So this is Christmas

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I am typically never in the mood for Christmas when the season starts rolling around. Every year I go further and further into December before I start feeling any twinge of interest and even farther to feel any excitement. Not many more years down the road I won’t sense these things until mid-January.

I know… I’m a Scrooge.

Well, I felt a spark of Christmas life on Sunday. There were two events that struck my flinty heart and made it smolder a bit.

First, there was shopping early in the morning at T J Maxx. Why was I not in church on a Sunday morning? Well, look, don’t judge. The good thing was that my wife and I found Jesus (and Mary and Joseph) at T J Maxx. What made me happiest about this was that the Holy Family turned out to be the perfect gift for dear friends of ours. It felt good to buy this object in order to give it away, just to be able to indicate to our friends that, “Hey, we are happy that you are in our lives.” (Even though one of us might be rather humbuggy.)

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The second thing that jazzed me up a bit for this holiday was a Christmas concert at St. Paul’s Church in Clifton, NJ. The lighting of the dozen Christmas trees at the front of the church caused oohs and aahs. I think that’s what got me. I thoroughly enjoyed that concert: operatic singing, youth choir, singer/songwriter, baritone horn and trombone, cabaret style, congregational singing. I teared up a few times.

Here’s one song that I loved. It features our friend, Valerie Bernhardt singing and my wife accompanying on piano.

And here’s a song that just plain makes me happy.

I can’t guarantee that this little spark will turn into a real flame in time for Christmas. But there are still 10 days to go. There’s hope.

My Running Story

Princeton Half Marathon 2015
Princeton Half Marathon 2015

For most of my life I had been an on-again/off-again runner. I liked running but never seemed to be able to stick with it. For many years I was a wannabe long distance runner. But as the years increased and my running did not, I found myself overweight, on high blood pressure medicine, and depressed. My favorite pastime by then was lying in bed watching movies and stuffing my face with chips and salsa. Once I fell asleep while eating Ring Dings in bed and woke up to find that I had rolled on one. I had officially become a slob. Oh, and I was smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. That was 5 1/2 years ago. I was pretty much at the end of my rope with myself at that point.

Coinciding with this dissatisfaction with my physical condition was the happy circumstance of meeting a wonderful lady who would become my wife a few years later. She was/is a very active girl and that motivated me.
I started walking every day. I cut out the Ring Dings (most of them). I cut down my portions. After 4 months, I had lost 20 pounds. That’s when I started running. After another 4 months I had lost another 20 pounds. My doctor took me off the blood pressure medicine. Four years later, my blood pressure is better than it had ever been.

My wife go me to run my first race, a 5K, in the spring of 2011. I was hooked! I did a few more that year. And more in 2012. Even more in 2013. In 2014, I got the crazy idea that I could run a half marathon. I ran my first half in October 2014 and was ELATED. I have now run 7. And this year my wife did her first (and then second and third) half marathon. She said that seeing me do my first two inspired her to go for it. Imagine that, the Ring Ding peddler inspired someone to run 13.1!

Onward and upward for the future!

Cairn City – Appalachian Trail, Delaware Water Gap, NJ

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This wondrous sight is located along the Appalachian Trail in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. It’s about two miles in on the trail off I-80 in New Jersey, around halfway to Sunfish Pond.

Watch an aerial view:

The water is not usually there. This video was made the day after heavy rains.