Thankful Sunday: Relaxation Level - Couch with comfy slippers

You know that feeling after you've driven all day?  Yeah. Me too.

I woke up slightly before my 5:30am alarm clock.  I am not joking.  I wasn't thrilled either because I really didn't sleep well last night.  I put the finishing touches on packing and headed down for provisions.  I had a Turkey Sandwich, Nut Cups which are a desert you have to see to believe, water, some other snacks, a cup of coffee and coke.  Plus Sour patch kids and Popcorn in the car.  Due to a weird confluence of events, I wound up getting a coffee a bit later in the trip as well.

It was around 7am when I realized I was going to hit a detour in Indiana just before Chicago.  Well f*ck!  It wound up being okay though.  Usually I'd hop on I-80 to the beltway around town.  Hopping on I-80 was not an option today so I took I-90 straight through the center of town.  It's 7:30am on a Sunday.  How bad could it be?  Turns out the worst part was the one cash lane open to pay tolls so I waited a while for a truck in front of me.   The downtown skyline was pretty covered in fog.  Even so the Sears Tower is impressive.  And I'd never seen the White Sox stadium before.

I wound up getting home slightly after 2pm.  Anyone who's tried returning to Minnesota via I-94 in Wisconsin knows that stretch between Eau Claire and the cities can be brutal on a holiday weekend.  It just gets so packed that everyone winds up going 40mph. I am not making this up.  It doesn't seem to get bad until later in the afternoon and evening which is why I tried to leave so early. As soon as I got home I asked Siri about the weather this week.  Siri is not my bff right now.  Sigh.

Once I settled in back home and the room stopped spinning, I badly wanted to try out my only Black Friday purchase: new running shoes.  For the running geeks out there, these are New Balance Trail Minimus.  They are usually expensive shoes but I snagged a pair for around $30.  I can only assume they are last year's model. I'd never run in a trail shoe before.  I need to mind more trails to run.  This was a quick workout, and involved trying a different stock interval workout from my Endomondo app.  The stock workouts are short, about 20 minutes including warmup and cool down, which was perfect for a 2-mile run.  After the run I had a nice stretching session, important for cooling down and doubly important for my legs after the long car ride.