Balmy Sunday

We lounged this morning: read the Sunday paper, fell asleep sitting up on the couch, woke up and decided to run around Calhoun and Harriet to redeem the day and soak up the few atoms of vitamin D produced by the wan January sun. People around the lakes had a look of contentment - little half smiles sometimes blooming into a full grin on eye contact. This is a common expression - people are so happy to be out, even in pale sunshine, after two weeks of subzero death cold.

On TV this afternoon is a story about a group of guys replicating the Peking to Paris auto race of some time in the early 1900's. They alternate between great adventure, great fun, and being really ticked off with each other. They're driving the cars of the era, dressed in the clothes of the era, but they have a sag wag tagging along with them that I'm not sure the original auto racers had. Hey, a guy's gotta be comfortable, I guess. They're in Siberia, which looks a little like Minnesota, and should help explain why much of this blog has so far focused on the weather.

Heat wave in Minnesota

It got up to 30 today. As a measure of just how freaking cold it's been the last couple weeks, 30 degrees made me feel like running in shorts. But I stuck with my good ol' Minnehaha Marathoner greenies. The club ran in our centipede costume in the St. Paul Winter Carnival 5K this morning. We had a full contingent of 13 heads and 26 feet, and completed in a blistering 42 minutes. We burn up a fair amount of time surrounding police officers stationed on the course and giving high-fives to the runners coming back in the opposite direction. Steve stayed in bed. He woke up to his own personal morning pukefest, triggered by, a) the scallops we had for dinner, or b) the copious amount of wine we had at dinner, or c) some kind of evil-but-brief stomach flu. He seems to be better this afternoon. At least he's talking about what we'll have for dinner tonight.