Livin' the Dream in Lima

The non-failure recipe. Keep reading for more info. :-) So yesterday afternoon, after sufficient couch time, I decided to embark on a baking adventure. I hadn't baked in a long time! (Ok... just 4 days.) But we were having guests for dinner the next night, so I had to prepare a dessert! I had been debating between Cake Batter Rice Krispies and Better than Crack Brownies ... and I decided to go with the more indulgent of the two.  It all started out innocently enough. Basic brownie base, topped with some chopped Reese's. It was then to be topped with a Chocolate-Peanut Butter Rice Krispy mixture. Which called for 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter. Slight problem: we were almost out of peanut butter!  I tried to improvise, substituting some marshmallows and adding a little extra chocolate. Smelled good, tasted good, but as it set up it became not so good. Fail, #1. Clumpy, nasty mess. Yuck! Attempt #2 to salvage the topping consisted of trying a no-bak

So, today school was cancelled. Again. I have a feeling we will still be in school in July. We got about 6 inches of snow dumped on us last night, with winds so severe that we couldn't see out the back window. Or the front window.  And I needed to get in a long run at some point today or tomorrow. I figured since I had all day off school, I might as well do it today. But, with the conditions, it meant one thing: TREADMILL !  Now, I have run 14 miles on a treadmill before, and it wasn't death. After about 12 miles though, I was definitely ready to get off. So today would be an interesting task. I got up around 7am to get some breakfast in my belly. (Last week's long run, I only ate a half a Clif bar before the run. Not the smartest idea. And no mid-run fueling. I didn't have a clue!) I also bought some Clif Shot Blocks this week when I picked up my foam roller at the sporting goods store. I figured I'd give them a "shot" (haha)! I have h

So... I mentioned yesterday that I ran 16 miles last Friday. Some of you might be thinking... "Why, oh why, would you put yourself through 2+ hours of torture and pain?" And trust me, I think 16 miles is a looooong way to run, too. 12 is not bad, just an hour and forty minutes or so. But once you get up over the 2-hour range, that's just insane! You see, one of my life goals is to run a marathon. I've run two halves, one in 2006 and one in 2010. I like the half-marathon. But I want to be able to say I've completed a full. I wasn't sure if I was quite ready to tackle it just yet, but I set forth a tentative training plan about 5 weeks ago. (You can see my weekly runs here , or by clicking The Land of Running at the top of the screen. ) I decided that if I made it to a 16-miler and felt okay, that I would proceed with running the marathon. The 16-miler went great! So I guess here goes nothing. I've decided to run the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon on

For recipe, see bottom of post. Woot woot for 4-day weekends! My Business Man and I were able to go home and visit our fam this past weekend, which was a blast. We hadn't been home since Christmas (!) so there was lots of catching up to do.  I didn't have school Friday, so we even got to leave a little earlier than usual. Of course, not until after I ran 16 miles. (In shorts! In the sun! I was happy. I will expand on why I am running so much in a future post, promise.) We re-fueled along the ride with some Starbuck's, which was awesome. Did I mention it was sunny and beautiful out? That called for my usual 'summer' drink, an iced mocha. Did I mention I was happy?  I believe my Business Man threatened to make me walk the remaining 240 miles home when I asked him to take this picture. Or maybe I said I would walk home, just to "prove a point." I might have once attempted to walk 11 miles home from work one summer trying to "prove a point"