I know you were looking forward to a running recap from me, but it was much too cold to run outside today. It feels like autumn gets shorter and shorter every year, with the taste of first frost kissing the faces of trick-or-treaters, and the daylight waning too early now for even speedwork along the Charles. So rather than the run I walked, leisurely, to the grocery store for hot cider mix and some deli chicken -- you know I'm a hopeless cook, why do I always feel a need to defend myself -- and caught up on the work you and I both know will be waiting for us tomorrow morning. When did we become such workaholics? I remember you said never to bring work home, and that it was a slippery slope to dissolving all semblance of a personal life. But isn't there some sick pleasure to the preoccupation? Now I sound pathological.

Did you intentionally miss that going-away party for Derek in the back conference room yesterday afternoon? God it was so awkward -- everybody standing about, trying to contrive just the right shade of polite sadness to warrant their presence (there was free cake, after all). He didn't know half the people in the room, but that's how these parties usually go. I could see that he was already envisioning a life beyond this place, and the rest of us were probably a little jealous of that. The prospect of something new.

Anyway, sorry, this has nothing to do with running; I'll get back on track (puns always intended) next week. Until then, we should bring lunch to that hotel courtyard with the heat lamps, and you can tell me about your trip to Maine, okay? Where there good trails up there?