Per our usual Friday routine, the girls went with Aunt Ellen today. I ran errands after dropping them off and was positively starving by the time I got home.

My latest trick – A LA Natalia Rose – is to snack on carrots while I prepare lunch/dinner if I’m really hungry. This keeps me from overeating when I finally do sit down to eat and it keeps me chewing my arm off or chewing anyone’s head off because I’m hungry and grumpy. Lucky for everyone, I was home alone and the only one who got his head chewed off was the carrot.

I made a giant salad with just about every vegetable I could find in my personal farmer’s market of a refrigerator.

Red leaf, green leaf, carrots, red onion, green pepper, raw corn, a giant tomato, mushrooms. Consumed at my desk because I like to eat with my friend the computer when I’m home alone.

Although my salad was roughly the size of my head, I was hungry again within an hour. I moved on to an open container of 2% Fage that was about 75% full. I poured a little maple syrup on top and then crumbled a few Island Vanilla Kashi mini wheats on top.

Again, consumed at my desk.

And again, within about an hour the bottomless pit was empty again. I’d even had a couple unphotographed dates and almond butter and I’m fairly sure there was a small piece of G&B in there too. And it was only small because it was the last of the bar and now we’re out. Out of dates too.

I then moved on to something else I could smear AB on. A slice of Ezekiel cinnamon raisin toast.

With a few banana chips too.

And finally, I quelled the savage beast.

On somewhat short notice my running bud Shawn and I decided to do some speed work on the track tonight at the fitness center near the house. We warmed up and jogged the mile to the track.

We ran 400 meters (once around the track) at 5K pace (fast) and then 200 meters (half way around the track) at recovery pace (very, very slow). We did this 5x and by the last time I was just about ready to die.

We jogged the mile home and then another mile cool down. We ran about 5 miles total and were gone a total of 50 minutes, but I didn’t stop my watch for walking and water breaks.

Home and totally wiped out, I was entertained by Ava who danced, flung and twirled around the family room to Backyardigans music downloaded from iTunes. If you’ve got kids and/or know who the Backyardigans are, you can’t deny that their songs are pretty cute and clever with a good beat. I won’t lie, I get my dance on when I hear Buffalo Girls & Boys. Ava does too.

Maxine and I just tried to stay the hell out of the way.

And no dinner. I think my massive snack attack this afternoon was dinner. Running late in the day always kills my appetite. I am totally whooped am completely out of fuel to come up with any sort of clever closer here.

I’m still trying but I got nothing. Boring.