This Time You Got It

Okay, okay, NOW I'm in the holiday spirit. As I predicted last week, Deb took one look at the unpacked fake tree and conceded that we need to get a real one. So now we have a nice, real Christmas tree in the living room. The girls and I decorated it on Saturday afternoon and it looks pretty sweet.

The Mill Cities Relay went well on Sunday. It snowed, but fortunately not too hard and not enough to make the footing treacherous. It was cold standing around waiting for the baton, but once I got going, I was fine. My leg was 9.5 miles and fortunately my injured didn't bother me at all. I ran at a 7:30/mile pace and felt good. My team finished 144th out of 182 teams, but what the hey.

Man, it was crazy cold yesterday. I took Hannah out to the bus stop in the morning and it was about 11 degrees. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long for the bus. Today was a little warmer, in the 30s, but tomorrow it could reach 60. Weird.

Gleep glorp:

• I admit it, Facebook is like InterWeb crack. Totally addictive. But a student who was disciplined for creating an FB group criticizing a teacher has now sued her old principal. Next up, you'll see lawsuits over defamatory status messages.
• Happy 40th birthday, computer mouse. You don't look a day over 28.
• Stay classy, Syracuse fans. Yeesh.
• Don't know if you've been following the travails of Rinku and Dinesh, the two Indian kids who won a contest and recently signed tryout contracts to pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but it's great stuff. And not just in the "make fun of the immigrants" vein; it's a compelling tale. But there's also some of that other stuff, too.
• Burger King is embracing the power of publicity with its "Burger Virgins" campaign, in which folks in Thailand, Greenland and Romania who have never heard of hamburgers are given Whoppers to try. With wacky results. The campaign has drawn fire from nutritionists, who say the "virgins" are better off not eating the non-nutritious food and from folks who say the ads essentially make fun of foreigners. Me, I liked BK's "Coq Roq" campaign better.
• Things are changing in the world of late night: Jay Leno's moving to prime time, Conan's taking over Leno's spot, and Jimmy Fallon is moving into the 12:30 slot on NBC. Fallon debuts in March and yesterday posted his first "vlog" (God, I hate that word) entry taking a behind-the-scenes look at the show. It's pretty short and kinda gave me a headache from the stupid shaky camerawork, but at least his house band is cool: The Roots. The Leno move is interesting because it appeared he would initially go to ABC or Fox to continue doing an 11:30 talk show, but instead he will do a 10 p.m. show five nights a week. It's a fairly unprecedented move for a major network to have the same show on every night during prime time. Apparently, NBC offered a similar show to Letterman a few years ago and he turned it down. It'll be fun to see how it plays out and whether people stick with it or get bored after a while.