impending doom (aka winter)

(photo: Ben) I stepped outside this morning and my brain immediately jumped to Chefchaoen, that little damp and cold hamlet in Morocco's north that felt just like this. It made me want a wood fireplace and time to just lay around.

See, that's the thing about Chicago's pre-winter. (Can't call it fall, it's too cold and the leaves are already gone.) It makes you just want to lay in bed. We're all tired, there's not enough daylight, it's cold, it's damp, and we're all struggling with the same head cold. The easy solution is to stay in bed and call it a season. But the one thing Ben told me the day I moved here is that the way to get through winter is to not give up, not just for a day. Because if you let 40 degrees and rain keep you inside, then surely 10 below...

So my dog, my head cold, and I went for the usual 5-miler this morning. The head cold robbed :3o a mile from my pace, the dog kept dragging me, trying to get up to normal pace. But I did it, so take that, pre-winter! Last winter I ran all through the worst of it. I need to just keep going to do that again.

In the meantime, Ben's bikes are on the train to Philly. Looks like the weather this weekend won't be too helpful for my cold. But while we're busy with our high expectations for Ben, let's just remember that there are other things he's good at too. Like this. ( I was searching Flickr to see who all posted pics of him from last weekend and it came up... ah, memory lane.)