Sunday Long Post

First of all, to answer a few FAQs:

1. In response to some comments on my holiday stress that I posted about yesterday: I'm not necessarily that stressed out about preparing for the holidays in and of themselves. In fact, I am 97% done shopping, holiday cards are done and in the mail, winter-wear clothing for MN is out of storage, and car is ready for the trip (oil is changed, SunPass is charged up). See, what's stressing me out is that I have not only the finishing holiday stuff to prepare for before we leave, but I also have the semester to finish (which means reading about 135 essays and finalizing grades in the next two weeks), I have a book review due on Dec 9th (I review about a handful of books a year for ForeWord magazine) and I've only read about 20 pages of my assigned book, I have the Palm Beach Half Marathon to run on Sunday, Dec 7th, and we are hosting a Christmas party for our friends on Dec 12th. So, it's all of these things converging at once that has me feeling a touch stressed.

2. Some asked if I'll be running while we're in MN for our 2 week vacation: Hells yeah, I am! I do have some winter running gear, but it's limited and somewhat make-shift, but it will do for just two weeks. But I couldn't go two weeks (especially during the holidays -- all that time with family, ack!) without running. Plus, since I don't have to live and run in winter conditions on a regular basis, I actually kinda like the change in weather and terrain.

So, on to today. As mentioned above, I have a shitload of essays to read, and worse yet, about 75 of them are research essays, so I spent most of the morning working on those: Some are really well-written and contain excellent research and writing; others are...well...like Thumper's mom says, "If you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything at all." The good news is that I made significant headway with them and I feel good about how much I got done.

After lunch, I settled in with these two

for some Sunday afternoon football, and we're currently watching a pretty tight game between Miami and St. Louis: C'mon, Fins! Pull your shit together!

BTW, what'cha think of this pic of Scooter? Funny, right? Doesn't he kinda look like a Gremlin? I was gonna say that I'm gonna start calling him "Gizmo" but then Jerry said that Gizmo isn't a Gremlin and they only turn into Gremlins if fed after midnight; does anyone remember what they are called before that, when they're still Gizmo-esque?

As for running today, I slept in this morning for the first time on a Sunday since September, and I was gonna save my long run for early this evening, but now the weather is doing this:
Off and on showers, windy, cloudy weather, with tornado warnings until 8 pm. You can see how windy it is in this next pic: That's the flag on the 9th hole on the golf course directly behind our house. Not ideal running conditions.

So, after football, I think I may try to fit a quick, short run in (weather permitting -- it's pouring out there right now) and skip the long run since I don't want to gamble with the possible tornadoes. I've been apathetic about running this week and I'm logging some of the lowest weekly mileage that I've had in a long time, but I can just think of it as a step-back week, right?