(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 29)

Hey everyone!

It’s been about six weeks since I last wrote a Sunday Paper so here I am, hopefully refreshed and full of new ideas and information to share with you.

I enjoy reading what my family has to say in their posts each year, and I love how creative they get with the dog’s post.

I look forward to those posts every June and I know many of you do as well.

The fact that it happens right smack in the middle of the year serves as a nice way to break up the year of Sunday Papers for me.

Which brings us to this week’s post - an opportunity to catch up on some of the stuff I haven't had the opportunity to tell you about the past six weeks or so…and looking forward a bit to what I have in mind for the next six weeks and beyond.

I wasn’t quite sure how to break this up - I was originally going to give you a ‘Looking Back’ recap and a ‘Looking Ahead’ preview, but some of the topics I want to bring up fall under both categories, so I think I’ll do this by topic and we’ll just forego the ‘Notes’ and other regular Sunday Paper features this week:

General Life

That’s a pretty bland topic title but there were a couple of things I wanted to mention that don’t really merit their own heading, so ‘general life’ it is.

The biggest thing that happened while the guest posts took over the Sunday Paper was the fact that we went down to New York over 4th of July weekend for a few days. This shouldn’t be a big deal…but it is the first time we were there in more than a year and a half. (Well, in Queens. We went to my sister’s for an outdoor gathering one afternoon in the midst of the summer of 2020, and my parents have come up here a couple of times, but this is the first time we spend an overnight at their house like the olden days.)

I suppose there’s lots I could tell you about that trip, and maybe I will in future Sunday Papers, but one of the biggest items (well, besides getting the fan cutout back, which you will certainly be seeing a lot of, as you probably already know) is that I went to a Mets game for the first time. This was important for two reasons: 1) It had been a while since I had been to Citi Field, and 2) It’s been a while since I did anything. This was a nice ‘ease my way back into the world’ thing. I was going to meet a couple of friends for a game, they canceled, and I wasn't going to go but I asked my daughters if anyone was interested and my oldest was. So we went. I’m very glad we did. It was a great game, and the fact that it was outdoors and not a huge crowd made me feel better about things. (Aside: I am still writing about the Mets once in a great while. I just can’t do it like I used to…there’s too much else to occupy my time. But it’s still an exciting season and maybe as the season winds down I’ll increase my writing-about-the-Mets-output at this separate part of the website.)

We’ve kind of been easing back into things in a number of ways. Kathy and I have been to the beer garden at Exhibit ‘A’ a couple of times, which is always very nice. It’s usually outside, too, which helps my hesitation about being in the world, but one time we went and it was indoors and we did fine with that too. So I’m getting there as far as getting back to normal.

Comedy

But while we’re on that topic let me tell you about some of my hesitations. The big issue for me is that 4 out of the 5 of us in the house are vaccinated. But I’m kind of fearful of transmitting something to our youngest, who is not yet. So that’s why I’m not throwing myself back into everything full-fledged. I tip-toed back into comedy last week, going to an in-person open mic in an indoor space.

It wasn’t bad. (Well, for pandemic reasons. It was not great for open mic reasons, but that’s another story.) But I still have it nagging at my mind constantly that maybe I should be wearing a mask or maybe I should be a little more separate from the crowd, etc.

I’ll try to figure all that out but I am hoping to get to at least a couple of shows or mics a week moving forward…but not if it’s going to jeopardize anyone’s health.

Writing

I don’t know. Do I have a writing update? I’m lucky in that work never really went away over the pandemic…but my creative juices haven’t flowed as much as they have in the past. (Oh, that’s another point I wanted to make about comedy - I have been writing more in terms of material, so that’s a creative inspiration that I’ve had lately at least. Why didn’t I just cut and paste that information to the previous section? I don’t know. Maybe to fill out the ‘writing’ section more.)

I am hoping to figure out how to get more creative writing done, but in the meantime I have organized my writing space and I’m feeling good about that procrastination.

Running

And now the big piece that’s been dominating my life lately…and will continue to do so for the next few months.

Training for the Boston Marathon is continuing to go well. Thank you, by the way, to so many of you who have donated to support my run - if you would still like to, of course, you’re still more than welcome to. Here’s the link to the donations page. As a reminder, I am running for Team Framingham, and I’m raising money for the Framingham History Center. (You can also keep tabs on the running updates by Liking the Facebook page or by following me on Twitter. Thanks!)

I’ve been making sure I run the marathon course every weekend for my long runs - this week it was 12 miles from Natick Center down towards Coolidge Corner. I’ve managed to stay healthy so far (KNOCK ON WOOD) and each week I am able to tackle a longer and longer run so I guess I’m doing it right. Big thanks to the Peloton app for that. I continue to watch my diet to make sure I’m not carrying around too much weight on these runs. And I’ve also gotten myself some fun (and expensive) running toys that help me keep track of runs without carrying too much equipment (an Apple Watch), keep me entertained (quality wireless earbuds) and hydrated (a water backpack that I’m not quite sold on using consistently).

Saturday’s run - the 12-miler - was the most challenging so far. I think I know why - and that’s part of what I’m planning to write about next week. But the new toys, which were supposed to distract me from running in a good way (by making me think about it less) turned out to be a distraction in a bad way - as I fiddled with the hydration backpack and tried to troubleshoot an ear-pod problem. But I completed 12 miles despite the problems, and that’s the important thing. It’s going in the right direction.

The cruddy weather has at least worked in my favor for the training - though it’s rained on me a couple of times I guess I prefer that to running in the intolerable heat. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’ve been getting out before 7am to make sure I miss the hot parts of the day.

So if you’re on the streets of Framingham weekday mornings before 7am or somewhere between Hopkinton and Boston on Saturday mornings look for me and say hello. (Don’t be offended if I don’t recognize you though - I’m terrible at seeing people in cars.) And kindly look the other way if I’m struggling with the hydration backpack or my ear pods.

So I think we’re all caught up here. I look forward to getting back into the Sunday Paper writing routine. Thanks for reading and giving me a reason to write.