Steve Blogs!: Another One Of Those Days...

It's already been one of those days.

Mrs B and I got in from Rocktoberfest around midnight-thirty and fell into bed. I was awakened at 6am by Mrs B's phone alarm going off downstairs. I trudged down the stairs, turned off her phone, and started the coffee. While it was brewing (which seemed to take forever), I turned on The Weather Channel, and noted that it was 41 degrees outside...ugh, another cold weather run.

Poured my first cup of coffee and decided to get my Plank-a-day out of the way. Here's the subsequent post on Daily Mile:

That's right, my plank was interrupted by a pesky insect. *Sigh*

I poured a second cup of coffee, leashed up Zeus, and headed over to the running trail. Here's my subsequent post from THAT trip:

To expand upon my observations:

I don't often run that late in the morning, for a number of reasons. First, as I have to get ready for work AND get the kids ready and to school every morning, I have to be out the door by 7:15, which means I have to be in the shower by 6am, which means I have to start running by 4:45, which means I have to be up at 4am. Every week day. As a result, my body has become accustomed to rising early, and do so even on the weekends. I've never been a "sleep in" kind of guy, and even less so now.

Second, and most importantly, if Zeus is out on the trail with me and there's any sort of daylight, then the number of rabbits, squirrels and birds increases exponentially (and his attention span decreases by the same degree). Therefore, I've found it most effective to be finished running before there's any hint of sunlight.

Along Hudson Street, which runs parallel (sort of) to the back two kilometers of the running trail, there are a number of houses whose backyards face the street. At 5am, the dogs that live in those backyards are either still inside or fast asleep. We NEVER have dog barking issues during the week.

Today was different, as it seems every dog was awake and out and ready to distract us (and by "us" I mean "Zeus".)

We were running north, which meant I was between Zeus and the dog yards. On three separate occasions he came across the front of me to investigate the barking from the yard across the street. On each of those occasions, I nearly took a header as I tried to simultaneously jump out of his way and pull him back in line so we could proceed.

When I wrote the post above, I was just kidding about making puppy burgers. When I wrote it in my mind immediately after the third episode, however, I was dead serious. Lucky for Zeus there are no free standing grills along the running trail.

And just a quick note about the third item - this has been a great concert year for me. I've seen a lot of bands that I have loved for years or have just discovered - Seether, Bush, My Darkest Days, Staind, Godsmack, Shinedown, Papa Roach, Adelitas Way, P.O.D, Jonathan Coulton, They Might Be Giants, Lit, Hellyeah, Buckcherry, Hinder - and have had to suffer through comparatively few bands that "someone else" (not naming names) likes in order to do it - James Taylor, Grouplove and Nickelback come to find - and I'm sure there were others that I don't remember or have blocked from my memory. I've seen far more bands this year than in the last few years combined!

Many of these I've already uploaded to Facebook, but I'll share them again here as my tribute to a great concert season!