Sunday - Gearing up for the week (and a brief bit about Reggae music)

I'll start with the highlight of my day today: an 8 mile family bike ride on the trail that connects the communities in our Valley. It was a wonderful morning for a ride. We saw cows pretty close up (sharing the shade from the same cluster of trees that provided our shade - really, we could see their eyes!), including a handful of young calves. We passed a number of folks walking their happy dogs, and we saw . . . 2 deer. Had my husband not convinced my son to tough out one more half mile before our turn around, we would have missed them. The 6 point buck stared at us for a good 3 minutes before deciding we were harmless and to join his young friend (perhaps a 2 year old male?) and head across the parallel road. It was amazing to catch glimpse of such a large deer - and great that our son could witness it (I believe little sister had dozed off by that time, or was darn close to it). (photo credit: Neahkahnie Net)

This week has a few exciting things coming up:

- concert on Tuesday night with my husband

- dinner with a long lost friend from high school (who has acutally been living in our area for the entire time we've lived here - thank you, Facebook, for the amazing connection)

- concert for the entire family and high school friend after dinner

- hopefully a few runs sprinkled into the week, some yoga and balance ball work

- finish my daughter's new "big girl bed" quilt (I might be dreaming with this one, but I'll work on it a little each day)

The week will also have a less fun aspect:

- my poor mom has to have a root canal

The upside of the root canal is that it should alleviate the immense pain she's been enduring all weekend (though the meds she was able to get on Saturday help, she'd much rather be out enjoying life than sleeping all day). We're hoping that she can get an appointment tomorrow morning. Having dental trouble on weekends is for the birds!!

Anyway . . . I promised that there would be an educational bit to my Sunday postings. So, here are a few fun facts about Reggae, in celebration of the concert on Wednesday (facts summarized for you from here):

- Ska and rocksteady music in Jamaica (we're talking 1960's here, folks, not the 3rd Wave Ska movement of the 1980's with greats such as The Toasters - that's an entire post of its own) led to the development of Reggae

- Reggae is all played in 4/4 time (think back to music class . . . this is generally the first rhythm pattern taught, which may be why you can't help but get your body moving to Reggae!)

- The Grammy awards introduced the Best Reggae Album category in 1985

Bet you didn't expect to get a mini music lesson here! I like to keep you guessing . . .

Have a great week, and as always - happy running!