I've now walked over 200 miles this month, and ended up being on the same trail at mile 200 that I was walking on when I reached 100 miles a couple of weeks ago. This time, Jeanine was with me. She has walked a little over 100 miles this month, so that brings our combined total to over 300 miles. We found a couple of snakes too, the first being a tiny little Gopher snake stretched out in the middle of the trail, and the second being a little Striped Racer. Jeanine spotted it off to the side of the trail, and I caught it to take a few pictures. I haven't seen one of these in the wild in over 20 years, and I think I've only ever caught one or two of them, so I was pretty happy to finally get to take a few pictures of one. It was a nice 200-mile present.

On my evening walk yesterday, I saw at least 10 Night Herons, all patiently waiting for dinner along the shores of Vasona reservoir. The last one I spotted suddenly thrust his head forward, looking intently at the water for a moment before striking and snapping up a 3 inch fish. Nervous about being observed, it hopped into some nearby low branches to finish its meal. Earlier in the same walk, I spotted the little brown face of a mouse peering at me out of a little brown hole. It froze when it saw me, before some tiny movement on my part caused it to vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

I'm tired today, mostly because our morning walk preempted my morning nap. I split my sleep schedule during the school year, catching a few hours of light sleep at work (if the kids are all snoozing) and usually coming home in the morning to sleep until noon. My apartment stays nice and cool on hot days, and retains warmth pretty well on the cold ones, so sleeping during the day is pretty easy.

Currently listening to: Comus "East of Sweden"