Well, that was beautiful. Yesterday, I mean. Sunny. Warm. The sort of day where you go outside bracing for one season and are left to marvel that you’ve somehow been transported to an entirely different season. Or that your human notions of space-time are finite and limited. Or that a different weather system has moved into your region. One of those things. Definitely the second one.
Anyway, it hit 62 degrees, so I ran 6.2 miles. And, in the breeze, there was a tumbling tumble-crape myrtle.
I walked outside to run and heard that thing scratching its way down the street. So, of course, I had to follow it a while. It left the road once, and went deep into someone’s yard before stopping, such was the breeze. I retrieved it, put it back in the middle of the road and it blew around some more. I’d managed to walk five or six houses down the road before I decided I had enough footage to make that oh-so-compelling video. You can cover a pretty decent distance if you’re busy staring in a viewfinder. Or at your phone screen. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.
Just a lovely run. Started too strong. Stayed fast. I dropped almost five minutes off of my last 10K over the same course. And I thought that one felt good. It must be the shoes.
Now I just need them to make me fast.
So it was sunny and warm yesterday. Today it was almost warm and overcast, so I only ran a 5K today, faster than I have in a good long while. And now I’ll let my legs rest a bit.
Are we padding this out with tweets? We are padding this out with tweets.
How are you? Did you miss me? I would understand if you didn’t. There’s a lot of stuff out there to see and read and watch and hear and do. And if it isn’t in our faces all of the time, we might not even be aware of it’s absence. We are consumerists of the moment. It has probably always been this way, since society reached beyond some arbitrary critical mass of saturation, but let’s blame it on the Internet.
Shame on you, Internet. There’s just so much of you. So much so, that people won’t even notice me. Or, most critically, notice if I’ve taken the day, or many, off.
Which is what I’ve done. It was a nice idea and I’m pleased with having done it. I haven’t written anything here, or on social media, though I have kept up a little. I’ve just done the other things in life. And, I suppose, that means I’ve had a little extra time. So I have accomplished more stuff! Well, yes and no. Mostly no, but also yes, in a pleasing enough manner. I read four books. Two of them were essay collections edited by Edwin Grosvenor, one on The Civil War and one on World War I. These were both good. It was, I said to a friend, like reading well-written longform Wikipedia posts on specific subjects. I also read Al Roker’s story about the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. It was a book that tried to walk a line between people who want to know about weather and, yet, no know nothing about weather. It is a great and tragic and amazing tale, one somehow lost in the modern zeitgeist. But the book could have done with another editing pass or two. Also, I finished a book about the archeology of the battle of the Culloden battlefield. We visited there a few years ago, and the interpretation is well done for casual visitors. Most battlefields are difficult, for me anyway, to visualize and understand. Not so, Culloden. Part of that is because of the work that’s been done to return the hallowed ground to what it looked like in 1746. And that’s because of thoughtful scholarship like that found in this book.
Things that have happened since we spoke last…
I got sick! There were about six days of feeling rough, eight days of eating zinc and vitamin supplements and cough drops like candy, and three of those days where I was laid quite low. After that, another week of idle coughing and throat clearing. But I’m fine now. It was, as you might expect, a fine way to bring in the new year. But, with that out of the way, I’m good to go and be virus-free until about 2026 or so.
I returned to work after the holidays, of course. (As did you! Was your office different? Mine was exactly the same.)
The beginning of a semester brings its own odd pace. Two or three weeks in, as we are now, the rush of the start is over and we slip into the rhythm of the term. But, in addition to that early semester rush, we’ve also been working toward a project that just wrapped last Friday. CBS Sports was here, producing an episode of We Need To Talk. They used our studio, some of our students and talked to and about a lot of the local sports world. This is the only clip they’ve put online so far:
It was a good show, a good experience for the people who took advantage of it. And, most importantly, we can move on to other things.
Let’s catch up on everything else with photographs.
Poseidon is still getting into everything. We try to keep him out of the laundry room, but he’s fast. And he knows precisely what he’s going for, the bag randomly sitting between the dryer and the ironing board:
We’ve had gray skies:
A lot of gray skies:
It’s just positively charming in its perpetual dreariness. (It’s not.)
We’re averaging one day of blue sky a week. But on one particular blue sky day we had a nice sunset:
It should just happen more often, is all.
I’ve been running, of course. Even as I was trying to get over my head cold. And I have had the opportunity to use the running light that The Yankee got me for Christmas:
It casts a giant arc of light. Probably looks weird coming at you, but you don’t miss things on the sidewalk or path or road. And it inadvertently spotlights deer. Now we both have one of these ONE80 lights, and we’re big fans. If you run, or work outside at night, or need something that’s ridiculously bright and long-lasting and hands free, this is the one you want.
Also, it has been cold, of course. But happily, so far this year, it has been an unseasonably mild winter. Even still, cold enough.
Only a few days this month have been really bitter. And that’s plenty for the year, thanks.
I got to run with Venus, which you can see in the twilight here:
The Canada geese are just moving back and forth from one pond to another around here.
They think, this is south enough, I guess. They are mistaken.
There is a running path behind our house. It has little tendrils that extend out to the road in front of us, but otherwise, it just exists unto itself, ending in a fallow field on one end and almost seven-tenths of a mile away it ends in woods. It is one of many paths around the city, and we’ve been told that they’ll one day all be connected, which would be a great feature, if you think about it. The realization of that goal may well be long after we can be bothered to care, or live here. But there is a bit of progress on our local stretch of pedestrian asphalt. The path behind us has been extended a bit, recently. Now it goes back and behind the newer developments on the road. Meanwhile, one of the other paths (which joins the larger network on one end and just … stops … on the other end) is growing toward our little path. One problem: the creek in between. Well, that problem has been solved:
Now those two paths just have to link up.
Also, the ponds recently froze:
Definitely the kind of weather I want to be outside in. Fortunately they haven’t been frozen solid. Here’s a shot of a larger pond, just a day or three later. And if you squint at the fuzzy background in the distance it almost looks like that’s some sort of alpine village, which would be an upgrade.
It has been cold enough for the cats to cuddle:
Phoebe is also doing just fine:
And now we’ll try to get back into some normal routine around here, too.
Last day of the year, last run of the year, last, last, last. It was a dank and chilly run, a 10K, and it all felt pretty good, shockingly. The splits weren’t good, the times weren’t amazing, but the spirit was good and I was pleased with the effort.
For the month, then, that’s a little over 76 miles.
Poseidon is not impressed.
Phoebe is always polite enough to at least play the part.
Well, I’m pleased. I suppose the comeback is complete. Now we just have to figure out what’s next. More miles? Faster miles? More faster miles? Holding serve? Staying inside and holding a hot chocolate?
On our tramping about town today, a day in which we tramped, we visited a local running store. This is a place where my mother-in-law picks us up nice things like, this year, a new blinkie for bikes and a couple of nice pairs of running socks. They were, today, having a sale.
I did not buy an aero helmet. But it looks pretty cool, right?
Or is this more my speed?
That one is probably more my speed. My speed being: slow, but fashionable.
Except on today’s run. I was fast! Well, for me. I guess? At this stage? It was fast? Ish? Question mark? I ran four-and-a-half miles, last run of the trip, and was about to get down into a respectable speed for a 5K when … a car pulled out without regard to looking left or, in my case, right, and almost hit me. I gave him A Look, which is different from The Look, because there were cars behind him, and if he’d received The Look those other cars would have been trapped behind the car with the lifeless body in the driver’s seat.
And somehow that nonverbal exchange cost me about 15 seconds, which kept me from getting the first 5K in recent-record time.
Or that’s the story I’m telling the sports historians anyway.
Here’s a look at Gray’s Creek, a gut where the fishing is apparently good, but not much else is said about it on the web. On one side is a short municipal golf course. On the other side of Gray’s is Hall Island, which is not really an island, but actually a spit:
There are 31 gorgeous houses and at least 12 pools on the non-island, which seems a pleasant place of residential bliss where nothing out of the ordinary has ever happened.
And here’s one last look of the Long Island Sound, from Compo Cove. It was a great week to run here:
Old neighbors came to visit. There were many laughs and complaints about the new Star Wars movie. We’ll go watch it soon, but first, this strawberry shortcake:
Tonight’s dessert, and the gag gifts that went with it, mark our last Christmas celebration of the year. You want them to continue. You want them to end gracefully and well. Dessert is a good way to do that.
The holidays are over, the holidays continue. Christmas has a way about it, doesn’t it? So much build up, so much frantic build up in these shorter holidays years, and then you hit all of the parties and family fun and then … there’s that paper pile, your presents and the now empty tree. Good thing we’ve come to think of all of this time as being about the people, then. Good thing we’ve had the time to spend.
We are fortunate that way. It’s back home and back to work for most people, but we are able to enjoy an early start and a delayed ending to the holidays. So the holidays continue.
Nice run this morning. I ran around the park where The Yankee played as a child, where we took our engagement pictures in a nor’easter 11 years ago last week. It’s much warmer today, thanks. Also, the roads have been freshly paved.
We went to Pepe’s for pizza salad. They make the best salad pizza you can find anywhere.
Truly great stuff. And my in-laws were nice enough to bring us, and to share. They’re kind people that way.
Here’s Frank Pepe. He opened his first restaurant in 1925, after he ‘d come to the U.S., returned hom to fight in the Great War and then returned to America and found his way into the restaurant business. We’re dining at the third one, which opened decades after he died. The guy in this photo has no idea there are going to be a dozen stores bearing his name.
He started out making two pies and selling them off his head. And now here we are. The server did not bring out our pizzas on her head, which was a bit of a disappointment, but that was the only disappointment.
After dinner, a dilemma! We went to a minor league hockey game. The Wolf Pack at the Sound Tigers, in a battle of compound nicknames. The Sound Tigers are the home team, and a part of the Islanders organization. The visitors are in the Rangers farm system. You’d cheer for the home team, because they’re the home team. But this is a Rangers family. So this was a confusing time. A confusing time mollified by my new favorite past time.
Who knew they needed a go kart on ice? They ran this guy out in between segments of play and he was purely a stall. The promo was watching two guys race across the ice putting on a fire fighter’s turnouts. They were too fast, so this guy got to do his laps.
The Sound Tigers won 5-1. Also, it was teddy bear toss night, which was great fun to see. After the first goal people toss their new stuffed friends onto the cold, cold ice as part of a toy drive.
If only we’d known, we could have continued the giving. It should never end, after all.
