What Happened?

I feel very disconnected from a lot of things in my past that I really used to enjoy. Poker night is a good example. A bunch of used to get together semi-regularly to play poker. There was never a set schedule – it was always more of an ad-hoc thing. I miss it. I dont get to see any of the guys that much with the exception of mountain bike rides. I think I will have to try and throw one together.

We also havent had a camping trip in a while. We were doing the bi-annual camping trip with some regularity over the past couple of years, but this year, it fell apart. I dont want to set these kind of patterns. I am too close to any of these guys to have things dissolve and go away.

With the way I dress for work, I sometimes wonder how many people get on the train and think I am a student on my way to school in Philly. Granted, if I am mistaken for a student, most people probably think I am the really old guy – you might have had one in your classes as well. The guy in my class was well into his thirties, and he was full time, which is very rare. One would think that a guy like that, who is immersed in a culture that is predominantly populated with kids in their late teens/early 20’s, would have the propensity of regressing back into maturity level to attempt to fit in. But the guy in my class played it cool and kept mostly to himself.

See, I would regress. Quite frankly, it wouldnt be a big effort for me to regress- I dont think I have fully embraced the maturity level that is commiserate with my age.

I flew out to Dallas to give a presentation at a conference for retail facility managers. I got off the plane and it was 80 degrees. When I left Philly, it was 44 and raining. The presentation went ok. I used a presentation that was created by the president of my company. I had reviewed many times over, but as I was giving the presentation, I felt very disjointed because I didnt create it. I didnt know the seg-ways between slides. Lesson learned: next time I will make my own presentation. It also didnt help that I was hung-over and working on three hours of sleep. The night prior, I had met some folks from a large retailer and had some (many) drinks with them, to the extent that the security at the hotel kicked us out of the bar at 3:00 am, well after the bar had closed. Good times.

Of course, as luck would have it, my plane leaving Dallas was three hours delayed back into Philly because of the shitty weather. I cant fault Philly for this one, as much as I would like to. The weather truly was awful. My luck just got better as I got on the plane. I had managed to snag an aisle seat, but the guy sitting next to me was on the large side. To complicate matters, five minutes after sitting his ass in the seat, he passes out and starts snoring like a howitzer. Without the sounds of the engines to drown him out, it was unbearable. People in front of me and behind started looking around, thinking perhaps one of the engines broke. It was that bad. Once airborne, the engines drowned him out and I had some relative peace and quiet.

I am a bit out of sorts with respect to my running schedule. I havent run since Wednesday. I wasnt feeling great this weekend. I cant put my finger on it – I never felt motivated to get off my ass and run. I dont know – maybe it was the weather. It just wasnt there.

Saturday, I timed a race at Ridley Creek State Park for the ACDC Animal Shelter. Only 20 people ran. I really felt bad for the race organizers, but this weather we had was brutal, and there were two other races taking place that morning that runners had to choose from. I have races lined up for the next two weekends, and then things calm down a bit. I just got word from Tim that the weekend of December 12th, we have three huge races back to back and each race will have 1,000+ runners. Wow.

…. And then the Pickle Runs start….