4:35 a.m.

More about running in heat today -- every runner in Chicago is talking about it, for sure. Except the creampuffs who run treadmills. I'm KIDDING, you guys! I hate treadmills and only run them if it's like, 4 below or the sidewalks are covered in ice and snow. Or if I'm very pregnant. But I digress.

Today is the weekly 5@5 I run with friends at the lakefront, our 5 miles at 5 a.m. Baby C got up at 3:50 a.m. to eat, we dozed a bit and I was up and dressed at 4:25. Sweet! I walked into the living room and looked at the windows, which appeared to be draped with what resemble a veil. Steam. Huh. Checked the BlackBerry, grabbed the keys, and oh, wait, my running pals aren't going to meet up. Many of them live a few miles south of me and they were getting a storm. Rats. I hate it when I get up and dressed and then weather is a factor. So just go back to bed, right? Naaaaah. (Edit: 78 degrees and 85 percent humidity at 5 a.m. Holy cats.)

I left the house at 4:35. This is early even for me. It was still dark, that "darkest before the dawn" dark. The sidewalks glistened. A fog hung over my neighborhood. Trees dripped overhead. Want to know who's out at 4:35 in my neighborhood? People delivering newspapers. That's about it.

So many of you know that I used to work at a major newspaper in town until my layoff last fall. It dawned on me in the last few months that I had mostly gotten over it, meaning I didn't ache when I thought about the place like I used to. I stay in touch with friends there still and no longer have to be nice to those I couldn't stand. Yesterday the big news was that the Chicago Sun-Times was going to be printed by its arch nemesis, the Chicago Tribune. (Actually, the Trib has been delivering the Sun-Times for some time now, so the two papers have been snuggling in bed together for awhile.) That means a shutdown of the printing plant on Ashland Avenue and 400 jobs eliminated. While $10 million in savings was touted as the reason to do this, what with the newspaper industry sucking and all, the reaction among employees was horror. "Horrid day for the Sun-Times. Production in the hands of those with an incentive to bury us," one of my friends wrote me. Hope they use that $10 million wisely.

So I'm thinking about all of this on my run, and thinking about how I recently canceled my daily newspaper. It was kind of an experiment -- since I'm no longer beholden to my employer to get the paper, why pay for it when news is free online? So, I amped up my Twitter feeds, got rid of the paper and decided to rely on news alerts and Twitter. It's working OK, but man, I miss my paper. I keep thinking I'm missing something important! So I may resubscribe again. If they ask nicely. Or make me an offer I can't refuse.

You know, if you think about stuff like this on a run, three miles can just fly by. I got home, drenched, just as the sky was lightening. As I walked inside, I could hear Baby C squeaking as she dozed next to her daddy. Everything just felt OK. But man, am I gonna need a nap later. That's a perk of unemployment, after all.