What was your most interesting day?

One night last month, after work but before dinner Cameron, Sam and I went for a walk around our circle. Fairly recently, we learned that three laps make a mile. We'd like to walk at least a mile a day. Sometimes it happens.

As we were walking, we were talking about our days. Cam told me a bit about an exercise he had given his students at the Academy of Art. It sounded fun. I thought that we should ask each other some of the interview questions he assigned to them. The first one was to ask someone about their most interesting day of the past year.

When I asked Cam to name his, he almost immediately said it was the day we took the Maple Loop Pass hike in the Cascade National Forrest. During that hike, I said it was maybe the craziest thing I had ever done. (Hiking for hours through snow on top of unfamiliar mountains in sandals was pretty crazy.) I love the memories of that hike and our time in the Cascades (which I took to calling a second honeymoon) but I haven't gotten around to writing about it yet.

There are many family reunion memories I still want to document on the blog. When I started thinking about the reunion, I decided my most interesting day of the past 12 months was probably the day that Sam and I went paragliding in North Vancouver.

But before deciding on my most interesting day, I went back and thought about the past year, a month at a time. I remembered that a year ago, in mid September of '07, I started my job at CASA. We laughed that because of the job, I was late getting home and we were late carving our pumpkins last October.

In November, a bunch of relatives from my dad's side of the family came to the Bay Area for a Powell Family Thanks-
giving.

In December, Cam and I celebrated Christmas on our own and my dad had his surgery.

We spent New Year's in Chicago with Eric, Sarah, Ian and Avery. It is funny how now that I live in this amazing place, leaving it is such an extraordinary thing. We miss Chicago. I enjoyed going back there immensely.

Then, things started to get fuzzy. I couldn't remember what we did for Valentine's Day. I figure we both worked and that I fell asleep early on the couch. I remember it getting dark early in February and feeling like I was solar powered since I would lose energy as soon as the sun went down. Turns out that was the night we participated in the SF Pillow Fight. We also went skiing in February.

Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of specific memories from March. I'm glad we have the blogs to remind me of camping at Salt Point, my mom's visit, the Shawn Mullins concert...

In April, when Cam mentioned his birthday, I remembered the amazing time we had at Yosemite with Jim and Liz.

May was pretty fuzzy too. (We participated in Pangaea Day and experienced Beard Papa's cream puffs on Mother's Day, went to back to Maker Faire and took Sam on his first cable car ride on Memorial Day.)

In June, I knew we went to DC but had forgotten about our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There was the Powell family reunion, in northern Washington and Canada in July. August was full of birthday bonfire parties and Sam starting middle school. This month and last month, there has been a lot of focus on election stuff. I wonder what I will remember from September and October of 2008 when I try to recall them in 2009.

Hopefully, I will remember the hike I took with Sam and Leo the last Saturday in Sep-
tember. We didn't have a camera with us. Cam was in the city for Lily Bunka. There was no food in the house so I took the boys out to breakfast then we climbed a different trail to a different part of Ring Mountain. When we arrived at the enormous rock configuration, that was our destination, I sat in the shade, reading a captivating book while they climbed and played. I didn't know what to expect when they started calling for me to come and see what they found.

In the trunk of a tree, they had discovered an opossum. All I could see was the side of its head. It didn't seem to be moving and I was surprised that it was still there after all of their yelling and coming to get me. I guessed that it might be dead but they said it was blinking and that its ears had moved. I praised them for not poking at it with the sticks that were between them and the tree and suggested that if it was alive, it was likely pretty afraid and that we should back away from the animal we had cornered before it felt the urge to defend itself. As I was backing away, after them, the opossum suddenly turned its head to face me. It was startling and made me make a silly, startled noise. That was interesting.

While writing this post, I've been looking through pictures from the past 12 months and am reminded of many little adventures, like that one, that I hadn't shared yet.

I hope I will remember dancing with Cam and Sam last weekend to Ben Kweller at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. My favorite songs were Falling...

and Penny on the Track. I wait. I wait. For something good. For something great. Go. Just go. Find a place that you don't know. I see. I see all the things that I should be. Play. Just play... I try... I wait. I wait. For something good. For something great.

Thanks for letting me reminisce. What was your most interesting day of the past 12 months?