CafeChatNoir

Foamy the squirrel says what we’re all thinking on Hurricane Katrina…

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

courtesy

I’ll admit to being an impatient person.  I joined this gym mainly so I could use the pool over the winter.  But you can tell when you sign up, they reeeeeeeeeeeeally want you to do body age evaluation thing, even though it is optional…  Now granted, I have no illusions about the fact that I let myself get out of shape since the AidsRide, and I am starting from near nothing.  I know this, I have a training plan that works with this.  I’m not particularly proud of it, but there it is.  They kept saying when I scheduled it that “it’s not pass or fail!” - my ass it isn’t, at least not to ME.

So, I went in this morning and did it.  Now, my “body age” is less than my chronological age, which I was positively thrilled with - I figured they’d come back with something along the lines of “Wow, you should be dead!”  But, there were some really annoying things about it, because I KNOW I need work, but lets not do anything to make it look any worse than it is, OK?  Some time on an elliptical, one strength test, one flex test, and then a Q&A on your eating habits.  Not exactly comprehensive, but OK, it’s a start, and I’ve at least got a few specifics I can tend to over the next couple months so I can do it again, and do better.  (Nothing like getting a little tweaked for some motivation.)

– The elliptical had to come about from the fact that I don’t do motorized treadmills…  (Yes, you may laugh hysterically now.)  Seriously, I can count the times I’ve done that on one hand - they freak me out - if it’s not a slow walking pace, I feel like I am going to do a complete face plant and kill myself - I really prefer being the one controlling where the ground is going under my feet.  I tried, and I lasted about 10 seconds before I had to tell the poor guy we were gonna have to find an alternative…  (They just set the speed up to high walk immediately, maybe if they did it gradually I wouldn’t feel like I was gonna go flying off the back?).  So over to the elliptical - never been on one of these.  MY GOD, that had to be inspired by medieval torture devices.  It wasn’t too bad, but requires a little more coordination that I have on a good day - I found it hard to get into a decent rhythm on it, but I finished without sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and more importantly, without falling off of it.  And then the display flashed and said something about “do again, but make it harder” -  fortunately the trainer decided this would probably not be in anyone’s best interest…  I think he at least cut me some slack for the learning/coordination curve on that one.  (He also decide it would be great to have some Q&A while I was on it…  I said, “I know you’re trying to make sure I can breathe and stuff, but it’s just cruel to make me try and carry on a conversation right now” cause I was having to concentrate way too much on keeping my arms and legs going in the right direction at the right time.)  What I don’t get is how that required more time than the treadmill would have - to me that seems much harder than walking or running, but maybe it’s just my lack of coordination that makes it harder?

– The flex test.  Good grief, they pick one of the things I’ve always sucked at.  It’s what we used to call a pike stretch back when I was in gymnastics.  Couldn’t do it for shit back in the day, even though I could turn myself into a pretzel back then, and still can’t do it for shit now.

– The strength test.  Why the hell couldn’t they pick something with my legs???!!?  It was basically doing a curl with both arms and holding it, and apparently, I have to work on that.  (30 pushups a day have done me no good!)

– The eating Q&A - overall, not bad, came up average on about everything, but one question annoyed the crap out of me - asking about dessert.  You had options of “all fat, all calories” down to “low/no fat” - but no option of how often!  I was honest - if I’m gonna have dessert, it’s gonna be the real thing.  But that’s not real often at all.  (I discount the pudding pop binge during the AC outage.)  As we went over the answers, that one came up something along the lines of “you suck!” - I told him that one simply wasn’t fair!!  He actually agreed on that one that they needed to add some sort of “how often” to that one.  :)

But seriously, overall it didn’t turn out too bad, they say I’m not completely starting from ground zero, which I could say was just a motivational kindness on their part, but I know that what I’ve done since I got back from the beach has made a difference.  They also seemed to like my goal - it was nice to be able to fill that box on the form with something concrete instead of some ephemeral garbage about “improving overall health” - they think a Sprint Tri is certainly doable next summer, as do I.  :-D

Once all that fun was done, I hit the pool for a couple laps.  NICE.  Especially when I realized after watching for a minute or two that I didn’t have to be in the slowpoke lane.  Tomorrow is “equipment orientation” - hopefully they won’t ask me to get near the treadmills again…  (Actually, I’m looking forward to that, the last gym I was at SUCKED in this aspect, they had zero orientation, and there wasn’t ever anyone around to help when you wanted to try out a new-to-you piece of equipment, so I shied away from a lot of things that probably would have been good for me, but I didn’t want to inadvertantly hurt myself.)

It would seem that I have a date on Friday.  :-D

OK, for whatever reason I am wired again tonight.  I should have crashed a couple hours ago.  This is the evil side of cable - West Wing reruns that start at 11 are very bad for someone who catches her second wind way too easily…

And I really do need to get to bed, cause I have to be at the gym at 8 for ‘orientation’ & ‘body age evaluation’ (THAT should be good for a laugh) - worth the minor one time hassle to get to the pool.  I still can’t decide if I am surprised that they’re cheaper than the county rec center…  I seem to recall a conversation in freshman econ class as to why county trash pickup was more expensive than using one of the private carters, but I can’t quite remember the *why’s* of it now.  Something to do with the efficiencies of private enterprise vs. the inherent bureaucracy of governmental operations I think… 

Alrighty, time to crash, the dog is giving me dirty looks cause I am on HIS couch and it’s bedtime…

Well, Tasha’s not online this morning, so it would seem they lost power. Hopefully it doesn’t get any worse than that for them.

Watching CNBC, I honestly don’t get why they send reporters out in these storms - they’re just asking for someone to get hurt one of these days, and I’m thinking it has GOT to annoy the cops and other emergency workers to have these folks in the mandatory evacuation areas. And the roof of the Superdome is in the process of getting blown off.

Stay safe everybody.

It’s a very good thing I don’t have to be coherent and working until 11 tomorrow seeing as how it is 4 am and I am still up. Sure, I slept in a little late this morning, but not “up until 4 am” late.

and not down south right now - Katrina looks to be a total bitch on wheels. I checked the weather where Tasha is, they’ve just got wind advisories up - I’m betting she loses power at some point tomorrow if it’s not already knocked out by the time work starts. Hopefully it won’t get any worse than that for her.

I’ve got some seriously sore muscles from last nights dancing. 3+ hours straight of getting your groove on will help you locate muscles you didn’t know you had…

The Ballroom was totally fun, somehow managed to sprain/bruise my finger, I have NO idea how I did it, about halfway through the evening I just noticed it was hurting like hell.  My feet are screaming at me (no surprise there), but it was very good.  Met someone interesting, don’t know if I’ll run into him again, but I definitely wouldn’t mind.

Tons of fun stuff on tap today - ATM, gas up the car, get new running shoes, gym to check out the pool since the rec center pool is closed til November (bah!), pickup the bike and get it to the shop, and TONS of housework.  Whee.

Your quote for the day from  :
“Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.” - Tallulah Bankhead

For whatever reason, it has great appeal to me this morning.

I slept in obscenely late this morning, and I have NO regrets about it whatsoever. :-D

I’ve decided to just be a lump today.  Tomorrow will be errands and all that good stuff, but today, Hi, I’m a sloth.

Today was a bit of a “people suck” day.

BUT, it’s Friday, I get to sleep in tomorrow, and we’re off to the Clarendon Ballroom tomorrow night for some fun. Hopefully we’ll not run into another weirdo like last time around.

I seem to be fighting to keep my eyes open, so that’s probably a sign I should go crash now, isn’t it?

So far, it’s been pretty good - I think it helps that I’ve been able to get into the mindset that this is my “real” shift now instead of just something that screws me up every couple months. Been getting my morning workouts in, have time for breakfast, don’t have to get up at the asscrack of dawn. Very nice. I do need to get to bed a little earlier, I’ve been up too late near every night reading - so I haven’t been getting up quite as early as I would like, but still not doing the “roll out of bed and dash out the door” thing that has been my norm.

The shift itself has been fine, in no small part due to it being rather quiet, thank god.

Still haven’t been able to get the bike to the shop this week since I’m in the office and the shop doesn’t open til 10. This WILL get done Saturday morning, come hell or high water.

I feel like I’ve got something really profound to say rattling around in the back of my head, but it just won’t gel into something coherent. Probably goes back to not getting quite enough sleep this week.

OK, off to work…

- you were the first person I thought of when I saw this! (You can get it at jinx.com)

Rumor mill in overdrive at the office this morning.  All I can say is if this turns out to be true, someone is making a huge mistake, and the fallout is going to be exceptionally ugly.  Gotta love office life.

I really do need to watch SGA more often, I do find Rodney to be absolutely adorable. , I totally understand the obsession. :-D I do totally dig the doc on it, too.

The second episode on tonight is reminding me why I like this show - completely hilarious.

Coworker asked if I was interested in being setup on a blind date today… I asked if the guide dog was cute.

Another plus to my brother moving in - more books!!!!! Started reading “Left Behind” last night, already about halfway through it. It’s a pretty good read so far.

Even if you don’t believe in the Rapture, it’s still a fascinating concept to contemplate. (Of course, given that I’m still only halfway through it, it could all actually end up being the work of space aliens, or the government, or massive doses of hallucinogens.) I’ll admit, about the first couple chapters left me a little unnerved - all the talk of trying to find people that have just disappeared, the landlines being down, but the internet still working just gave me a bit of a disturbing flashback to 9/11 trying to find people all day and the only thing still working was the internet…

But really, what if a whole slew of people just up and vanished, for whatever reason? I see the bumper stickers that say “in case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned”, and all I can think is, “Great, as if there will not be *enough* to worry about, add minivans careening out of control on the parkway to the list”. (Thoughts such as those show that I would be one of the ones left to dodge minivans!) I’d like to think that if it were to come to pass, whoever is in charge of it would have the courtesy to at least get the cars off the road first…

I am looking forward to seeing how it ends. (But given that it is a series of something like 7 books, I assume there will be all sorts of loose ends.)

OK, time for bed for this chicky.

You’re Hobbes!

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Met one of my soon to be ex-neighbors this morning while out walking - we’d passed each other on opposite side of the street several times and just before I got back to the house, he decides to cross the street and stop and introduce himself…  Joe is probably in his late 50’s, has two teenagers, is getting divorced, and is getting ready to move in with a bunch of guys in the same boat tomorrow.  Um, OK, nice to meet you and way to get to the TMI zone in record time, LOL.  (I think the situation was safe, I could easily outrun him, I think it was of one of those “dammit, I am gonna go say hi!” carpe diem moments and he just didn’t quite know when to stop talking…)

In other news, I broke 20 miles for the month today! 

I cannot believe the weather this week - absolutely gorgeous.  Sweatshirt weather in the morning, low humidity, and a beautiful sunset last night when I left the office.

Bob Pisani on CNBC is sitting on a 2006 Harley Springer Classic on the floor of the NYSE right now.  Very nice looking bike there.  (This is what all the motorcycle posts on my f-list have been doing to me, LOL.)

Up at 7, had a granola bar and off to the races with the dog.  Came back, finished the other bar from the package, then coffee and a bagel. :)  It’s nice to actually have time for this without having to get up at 4 in the morning.

40 minutes to get to work from the time I got in the car to sitting at my desk - and that includes a stop at Starbucks and parking at the ass end of the parking lot.  (I did go move the car closer in at 5.)  30 minutes to get home.  Sweet.

Very glad I resisted the temptation to sleep in.  Silly as it may sounds, it was really important that I start this change off with actually taking advantage of the morning hours - it would be toooooooo easy to sleep til 9:45 every morning and dash out the door. :)

Woohoo shopping!  Drugstore, REI, PetsMart, gas station, grocery store, and not a whole lot left in my wallet.  But all the family members have food, so it’s all good.

Stopped in at the Chipotle to grab a coke on the way out of REI, I swear, I need to go in there sometime when I am on the way home so I can actually get something to eat to take along with me - it smells SO GOOD in there.  I’ve never been a huge burrito person, but again, it smells soooooooooooooo good!

Got two things at REI, Timex Expedition watch with a countdown timer and chrono (I love Timex.  Everything I needed and not expensive.) and a pedometer - wheee for accurate times and distances.

Desperate Housewives is one of those shows I love, but scares me ’cause I can’t help but think, “Damn, is that gonna be me someday?????”

Leaving the Brick last night, Todd & I passed a couple and as we walked by, we caught this from the gal:  “Attraction and desire just create suffering!”  Being the sensitive types that we are, we at least got about 10 feet past them before busting out laughing.  I don’t know why it struck us as hilarious, but it did.  I’m sure in context it made perfect sense.  God help the folks that hear half a sentence of most of my conversations.

So, Lance and the Prez went for a bike ride this weekend.  17 miles in two hours, which gives you a pace of 8.5 miles an hour.  Now, that’s a pace I can surely deal with - doing even 12MPH is usually hard for me.  (Speed has never been my strong point when cycling.)  However, I’m honestly wondering how Lance Armstrong didn’t fall off the bike from going so slow…

Tomorrow I go on 11-8 permanently.  I’m kinda excited about it - nice to have a change that *I* initiated, rather than one dropped on me out of nowhere, LOL.  Pup and I will be out and walking right after breakfast, and there will be breakfast - last time we went out early with no snacks beforehand, guess who got a splitting headache shortly thereafter?  Yeah, none of that bullshit this time around.  Found a permanent spot for the toaster oven on the counter and picked up cream cheese for my bagels at the market today, so I am prepared.

Dear lord, they’re talking on the news about people paying over $600 for jeans.  I get pissed when I have to pay more than $40 for a pair - I can’t even imagine shelling out that kind of money for jeans.  Hell, i didn’t spend that much on my dress when I got married.

I wish they wouldn’t run the West Wing at 11:35 on a Sunday night when I really should be going to bed.  It’s the one where they introduce Ainsley Hayes, and it’s a great one, so I won’t be turning it off.

I have to send mad props out to  for an absolutely wonderful, sweet, nice, thought provoking post today.  One of those that makes you think to yourself, “Wow, I am a total schmuck, but I’m not a hopeless case!” and you’re smiling while you’re thinking it.  (Or it could have just been my own twisted reaction to it.)  But regardless, it made me think about lots of things about myself, things that are good, some things I still need to work on, and that while you can’t hit the rewind button on life, hopefully you can make amends for previous moments of schmuckitude and keep from totally fucking things up going forward.

Someone called me yesterday afternoon, but I have no idea who - I didn’t get to it before it stopped ringing and it didn’t show a number, which it normally does, could have been that it was also kicking in and out of digital roam all day.

Hit the Brick for some food & beer last night, quiet but nice.  Reinforced my love/hate relationship with Metro - the weekend schedules suck, and the red line was totally hosed on the other side of Dupont, not sure how Todd got home with that mess.   I made the error of wearing real shoes - ones that I’ve not worn in at least six months if not a year.  Even with the very short walk from the Metro, I’ve not nasty blisters and ended up walking back to the Metro barefoot, cause there was no way I was putting them back on if I didn’t have to.  Poor Chris, Celia ended up having to grab a cab to take him home, something did NOT sit right with his dinner & drinks.

Gotta hit the grocery store today - out of milks, sodas, coffee, everything.  PetsMart run is needed too, out of dog biscuits, cat litter and cat food.  All hell will break loose around here if I don’t do something about that. :)  Then a ton of catchup cleaning around here, since I haven’t gotten jack done this week.

OK, enough procrastinating. 

“I’m at Baskin Robbins, do you need anything?”

We finally had a quiet day.  It’s a good thing, I think my head may have exploded otherwise.  Our newbies were blissfully self-sufficient today and took care of the new incoming stuff, and I was able to get rid of about half my calls over the course of the day, and I’ve got a few I should be able to dump on Monday morning as soon as I hear those lovely words “you were right” from my clients.  This whole week finally caught up with me today, I was dragging tail big time.

Seems to be a fair amount of asshattery going around this week, I can only imagine it’s the full moon causing it.  Ah well, karma’s a bitch and the asshats shall get theirs in due time.

The dogs ears are itching again, and the vet had given us a whole bottle of eardrops and said that there was more than enough if we needed to give him more later…  Except that I dropped the bottle on the floor, so we don’t have any more eardrops.  Hopefully I can call the vet and buy another bottle tomorrow without having to bring the dog back in.  He also needs a bath this weekend, too.  Oh boy. 

More basement cleaning tomorrow (wheee) and tentative plans to hit the Brick tomorrow night.

I’ve got to get my bike over to the shop this weekend.

But before any of that, bed, and sleeping in.  Thank god it’s the weekend.

Can I take a nap now?

(I’m getting too old for this.)

Training is good.  Training is important.  Training helps our new folks get better.  OMG, I HATE TRAINING DAYS.  1 person on vacation, 4 in training, leaving a whole three and a half of us on the queue today.  And tomorrow will be just as good!  *twitch*  So, yes, down 5 people trying to keep incoming stuff under control, and lets add to that the new folks dumping calls like crazy yesterday afternoon before they go into training…  Sure, you can’t finish it and you’re out for two days, you pass it off.  However, the rest of us are so overloaded that the chances of those calls being closed before they’re back on queue is pretty much nil, and of course, they’re all OMGWTFBBQ URGENT!!!  Dude, I’ll figure out your brokenassed system when I get to it, OK?

FYI, folks, if you call a support line, and they spend a large chunk of time explaining something to you, that you should really already know, don’t repay the kindness by sending argumentative followup emails, with the final volley accusing said support person of basically being lazy because they won’t help you brainstorm your way into making a big mess.  Just a tip for ya there.  Yeah, someone helps you, fuck ‘em over.  Brilliant.

Yes, said client seriously fucked my day from the moment I arrived, as it was the first email I opened this morning.

Tomorrow will be better.

CNBC is interviewing the incoming CEO for Chrysler.  Behind the gentleman is a Jeep Cherokee - a vehicle that they don’t produce anymore…

It just occurred to me, we moved here 20 years ago.  20 years, and I’m back right in the same house where I started when we got here, and frankly, feeling about the same way I did then, too, aka “WTF do I do now??”  To be honest, I can’t decide if I am surprised or disappointed at the fact that I never left the area.

I didn’t get enough sleep last night.

To the asshat in BMW turning onto my street this morning - sorry I slowed you down by actually forcing you to STOP at the stop sign you so wanted to go blowing through, but I was already in the intersection you putz.

Oh, to the client that was pissy because I repeated myself FOUR times - had you actually taken two seconds to listen the first three times, I wouldn’t have had to keep repeating it.

The coworker to my left is on the verge of a total meltdown.  I don’t even begin to know what to do about that to help her - she’s totally freaked out all the time cause she doesn’t know everything yet, and it’s hard to convince her that she’ll do better and absorb more if she just relaxes a bit, and she doesn’t have to know everything yet - but cause she’s in a panic, she’s not picking up anything at all.  She’s also locking horns with the manager, and that’s not helping.

I got home to a message from my boss asking if I would go on 10-7 the next two days due to some scheduling cockups.  At least that’s what I think the message was, the answering machine is quite the piece of junk and really needs to be replaced.   I left her a voice mail on her cell saying I’d see her at 10.

Rain…  Yep, we need it, but it hosed the drive home, which I was an hour late starting anyway.  Trying to explain to the dog that we’re not going out as I am just not tough enough for outside exercise in the rain just isn’t working. 

The lawn folks accidentally left the side gate unlatched yesterday.  Found this out when I called the dog and he came to the door in the carport - apparently he was waiting at the other gate to get back in the yard.  Oh you can bet he got TONS of praise for not running off.  I know it had to be tempting to go wandering.

Couple things on my mind I just can’t shake that are starting to get to the point of being a distraction, and I simply cannot figure out what to do about it, short of bashing myself in the head with a stapler and hoping for selective amnesia.

However, there was a bright spot to the day - I got a coupon for a Starbucks freebie cause they lost my order this morning.  Totally unnecessary, but really nice.  I cashed it in on the way home. :)

QE did a makeover on a nudist this evening.  Highly entertaining.  And I’ve found a new drink recipe I must try - rum, grapefruit juice and lime juice all thrown into a blender w/ some ice.

Someone was attacked in Rock Creek Park the other day.  Apparently police & media are saying that joggers and such should be carrying cell phone with the police number preprogrammed in.  Personally, I’m thinking brass knuckles might be slightly more useful, then call the police after you’ve bashed an attacker in the face and run the hell away.  Seriously though, yeah, it bites to have to think about this kind of crap wherever you are if you’re not in a position where you’ve got an exercise partner that sucks as badly as you do to go and workout with.  Yeah, I could just pony up the money for the gym now, but I really do like to get outside if possible to exercise.

Note to self: I’d best come up with a different activity for my 47th birthday…