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Although it seems like I was born to be a Falstaff-esque jolly fat man, I finally got sick of the slovenly bloated way I was looking and decided instead to be a jolly slightly-fit man a couple months back and started running again every morning and Saturday afternoon. (I still have my Falstaffian tendencies, of course, but as per this change I'm also cutting out fast food, idle drinking and sugary snacks. Still a dirty old man however, and as soon as I can grow a Santa beard, I'm there, Sweetguts.)

While I'm not the all-area cross country runner I was in high school, much less Bill Rodgers, it's starting to get easier again...I no longer look like one of those jalopy-looking joggers that you occasionally see sweating and struggling in ill-fitting short-shorts as they reel down the sidewalk that appear to be about to break down and die. My form hasn't left me, and I'm running longer and harder each week. I'm losing weight, too (20 pounds so far). I've got a goal I want to reach by December (won't jinx it here by mentioning it) and I think I can do it.

One of the tougher things is keeping my energy and involvement up. But every morning I pass by a Chinese Baptist church at around 29th and Judah, and I see a poster in their window for their vacation bible school this summer with this image:

It's kinda hard to not look at that kid in the red shirt and not get inspired. "Yeah, Joel!," I imagine him saying. "Get that ass moving! Work it, man! Work it!"

I only wish I could get this excited on a daily basis:

I'm gonna be sad when they take the poster down.