Hey there, blog

Hi Blog, I see that you're still here. Although how pitiful you are looking, starved by your recent lack of attention. Yes, I know, our relationship needs work. I keep think that I will write you a post about this, or a post about that, but then do I write the post? No. I know, communication is not my strong point.

So I'm writing this post, short and boring though it is, just to get over the roadblock I seem to have built to posting. It's not much, but it's something.

I finally, finally, finally went for a run yesterday. It's been almost a month since my last half-hearted run with Marshal, my sister's dog, before Christmas. This lack of running is partly due to the snow and ice we had on the ground and partly due to inertia. When not running, it is so easy to keep on not running. (Just as when not blogging, it is so easy to keep not blogging.)

But I'd been a lump most of the weekend, and I was really feeling the need to get out and move, and it was a nice day, so I changed, and put on my new running shoes (bought before Christmas, but only worn for that one run-walk with Marshal), and headed out for the canal in the fading light.

We've had a bit of a warm up over the past several days, and the accumulated snow and ice are pretty much gone from the sidewalks. I expected the canal path to also be clear. Not so. There was still quite a bit of ice in places, of the skating-rink variety, so my new running shoes got well and truly baptized in the mud on the side of the path.

I ended up running (with just a few short walk breaks) not quite 3 miles along the canal and streets on the way back. It was a fairly average run, good to be moving if a bit sluggish.

The canal, by the way, was still frozen pretty solid, except for under the bridges. It froze over a bit last year, but nothing like this. Last weekend I walked along the canal, and some brave folks were walking and biking on the ice. Ok, that was probably safe, given that the weather hadn't been above freezing for several weeks. But driving a car? That takes a special kind of crazy.