a few things i find truly satisfying

1.  Hand-washing my running clothes.  I am not sure why, but this totally makes my day.  It doesn't matter how busy I am, or that I have ten loads of laundry waiting to go in the washing machine, I will always hand-wash my running clothes right after I finish a long run.  Brightens my day every time.

2.  A really clean room.  Too bad this hasn't really happened in a while.

3.  A great deal.  Even on things I don't need.  This is exactly why I need to stay away from Target.  I know where they hide all of their clearance items and I am such a sucker for unnecessary kitchen gadgets.

ballerman5000

So, our school recently started using this online gradebook that everyone thinks is super fancy because it allows the kids to go in and add a profile picture for themselves and list their "preferred name" next to their given name.

I have learned a lot about these kids through this gradebook.  For instance, John prefers to go by by Justin and apparently went to the beach this summer.  Yay, Justin.

Also, three of my students would like to go by the names "Butterball", "Swag", and "Ballerman5000".

Um, really kids?  But I guess when you go by "Poodle", there's not a lot of room for criticism.  Dang.

most exhausting week of my life

Spending all summer doing only the things I wanted to apparently made me forget that working can be exhausting.  And it didn't help that this week, my night classes started (anatomy and statistics) AND we had back to school night.  (In case you didn't know, parents can be really tiring.)

But, despite all of this, I have still managed to fit in some good times.  Namely, an 18 mile run and some baking.

I made a delicious batch of zucchini bread using this recipe.  I had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and as an after-school snack) until it was gone.

Then I whipped up some homemade pop tarts!  (Chocolate peanut butter and brown sugar cinnamon.)  They were flaky, buttery, and absolutely divine. Mine were not as pretty as these ones, but I'm pretty sure they tasted just as good.  (if not better)

Next, I am going to make some dark chocolate peanut butter cups.  Up until last month, I never thought that another peanut butter cup would ever come close to Reese's PB cups.  Then I tried Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups and almost fell out of my chair.  Something about dark chocolate and peanut butter really does it for me.  So I am hoping to re-create them with this recipe.  Wish me luck!

VA beach half marathon

Really, why did I think running a half marathon in Virginia Beach in early September was a great idea?  Let me tell you, it was not a great idea.  This was probably the most humid, disgusting, miserable race I have ever done.  I was dripping by mile 3, and telling myself I only had 10 miles to go was not super inspiring.  Augh.

But I still managed to finish with a time of 1:51!  And, according to my Garmin (which I trust way more than the race coordinators) the race was actually 13.18 miles, NOT 13.1.  Making a person run an extra .08 miles at the end of a race is really just cruel.  

The race did redeem itself with the post-race goods.  There were Snickers Marathon bars, cold water, 20-oz bottles of gatorade, ice cold chocolate milk (my new post-race drink of choice), bananas, peaches, tuna (kind of a weird choice, but I took some home with me), bomb pops, and 7-11 slurpees!!!  So really, the slurpees made it totally worth it.  (They also handed out Gatorade, Gu, otter pops, cold wet sponges, and water along the race course.  And beer, but I didn't take any of that.)

Being the superhero I am, I managed to take 2 pictures (out of about the 20 total) in which I do not look like I might die.  I know, I know.  You all wish you could be me.  Haha.  I even went so far as to steal them from Marathon Foto's website for your viewing pleasure.