Thanksgiving

My family went to my mom's brother's house in Houston, TX for Thanksgiving this year. We haven't been down there since I was 6, so it's been a while. Since then, they've built a new house, gotten 2 dogs who are now pretty old, and gotten wealthy. I haven't seen my cousins in a couple of years either, so I finally got to see one since he started college and I hadn't seen another since she started driving. It was crazy!
Houston was pretty fun. My dad and I ran a 5K on Thanksgiving morning. It was a fun one. There were 7,000 people running this one- a far cry from my last one. I did much better- a 26:50. The amazing weather in the high 60s probably did a lot for my running. After the race, Dad and I lost the car completely. We went to the parking lot where we thought that we had parked and it wasn't there. We were at the point of thinking that it had been stolen when we remembered a couple details about the lot that weren't right, but we wandered around forever downtown trying to find the car. In the wandering around we saw some cool stuff- the best of which was a magenta PT cruiser modified to look like a hippo. It's front was a nose and the mirrors were shaped like ears and the trunk was a butt complete with a tail. It was crazy looking. And this was definately someone's personal car- not a commercial advertising vehicle or anything.
For most of the week, everyone sat around, played cards, took walks around the neighborhood- nothing too exciting but nice anyway. I was amazed by the weather. That made the whole trip worth it. It's a shock to get back to Jackson. I went from highs in the 70s to where it might snow tomorrow night.

5K

I ran the Awesome Autumn 5K this morning in Jackson. It was the smallest, least organized run I had ever been in. I give the weather partial credit for making it so small- the wind chill was in the upper 30s and it was sprinkling for part of the morning. The woman in charge had decided not to put up the arrows showing everyone where to run, so she handed out direction sheets that told you streets to turn on. We all had to run with our directions. Only 14 people had shown up to run or walk. Of the 14, 3 had planned on walking and decided not to before the run began; one quit about 15 feet past the starting line; and 2 quit halfway through the run when a car drove around to check on everyone. That left only 8 people finishing. At least with such a small group, I was able to finish top in my age group. I ran a 31:03, which is not very good, but considering the weather and how much I have been running lately (hardly at all), I guess that's better than I could have expected.