Gourmet Runner

Just for the record...17 miles is freakin' long. It was literally the longest run of my life! I really needed a successful long run to get my heart back into marathon training. The high heat and humidity around here lately mean that most of my runs are slow, interrupted by walking breaks, and usually get cut short a little. So when I saw I had a 17 miler on the schedule, I decided to use a guest pass at a local gym to get the run inside. 17 miles = 2 hours, 45 minutes (9:42 pace) Yes, I spent nearly 3 hours on a treadmill facing the wall. And guess what? I LOVED IT! The gym has cardio machines with TVs, so I watched some news, lots of E! and an episode of Chopped to make the time go by faster. The best part of all? When I stopped to finish, and the treadmill said 7 miles (I ran the first 10 and went for water) and the guy next to me said, "Wow, I've never seen a girl run 7 miles on a treadmill before." You have NO IDEA how satisfying it was to say, "Actually, I...

I'm moving my long run to tomorrow since I'm working today, so in the meantime I thought I would update you all with my house progress! If you didn't know, hubs and I moved from Hong Kong six months ago to build our dream house in Georgia. We came with the goal of building a modern and energy efficient home on our land. Well, a little bit of time later (and a lot of extra cash later) than we expected, but it's nearly done! I love this house! What makes it so special for me is that hubs designed the entire thing himself, from the layout to the materials to the roof heights. Truly one of a kind! The house itself is completely finished, painting, and air-conditioned (woo-hoo) but there's that small issue of furniture. Although at this point, I'm pretty ok with sleeping on the floor! The kitchen is completely from Ikea--cabinets, appliances, the whole kit and caboodle. Here's the most recent picture, but more has been done since then: The countertops have...