Blogger's being cranky

I don't know what's been going on with Mr. Blogger this morning, but I've been trying to log in for about an hour and a half and this is the first time the template has opened. Let's see how much I can say in the next 15 minutes, because beginning at 8 a.m. I'm scheduled. Sigh.

Onions from the garden, destined for Kung Pao.

Our little dinner get-together went very well. As I think I mentioned, the local Chinese restaurant, um, SUCKS, so I made hot-and-sour soup, spring rolls and Kung Pao chicken. Except I used beef instead of chicken and I jazzed it up with lots of vegetables. I served brown rice, an item rarely seen in Asian eateries, at least it's rare here in the Middle of Nowhere.

My [purchased] fortune cookie said "You are on your way to perfection," or something like that. My fortune definitely got the biggest laugh. At our ages – 60 to 68 – we know there's no such thing.

Guess what I did for exercise yesterday. Go on, guess! Okay, I'll tell you. I j.o.g.g.e.d. It's been many moons since I've propelled my body at a speed greater than 3 mph, unless I've been on a treadmill. For some reason, I just felt like moving a little faster yesterday, and conditions were perfect: high 60s, low humidity, a simply gorgeous day. It reminded me so much of many days when I was training for a half-marathon.

The smartest way to pick up the pace is to run a little and then walk a little. I didn't stick to anything too strictly, though I tried to keep the intervals the same: two minutes jogging followed by two minutes walking, or 1/1s if I couldn't manage to jog for two minutes straight.

I had a lot of trouble the first half of the route (I turned around after 1.5 miles), but the last complete mile is all downhill (and now you know why that first part was so hard) and I jogged continuously for eight-tenths of it. My final average speed was 3.75 mph. I'm pretty happy with that.

It's hard to call what I did high-intensity interval training (HIIT), but I guess if the intervals vary in intensity it could at least be called highER intensity. What it really did was give me a huge sense of accomplishment early in the day and that feeling lasted all day long.

Tomorrow is the last day of March (duh) and my last day of daily blogging for a while. I'll probably go back to Monday through Friday, but I might even – gasp! – skip a weekday here and there once I start working. I've been posting daily for five months. I can hardly believe I've been able to maintain my streak.

But wait! I'm moving the daily photo post to this blog April 1! So I won't break my posting streak, just my writing streak. (My photo captions can hardly be called "writing.") Heh.

Okay, gotta go … if I don't make mozzarella RIGHT NOW, it will not be ready for the chicken pesto pizza we're having for dinner. The more time it has to chill, the easier it is to shred. Have a fabulous Friday!