Life In The Fast Lane, Surely Make You Lose Your Mind
Well, so much for that promise to maintain more regular blogging hours. It's just that work has been insanely busy, what with trying to catch up from all the short weeks since Christmas, including this past weekend, which, as seems to be the case lately, turned out to be rather less than the anticipated "three day weekend" for which I'd been hoping. Mind you, I got quite a bit done on Monday: did most of the taxes for my "second job", processed all the W-2 forms I need to send out, and got some filing done; but I really would have preferred to have not been there at all. And this week has just been more of the same, including the usual round of evening meetings, which generally leaves me only a couple of free nights at home, and those have been spent mainly trying to catch up on domestic chores. Plus, I've had to tackle a good portion of next week's workload on top of everything else, since I'm actually taking a bit of a mini-vacation.
Yes, you heard me: something vaguely resembling an actual vacation, although I'm not planning to travel any farther than La Conner (AKA "The town where that crazy writer lives"). Still, I've booked a little cabin in the woods next to the Sound for a couple of days, where I intend to do little more than walk on the beach and stare at the sky - maybe I'll take a book along, but that may be about it. The rest of the week will be spent (hopefully) just lounging around the home base, maybe get a couple of household projects done, but in general engaging in as few scheduled, structured activities as possible, which for me will be a pleasant change-of-pace.
On another note: apparently, the return to the gym, even though I've only been managing it a couple of times a week, seems to be paying off. I've initially been limiting myself to cardio work: half an hour on an eliptical trainer, half an hour on a recumbent bike, followed by fifteen minutes in the dry sauna, but I'm back on a weight loss track after several weeks of holding steady at around 195-197. As of today, I'm solidly in the mid 193's, and seem to be dropping roughly a pound every ten days.
So, definitely not losing it as fast as my previous track, but as someone pointed out to me the other day (and which I guess should have been obvious if I'd given it more thought) I weigh 30 pounds less than I did six months ago, so my body doesn't require as many calories to maintain the lower weight, which means in turn that the lower calorie diet I've been on is in fact no longer enough to cause me to lose more weight, just to stay at where I am; in short, I'd reached a state of more-or-less equilibrium. And in order to get back onto a weight loss regimen I need to do one (or preferably both) of two things: either further reduce my caloric intake (and I have managed to find a few ways to trim off a bit more without feeling like I'm sacrificing anything), and/or increase the number of calories I burn, which of course is where the return to exercise comes in.
The bottom line is that it looks like I'm definitely going to miss my mid-February target for hitting 180. But, the good news is that I'm still losing weight, albeit more gradually than before. As I continue, I think I also have a better sense of needing to ramp up the activity level accordingly, and with the (temporary, but timely) return of warmish weather (thanks, El Nino!) to the Upper Left-Hand, and a determination to increase my gym visits to three a week, I think I can still get there by maybe April or May.
Being a native Mossback, I generally like the rain, whether it's drizzling down in a fine mist or pouring down in a deluge. But lately, rain seems to be a lot like that one guy who always shows up first to your party, and he's really funny and charming - for awhile. But, after several hours you realize he keeps telling the same joke over-and-over again, and he keeps hitting on everyone else's girlfriends, and he drinks all the vodka, even though he didn't bring any himself, and he tries to pull off some sort of stunt that goes awry and puts a scratch in your coffee table, and suddenly you realize it's 3:00 in the morning, and everyone else has left an hour ago, but this guy just keeps yammering on-and-on, even while you're trying to shove him out the door - and then he just suddenly passes out on your couch, but you're simply too exhausted to try to wake him up and make him leave, and the only thing you can think of as you close your weary eyes is: "I just hope he's gone by the time I wake up, and that my TV is still here!"
That's how I've been thinking about rain lately...
When My Work Day Is Over I'm Too Tired For Havin' Fun
Dear Blog:
Hi! How've you been? Really? Sorry to hear that. Me? I've been really, really, REALLY busy - in like, too busy to log on and chat busy. Yeah, yeah, I know. I said I'd keep in touch, and I meant it when I said that, but c'mon, give a guy a break! It's only been - what? - ten days, that's not so much now is it? Well, okay maybe it HAS been one of the longest runs of non-posting since we started this thing together, but it was bound to happen sooner or later, right? Honestly, I promise I'll do better in the future - no, I mean it! I can change! So, no hard feelings, okay? Okay, good - whew! I'm glad we got that out of the way.
What have I been up to since the beginning of the New Year? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let's see, first off, that four day weekend turned out to be really like just a two day weekend spread out over four days, since I ended up doing some maintenance work at the theatre one day, and having to also come into the office for a few hours on another day to get some prep work done for a board meeting on the 4th. But, I did also manage to get out to a show on Saturday night.
So, there was the board meeting on Monday night, and an Equity Liaison Committee meeting the following night, then on Thursday evening I went over to a friend's house and had dinner with her and her husband, then spent three hours doing some "table work" with her for a show she'll be doing in February. Friday I was supposed to work our monthly late-night cabaret, but I took myself out knowing I had to be up early the next day for the workshop. Instead, I walked down the hill five blocks to my new gym (which is HUGE, BTW!) and spent a couple of hours on the elliptical trainer & stationary bike, then a round in the sauna and the jacuzzi (the steam room, unfortunately, appears to be out-of-commission until the end of the month.)
As I expected, Saturday turned out to be a very LONG day: 14 1/2 hours, to be precise. Got to the office around 8:00 a.m. to prep food & make coffee, did the workshop, which ran until about 6:00 p.m., did some clean up in advance of the Sunday session, then went to dinner with the group at one of my favorite local restaurants. And since I was officially the "host" (seeing as I set up the reservation, picked the appetizers, etc., etc.) it wasn't all fun-and-games since I also dealt with the restaurant staff, the waiters, et al. Fortunately, I have a good friend who's one of the sous chefs there, so I knew we'd get exemplary service - which of course we did!
Sunday, I was back at the office at 8:00 a.m., and the session started at 9:00 and went until about 1:00 p.m., after which I spent some time cleaning up - and putting bits-and-pieces of things back onto Big Red, since most of my tools are still living at the office (installed a new turn signal switch, new radio antenna, new rear running light, and new front stereo speakers), so I didn't actually get out until around 3:00 p.m. by the time I cleaned up and the last of the workshop participants came by to pick up their luggage on the way back to the train station. I (very briefly) considered hitting the gym again, but by that point I'd pretty much hit a wall, and decided the best thing to do was to go to the grocery story, pick up a few sundries, go home, fix dinner, take a shower, and finish off the day with a DVD. By 10:00 p.m. I was ready to call it a week. Unfortunately, that was Sunday evening, and I was back in the office bright-and-early at 8:30 this morning.
This week it shaping up to be much quieter: I've got a small pile of work that got neglected due to prepping the workshop, but which should be fairly easy to get through. And, so far at least, I only have one evening event on my calendar this week, a financial health workshop I'm attending tonight (always looking for new information I can impart to my tax appointments!), and that's really it in terms of obligatory extra-curricular activities. There are a couple of social events I COULD plug into the schedule, but after the past few weeks, I'm feeling more inclined to not commit myself to anything, and if I feel like I've got the wherewithall to do it when it rolls around, then so much the better.
Next weekend is another three-day off stretch, and seeing as I didn't even get a two-day weekend this week, I'm also purposefully not planning anything more ambitious than a bit of yard work (weather permitting) and maybe whatever laundry I don't get done earlier in the week.
And, I'm actually taking something resembling a vacation the last week of the month: taking the 26ht through the 29th off and spending most of that time in a cabin on the Sound just west of La Conner where I hope to three days doing nothing but eating, sleeping, reading and sitting next to a wood stove watching the rain come down.
Not to toot my own horn, as it were, but I think I deserve it.
What? No, I don't know if they have Internet access there, in fact it would probably be good for me if they don't. I'll be back, I swear! You just gotta trust me!