I feel adrenaline.

Trick-or-treat was a lovely success, there were fewer kids than usual but not by an extreme margin. However, it is disappointing to learn that neighbors on adjoining streets don't share in our attention. One of the folks just around the corner said he got ten children.

I can guess why, there is a concentration of houses with their lights on where we live, the side streets are spaced further apart and appear less occupied, or friendly. Last year, I started making a map of the houses that would have candy, only I'm afraid that might actually just go to further illustrate that point.

Our neighborhood needs to get to know each other again. It's been a long time.

Horde 0122

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 27:23
Pace: 8:50

One more spooky zombie story before I begin leaning into the holidays. And this time, it was pretty exciting!

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 52°
Climate: overcast & cool
Mood: ugh

Spent some time with friends last night, then watched SNL live … did too much, stayed up too late, had a late, late morning, with head pain.

And yet, this run was just what I needed to reset. It’s a perfect fall day for running, I hope that is the case for my running colleagues in New York.

The question … will I, can I join them next year?

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 160 lbs.

Planks: TBA
Push-ups: TBA

Sit-Ups: TBA

What’s That Lyric?

Black Friday (pretty like the sun) - Lost Frequencies ft. Tom Odell

You keep stopping when you could be walking.

Let's just not nitpick over the password stuff.

Have not successfully completed fifteen runs in one month since June. I would like a high-five.

Distance: 3 miles

Duration: 25:28

Route: Rec Center
Temperature: 43°
Climate: clear & cool
Mood: anxious

Could have run outdoors with a jacket, it's nice. But just cool enough that I wanted to be indoors -- and that's how we do that.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 160 lbs.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

Monster Bash Playlist

I Lied to You - Miles Caton

Nightmares - A Flock of Seagulls

Dinner With Drac pt. 1 - John Zacherle

Dead Souls - Joy Division

Walking With a Ghost - Tegan & Sara

Goo Goo Muck - The Cramps

Horror Movies - Skyhooks

You’re running around. You know better, daddy.

Ten runs, every other day. Consistency. Dedication. Anxiety. Commitment. Today I ran as many runs as I did in 2012, a marathon year -- no literally, I ran a marathon -- these are the numbers I rack up training for a marathon. And there are two more months in the year.

Consistency. Dedication. Commitment. And anxiety.

Distance: 3 miles

Duration: 24:49

Men need twice as much exercise as women to lower heart disease risk, study finds by Ian Sample, Science Editor, The Guardian 10/27/2025

"Under NHS guidelines, men and women aged 16 to 64 should take at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, each week, combined with muscle-strengthening activities at least twice a week."

Route: Rec Center
Temperature: 52°
Climate: cloudy and cool
Mood: very anxious

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 161 lbs.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

What’s That Lyric?

I Put a Spell on You - Sonique

I was born to run.

Doing some substitution work this week, stepping into Willy Loman's shoes for the first time in, well, a very long time. And these damn arch supports are killing me.  

Distance: 3 miles

Duration: 25:28

Route: Rec Center
Temperature: 48
Climate: clear & cool
Mood: delirious

The evening is pleasant, but I don't run in the dark anymore.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 162 lbs.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: TBA

What’s That Lyric?

Midnight Sky - Miley Cyrus

It'd be safest if you ran.

In 2007, the Death Clock said I will die Monday, October 7, 2047.

Now it says I will die Wednesday, May 7, 2042.

What the fuck, Death Clock?

I don't want to die on a Wednesday.

Seriously, though, and to paraphrase Logan 5, "Do I get my five years back?"

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:09
Pace: 9:04

Now avoiding all the pre-Halloween Halloween candy in the office. And yet, at home I have started just putting things into my mouth. When it's the other half of the banana I had as part of breakfast, okay, I guess. When you are putting away the leftovers and decide, at the end of the night, to have another "little" bowl of pasta and sauce, that is not okay, that is weirdly compulsive.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 50°
Climate: overcast & cool
Mood: all right

He's got legs.
He knows how to use them.

Capsule review: FRANKENSTEIN (2025)
Given the essential subject matter and also popular trends in gothic horror this film featured a surprising lack of dong.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 161 lbs. (-9.0)

It's cool and damp, but the sun is shining so brightly. An indoor run would be a crime.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

Spooky Workout Mix

Rasputin (Club Mix) - Boney M. ft. G. Mart

Mother - Danzig

Sick, Sick, Sick - Queens of the Stone Age

Blood in the Cut - K.Flay

Into The Void - Nine Inch Nails

Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? - Revolting Cocks

Tooth - Lady Gaga

Shit, got some new ideas for the Monster Bash Mix.

This race is all but run.

The weather has finally, truly turned. Depressing headache yesterday, as the clouds came in and the temperature dropped. It's rained for about a day, we're bringing the plants inside, I'm starting to close the windows, the heat is on.

And it is time to hit the rec center.

Distance: 3 miles 

Duration: 25:42

A few years ago, when I was having trouble turning a small idea into a big idea, I started to go on longer and longer runs. The urge was to make a metaphorical idea come true; by tracing a bigger area with my feet, perhaps I could trace a bigger idea with my mind.

-  by Ben Ratliff, "Run the Song"

Route: rec center
Temperature: 45°
Climate: rain
Mood: irritated

Just a few days ago, it was my Noomaversary. Surprised they didn't let me know, but that might run counter to their programming, drawing attention to the passage of time. Or maybe a lot of people quit after one year.

My recreation center membership renews in December. That's how late I signed up, how long I ran in the cold and rain before taking that step. Now, I just need to prepare in the morning, and I go. It's not a big deal.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 170 lbs. (+10)

How do you jump ten pounds in two days? It was surprising to me, but not too surprising. The fact is, the past two days, yesterday especially, were not "mindful." They were, in fact, ordinary. The headache compounded my desire, I sat in a classroom in Aurora, miserable, taking notes, and thinking how much better life would be with sugar and caffeine. I made a beeline to the nearest Starb*cks and got not only a PSL, my first, and hopefully only of the season, and why not, a slice of banana bread.

That banana bread is 380 calories, all by itself. This was after having had my traditional breakfast.

Lunch was packed, which was good. But it is sugar season and there is candy all over the office, I had one, two, I mean, they're so small, three pieces of candy. Two of them were chocolate.

Last night I was on my own and I made dinner. Leftover mac and cheese, but I did not measure it, and so it was closer to two cups, not just one. In that way I could just empty the container. Why not? And I grazed on pretzel sticks as I air fried sweet potatoes.

Later, watching TV eating dinner and having a beer, I decided not to let the honey mustard I made go to waste and fetched two unmeasured handfuls of pretzel sticks, but also made additional honey mustard to go with it.

Unregulated, unmeasured, unrecorded, unmindful. This describes what used to be a normal day for me. Just, eating whatever.

There is a lot of produce in the fridge, but I could not be bothered to make something good for just me, which is unfortunate. But there you go, ten pounds in two days. A lot of that weight is probably just working its way through me, waiting to get out. But some will remain.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: TBA

What’s That Lyric?

It’s Not Over (‘Til It’s over and Done) - Bleu McAuley

How weak you must feel.

Good lord, tripped on a cat on my way upstairs in the dark last night and it feels like I sprained my toes.

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:50
Pace: 9:18

As many runs as I completed in both 2019 and 2021. And in 2019 I was training for a marathon. Of course, that was also the year I was losing my mother and basically didn't run the last two months of the year.

Then again, after Chicago, I am surprised I ever ran again.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 58°
Climate: partly cloudy & cool
Mood: all right

Fall quarter, freshman year. I was eighteen. This was thirty-nine years ago. For context, thirty-nine years before that was 1947, when my parents were only twelve. Don't know how that is relevant, but it seems important to me to appreciate just how long thirty-nine years is. I digress. 

Fall quarter, freshman year. It was 1986. I did not know yet how to take care of myself. I remember I was ill that semester, and in the middle of the night I was hungry and had some milk (don't ask, it's gross, adults who drink milk are monsters) and was surprised to learn it had gone sour. I was grateful that one of the water fountains on the floor was right outside my dorm and was able to spit it up there.

The point is, I was eighteen and had never had bad milk before, because I had a mother who would never let anything go bad in her refrigerator. I had never thought to check the expiration date, of anything. It had been taken care of. I had been taken care of.

And yet, there I was. Living, in a way, on my own. Someone still made my meals for me, that is what a dining plan is for. And I was warm and safe, presumably so that I could concentrate on my studies which was why I was there. I was still like a high school student, but in many ways, on my own. Still a pampered child, only now I drank beer, smoked cigarettes, and screwed.

My girlfriend had a roommate who did not care for me, and I do not blame anyone who did not care for me when I was below the age of thirty-five. When I think of the room they shared I see the bed, the cinderblock walls, the naked, tile floor. It was a room like the other rooms. We did not sleep over at each others' rooms, that may have had as much to do with our own feelings of discomfort (sleeping in the same bed as someone else is a skill, especially a narrow dormitory bed) as it did with our roommate situations. Better not to make things weird.

Also, I think it wasn't allowed. That makes more sense, too. But people did it, of course. We did not.

"You have this, too? I have this."

Her roommate had a copy of Suzanne Vega's first album, and the girlfriend developed an affinity for it. So did I, though even at that time I felt that she, and by she I mean Vega, was criticizing me. Or maybe, more to the point, that she had my number. Or that she had ours.

I want to be clear, I was never physically abusive to her, my girlfriend. But that does not mean I was always kind, or smart. I was a fool. Several of the songs on this album (others of hers, too) allude to domestic violence, even as she serenely sings and elegantly plays her guitar. The song Marlene On the Wall, more than any other song on that album, reminds me of that time, of that place, and of that young woman. 

An old black and white poster, it may have been that one that every female college student had at that time, "Kiss by the Hôtel De Ville" by Robert Doisneau, the one Campbell Scott shows us in Singles (if you know, you know) but in the song it is Marlene Dietrich, witnessing the uneducated fumblings of a couple who are soon to come apart, a poster blu-tacked to the painted cement, a romantic image that attempts to add warmth and style to a utilitarian domicile with cold walls and a cool floor.

Other evidence has shown that

You and I are still alone

We skirt around the danger zone

And don't talk about it later

Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega (1985)

Cracking

Marlene On the Wall

Small Blue Thing

Straight Lines

Undertow

The Queen & The Soldier

Knight Moves

Neighborhood Girls 

But the only one here now is me

I'm fighting things I cannot see

I think it's called my destiny

That I am changing

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 160 lbs.

Got my kit on this morning, stepped outside and it was raining. I'm not in training, there is no reason to deal with that. Not cold, not wet. Time to transition to the rec center.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes