It's April...Almost

From now until the end of the semester, I'm going to be running around like a lunatic screaming "It's April...leave me alone...Unless you can help me with homework." Not really, but maybe. Aprils and Novembers are the hardest months of graduate school, but I'll talk more about grad school whoas later in the post. First, I want to talk about my run yesterday and my breakfast this morning (before we get into the grad school talk).

Yesterday's run went from bad to good, which made me happy that I stuck with it.

Mile 1 was a reminder of the speed work I did on Monday. And it was a reminder that I need to stretch no matter how much I feel like I'm dying. At the end of mile 1, I thought about turning around and heading back to the car. It was hot, and my calves felt like pieces of lead. And then I could hear my mom in my head saying "If you're going to run a half-marathon you have to keep your base run. And you can't quit after one mile."  So I pushed on.

Mile 2 was better, and mile 3 was ever better than the second one. The heat was still ridiculous. But I somehow made it to my car.

Here are my stats:
Distance: 3 miles
Time: 34:14
Best Pace: 9:34
Average Pace: 11:25 (pretty proud of that)
Calories: 356

Pretty sure I ate all of those calories back plus some when I got home. The main culprit was this piece of beauty and deliciousness.

My mom's homemade pecan pie. Gooey gooey goodness. I swoon.

This morning I got up and made myself a pretty little breakfast. (Sidenote: I've got to get better about eating after I wake up....I can't keep waiting for hours to have breakfast. It's going to be a very difficult, yet necessary, lifestyle change.)

Fried egg sandwich with extra thin sliced cheddar cheese on a whole wheat bagel thin, two cuties and coffee...always must have the coffee.

Speaking of the coffee, I'm about to pour cup number 3, and this is due to my unsettledness stemming from this week's grad school assignment. Now I won't bore you with all the details, but I just wish the direction of the assignment was clear.

I could do one of these two things:

1. Answer all the questions in an essay format like the handout says...and be faced with redoing the assignment after a different time on a larger scale (i.e. full literature review...yes it will be as awful as it sounds).
2. Disregard said handout and write the actual literature review and research questions for my upcoming final paper (yes, it also sounds equally awful).

I've been mulling this decision around in my brain all morning. And the main reason I'm stressing hardcore is because it's due tomorrow at midnight. While it can be done in the time period and I feel confident in my skills to write under pressure, I just don't want to set off on the wrong path, which will lead me to a redo or a bad grade.

Grad school peeps, weigh in on this dilemma. I've e-mailed the teacher and my classmates, and I have class tonight. Lord, I feel my professor because I'm about to blow him up with questions.

So until I decide what to do about my grad school dilemma, I am debating on making these cookies. Here is the recipe.

(And by that I mean I'll probably bake while mulling over said problem. Baked goods fixes everything.)

What do you know? Anything interesting going on?

What is your go-to stress reliever?
Mine are baking, cooking and eating.....go figure. :)