Welcome New Year!

Last year, before we ran a very chilly New Year's Day 5-mile run, our our good friend John said, You know, if we do this one more time it will be a tradition.

This morning we found ourselves at White Rock Lake in Dallas, ready to run another New Year's Day 5-miler.

Amazing, huh? Not half as amazing as having our good friend John there. He and his wife had returned from vacation in Germany little more than 12 hours before race time.

Now that's commitment to tradition!

It wasn't the best of races. We all were tired (one, admittedly more than the others). Yet somehow, The Boy managed to win another award (4th in his age group) and I improved my time over last year by two minutes.

I can already tell that it's going to be a strange year.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I'll settle for a strange year as long as it's not an injury-filled stressful year. Deal?

One thing is for certain: I was able to cross another item off my 101 list. We all went to lunch (after cleaning up, natch!) and had a fantastically cute waitress from Australia. She was in the States for a year to experience American life.

We decided to give her a taste of American generosity - a 100% tip. She earned it, we were happy to bless her and it was a wonderful way to wrap up our first day of 2011.

You see, a run is good for the body. But generosity is great for the heart.