Halloween

It was a beautiful morning for running.

The sidewalks were dry, but the ground and trees were still covered with bright white snow, and the low cloud cover meant that the glow from the city lights was reflected across the landscape in a way that almost made the night seem to shine. It was cold -- mid 20s -- and there was a bit of a biting wind, but I wore enough layers to where I was actually a little too warm toward the end of my run.

I know that most of you think I'm a bit odd for running so early in the morning. After all, I need to finish by 5:20am so I can shower and get onto the pool deck in time to coach swim practice at 5:30. If you do the math and calculate when I have to wake up in order to eat breakfast, pack a lunch and work clothes, as well as performing all the standard morning hygiene activities, you can see that I need to get to bed pretty early if I want adequate sleep. The good news is that I don't like staying up late at night anyway, so I rather enjoy this unorthodox schedule.

Of course, it may partially explain why I don't have a girlfriend...but that's a topic for another discussion. Anyway, the point is that I think that finishing my runs a couple of hours before sunrise seems to work best for me. But I can't begin to tell you how much I miss being able to swim. As of this morning's inspection, I'd guess that I have at least another week before my ear will be healed over enough. Bummer.

I am enjoying coaching from the deck, though. It provides a different perspective. Some of the differences are easy to guess; it's easier to notice who's cheating on sendoff intervals, and who is being lazy on their turns. But I also can tell who is actually watching the clock vs. who is just pretending to, and which lanes need reminders about lane etiquette. I also really enjoy the fact that it's obvious that many of the people on the team have truly become good friends and are enormously supportive of each other. I may not have anything to do with that, but it makes me proud to be their coach in any case.

Anyway, because it is late at night as I write this, I'm going to keep it short so I can get to bed in time to allow me to exercise before sunrise tomorrow. I'll leave you with some Halloween-themed graphical quizzes. As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge the photos.

The challenge is to figure out the key word in each row, and how that word relates to Halloween. Some of the individual photos have other relationships to scary things, and I'll point those out when the solutions are revealed. You get extra credit if you can pick out which one of the photos in the last puzzle has a relationship to the entire theme of the second puzzle.







Have fun, good luck, and have a great weekend!