After walking Bennie over 2.0 miles down-back, I decided that it was just too damn nice to head into town to run or plod along on the treadmill for a recovery run. Especially when one of the locals pick-up guys had plowed down-back. I found that conditions were just about perfect for running down there after last night’s colder temps.

The temps were around 32*F, bright sunshine and a pretty good breeze on the way out – good for running outside.

I wasn’t planning on running fast and running through here was going to make sure that I didn’t do anything stupid. While the footing was decent, it was not the same as running on bare tar and you use additional stabilizer muscles that don’t get used all that much running on tar or the treadmill.

Once I got going running down-back was actually fun and even when I got over on Tiffany, I didn’t pick up the pace all that much. It was simply one of those runs that you go out do it, smile when you finish and wish you could have simply kept going.

I did use the Tempo 9s to run and they did nicely on the hard packed snow, but not so well on the looser stuff. However, they did everything well enough that I completed the run without any problems. Well beyond using those stabilizer muscles that haven’t been used for a while, I guess the only reason they didn’t really whine is because I do walk in this stuff almost every day, but I still know that running on it is different and the body tonight is letting me know about it.

Life does tend to catch up with you though.

Yeah, it was one of those hurry-up and wait days otherwise. First we had to wait around for the heating oil company to deliver oil, but there was a catch for the first time since we had been with the company (over 10 years), we were asked to be there when the delivery was done and give the drive the difference between our pre-pay and whatever amount was due. Not a big deal, but not the way the company had done business previously with us.

This was strange and when the delivery hadn’t happened by 11:00a, I gave a call to get an ETA and was told they were not sure when the delivery be made other than it would be by 5:00p. Not really what I wanted to hear since I had other stuff I wanted to get done today. So I asked if there had been a change of billing policy and when they said no. I asked them to check our file to see why the change of billing practices had been done. After futzing around for a few minutes, I suddenly received an apology, was told that they would call the driver to change the payment requirement and we would be billed as usual since we are such great customers.

When I pressed for more information, I was told that someone “new” had given us the wrong information when we called to place our order.

Yeah, we pay our bill on time.

Somebody screwed up, but it worked out and I was able to get my run in.

We have been having issues with our cable and internet for a few months, so we called and frigged farted around with their phone system and automated help line for half an hour before getting a real person. They were very helpful, but unable to fix the problem. However, they had an open time to get a technician out to the house that check things out at the house at 5:00p today.

Same day service – wow.

The repair guy got here and did a few things and figured out that they had to replace the line from the utility pole on the road to the house. It seems that the squirrels over the years had gnawed the wires and caused all of our problems. So it took about two and half hours to get that accomplished and they strongly recommended that I take the cable box down to the Augusta office to trade it in for a newer model. This one is over seven years old and according to the tech is starting to show its age and he didn’t have the correct one in his truck tonight.

So now we have faster internet, all the channels we are supposed to have, without all those error codes and blank screens that were appearing before.

In other words today was just one of those days in the life of Harold. 🙂