Running hiatus and Where there's smoke, there's not always fire

Well, I need to take a break from running. I simply can no longer run in my current shoes; it hurts too much. If it's not my knees, it's my hips or my back and I can't really do more than 2 or 3 miles. Since we can't afford to replace them right now, I'm going to take a break until we can. I'll just concentrate on cycling and get my cycling muscles back in shape. Coincidentally, I won a $25 gift certificate to a local running store in a raffle at our company's "wellness fair" yesterday. I'll hang on to that and check the place out; if the prices are good and I like the way they do shoe fittings, I'll get them there. Otherwise, I'll just use it to buy some running gear and get the shoes at the place where I originally planned.

The whole Tampa Bay area is covered with a cloud of smoke today. We have a fairly steady north wind that is pushing smoke from fires in Georgia and north Florida down on us. It's starting to clear out, but this morning it was horrendous; it looked like we were socked in with fog. The smell was overpowering and it worked its way into our building. Everybody has been coughing , I've had this nagging sinus headache all day; it's terrible.
Here's a picture from the newspaper that shows what it was like:


Hopefully, the weather will change tonight and everything will clear up; the weather is supposed to be beautiful all week and we'd love to be able to keep the windows open and the AC off.