I just want somebody to suffer with me

I called my dad the other day and we chatted for a couple of minutes. Eventually he asked (I don't call all that often, and when I do it's generally for a specific reason) if there was anything in particular going on. "Well," I said, "now that you mention it, what are you doing October tenth?"

He poked around in his calendar - he tends to be very, very busy, and he travels a lot for work, so there was no guarantee that he wasn't scheduled straight through to 2011. "Nothing, yet," he said.

"Oh, good!" said I. "How do you feel about running a half marathon?"

So... barring as-yet-nonexistant timing conflicts, he'll hopefully be coming up here to run a half with me. He said that his times are currently really, really slow, but... well, his "really slow" times are my "sort of slow" times, his "decent" times are my "no way in HELL is that going to happen anytime soon" times, and since he has three and a half months to prepare and I don't really plan to get much faster in that period (and considering that he is, hmm, goal oriented and doesn't always know his limits - gosh, I wonder where I got that same trait from?)...

Anyway. "I just want somebody to suffer with me," I told him. Good thing he understands my sense of humour.