Welcome to the Hour of Madmen and Bunnies

This week's Friday Newsletter is a MESS. But like, in a good way.

It is with a heavy heart that I must report I have begun exercising in the mornings.

I do not want to be doing this, mind you. There is nothing I want more at 5:30am than to be completely unaware of the fact that it is 5:30am, or of anything else, for that matter.

Unfortunately, my evenings have become impossibly busy. The school year has ended, but summer arrives bearing only a false promise of freer schedules. The harsh reality has quickly set in: a cannonball run of camp pickups, youth sports, and work ramped up to its most frenetic pace of the year. The other night, I took the second hour of a supposedly-half-hour conference call as I made my way to shuttle a child from a birthday party to a baseball game.

I simply cannot count on the evenings if I want to get my workouts in, and unfortunately, I have to get them in.

Why?

Well, that brings me to my second piece of terrible news.

Against my better judgment, I have gone and signed myself up to run a marathon. (Indianapolis, in November.) I make no guarantees of success in this endeavor, and there was a time in my life where I simply would have kept this plan to myself lest I jinx it or otherwise fail to follow through on it. I'm not worried about that this time around. I ran five marathons in my 20s and 30s, but now that I'm in my mid-40s, I approach any athletic goal with the carefully-hedged expectations of someone whose favorite NBA team is building a roster around an injury-prone 7-footer.

"Well, if he stays healthy, this might work, but... we'll just see."

(Let's hope I'm more Wemby and less Greg Oden. But I digress.)

Marathon training is, at its core, an exercise in stubborness. You don't have to be fast, coordinated or smart, which is good, because I'm none of these things. You simply have to be consistent and/or persistent, and I'm going to do my best to spend the next 23 weeks persisting against the siren song of my pillow, dragging my miserable bones out to run while the rest of my household slumbers peacefully.

Do you want to know the worst part of all of this?

I've been finding these morning runs pleasant.

It's been in the mid-50s and cool each time I've headed out this week, and just light enough to see without a headlamp (I wear it anyways, as a safety measure.) It's quiet. There's no traffic on the one busy road I need to cross. I'm not getting any notifications on my phone or watch, and there's nobody else outside. In fact, it's so quiet out there that I've been keeping a running tally this week of "people I see" vs. "bunnies I see", and the bunnies are currently holding an 8-5 lead.

(I am on the record as being firmly pro-bunny; it's the most delightful suburban wildlife by a healthy margin, even if they steal the occasional tomato from my garden.)

I have come around to the benefits of the morning run. I start the day invigorated. I commune with nature. I guarantee that an off-the-rails afternoon won't put me off-track for my training, and I get to eat a bigger breakfast when I get home.

It's perfectly logical, and I hate it.

(Tune back in over the coming weeks as I begrudingly extol the merits of drinking water, getting a good night's sleep, packing a healthy lunch, reading instruction manuals, driving the speed limit and more in a series I call "OKAY FINE I GET IT LEAVE ME ALONE.")

(I am not actually going to write this.)

I started off in a rambling mood today, and I assure you it gets worse from here. I've got a lot to talk about today, but it's a MESS. (A happy one, but still.)

Today I'm talking improvised summer meals and big-flavor cocktails. I've got a band that had me on name alone, an update on my latest obsession, and a lightning round of other ACBN-Certified Good Things.

Oh, and pets. There's always pets.

The ACBN does more by 9am than most people do all day... and it starts now.

Summer is for winging it

My cooking has been nearly non-existent the last few weeks. Between work travel, family travel and the ever-present spectre of youth baseball, I've eaten trail mix and/or Taco Bell for more meals than I'd like to admit lately.

Still, it's summer, and a warm summer night free of obligations is a great chance to wing it. A few nights ago, I prepared Mark Bittman's Greek-Style Watermelon Salad with Feta simply because they had the good watermelons in at the store, and paired it with tuna steaks because they looked good in the case.

I am bad at assessing quantities and appetites, though, and I cooked too much tuna (charmed I'm sure). Seared-but-mostly-raw tuna didn't much appeal as leftovers, so I took what was left, threw it in the food processor with a chopped shallot, then folded in some oregano, garlic, celery salt, bread crumbs and a beaten egg to make improvised tuna burgers that I griddled up in a small window between evening obligations on Wednesday.

(served with tomato, red onion and sriracha mayo on an English muffin)

They turned out surprisingly good for something I had not planned at all, but also served as a great reminder that my Salmon Burgers are ripe for revisiting:

(I am very much hoping to get some actual cooking time in this weekend, and if I do you're sure to see the results.)

Copper kettles, woolen mittens, you get the idea

I was going to title this section "Raindrops on roses, things of that nature", but then I remembered I did exactly that seven months ago. Nevertheless! Today's cocktail is one that I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to making, as it too features a few of my favorite things.