I can't believe it's already April. And as such, it means the Worst Time of the Year is fast approaching — three years since I last saw Isaiah; three years since he died.

I got a tattoo last week, and at first I was pleased that, for once it seems, it's not a memorial tattoo. But all tattoos seem to be memorial tattoos, and since it's a poppy I was sad to think that, with time, I'd come to see it as a memorial for the best dog ever. The tattoo runs up the length of the back of my left leg. I was inspired, in part, by a woman who also runs around Lake Merritt and who is much faster than me. She has long tattoos on the back of her legs too, and as she breezes past me, I always admire them. I like the idea of giving those behind me something to look at, a reason to mutter "well, she's badass."

That I am.

I'm back into half marathon training again — just a month until my next one, this time running across the Bay Bridge. I ran 9 miles on Saturday's long run, and this week I'll restart the speed work. My body doesn't seem to mind it, which is a relief. I was, in some ways, more nervous about the recovery from my first half marathon than the race itself, knowing that I had this second 13.1 miler to do. Aging makes recovery much more challenging, and while there are so many gadgets and products that promise to make recovery better/easier/faster, the key is really sleep. (Klaxon: new writing project!) I get up really really early in order to walk around Lake Merritt with Kin every morning, but yeah, I go to bed really really early as well.

It's an old person's schedule: eat dinner early; go to bed early. But I don't mind. Also making me feel old: the movie Tetris, available on Apple TV. Not only do I have very fond memories of playing the video game many decades ago, but the scenes that take place in the Soviet Union reminded me of my visit there in the late 1980s. I've always associated the collapse of the USSR with the youth culture and rock music — there's a scene in the film where Europe's "The Final Countdown" plays in a club, and it hits just right (despite the almost universal agreement that that is one of the worst songs ever written). I hadn't known the story of the video game and all the political machinations surrounding it. And while I'm not always a fan of Eighties nostalgia for video games — Ready Player One is bad, I'm sorry, it's bad — Tetris is actually quite delightful.