91 minute run along desolate, thawing streets of Exton. I ran beside 1970s raised ranches bolstered up by 1980s additions making the shape of a jealous house shrugging its shoulders in directed envy across the street, down the cul-de-sac at the 2005 Toll Brothers McMansions --newly erected, newly purchased by the dotcomer 20 something couple with the black-rimmed glasses, and full of empty rooms to store their 4000 square feet of a lifetime's worth of selfish treasures. 300 crunches. 12 miles? 12 miles. ----------------------- While waiting in line for Santa today, I picked at my right eyeball and pulled out my contact lens. It was ripped in two pieces and when putting it back in to drive home the world took on a new look; I could close my left eye and see a welcome, peaceful, blurry, fading world. Christmas orgies of sacks, blinking lights and lemmings went out of immediate focus. WTF does this have to do with running? My fingers did come into focus --the underbelly of their tips, red. I'm dehydrated. I've seen this before, in the field while in the Army. I'm really dehydrated. So much so, that I've got other symptoms -- confusion, lethargy, and other physiological signs. Dehydration is a story that won't end. You can keep your body at 1/2 a tank forever and go on lighting a match to your brain and kidneys. You runners, listen up. Drink water. Pay attention to this. I have been drinking too much coffee and beer without thinking that both act as diuretics. ---------------------------- Race tomorrow. Not sure how its going to go down. I haven't raced since Philly. Looking reality in the face, I haven't done squat since then for workouts so I've got low expectations. Heck, this is December after 9 marathons. This is the fallow field waiting for the sun to come out in January when the acerbic farmer will plant the seeds in the basement to dispel the naysayers and vicarious blogging sloths. ---------------------------- Narnia is brilliant. Enough said. --------------------------- Tears Woesucks I used to be very faithful to Sears. I bought all my appliances there. When I visit the store and the old man with the full head of gray hair and Old Spice smell to him clicks my name into the Commodore 64 terminal while trying to sell me poop for a maintenance contract, I get a warm, mom-and-apple pie feeling. It's 1950s nostalgia. Full time, commissioned people tapping marked up machinery trying to sell it to you. It's the American way completed with handshakes and weathered hands clacking on brown, coffee-stained keyboards lit up by black and white Wargames-era screens; it's Sears. Well I sat around with my daughter till noon today waiting for Sears to come deliver my low-end washer. Some ingrate called about 1pm and told me that it ain't coming. In the world of supply chain management, Meet The Press commercials with shit flying all over the world instantaneously, Sears can't get me my machine which was supposed to be delivered today, until December 30th? This means 13 more days of unclean running clothes, reused socks, sniff-test with descending standards of passing marks, and complete inconvenience. To top it all off, ingrate hung up on me when I told her their Commodore 64 way of doing business doesn't cut it. I have this way of irritating people; I'm a thorn in the sides of people I choose to embed myself into. I still have the original letter with the real signature from the editor of Time Magazine in response to my 6th Grade letter railing against their blatant left wing bias in the coverage of the war in El Salvador. I was a begrudged fair and balanced zealot before fair and balanced became a buzzword brought to you by Foxbabes and Sean Hannity with the Mao American flag lapel. Now I could give 2 shits about it all. What does this have to do with running? I hear Ruppert Murdoch's son runs 16 minute 5ks when he's not racing his yacht.