Locked out (and a Possum)

So I meant to post this on Thursday...

I made a special trip to Wal-mart Thursday evening after work.  Why, you might ask (and I assume you do, since you're a curious and polite audience)?  To buy a new gym lock.  I had a great workout on Monday, headed into the locker room at the YMCA all set to head home for spaghetti, and found a different lock on the locker I was using that day.  It turns out they rented it to someone, who hadn't put a lock on it yet, and he randomly arrived to do so while I was in the weight room.  So they cut my lock off, bagged my stuff up, and waited for me to come looking for it at the front desk.  No message over the intercom, no looking for me, just snip, bag, sorry about that, email our directer to be reimbursed.  $3.47 for a lock, not worth the gas required to deposit the reimbursement check.

Thursday was also the scene of an aborted workout.  Wednesday night we had a visitor at 2 am - a possum.  The dog cornered him alongside the house, and barked until someone came to do something about it.  Had this happened to me growing up, I'd have dispatched the critter, and in the morning disposed of it in the woods.  But now I've got neighbors, and wasn't too keen on people waking up to a shotgun blast at 2 am - not to mention I didn't care for the idea of shooting so close to the siding on the house.  So I took a tomato stake and beat him with it until he finally ran.  Possums are stubborn, and pretty fearless.

So I didn't get back to sleep till nearly 3, and by then my night of sleep was ruined.  I woke up exhausted, struggled through my early routine, laced up the shoes, and hit the road for 12 - 1/4 mile intervals.  After the first few, I decided to cut it back to 10.  A couple more intervals, and I decided that I wasn't doing any good, and turned around, got on a decent pace, and went home. 

But I got 12 good intervals this morning, I've got a lock for my next trip to the gym (tonight), and we're getting things prepared for a trip to the Outer Banks this coming weekend.  God and possums willing, I'll get in a few more good workouts before we leave, and then do some running in the sand while I'm down there.