Good Morning! Tim - I bet just having a date to count down to really helps your attitude. Wine making sound like a very tastey hobby too!! I have always been "anti-tattoos" also - my girls even tell me that I threatened to kick them out of the house if they ever got one. I'm not sorry I did it - thought about it the whole 26.2 miles and then some. The hardest part was telling my 92 year old mother!! I said "mom, I have to tell you something, and you have to promise not to yell at me". She said, "what did you do, get a tattoo?" Ha! Little did she know .....!!!! She thought it was cute and then said "well, at least you can cover it up". Holly - those e-mails went right to my spam folder, so no harm done on my end. Scheduled rest day for me. The snow is coming down - the wet heavy pretty stuff. Enjoy the lights Peter! I put my mom's lights up yesterday and will tackle mine this week.

Would you be interested and have time to play some online chess with him?

No, but there are many websites where your friend's son could play chess against people all over the world, at any time of day or night. If he goes online, he will find so much chess it will be coming out of his ears. If he is at all obsessive, his school grades will drop, he will stay up late and lose weight and grow pale, he will give up all normal face-to-face human relationships, and you and his family will curse the day you consulted me for information. A simple Google search using the keywords "online chess play" will turn up dozens of sites. A few well-known sites include the Internet Chess Club (ICC) at http://www.chessclub.com/, the Free Internet Chess Server at http://www.freechess.org/, and playchess.com (which I have used, but not recently) at http://www.playchess.com/. Many people enjoy playing chess online, and I do not begrudge them their fun, but almost all online games are played at very quick time controls such as 5 minutes each for the whole game, which leads to almost-instant gratification (or the reverse) but is not conducive to deep thought. Moreover, it is not possible to know whether your opponent is cheating by looking at books or databases during the game, or even by referring to chess software which he may have running in the background while he plays you. However, playing a lot of quick games online can be a good way to learn openings, or so I have heard. In general, the best way to improve at chess is to study a little every day on one's own, and play every week at a local chess club against other people, ideally people who are better than you are so you will be challenged to raise the level of your game. There was no chess club here in my small city of 17,000, Newburyport, Mass., so I started one in February 2002. It has met almost every Wednesday night since then, offering monthly nationally rated U.S. Chess Federation tournaments played at the rate of one game per week. The USCF is always eager to support new local affiliates; find out more by visiting their website at http://main.uschess.org/. Dark Horse

Good morning smart recovering runners. A long healing time is just putting money in the bank. Ever notice some of our fastest runners are also excellent swimmers. It's good to develop an alternative form of excercise (non-leg using) for cross training and to switch to in case of running injury. I have difficulty keeping up on those becasue it is so much easier to just get up and run...my bad I looked up rbbmoose's Philly results... let's just say... WOW! I hope our flying monkeys are having a good day! Holly.. wet goves and 30's IS cold. Maybe thin water repellant outer gloves would work. I usually wear those knit one size fits all gloves (under $2). If really cold, glove liners under the knit gloves. Rest day and some cross training. Planks for the Holidays! Gearing up for 8K Gallup and Gorge Thursday, last of the three race series (4 mile July, 10K October and 8K Thanksgiving) Hope to win my division (fingers crossed), hope to PR.

I just saw a great article on msn.com about cute running garb for wimmen. I am all about cute wimmen, so here is the article followed by the article's link to photos of clothing items. Running skirts Fans say they're cute and comfortable — with less chafing and ride-up than shorts or running tights. Detractors say that skirts, and competitions like the SkirtChaser race series, get in the way of women being taken seriously as athletes and competitors. Nevertheless, searches for "running skirt" have been steadily increasing all year. Here are some pictures. http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=%22Running+skirt%22&form=MSNHAL#

blah blah pussy designer tattoo blah blah

I think one of my clients already has that tatoo . Yes, Holly, those handwarmers are wonderful--our own divechief brought enough so all of us who were running the Seattle Marathon had two and I was hooked. Perhaps he can post the site--I think he gets them onlline in bulk (as a deep sea diver, he goes thru a lot). His are environmentally friendly. grins, A gym day for me, not running, nope, nosireebob...and tim....twocat......etc.

And would that be on his butt?? Rest day....got a whole bunch of aches and pains...so might take two rest days. Knees achy, hamstring tight, calf tight....