Sometimes I have trouble believing that the world around me is real. Sometimes I think that it all just has to be a figment of my imagination — maybe I’m slumbering and whatever I ate for dinner is making me dream strange things. How else to explain those stories you sometimes read that make your jaw drop open and your eyes pop clean out of your sockets. Like this story from Reuters that was, no kidding, headlined: “Japanese astronaut tests stink-free underwear.” I nearly fell out of my chair. The lead started out: “Teen-age boys, are you tired of embarrassing questions about when you last changed underwear? Japan’s space scientists may have just the answer — a line of odour-free underwear and casual clothing.”

Quick geography lesson: The United States is a really big place and not all of it has the same weather. For instance, if you leave Florida where it’s a balmy 80-plus degrees in March and set out for New York City, you’ll likely find that flip-flops and T-shirts won’t cut it. Unless, of course, your idea of Manhattan is hypothermia and a frostbitten toe falling off. Here in Florida spring is in full effect. It’s warm out, the leaves are an eye-tingling shade of green and there’s so much pollen on the ground that you have to shovel the driveway just to get your car out in the morning. New York is in no such disposition yet. The trees are still barren and temps are straining just to reach 50 degrees during the day, and dipping into the low 30s at night.

It’s been the absolute doldrums in the news recently. You can’t pick up the paper or switch on the TV without thinking to yourself, “Is there such a thing as a fourth world country? I bet my dollar could go a long way there.” Gloom and doom. Utterly depressing. All the talk of layoffs, bailouts, busts, bankruptcies, foreclosures, ponzi schemes and that poor jilted contestant on “The Bachelor.” Heartbreaking. So I want to help everyone take a collective deep breath by giving you some positive and upbeat news to read. I thought I would search out all the warm, fuzzy, feel-good, happy news I could find and relay it on to you. Call it a balm for the soul.

It was an official closing of a chapter. Slamming shut of the book. The recovery is now complete, the past is all behind me and the goal I set for myself a year ago has been achieved. “You know the surgeon who stitched you up said you might not run again,” my wife reminded me after I finished the Gasparilla 15K down in Tampa last weekend. It was almost a year after the fateful surfboard injury when a fin from my board stabbed me in the thigh leaving me with nerve damage — a prickly, pins and needles sensation up and down my leg — and a thigh that looks even scrawnier than before.

It was an odd sound — a strange one. One I had not heard on a run in quite a while. The sound? Silence. Or should I say natural noise. Sounds of the world going round and not drowned out by the tunes from my trusty iPod. I’m not an iPod addict like some people, but it has become a running staple for me the last couple of years — as common as running shoes or my frequent cursing as I try to loosen up during the first mile. Only, one of the speakers has started kicking out sounds like a chain saw revving in my ear. Thompson sweat can penetrate a hermetically-sealed chamber, and I think mine fried the earbud. I’ve been borrowing my wife’s, but I’m starting to feel guilty seeing as how I’m sweatier, dirtier and smellier. Why is it women could roll in garbage, live with pigs, swear off bathing for weeks and still beat us men even after we’ve showered.