Marvelous Monday

In traditional Marvelous Monday fashion, I bring you five tidbits about the start of my week:

1. I got to squeeze in a little run over lunch today.  The sky was blue, the leaves were rocking, and the temp was a pleasant 57 degrees.  I stumbled awkwardly over a root because I was looking at some orange leaves against the sky.

2. It's World Series time, and I love the World Series.  I've realized that part of why I've started getting so excited for my Tennessee games now is because I'm transferring my baseball enthusiasm to SEC football and thus not feeling quite as sad that baseball is nearly done for 2011.  That sounds more dramatic than I intended. It's not really that serious. I just welcome all sports-related excitement.

3. On that note, my brother convinced me to run a 5k next weekend with him.  (Okay, it didn't take much persuading.)  I will treat it as my first kind-of-hard effort post-marathon, so no world records will fall.  The exciting part is that it's a Halloween 5K in Anoka, otherwise known as the Halloween Capital of the World.  Hence, many runners will be in costume.  I think I need one!  I have a fall-back costume I could wear, but I am open to new ideas that don't impede me too much.

4. Tomie DePaola, author of the awesome children's book Strega Nona, is reading at the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul on Thursday! I love Strega Nona!  I think I'm going to go, even though I'm a little uncertain about whether attending a children's author's event sans children is very odd, a little bit odd, or just plain old literary inspiration.  Which author from your childhood favorites would you love to hear read?

5. I've started working on learning more about the manual settings on my camera so I can take better pictures.  This is partially motivated by my love of photos taken at night - and seasonally, my love of creepy pumpkin pictures. I'm excited to practice and I want to find a book to learn more!

Please chime in with costume ideas, photography tutorial recommendations and/or children's book authors - and of course, think about what is marvelous about your Monday.