The last great sunny day

I keep thinking that this is the last great warm sunny day of the year, but they keep on coming. It’s been great for midday runs, which I’ve been lucky enough to fit in a couple of times a week for the last few weeks. That’s a good thing, because I fell off the morning schedule when Lee broke her arm. I’ve been able to sneak in midday runs for the past few weeks, though, and it’s mostly been beautiful (too beautiful, because the locker room gets really crowded on nice days). I want to run the First Night Saratoga 5K, so I’ve got to get serious about training again. After the Race for the Cure, I wanted to pick up some speed and started training faster, and immediately ran into problems with a sprained left foot and ileotibial band problems on the right leg. The sprain feels 95% better, though rest alone really wasn’t enough, and now I’ve got a good stretch for the ITB that seems to have ironed that problem out. It’s always something, and you can’t stretch everything every day — after a while, I stop doing a stretch entirely and then I get hurt.
Christmas shopping is advancing nicely. Big Amazon order coming, with a couple of things for Lee. Picked up some stocking stuff for the kids at Kate’s on Tuesday. Need to find things for the difficult people (read: no actual interests in life).
Totally jazzed about Thanksgiving in New York. I got nervous over the inability of the Marriott to guarantee that we would have two beds, and I’m sure the room was a closet, so I switched us over to the DuMont on the east side. Less central location than Times Square, obviously, but that’s probably a good thing. Plus, it has a kitchen, so we can buy and eat normal food. We were shut out of just about everything that would require a ticket, but I’ve found a bunch of things that don’t (I mean, this is NEW YORK CITY, f’chrissake — there can never be a shortage of things to do). Kids want to go to Ellis Island, which I’m very iffy about, but if we could get down before the lines on Friday morning, maybe. Otherwise, we’ll take the Water Taxi from the west side down around the horn to Fulton Landing, and walk back across the Brooklyn Bridge, and that should make them happy. Bring comfortable shoes, everybody!
But most of all, we get to see the parade, live and in person. Got to figure out the best vantage point. The BEST vantage point would have been one of the rooms I regularly enjoy at the Mayflower, but those come at something of a premium on the morning of the parade, as they put you at eye level with the balloons.