I had really an amazing day yesterday, y’all. I mean, we all have 12-hour, 3-phase birthday parties, but this year I had a really good one. Phase I was… Oh wait, stuff actually started on Thursday.

Phase 0: My brother came into town. Disco’s been working downstate and coming up to Chicago on weekends sometimes, which is awesome, and I like hanging out with my brother. We get along so well it’s almost like we’re family. We spent a good chunk of the day on Friday going grocery shopping for all the different pieces and parts of the feast I had planned for Sunday. Brothers love shopping.

Phase 00: Saturday, I had tickets for me and some friends to be most of the 12-person audience of Trapped in a Room with a Zombie. It’s a frantic and exciting puzzle experience where you are, as the title suggests, trapped in a room with a zombie. If you don’t solve all the puzzles in 60 minutes, the zombie eats you all and you lose. Our group made it out in 55 minutes and we didn’t lose anyone to the zombie along the way. So, yes, we’re awesome. My one quibble with the show, and which, to be entirely fair, is just an expectation of mine based on other experiential shows I’ve experienced, is that there was no narrative to the show beyond a brief framing speech at the beginning. But then again, we were so frenetic trying to solve the abstract puzzles, I’m not sure we could have absorbed a plot along the way.

Phase I: Sunday morning, I had invited a whole slew of my friends to come and run the Chi-town Big Game 10K with me. I mean, with zero pressure—it’s a ridiculous thing to do, especially in this sort of weather. Eight of my friends accepted the challenge, which is about six more than I was hoping for. And with the pre- and post-race being inside the United Club at Soldier Field, I was actually able to relax and talk to them a bit, instead of shivering for my life. Shaun is in full-on Iron Man training mode again and so ran an extra six miles right before the race, to get in his miles for the day. And Disco is just hardqore, so he did the same thing. It was really hard to be sensible, but I decided not to join them for that, and it ended up being a great decision—I was well-rested enough and our friend Jin set a brisk enough pace that I was able to set a PR, beating my last record in the 10K by about 4 minutes. That was a real nice present for a man on the cusp of a mid-forties birthday.

Phases II and III: I had laid out the day as a brunch right after the run that would roll into the afternoon and then a Super Bowl-ish party. The party rolled along so well all day that someone came into the dining room at some point and announced “the game started 20 minutes ago if anyone cares”. People came and people went all day, and my thanks to everyone who came over.

Phase IV: My buddy Dave Stinton knew that I’d been thinking about doing some stand-up again and invited me out to a couple of open mics tonight. One of them got canceled, but I did four minutes of new material at Smush tonight. So that’s another nice present for a forty-four year old man—the laughter of six other comedians.

Race Official results: Time: 54:57
Pace: 8:51
Overall place: 85 / 243
Place in Sex: 53 / 103
Place in Age Group (M40-44): 15 / 22