Show Me The Money

It's that time of the year.

The time when my bank puts a hold on my funds for "suspicious activity" because I purchase 4 different things from amazon in the same day, and the time when I somehow spend over $100 on decorations for the house, yet walk out of Michael's with only a couple small bags of stuff in my hand.

It's the time when I call the same client every hour to make sure they got that contract, "just in case" something was wrong with the email server or it ended up in junk mail.

At some point in my life, everything in the month of December began to center around money: saving it, spending it, collecting it. 

At work, there's anticipation of what the final numbers will be for the year - it's all about dollars, whether it be personal and team quotas or rates or revpar indexes.  I feel pretty confident that we'll make and exceed the anticipated production number and pull off an awesome year. Even if it means  camping out by the fax machine (which conveniently always decides to malfunction at the end of the month) or checking email every two minutes.

No! Not again! Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam!

Personally, I've been getting by pretty well and saving myself some green so far thanks to free shipping and discount coupons. All gifts (with the exception for maybe 1 or 2) have been bought. I did all my shopping online and even splurged on Black Friday and bought myself a laptop of my very own! It even has Windows 7! (I know, I'm so two thousand and LATE). Prateek will be excited to not have to share his Mac Air anymore, and I'll finally be able to download ridiculous amounts of house music and maybe even some audio mixing software in my quest to become a world famous DJ. The possibilities are endless.  

Surrounding all of this holiday "cheer", I have also gotten extremely antsy. Mostly due to the fact that I've been in hibernation and haven't gone for a run in over a month. It was nice to take some time off, but I've had enough and am starting to feel a little squishy. 

So this week is the last straw....I am going for a test run to see how my knee feels. Barring any setbacks, I'm jumping back in the saddle with full force: long runs and workouts and yoga and gym time and spinning and resistance training and hill training and speedwork and..... 

 There are so many good half marathons coming up in the beginning of 2012 that I need to get it in gear. Plus, winters in Florida are FABULOUS to run in, so I refuse to miss out!

I know all my friends and family can't wait to deal with "Marathon Mary" again. Sorry in advance. But if you're lucky, you'll have the privelage of seeing this look of pure (frightening) joy once more:

Also since it's Thursday, I'll leave you with a thought: