The only marathons I have been a part of involve 12 episodes of Law & Order aired back to back and the loss of sensation in my buttocks. Another type of marathon is being covered tonight on PBS and it doesn’t involve a dozen hours of Sam Waterston. Tonight’s episode of NOVA is called the Marathon Challenge and follows 13 novice runners as they train to run the Boston marathon. I’m really looking forward to watching this because…I signed up to run a half marathon! Woo-hoo! Me and the Indianapolis 500 Mini-Marathon on May 3, 2008, baby! I’ve lost half my weight, I wrote a book called Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir and now I’m going to run a half-marathon. I hope to learn a lot from this show and I hope no one gets horribly injured or collapses in a pool of vomit because that registration fee is non-refundable. Check your listings for time and station.

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My hostel friend Adrienne, who writes Baby Toolkit, has tagged me with a meme. That’s my “hostel” friend, meaning I met her at the youth hostel during the BlogHer conference, not my “hostile” friend. I don’t think I could be friends with a hostile person whether I met them at a hostel or not. Here’s the rules:

Meme Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

I’ve spilled my guts on this blog so much I sometimes feel like I need my own biohazard waste bin to clean it all up. But here are eight health and weight-loss related things about me that you probably did not already know.

1) I don’t care if artificial sweeteners kill me, I’m eating them anyway

I know some people don’t like to use aspartame, sucralose, saccharin or any of those sweet, sweet, chemicals that end in [...]

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Hey everybody, NBC is bringing American Gladiators back to television! You’ve got until October 1 to submit your application. I spent several summers of my childhood watching reruns of American Gladiators on the USA cable network between airings of My Two Dads, The Facts of Life and Just the Ten of Us. Each show featured two male and two female competitors who would face off against the “gladiators” in several trials of strength, agility and balance. Unlike the Roman gladiator games, there were no tigers or pointy spears, but there were huge Q-tips.

When they weren’t working out or abusing performance enhancing drugs, gladiators had part-time jobs performing inner-ear hygiene on giants. They also used the big Q-Tips in the “Joust” competition where competitors stood on two raised platforms and tried to knock each other onto the mats below. I doubt I would do very well in that game because I was the girl who was terrified to jump out of the back of the school bus during emergency evacuation drills. If I were to find [...]

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