Snow Moat, Snow Problem

Another week and a 12 mile long-run down.  As most of you already know, we have gotten a ton of snow the past couple of weeks.  The best bet for finding a safe, non-icy long distance route is to stay on a main road and go out and back which makes for an exceptionally boring run.  And, because of where I live, Mass Ave would be the only road with enough sidewalks to make a long run out of.  Running on Mass Ave means running through Harvard Square and, for whatever reason, I never have good runs when I run through Harvard.  To combat the unknown sidewalks, Harvard, and the cold, Micah and I split yesterday's long run between running outside and on the treadmill.  It worked out well, except running on the street right after getting off the treadmill is not easy.  I felt like I had sea legs and was a little wobbly on our way back home.

My running stories this week aren't really worthy of a blog so I'm going to turn this over to my two dogs, Minnesota (Sota) and Buttercup.  Sota is master of escaping in general and the mounds of snow in the backyard has made it even easier for her to figure a way out.  The neighbors had piled the snow from their driveway over our bushes and into our yard, giving her a bridge to get out.  When I saw what they had done, I hoped that Sota's fear of everything would keep her in the yard.  Unfortunately, Sota is afraid of everything but snow and jumping.  In lieu of a run on Friday, I decided I would knock down her bridge and shovel a moat in between the bushes and our yard.  After an hour and a half of shoveling and excavating of ice blocks, I had a pretty nice pathway.

Surely this would keep Sota's tricks at bay.  I was very proud of myself and decided my hard work was certainly deserving of some hot chocolate.  This sense of accomplishment was short lived.  I was inside for all of two minutes before I heard barking.  From the front porch.  I opened the door and there was my little Houdini.  Smiling and taunting me with her unbelievable escaping abilities.  The only way I was going to be able to put a stop to this was to figure out exactly where she was getting out.  I put my snow gear back on, took the girls outside, walked on the other side of the fence and called her.  Please note that in the photo above that there are no trampolines of any kind in our yard.

Unbelievable.  This isn't even fair.