I’ve been pretty busy this week so far. At work, it’s lots of meetings, testing, decision-making, and setting things up so I can disappear for two and a half weeks’ holiday break starting in eight working days (since tomorrow is the “National day of Mourning for President Bush*, and thus a federal holiday in practice). At home, it’s been working on knocking other things together to prep for upcoming activities, including continuing my training for the upcoming Celebratory 5k I’m running with the youngest on Sunday to wrap up her participation with Girls on the Run, a neat little program she’s been having fun with.

My training, of course, has been interrupted by the awful cold/sinus thing I had last week, but yesterday, I ran a full practice 5k one one of my usual bike trails, and didn’t do too shabbily. If weather holds this afternoon, I may do it again today…though the weather guys have been dropping the dreaded word “snow” into things, possibly for tomorrow, so we’ll see. At this point, I’m running most of the distance (with some breaks, mostly due to the impact on my ankles – I’m a biker so I can avoid all that), though I expect I’m pushing myself harder than I’ll have to in order to keep pace with the kid. I mostly just don’t want to embarass myself.

Not much else to speak of this week; it’s pretty typical. Just trying to work my way through the last slog until I can relax a bit.

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*- I guess I should comment a bit on President Bush (41)…Although I remember Carter and Reagan, Bush was the first President I was truly aware of – his term coincided pretty much in line with my high school years. Mr. Ely the civics teacher and advisor for the “Young Republicans Club” was a big fan, unsurprisingly, and given where I was at the time and the primary influences I had, I tended to be way more conservative than I ended up being as an adult. That said, 41 really was from another era; an era where cooperation amongst the parties was de rigeur and possible, and things he passed, like the Clean Air Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, are things that are basic human goods, but that today’s Republican party wouldn’t touch, with cries of socialism and whatnot. His presiding over the end of the Cold War, and over the first Gulf War (wow…a military action in that part of the world with a clear goal and end point? kind of an anomaly in modern American history) isn’t to be ignored. He wasn’t perfect, of course, no one is, though I kind of think of him as the last of the decent Republicans, in part, I think, because he was a career public servant and really knew the bureaucracy inside out and in general, how Washington worked, and was truly interested in the public good rather than “pwning the Libs”. The world is very different today, much, I think, to our detriment. I’ll definitely mourn the loss of Mr. Bush, and the loss of the era he represents. Also, if Sully (tear) thinks he was a good guy, that’s gotta mean something.