Day 719

The power is back on. It's nice to have electricity again. It's not so nice to have another leak in the roof however. The rain that started yesterday afternoon continued through the night, and sometime before morning I awoke to hear the sound of dripping water in the living room. I put a bucket under the drip and went back to sleep.

When daylight arrived, I went up on the roof to assess the situation and spent quite a while sweeping water off the roof, even though it was still raining. By the time I was finished, I was already so wet that I figured I wouldn't get any wetter if I walked down to the lake and photographed the White Rock Marathon that was taking place behind my house.

Earlier, during breakfast, I watched the leaders in the race go by on television. Two Kenyans covered five miles in the time it took me to eat my Krispy Kreme donut. By the time I got down to the lake with my camera, the really fast runners were already close to the finish line. There were still plenty of runners however. 25,000 of them to be exact. I've never understood runners. It is raining cats and dogs outside. It is getting colder by the minute. Does that dissuade any of the runners? Not a bit. They all just put big black plastic garbage bags over their heads and continue running 26 miles in the freezing rain.

Just knowing that 25,000 intensely competitive type-a people were running a race behind my house was a bit unnerving to me. That's a lot of competitive people. I'm not a competitive person at all. I work hard and I think I'm good at what I do, but I've never spent much time trying to convince people that I'm better than anyone else. I avoid contests and competitions like the plague. Sure, I understand that there are winners and losers in life, but it's still frustrating to run into someone who thinks that in order for them to win, I have to lose. Hey guys, game over. I still prefer to think I passed the finish line at birth and have always been a winner.

When the rain finally quit toward the end of the day, I went up on the roof again and swept away the remaining water. I rarely get up on the roof twice in one day, but it's supposed to freeze this week, and I'm determined not to have ice on the roof again this year.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day