Being Productive

Today is a day of doing things. We're cooking dinner for some friends (and making extra for ourselves to eat in the week), baking cupcakes and making up Cornish pasties to take to Newbury for a family get-together tomorrow, tidying the house, exercising, grocery shopping, and watching The Mask of Zorro in the background of it all.

If they were all blue, they could be Breaking Bad cupcakes...

The cupcakes are the recipe I used last time for the red, white, & blue cake that I took to the ward Munch-n-Mingle all those months ago. The frosting, as per usual, is the creamy cream cheese stuff (both recipes are on my Pinterest page). Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff because it's just tart enough to be nice. Most frosting is too sweet for my taste. But I still think I ought to learn another fun frosting or two just to switch things up a bit.

Oh yeah...and by exercise, I mean that I did basically a 9-mile run today. Considering that I haven't run more than 4 miles at once since New Year's, that feels like a bit of a big deal. Especially since I managed to keep under my 10:00min/mi benchmark pace overall. If it hadn't been for slightly tired legs and the encroaching feeling of being asthmatic I probably would have hit my 9:30min/mi over the distance...but with all those caveats, it doesn't really mean anything. At least I haven't gotten much worse, and I'm still on track to aim for just over 9:00min/mi on the Fleet Half in March.

frozen layer on top of the canal today

Now that there's been another purge of extraneous junk, it's time to get to work on Cornish pasties for tomorrow and sit down to curry and the rest of Mask of Zorro before heading over for a games night with a few other couples we know. I have to confess: I'm not as much of a board games person as I once was...and I was never much of one to begin with (though I dominated at Monopoly and Clue). That said, I can still browse through the last few chapters of Happier At Home and contribute to the conversation if I find that I'm really not up for much.

My stomach seems to be punishing me for having the audacity to run 9 miles earlier. I think it needs to lie down on the couch and watch Antonio Banderas caper around in spurs and a black eye mask...