CafeChatNoir

Not that it’s been a bad week, but I am ready for the weekend. In the meantime I’ll settle for a beer & some hockey as soon as I can dash out of the office…

Edit: Seeing as how it’s 4-1 Buffalo at the end of Pd 1, it may be several beers…

Courtesy of my TriRats mailing list:

Marge: Homer, the plant called. They said if you don’t show up tomorrow don’t bother showing up on Monday.
Homer: Woo-hoo. Four-day weekend.

The fact that everyone in the bar heard me scream “OH FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” as Ovechkin went backwards/headfirst into the boards and crumpled onto the ice this evening… Fortunately, he seems to be OK, to the point where he’s quite responsible for the Caps shootout win this evening.

Had a kickass day at work, and this finished it off quite nicely.

I really need a hockey icon. Done.

Funny how one little thing can leave you giggling like an idiot all day.

I’d really prefer not to go to work today.

My horoscope:

You’ll need every single little scrap of patience you can muster to get through the next three weeks. Mercury is about to turn retrograde for the third time this year, a time that’s classically marked by frustrating experiences, especially when it comes to communication and travel. In your case, it could make getting in touch with your higher-ups a bit more difficult, so start early and leave lots of information, like where you’ll be and at what time.

OK, kicked out a shitload of phone calls this morning. Fencing estimate will happen sometime this week, need to get a proposal together for the HOA for that, insurance company has been contacted about flipping car & house, house measuring for carpet is Saturday, water bill has my new mailing address on it and the bill is now paid (week late, since the post office has ceased forwarding my mail…but they took off the late fee since the bill was returned to them), electrician coming out on Dec 5th to look at the lightpost in the front yard (I don’t particularly care, but grandma wants to fix it for a Christmas present), Case handyman services will call me back on getting them out to finish off the tiling in the bathroom and swapping out a bunch of light fixtures, and the docs office will be calling me back to decide if I have to go back for a consult or if they can just flip me to an alt prescription since the FDA has effectively blacklabeled my current scrip…

54 days until some level of normalcy returns… (In the form of busy season at work and having 70 days to be ready for a half marathon…)

I’m counting down to Saturday night, January 7, 2006…at which point someone is going to have to come to my bar and carry what will be my very drunk ass home.

The next 7 weeks are going to be hell. Two holidays, two races, grandma comes to town for a month, all my stuff packed up and moved out of my house, carpets & a fence put in there, smash some training in all of there without pissing off my grandmother, and oh yeah, that work thing. And possibly a side trip a few hours south of here, which would provide a glorious distraction to all of it.

Wish me luck.

So that when you come home, put the key in the door lock and it just spins, you can call the locksmith to get you in the house and just chill out in your front yard instead of having to go over and find a neighbor at home when you’re all sweaty and nasty and generally gross.

For those in the NoVa area, I highly recommend Baldino’s Lock & Key - I’ve used them for various things over the years, and today they came through like champs yet again - at the house in under 30 minutes, picked the working lock on the back door so they didn’t have to drill through the broken lock on the side door and could just fix it from inside. And I don’t have to deal with new keys either.

The ability to say

CARPE FUCKING DIEM, BABY!

and mean it.

It wasn’t always like that, and I never really realized it until now…

…for I am the baddest motherfucker around.

So, for the USMC’s birthday, went out and saw Jarhead. Very, VERY good movie - really enjoyed it, and would definitely recommend it, especially if you’re a bit of a military freak. More fun if you have Marines to go see it with - quite fun to watch their reactions to it. Another plus to watching it with Marines, they don’t get freaked out that you know the “This is my rifle” speech and can recite it along with every other Marine in the audience. (I’ve found there is a segment of the civilian population whose reaction is to back away slowly and then run like hell.)

And a very special thank you from the bottom of my heart to all our vets today.

OK day today, because you see, we have a “game plan” for dealing with the disaster that is the queue… I can’t really say if it’s working or not, but a important component seems to be “leave Cindy the fuck alone so she can figure out her OWN calls instead of everyone else’s and don’t depend on her to pick up the incoming crap that you’re afraid of” so it’s working for me at least. Now the key is if we’re going to keep this up for the rest of the week at least. Because, if we do, then I actually have a snowballs chance in hell of getting my calls down to a reasonable level. Today I managed to move off 11 and only pickup 2, this is good. The other times we’ve had a day for clean up, the next day just completely undid all of it anyway, so this really does need to continue for a few days at least. We’ll see I guess.

No training today or tomorrow, going into slug taper mode. :) Probably another short run Friday morning, 5 miles over the weekend and then another short one next week, then Thursday & Friday are reserved for panicking, and Saturday is race day. Next is the 5K in December, won’t really alter my overall schedule for that like I have for the 5 mile run. Then it’s getting ready for the half-mary in March and the first tri in May. Those should actually go OK together training wise - just keep with the regular tri schedule during the week and longer distance runs on the weekend for the half-mary. The one thing I’ve found is that it all builds on itself, so it’s not like I have to run constantly to be ready for March. December is going to be rough - my grandmother will be here and I don’t quite know how I am going to work around that yet. I’ll figure something out.

OK, off to bed, tomorrow is another day in which to excel or some such nonsense. :)

Despite two people being unexpectedly out of the office today, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. That or I am just getting completely numb to it.

Did a 3 mile run at lunch and knocked the crap out of it - 31m6s total for a sweet pace of 10m22s miles. Pretty much the highlight of my day.

Yesterday pretty much sucked on EVERY level possible. I am NOT going to let that spill into the rest of the week.

Even though I just went through my emails and we have one person out sick, another coming in late, and a third getting ready to leave for a docs appt… And I don’t seem to be able to get into half the apps I need to do my job.

*twitch*

Alrighty, I’ve got the “Bring It, Bitch” playlist queued up on the iPod, I WILL be running at lunch (and running angry I am sure so it will make for a great pace) and I WILL HAVE A GOOD DAY, DAMMIT.

Dentist wasn’t too bad at all, novacaine is finally just about worn off, but there is no way I’m going to even attempt swimming tonight, I’d surely drown. Why I do love my dentist - all my other dentists have said “ooh, filling came out? That’s a root canal right there.” My guy? “Yeah, it could be because you need a root canal, but sometimes old fillings just break.” No root canal for me, he said it all looked OK and just refilled it with better superglue.

I’m off to watch some hockey and get a little attitude adjustment time. Today wasn’t a good day, no reason for it to spill out into the rest of the week.

I will fully admit that this morning, the absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was to log on and work. I am starting to get a little bit fried. Fortunately, I am off early today to go to the dentist and still have some downtime before I have to take off.

So, today became “explore your career options while working to maintain a little sanity” day. So far we came up with:
USN Reserves aka, Reserve bum - patriotic, but drill weekends would likely interfere with race weekends.
Mercenary - more flexibility in scheduling, can be considered patriotic by some parts of the population
High priced Cap Hill arm candy - less long distance travel, and free food.
High priced Cap Hill arm candy actually doing surveillance for the opposing party - again, less travel, free food, and I’ve always wanted to be a spy…

Yeah, just a liiiiiiiiiitle bit fried right now.

I have absolutely zero desire to work tomorrow. Dentist, too… though I’m not sure how much he’s going to be able to do - seems whenever I’ve lost a filling (any dentist) they look and say “yup, you lost a filling, come back in a week for the actual work.”

My weekend was NOT long enough, my day off was NOT a day off, and I just want to be a full time slacker, thankyouverymuch.

OK, enough whining, off to read. (I’m reading a book for the sole purpose of turning around and then reading an analysis of said book…what’s worse, is that I know I read this book a very long time ago, and now that Amazon has delivered the replacement, I am sure it will turn up in the next 48 hours.)

I’ve got someone to run with down at Quantico! She’s been sick as a dog lately, missed her race this weekend and is dying to get out and do something, so she’s gonna do the race with me! She’s a MUCH better runner than I am, even after being sick I am sure she’ll smoke my butt, but it will be fun to have someone I know there.

Edit: She’s the one that put the bug in my ear about the half mary in March. :)

Wheeee. I gotta do throwaway runs more often. Yesterday there was some debauchery at the bar w/T who is in town and WOOT is gonna rent my townhouse starting in January!!

So, after that, I decided this mornings run would just be “get out and move for 5 miles” with a very, very secondary goal of try to beat 11m35s miles, cause that’s my current average for my runs that have been under 12m miles so far. Figure it would be good to not go totally backwards. So, I walked when I felt like it, played with my strides, threw in some sprints here & there, and managed to pull out my best 5 mile time yet, of 56 minutes and 56 seconds… I don’t get it either, but I’ll take it.

Helped that I didn’t overdress today, too.

I love how my days off still manage to involve at least 2 hours of being on IM and email with work related crap…

Did another 5 miles yesterday, pace less than stellar, but under 12m miles again at least, I overdressed so I was roasting, and I just couldn’t get my head into it. I did throw a nice sprint on at the last 1/4 mile. Tomorrow will hopefully bring a better run.

The good news is that I have a set of contacts again, so I can get back to swimming.

Tons of little things to get done this weekend…

When basking in the glow of a 5 mile run with an 11m18s pace (which is better than my last 3 runs of shorter distances), don’t go talking to the Marine that finished his last marathon in 3:30…

Yup, dragged myself out yesterday and ran, felt VERY good, now know I can knock out the 5 in two weeks without dying, despite the temptation to keep increasing my distance, just going to work on pace for the next two weeks, then I can start worrying about being able to do 13 without dying in March.

Eye doc tomorrow, I’ll have contact lenses again so I can swim!

Fuck. I am feeling like total crap, my voice has crapped out and I am pissed. I was gonna go knock out a 5 mile run tomorrow morning, now it’s not looking so good unless I have some miraculous recovery overnight… I am especially angry over this because a good chunk of the reason I feel like crap is because work is flattening me. Which is happening because the chick in charge has just been letting things go all to hell - yes, we’ve been shorthanded, trust me I GET THAT, however that’s NO DAMN EXCUSE for not making EVERYONE do their part… Grrr. Three more on the queue tomorrow, THANK GOD, and I have Friday off.

Really, I know everyone is tired as hell, but that’s not going to stop the calls from coming in, and it pisses me off that some folks just aren’t pulling their weight at all, and no one is doing anything about it.

Managed to get in a run at lunch yesterday, a bit under 3 miles, still under 12m miles. :) (That is good for my slow ass.) Had planned on doing 5ers tomorrow, Friday & Sunday…may get shifted back a day. Can’t swim for the rest of this week, out of contact lenses. (Do have eye appt on Friday to take care of that.)

There was a runner there from Texas, that I “know” from my training site. The dude is a flipping machine. His race list makes mine look like preschool activity day. He runs w/a flag, so when I was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time on two different occasions when he came through, I knew it was him right away. (Gotta say, most everyone starts to look the same after about 5 minutes, LOL.)

So, I hollered at him at the top of my lungs both times, used his real name and cheered him on like crazy. I left him a note in his training log letting him know it was me - got this back:

BWAHHHH! So you’re the seemingly random cowgirl who knew my name! I was going crazy trying to figure that one out!

Thank you so much! Passing you was the only time on the whole course that I got to hear my name! Everyone else just yelled ‘flag guy’ or ‘Texas’. That got real, old real fast. Anyway, it was great to meet you! …kind of …almost

So, if you think that going and “just” being a spectator doesn’t make a difference to someone, rest assured, it does.