Aren't I crafty?

Rainy day.

We are getting thunderstorms here. Which I totally love, except they make me want to sleep! I was pathetically tired last night – I went to bed at 9:30, and slept until after 6! :-O I woke up so stiff and sore – even though I did so little, I overdid it at the gym. I’m going back this afternoon – all I can do is work through it.

So I’m feeling a little discouraged on the exercise front, but I keep telling myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and jumping back into my routine isn’t going to happen. Oh well, still slugging along.

I have a ton of stuff to do at the office today – 2 meetings plus a lot of stuff for my boss. Yesterday we found out our weekend company is coming Friday night rather than Saturday morning. That’s great, but it means less time to get everything in order, you know? Luckily, hub will have the day off tomorrow so he can clean, then all I have to do is pick up here and there when I get home. Tonight I need to finish up some sewing for our medieval thing this weekend so I can get my sewing toys all picked up.

Well, that’s about all I know today.

Wireless baby!!!

I am sitting in my easy chair in my living room, watching the last half of alame sci-fi movie on the tv, plugged into nothing in the world, typing on my thinkpad. How freaking cool is that??? technology rocks.

Done nothing but sewing this evening, so I'm feeling pretty relaxed. Don't worry - I promise to wash my face with my new super good for my skin face wash and brush my fangs before turning in early. I'm still stiff, and 5 comes mighty early.

Um yeah, it’s like that

Oh. My. God. I went to the gym yesterday afternoon. The nice thing about not keeping track of your workouts or food is that you are able to delude yourself into a false sense of complacency. I have no idea when I last went to the gym - I quit writing the date at the top of the page. According to the way my muscles feel today after that wimpy workout yesterday, it’s been at least 6 or 7 years! I decided to do one circuit of my total body routine. I take small breaks between exercises, but run through the whole thing once, and then back through again. Not so much yesterday. I’ve lost a lot of ground. :-( SO, my weight lifting plan is this: Do a total body circuit twice a week. Do the circuit one time through this week and next, then for 2 weeks go through the circuit twice. After that, I should be ready to split my routine into upper and lower body. Right now I need to work everything lightly a couple of times per week to build back up.

Hub went to the gym this morning and did basically the same thing. He was shocked at how inflexible he was. So we both clearly have a lot of work to do.

This morning I just walked. I ran yesterday plus lifted, and I stayed up a little too late. So I went ahead & got up (I have to get back on schedule!) and walked for 2 miles. I’ll get there – it’s just gonna take a while.

I feel a lot like the Goodyear blimp shoved into a pair of brown capris today. Eating yesterday was on track, so what’s up with that??? Oh well, stay the course.

I think I have a tentative workout schedule planned:

M-F a.m. run and/or walk
Sat or Sun a.m. long run
M & Thu afternoon lift weights
T afternoon kickboxing

I’d like to add one more kickboxing in there, but that’s my goal for the next couple of weeks. That adds up to 9 workouts and I will give myself one “pass” per week. So my goal is 8 of those 9. Yes, I require a lot of exercise. And I’d rather work out twice a day rather than one really long time.

I am so freaking sick of tuna – I’ve had to absolutely choke down my afternoon snack the past couple of days. Maybe if I cover it in bbq sauce??? Tuna is a mainstay of my diet. I eat 5 or 6 times per day with three of those here at work, so I rely heavily on cheap & convenient sources of protein like tuna and cottage cheese. Maybe deviled eggs? But those are only good fresh – sounds like a lot of work. Hmm. I know some folks do protein shakes, but I much prefer not to drink my food. I wind up feeling deprived. Need to think about this one.

I hate the spots on my face. The wrinkles on my forehead don’t bother me too much, but I really hate the spots. I’m considering going to the doctor for a peel. Thoughts?
Well, that’s all I got. Have a good one!

p.s. I’ve posted my pennsic photos on my yahoo photo site – they are under “Pennsic 35.” I haven’t posted my cool craft projects yet though.

This house is clean!!

No, not of poltergeists – I got rid of the cheese dip and 2 beers that were lurking in the fridge. Okay, it wasn’t a healthy dinner exactly… In any case, the crap is out of the house – I threw the taco chips in the trash this morning. I got up and ran, and I have my weight training log so I can write out what I’m doing at the gym this afternoon. This is very much going to be a baby step, one day at a time process for me until I get back into my routines. Food during the day is under control, I’m back waking up at 5 am, and I have healthy dinners planned for the week.

I stayed up until nearly 10 last night doing cross stitch! It’s so much fun to be doing something like that again – I’m glad I dragged it out. Tonight I have some sewing I want to work on.

It is amazingly muggy here right now – I was a fright when I got back to the house this morning!! Hair all matted to my head, face beet red…. Lots of room for improvement! But I had a good time. I added a bunch of songs to my MP3 player so we could use it in the car – time to get the driving tunes off so I don’t have to skip over them when I run.

I bought a book on the history of the Tour de France to take with me on vacation. I haven’t touched it. I glance at cyclingnews.com and just get sad. I feel a little like a kid who no longer believes in Santa. I don’t know how I’ll feel when the season starts back up next year, but right now I feel like pro cycling has been ruined for me. Which is really sad.

I've updated my weight chart in Excel. Sometimes it gets a little sad to see how long I've been at this, but then sometimes it just reminds me that this is a lifetime commitment and there is no rush.

Goals

I’m back from vacation, the house and garage are cleaned up, and its time to start setting some goals for myself. I haven’t gotten on the scale yet, so I dunno what that will bring, but here are my current thoughts:

1. Weight. There are 17 weeks left in the year. I’d love to finally break the 150 point. That’s a loss of around 10 pounds by year end. That should be doable. More than any specific number, I want to be consistent. To that end, food goals:

2. My big thing at first is to start writing down my food. My planned meals are fine – it’s the extras that kill me – especially in the evenings and weekends. Writing would add a level of accountability. Another big help would be

3. Cut out the beer. Totally for a bit. Vacation saw too much beer – which is fine on vacation but its over!

4. Gym – lift weights twice per week. I can never seem to break into that magic 3 times per week, so I’m gonna quit trying. Instead I plan to focus of 2 good workouts, and maybe a good calisthenics workout on another day to supplement.

5. Running. I’m back at it! I’m slow and still doing mostly walking, but that’s okay. I did 3 miles Sunday and my plan is to build up until I’m doing a long run of 10 miles every weekend. At that point I’ll stop adding distance and start working on speed. No specific run in mind, but I need some structure around my program. That will keep me busy for a bit.

That’s it. Nothing spectacular, but a good start.

I had a very nice weekend. I did a bit of sewing, and I got my cross stitch back out. I haven’t worked on that in years, and it felt really nice. I want to find a good balance between my 2 hobbies of exercise and craft stuff. I tend to do one or the other, but I enjoy both, so I need to balance my time.

Work is very demanding and very busy, but it is also very exciting! I’m feeling more fulfilled in my work than I have in years. I’m tired at the end of the day, but also invigorated, if that makes any sense.

All in all, I give life right now a B+. It would get an A, but (as usual) money is a little tight. A friend invited us out to visit her in Seattle – I wish I could afford it. Oh well, a B+ is mighty darn good!

Change is afoot

I am slowly getting back into a routine. I am waking up at 5 (as opposed to going to bed at 5), and I am walking in the mornings. I am thinking about putting together a calisthenics routine (push-ups, mountain climbers, sit-ups, etc) to compliment going to the gym. We are going back to the gym next week. Unpacking is about halfway done, and we’ll finish this weekend. In short, life is slowly getting back to normal.

And yet… there are some big changes. As I said, we elected to begin doing our medieval recreation stuff with a larger, more mainstream group that has folks closer to home. As a result of that, we’ll be able to be more active. And because we have completed most of our house projects, we have time again to play. So our social/hobby life which has been lacking will be picking back up.

Based on my efforts prior to vacation, my job has morphed into something quite different. I’m at a place I was hoping to be 2 years from now. Instead of just managing small projects, I’ll be running a project office, coordinating efforts & reporting around a large group of projects which will fall under one large strategic umbrella. This is very exciting! And I feel confident that I can handle it.

I still miss the friends I made on vacation. My friend Misha called last night – it was so nice to hear his voice again. After vacation, life seems a bit blah. So I am glad I have some stuff to look forward to at work and at home to help stave off the post vacation blahs.

I am still catching up on blogs and I can’t wait to read about your adventures! So forgive me if I’m not commenting with my usual regularity. And I am putting a structured running program in place in the next couple of weeks – I’ll keep you posted!

With a song in my heart

I returned to the office to find that I had met my annual goal for re-engineering saves in my absence (my boss fought for me on my big project). I now have the luxury of working on a much larger, more strategic project. Pretty impressive for 8 months on the job. So, work is good. Make that great.

Hub and I have decided to drop out of the group we had been doing combat recreation with, and go with the more mainstream group most of our friends were already in. That allows us to jettison a lot of stress & baggage – there was a lot of drama in that group. But hub had been a member for 5 years when we met, and I didn’t want to ask him to give it up.

That frees us up to pursue some stuff locally. And our best couple friends decided to leave the belly dance troupe they’d been heavily involved with for the past 2 years as well – which frees them up too. So, we’ll be seeing a lot more of our friends, doing more fun stuff close to home, and don’t have the huge travel commitment of participating in a group based out of Pittsburgh.

We got up and walked a mile this morning (with a couple of stints of jogging for me). That’s not a lot, but the main thing this week IMO is getting back into the routine. The alarm went off at 5 – pretty drastic when you consider last week I was getting home from parties at 3 or 3:30. And food is back to normal which is also good. I introduced the Aussies to marinated mozzarella balls and to cream puffs (both from Costco). I eat lousy at Pennsic – my schedule is whacked, I’m eating out of cans, the food court, whatever folks toss out of their coolers…. But hey, I have 50 weeks to recover.

I was feeling stressed on many fronts when we left for this vacation, I’m feeling so much better – happier & looking forward to fun times with friends. And to running - exercise doesn't seem so much like a chore or punishment any more.

Life is good.

The Pennsic Beer Garden will live forever in my heart

Warning: this is going to be a long post. If you aren't interested in the detail: I had a terrific time, I'm home safe and sound, and I feel more relaxed, focused, and energized than I have in over a year.

Details follow.

First, I have to give some background on pennsic for this to make any sense, so here goes: A group that does medieval recreation started this "war" 35 years ago (the sca). It has been held in the same place for the past 30 of those years. During that time, it has grown into much much more than this group ever imagined, not to mention the group has grown as well. Now, folks come from all over the world. And not just from this one group, but from numerous other groups that do battle recreation of a similar style. and also just folks that just want to come and party with 12,000 or so other folks. It a cross between a ren faire and woodstock, but better organized than either.

Hub was on staff this year, so we stayed with the head of security & his group, over from Australia. They were terrific! We had a total blast camping with them. They were a fun bunch who fought hard and played harder. It was the most relaxed, fun-loving group of folks I could hope to spend 2 weeks with. We set our chairs up in a circle out under a tree, and every afternoon after battle we sat around in the "beer garden", snacking, having a cold beer, & visiting. It was the most fun, relaxed, vacation I've ever had.

The thing I hated most of all in the military was spending 2 years or so sharing all of your life - work, home, and play, with your close friends, only to move away. We don't generally share that much of ourselves with anyone other than our spouse, so those relationships are extremely tight. That was the way I felt leaving this past weekend. We are already going to start tightening our budget to get our finances to where we can pay our new found friends a visit in a couple of years.

I can't wait until next year. It will be a new group of folks, but I know we've fallen in with a great bunch.

Is it vacation yet?

Trying to pull additional data to meet all requirements on 2 projects I am trying to wrap up. Got hit with a big new project that must be done by end of day Friday (I'm leading 3/4s of my boss' team on it. It's pulling together data for my boss' boss to report to her boss and his boss). Got all that? But no pressure...

And of course packing, cleaning, washing laundry, etc etc etc. Oh, and my MP3 player died, and that had to be replaced so I have driving tunes.....

I have gone insane. Luckily the emergency autopilot kicked in so all is not lost. :-)