I have decided that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not because of the food (which, admittedly is very good, but only makes me feel ill afterwards) but because it’s the only holiday where you get a long weekend and the holiday is at the beginning, not the end. Most holidays you spend all of your time off before the big day, preparing for it, and then you need another vacation after the holiday. Christmas and Easter are two prime examples of this. But Thanksgiving Day is the first day of your holiday, and then you have a really long weekend after that. Lovely.

Thursday morning, while my mom baked her pies and make her oyster dressing (mmmmm…) Kristina and I went for a run in my old neighborhood. After my dad died, Kristina came to live with me and my mom (for which I will be forever grateful to Kristina for, and one reason she will always be my very best friend on earth) and helped me to take care of my mom (in an emotionally supportive way.) We lived in the house my dad died in, which my mom has since moved out of. But the neighborhood we lived in was far more conducive to running than the one my mom lives in now, which is basically just a .33 mile circle. Gets dull. So we went back to the old neighborhood (typical suburbia: ranch houses, no sidewalks, teenagers trying to run you off the road.) But we were able to run our furthest time ever! 42 minutes, and a 5K, as it turned out. We drove the path afterwards. It was 2 minutes longer than our Race for the Cure 5K, which I could be depressed about, but as this was just a leisurely run, I won’t be. I’m far more happy that I ran for longer than ever before. A nice run, good for making room for the massive amounts of food that were ingested later.

We didn’t run again until this afternoon. Kristina, Ren, and I went to LaSalle Park, in Kenner, which has a path around some soccer fields and another path around Zephyr Stadium, for the New Orleans minor league baseball team. It’s a nice path, a bit too sunny for such a hot (!!! it’s almost *@#&% December!) day, but has some nice shaded areas, and most importantly, it’s different. Yay for that! We ended up going about 2.8 miles, and for me it was 37 minutes (Ren and Kristina finished a bit faster than me.) A very good run for me.

Oh, and at Target this weekend, I signed up for a credit card, so I got a free all in one headphone radio type thing. Yay! Should be good for my long solo runs. Don’t worry, I’ll keep the volume low. Oh yeah, and we got a Christmas tree on Friday. It’s very dreamy. And I saw Harry Potter again today. I’m pathetic. But I love it!