Have you ever really looked forward to something only to have something come up to kind of ruin it for you?  Ya, that happened to me at the Margarita Fest.  But not because the Fest wasn’t a great time!

I got up early that morning and headed out to Color Me Rad (which was, you know, rad) where I felt great and had a really fun time with the family.  I went home, had some food and a shower and headed out.  Waiting in line to go into the Margarita FestivaI I started to get a little headache, but no big deal.

We headed straight away over to the shaded VIP tent to grab some margaritas and beer. Thanks to running into Denise of Run DMT I knew to grab 2 drinks to avoid getting back in line so quick; I got a Grand Mango Jalapeno Margarita and a Grand Prickly Pear Margarita.  I’d never had a jalapeno margarita before, and I gotta say it lived up to the hype.

Ya, I know this picture is too big but I just found out I could embed a picture from Instagram so how could I not?

http://instagram.com/p/oZJqTFLWgc/#

After we sat and drank our first drinks (I do NOT have the coordination to walk holding 2 full drinks and not spill one or both) we headed over to the Taco Bus.  I was super excited because I am for sure the last person in Tampa to try their food and what do you know, there they were.  Couldn’t be more convenient!

But then.  We were in line for about 10 minutes (the other food trucks barely had lines, a testament to the addiction this place causes) and I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the front of the line.  I asked my boyfriend if we could run back to the car for some Tylenol and come back, which we did.  I grabbed another jalapeno margarita and we sat in the shade listening to the band and people watching (always, always fun at these events) for about an hour. I didn’t drink my margarita but I did enjoy myself. Unfortunately as soon as we got up and walked back into the sun my headache firmly reinstated itself as the boss of me and we decided to go.

So no Taco Bus, no traditional margarita (tequila is my all time favorite drink), no Naked Turtle (I also love rum. Don’t judge) and no more fun for me.  I spent the rest of the evening staring at but not watching the TV patiently(ish) waiting for the stupid headache to go away enough to sleep.

Wanna know the worst part?  This was my turn to not be the designated driver and I only drank one full margarita!  What did I do to make karma strike at me like this????? As my 3 year old nephews would say, so sad.

Since I didn’t get to enjoy much of the festivities here’s some links to check out what some other Tampa Bay Bloggers thought. Spoiler alert, they thought it was great.

Run DMT , Never Have I Ever, Loving Life and Casa De Crews

Oh yeah, and final cool things I didn’t do but so hope to next year – this was a dog friendly event, and they had a corona beer bull ride thing.  Check out their twitter feed of the event, it is kind of cool:

https://www.eventliveus.com/event/tampa-bay-margarita-festival/wall

Anyways, long story short it was an amazing event and the people who put this on are doing it again August 16th – this time it’ll be the Summer of Rum. Here’s hoping I’m not the designated driver for that one and I get to torture people with drunk tweets!

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Margarita Festival in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

Have you ever looked forward to an event and then had to make the decision to opt out?  If you are here in Tampa are you planning to go to the Summer of Rum Festival?  If so check back here closer to the festival, I may have some general admission tickets to give away!

My last update I fessed up and said I had skipped a week’s running and was therefore going to do a ‘do-over’ week.  This week I didn’t do much better and started to plan on re-doing the week again, but with more running.  Then I decided forget that, time to move on, excuses are starting to stack up around here again…

Sunday night out of nowhere motivation hit and I decided that I would just run my 4 miles and move on to the next week.  Never mind that I hadn’t run hardly at all in two weeks and I’ve never run that far without taking walk breaks. That’s all good and determined and all that other good stuff.  It’s how I got it done that made this my nerdiest run ever.

First, I dropped the air conditioning 4 degrees.  I made myself an ice cold water with Endurolytes Fizz in it, which I had never tried before because seriously, it’s not like I”m running all that far. (It was grapefruit and delicious)  I put Spirit of the Marathon on Netflix and proceeded to run my miles while watching it.

Heck ya it worked!  Between the motivating movie and the fact that I wasn’t dying of the heat I not only ran the miles but could have ran more.  I think that it was the iced drink more than the air conditioner that helped with the heat, I don’t usually drink anything at all when I am running but I have of course run in the cold.

So cha-ching, on to the next week and I’m only 1 week behind from my original plan.

Do you ever use any jedi-mind tricks on yourself to get things done?  Whatever works, right? Right??

I haven’t posted for (vegan) Meatless Monday in a while, it’s about time to get back into the habit! Here’s a super-easy recipe for vegan chili relleno.  I was going to make a more intricate filling, but I was running late, Trader Joe’s black refried beans were already flavored with jalepenos, and replacing the cheese in the typical chili relleno with whole beans and stuff doesn’t sound like the right consistency anyways.  Though I may do it anyways the next time.

Here’s how I put them together:

Ingredients:

• 8 pablano peppers
• 1 can Trader Joe’s refried black beans with jalapenos  (refried beans mixed with a can of green chilis would be good too!)

That’s it.  Not much of a recipe, huh?

Part 1, which I did the day before but of course you could do it all in one day if you are less lazy and/or don’t tend to forget to go back to something after it’s cleaned up and hidden in a paper bag:

1. Place pobalano chiles on a cookie pan covered with tin foil.  I didn’t grease the pan at all, but I would the next time because they stuck a little.
2. Move the oven rack up if needed so it’s 6-8 inches below the broiler.
3. Broil the peppers until blackened, about 10-15 minutes each side, then place in a paper bag to finish.
4. After the peppers have cooled enough peel off the outer skin.  I found this to be a bit of a challenge, mine were only about 2/3 peeled but I didn’t even notice in the end.

Ya, they don’t look that great blackened but the kitchen does start to smell pretty dang good.

Part 2:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Slice an opening from almost the top to almost the bottom of each pepper and clean out the seeds from the middle.  I pushed them a little inside out and rinsed the seeds out in the sink.

Fill center with about 2 tsp of the refried beans, close the pepper and place on pan.

Bake peppers for about 25 minutes

Serve alone or with a sauce.  I personally always chose to use a sauce or dip when it’s an option!

OK, so maybe you are wondering what the heck happened to that top chilli.  What happened was…  I tried to recreate a ‘fried coating’ type thing.  It actually tasted pretty good but looked ugly enough to be a fail anyways.  If you are curious and can maybe tell me how to improve the look here is what I did:

3 Tbls water (and a splash) mixed with a about 2.5 Tbls ground flax, whipped to dip the chiles in first, then 1 cup spelt flour with pepper, cumin, and garlic powder mixed in to dip the chiles in second.  This was much more experiment than recipe, I just sprinkled the spices in.

I used a tomatillo sauce I found on the food network, mostly because I didn’t know what it was really and figured it was past time to find out. It was really good and I’d definitely make it again.  My son liked it on the rellenos, but next time I’ll make a red sauce for them, probably with chilpote peppers in adobo sauce.  I’m going to try a sauce like that next week to go with vegan tamales if I can pull it off.

That said, the tomatillo sauce is pretty dang good.  It was strangely sweet and I’m determined to find something that it would fit better with.  I did use it as a chip dip too but it’s such an interesting taste it need to be the star of some other show.

Ingredients:

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 Anaheim chile, seeded
1 white onion, quartered
1/2 jalapeno chile, seeded
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Juice from 1/2 lime

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Toss the vegetables with the oil, salt and pepper. Roast the vegetables until the tomatillos turn a dark-green color and the onions golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Let the vegetables cool, peel the garlic and blend everything together with the lime juice in a Ninja or food processor.

Have you ever tried a tomatillo sauce? Did you like it and what did you serve it with?

Saturday morning me and mine and my sister and hers all got up at the you-know-what of dawn and went to Color Me Rad. Our (8 between us) kids ranged from her 3 year old twins to my 20 year old, we were quite the rag tag assortment.

We were a little late (we have a rep to keep up) and it was a wee bit warm but there was a nice breeze, they were handing out plenty of water, and we had a blast.  I think the kids favorite part is that they were not only allowed to get dirty, they were allowed to get OTHER people dirty.  The twins were rubbing their hands in the colored powder on the ground and then on peoples shirts, pre-school heaven.

Here’s our running crew.  Needless to say we did a whole lot of walking and trading the wee ones back and forth; they walked, ran and hitched rides  at will.  The run was on the fairgrounds so we didn’t feel uncomfortable letting the older ones run ahead of us. No cars and nowhere to get lost!

As much as I’d love for these fun runs to instill a love of running in the kids you really can’t say what will happen.  But I can say that events like this are a great way to spend the day as a family, get away from computers, and make great memories.  And my kids have all of their race bibs pinned to their wall.  I didn’t suggest it, so it makes me happy to see that they are proud of them.

And seriously, who couldn’t use a little more boom, a little more rad, and a little more color in their day?

To top it all off I had the added benefit of a build in chauffeur.  I still don’t get why people don’t love having teenagers around.  Well, OK, it depends on the day.

My family’s other favorite thing to do together is eat, the family is Italian so we can get 40 people and 10 pounds of pasta together in a heartbeat. Like magic!

The family that plays together… probably bickers all the way there and back, but whatever.  How about you, what do you and your family like to do together?

Disclosure: I received race entries in exchange for posting about Color Me Rad.

Remember the 4 cute little baby chickens I got almost 3 months ago?  I bought pullets, meaning (in secret chicken people language) that they were future egg laying hens.

Well, not so much. The cute little yellow fuzz ball started crowing when it was about 2 months old.  Guess what’s against my HOA rules?  I  mean besides all the other stupid stuff.  Roosters.  And as much as we liked Nugget, we couldn’t argue that the crowing was obnoxious so we gave him to someone who’s daughter wanted a pet rooster.  I know, weird.

So the next day….

The very morning after Nugget was gone (and the hens cried all night, for real) the little mini chicken, Baby, started crowing.  Apparently he was intimidated by the huge rooster and didn’t show his true colors until Nugget was gone.  So he had to go.  We gave him to a family that had 6 bantam (little) hens. They were very nice and even offered to send me pictures of him in his new home since I had said they could only have him if he wasn’t going to be a meat chicken or raised in a tiny box or something.

So here is what I ended up with out of my 4 believed to be hens:

But wait, that isn’t a chicken!  Because fate says I obviously don’t have enough animals the guy who took Nugget, the 1st rooster, offered me a cute little 9 week old bunny in trade even though I already said I was just giving him the rooster.  Who would say no to that?

Of course since I hadn’t actually planned on getting a bunny we had to run out that night and pick up food and hay and such necessities.  Oh yeah, and since we didn’t have a rabbit hutch just laying around (s)he is living in my bathroom.   Ya, it’s kind of unconventional but it’s litter box trained and runs around my room when I’m in it for exercise.  Someday my chicken coop will be finished and I’ll build a hutch.  It WILL happen.  All that’s left on the coop is a ceiling and door, the only reason it’s not done is I can’t fit those supplies in my Prius so I have to wait for my dad’s truck to be available to make the Home Depot run.

I managed to turn 4 baby chicks into 2 hens and a bunny, and I didn’t even need a magic hat!    On the plus side I’m down to only 9 pets now…

I’m pretty sure that since my 9 are divided between hens, a bunny, dogs, and rats I can’t be considered an animal hoarder.  I’m pretty sure hoarders pick an animal and stick to it.  Right???  I am, however,  definitely at the point where even a goldfish would cross the line into too much!

How about you, what kinds of pets do you have?  Did you get any of them spur of the moment? I’m not the only one who couldn’t turn down a baby bunny, right?

First things first, the winners of a pair of tickets to the Margarita Festival in Tampa are Elliot W and Chris B.  Congratulations, I’ll email you your tickets tonight!

I also want to check in on my journey to a 10K.  This last week was not as successful as the first 2, I’m going to repeat the week.

Sunday was my ‘long run’ of 3 miles.  It was also Mother’s Day and I talked my oldest son into going with me to meet a running group and do a trail run. Happily, everyone there was really nice and I had a great time.   Unhappily I forgot that trail running in Florida often means  running in soft sand which totally and immediately wrecked me.  I have no idea how far we ran because I brilliantly tried to use a new to me program to track mileage but didn’t actually mess with it to see how to use it before starting to run.  Brilliant!  I decided to turn around and head back, and found that we had gone pretty far, but I really doubt it was 3 miles.  And also, we made a wrong turn on the way back because if I’m in the woods I kind of have to get lost a little.  Especially if there are witnesses.

I wasn’t too torn about not making my 3 miles since the terrain made it feel like about 30.  I without a doubt worked harder than if I had done 3 miles on the treadmill!  But then Tuesday I didn’t run do to poor planning on my part.  Thursday I did run but instead of 3.5 miles on the weekend I only did 2.  Blah.

So here it is Tuesday again, the first day of my running week.   I’m calling a do over on last week and following the same plan again.  I have a lot of the same things going on as last Tuesday, but this time I’m buckling down and not letting things get in the way.  Like writing this in the morning instead of trying to fit in writing at night.  🙂

Do you have a backup plan for when things come up and throw you off schedule, whether it’s a running schedule or something else?  If you are following a training plan do you have a problem with doing a week over if you do not have a hard date (like a race) you have to be ready by?

There’s a rumor going around that margaritas are Tampa’s drink of choice.  I have no idea if that’s true or not but I know if I had to pick a poison tequila is by far the tastiest!  Maybe it comes from spending so many weekends in Tijuana when I was younger or maybe it’s just that good, I don’t know.

Regardless, if you are also a fan you really need to join my out at the Tampa Bay Margarita Festival coming up Saturday, May 24th. There will be margaritas with Sauza (an old favorite of mine), Cabo Wabo (a favorite of everyone’s) and tons of other different tequilas. Bud Light’s Lime-A-Rita will be there and if you aren’t a tequila fan there’s Coronas and HRM Rex Goliath wine. And also, apparently there will be naked turtles there. Strange but true.

Of course they have to keep your designated driver happy too, so there will be lots of music and games and the evening will be topped off with fireworks. Los Lonely Boys will be headlining the show and there are plenty other bands starting after the gates open at 1:00.  I for one cannot resist sitting on the lawn listening to  live music, I can’t wait. Here’s a sample of one of the bands, Thomas Wynn & The Believers. Try and tell me this and a margarita isn’t the definition  of a perfect chill weekend.

The festival will be at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park and is being put on by the same people who did the Tampa Spring Beer Fling so I expect it will be a blast. Which is why you want to go too, right?  You can get your tickets here, they’re $15 now or $20 at the door for general admission or for $85 ($100 at the door) you can VIP it and your ticket will include all of your margaritas.  Sounds good to me!

What could be better?  How about winning a pair of general admission tickets? I have 2 pairs to give away, I’ll announce the winners here Tuesday the 20th.

Enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Margarita Festival in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

So, will you be there?

I said that I was starting a 10K running program and that I’d start doing a weekly update, I bet since you haven’t seen an update you think I quietly skipped out (again), right?  Wrong!  So far so good, no skipped or moved runs at all.

I decided it would not be a cop out to add a cushion week in before starting the actual plan since it had been a while since I ran and I didn’t want to give myself an excuse to quit the first week!

I’m running Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.  I may switch that to a Saturday here and there since a weekend run is a weekend run, but no other editing.  My add on week was a 2 mile, 1.5 mile, then 2.5 mile run.  This week I did a 2.5 Tuesday and 2 miles tonight.  So far they’ve all been barefoot and on the treadmill.  Sunday I’m meeting a running group (never did that before) and will do a 3 mile trail run.  That’ll be fun!  My oldest son is going with me so I know I’ll finish, I don’t run with anyone else often so when I do I don’t even notice the miles because it’s something different.  I’ll wear my minimalist shoes for that and maybe for all of my ‘long’ runs because the 10K I think I’ll be signing up for is a midnight run and I was told the turnaround part is really dark.  I like barefoot but not in pitch black conditions!

I’ve been doing yoga after every run and though I can’t say it’s been easy for me to finish all the runs I can say I haven’t been sore anywhere or had any real issues finishing.  I just have a horrible habit of looking at the mileage every 2 seconds which make my runs seem to take FOREVER.  I’ve been listening to Zombies, Run!, Rock My Run, and podcasts and it makes a big difference.  Especially if I hit on a really funny podcast.

My one fail has been cross training.  I haven’t been.  It’s part of the plan and I need to get started on it. I wish my Radio Flyer looking bike wasn’t messed up, that would make cross training fun.  I did go kayaking last Thursday, that counted as cross training for certain, even if it was a run day!

Lots of other great non-running things have been happening too. I’ll have to give an update soon on the garden, the chicks, our newest farm-y addition and some other things like a giveaway to the Margarita Festival coming up in Tampa!

Are you training for or starting anything new?  How’s it going so far?  I love the first few weeks of pretty much anything, it’s always so much fun to start something new!

Last weekend I went to an award ceremony for the Zombie Film Festival, and the week before I went to their second premier night to watch a bunch of short films, all about zombies (as you may guess).  What fun!

What is a Zombie Film Festival?  Participants get 30 days to create a film and all films have to contain certain elements.  I know these had to have a particular quote, a zombie joke, a plunger, and a few other items.  It was really fun to watch for the requirements in all of the different films.

After the award ceremony the second Friday there was a really fun punk band, The Funeral Dazies.  All of the members were zombies, and body parts did occasionally fly to and from the stage, but I’m sure they were basically nice people.   Here’s the band, a stray body part, and the awards announcer. They look nice, right??

So how did I know to go see all of this awesomeness when you didn’t even know it existed?  I have an in!  I know a really great group of people who happen to have just started a film company, Atone Films.  Their film, In Vain, won an award!

Here’s the link to the short film, check it out! Then go over to Atone Film’s new Facebook page and let them know if you like it!

The lead in the film happens to be the guy I’ve been seeing for many a year, do I know how to find the good guys or what?

Are you a fan of zombie films?  Do you think 100s of slow, shambling zombies are scarier or just one or two fast, parkour type zombies are scarier?  I guess it depends on how fast you can run…

I have a couple of confessions to make.

1. I haven’t run, done yoga, or much of anything else for about 3 months
2. I also haven’t written much because I operate on a switch, my motivation is ON or it’s OFF across the board
3. I have a serious commitment issue – I’ve been running off and on for years now but I’ve never got much over a 5K an I’ve never once committed to a running plan.
4. I am one of the most excellent people you will meet at making excuses about why I don’t want to get on and stick with a plan, and also I’m most excellent at making excuses.  Even about things I want to do, and then I convince myself (pretty easily) that my excuses are actually truths.

So, ya.  That about sums it up.  I’ve decided not to do that anymore. Again. Sound familiar? But this time I’m going to try a couple of things I’ve not tried before. Because you know, that thing where if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results…  I’m about 2 more times from being committed.

I chose a plan to get to a 10K and I’m committing to actually doing it.  I usually have preconceived reasons of why I might skip a night or why I might not finish it.  Yes, really.  This time I wrote it all on my calendar and I’m not making any schedule changes or skipping any nights.  If my run doesn’t happen until midnight or if I have to get up at 5am to get it in, so be it.  I looked at a bunch of plans and decided to go with Hal Higdon’s novice 10K plan.  A lot of people swear by him and the plan includes cross training and such so there you go.

My usual method is to tell no one when I start something like this because that way when I quit before I finish no one will ask me about it. This time I even told my sisters, so there is some built in shaming if  so much as skip a night.

Also, I’m going to do a weekly check in here to keep track of my progress.  Probably boring for anyone else to read but this blog actually started as a running journal way back when, so it works for me.

Finally, it’s about time for a new mantra.  I’ve read this one on the internet a bunch of times and it seems to about sum things up for me at the moment.

So here I go, off to find out what happens if I actually start something fully committed to doing it by the book. Wish me luck, and feel free to be part of my shaming team if I come anywhere NEAR to making excuses.  Which I won’t.  🙂

Do you ever have an issue with following through on commitments you try to make to yourself?  Do you have any suggestions on how to break through the limitations a person puts on themselves?