Hello!

Ohai!  No, I am not an LOL Cat.  But YES--this is my blog!  Let's see how long this lasts.  You may or may not know that I had a blog in my early OU days.  Back then, I was opposed to using one of these template-based sites and instead wrote all of my own HTML.  Well, I'm finished with my days of being an elitist.  Also, I definitely don't have time for all of that mess anymore.  Instead, I'm taking the easy (smart) route.

What will you find here, you ask?  Mostly a stream of consciousness.  I plan to blog about my new hobby (running), our cats (because I'm a crazy cat lady), any super awesome things Joe and I do (which could be everything we do), and cooking.  I'm going to hit all of those points right now!

I ran my first half-marathon yesterday!  That was fun.  In case you didn't know, I took up running this summer.  I returned from Germany on Saturday, July 2nd.  On Tuesday, July 5th, I decided that I wanted to become active.  Yeah, I was an avid tennis player in high school.  I fell out of that in college because the people on the club team were lame--not at tennis, but they just weren't very cool people.  All passion I had for tennis fizzled.  Last year, for the three months before out wedding, we did P90X.  That was all right, but there were too many days on which I thought, "UGH!  I don't wanna do yoga/cardio/arms!"  Actually, after our first night of yoga we decided to go hit some tennis balls.  That didn't last long, because I sucked so badly that we left the court after hitting for about five minutes--it was ugly.  So other than hiking in Germany, I hadn't done anything physically strenuous since July 27th-ish of last year.

That brings us back to Tuesday, July 5th.  I fired up some Katy Perry on my iPod and did a run around the block.  Boy-oh-boy, I thought I was being really hardcore running about seven-tenths of a mile.  I did that same run three times in a week.  The following week, I did what I assume was closer to a full mile.  A week later, I decided that I would just run until I couldn't run anymore.  That ended up being about 2.5, and after I was able to do that, I registered for a 5K for August 3rd.  Since I paid $20, I took "training" more seriously and got out 4-5 days per week doing 3 miles.  That 5K was rough--it was hot and humid, and I finished in 28 minutes, soaking wet and beet-red.  But I felt great!  After that, I increased my mileage to 25 to 30 miles per week.  I've met some pretty awesome ladies with whom I've been waking up dark-and-early on Saturday mornings to get in 8 to 12 miles.  Well, I guess we don't really wake up together.  Anyhow, that's how I got to doing this Fall Classic half-marathon yesterday.  What a blast!  And I'm itching to run another big race.  I am pretty sure I'll be running another half in Chicago on January 28th, then I'm going to try to get myself ready to either run the Athens Marathon or Glass City Marathon in the spring.  We'll see how well winter treats my training!

Well, I lied earlier.  I said I would blog about running, cats, awesome fun things, and cooking.  The running stuff went on too long, so you'll have to stay tuned until next time.  Off to the grocery store I go, then it's beer-thirty.