I do run-run-run, I do run-run

Wow, I'm now starting my seventh week of this marathon training gig...139 days until the Marine Corps Marathon, so about 17 more weeks of this to go. Actually it hasn't been bad at all. I did a 12-mile "long run" this past Sunday and listened to the squish-squish of my shoes that were full of sweat in the last three miles (takes about two days for the shoes to dry out). My right ankle, or more precisely the right achilles tendon has been acting up the last few weeks so I started putting it on ice after a couple of runs plus being careful in how I walked on that foot. Seems to have worked...it didn't bother me at all during Sunday's run and it's been relatively pain-free since Friday. I'm still not taking any chances however. I'll do ice again after Tuesday's run whether it hurts or not.

This morning I took a quick drive over to Minden to attend the funeral of one of my classmates from 1973, Billy O'Neal. He died of cancer on Friday morning and had been sick for a long time. I got to see him on April 30th (see photo below where he's making a face at the camera) when there was a fund-raiser to help offset some of his medical bills and we talked a bit. Neither of us had really spoken to each other since graduation from Minden High School. We just weren't in the same circles as life went on but we knew each other and we had absolutely no problems, past or present, with each other. Thing was that he remembered me and told how a couple of months ago he had mentioned to his wife, Charlotte (another classmate of mine), that a house they were driving by was one I used to live in. He just said it out of the clear blue. Heck, I didn't even know he knew where I had lived in the first place! After that visit and today's services I wished I had gotten to know Billy a little better. We still had different interests but I think it would have been fun to know him as the man he grew up to be. He was funny during our short visit back in April even though the cancer was in his brain and he spoke a little slower. He was also confined to a motorized wheelchair that he said wasn't fast enough for his liking. But the thing was that he looked like a man who was content with how his life was (obviously wasn't that wild about the way it was ending) and that things would be fine.

Billy O'Neal: March 1, 1955 - June 11, 2010

Rest in peace, Billy. Even though we were more acquaintances than friends, I'm glad I knew ya.

We have niece #3, Holly, staying with us for the month while she goes to summer school at Centenary. She's taking Physics which is some kind of hocus-pocus, voodoo subject that can't actually be real and goes beyond art major types like me. Well, really it doesn't but I don't like bothering with it. I got the gist of it when I took the class in college and I got into a couple of arguments with the instructor (to this day I'm still convinced I'm right) but I pretty much know how it works. Just don't ask me to explain it in English. I can see it in my mind much better than I can say it.