"Oh good. You still work here."

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Not the best way to start the day: "Oh good. You still work here."
- A co-worker, when I walked into the office one day last week. Turns out the company's been playing musical chairs, a.k.a. reorganizing.

Not the best way to end the day: That night I drove home by back roads, going 60 down dark, narrow roads that don't even had a shoulder if you need to pull over. I turned into the driveway, shut off the engine, and only then noticed clouds of steam rising up from under the hood. Half an hour later, the car was still steaming. Can't see any loose hoses, but there's a definite smell of antifreeze. Thankfully, I can get around without a car if I have to.

Goal for the week: I'm thinking that I might try working four 10-hour days this week. The manager told me that this was an option, and I'm wondering if it will work out better. I get more done when I can concentrate for long periods of time. Plus, I'm spending three friggin' hours a day commuting. Would be nice to only have to do that four days a week.

On the down side, doing this means that I will have less time to exercise during the week. Therefore, I have to take a walking lunch break. Also, I will have to make it an absolute rule to use the elliptical every night. That's going to be hard. I don't mean physically, but mentally. By the end of the day I'm usually worn out and want "me" time -- I want to relax, put my feet up, and be self-indulgent. The trick here is to try to persuade my inner slug that using the elliptical is a form of self-indulgence.

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes elliptical. Yes, I know it's the same goal as before. When it gets easy, I'll up the workout. (It's easy enough physically. The challenge here involves time and discipline.)
Done! Actually did 5 miles walking.

Back to the routine

Quote du jour: Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
- Yeats (attrib.)

Why does a headache leave you feeling as drained as if you'd indulged in an orgy of debauchery? If I'd known I was going to have a hangover, I would've gone out on the town, damn it.

Oh well. Another day, another dollar cliché exercise goal.

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes elliptical.
Semi-win. Did 3 miles walking. Yes, the headache came back. I am nearly positive that it's caused by dehydration. The workplace humidity is kept unnaturally low, to make the products feel better. They do provide extra drinking water stations to make the people feel better, and a round-trip walk to the closest one is a 1/4 mile walk, so it's not too bad. So long as I remember to keep drinking. Slacked off this afternoon, and lo! The headache returned this evening like an old friend. The kind who owes you money and sits around on your couch drinking your beer and watching shows you hate.

Heading toward Progress

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Quote du jour: When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
- Yeats

I'm feeling old and gray and full of sleep this morning... if I sat down by the fire I wouldn't be reading, that's for sure. I think this week has been better. Managed to get some kind of exercise in every day, even if I'm falling down on the eating healthy veggie stuff from home part. I'll work on that next week. Progress is being made.

Yesterday I managed to drive to work with hardly a wrong turn at all. (This is along very convoluted back roads rather than the congested freeway.) At one point, I came to an intersection. The road sign told me that I had to choose between taking a right and heading to Newberg or turning left toward Progress. I chose to head toward Progress.

Site du jour: Suldog has a good post on incarnation. "...putting great wealth into your hands would be akin to granting a meteor the ability to tap dance."

Exercise du jour: I am going to fit in the 4 miles of exercise and 15 minutes elliptical. That's not too much to ask. I can do that.

The World of NIM

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NIM^TM (New Improved Merry) is a person who:

• Leaves the house at 5 I'm-not-kidding-move-it-woman 30 in the morning


• Every day Monday through Friday


• Is bright, cheerful, energetic and a good worker good at faking the right things, given sufficient coffee


• Is determined to get into a positive rut re: exercising

The trouble with this new job is that while it is infinitely cheaper to take public transport, the train stops running at a fairly early hour. (It only runs during rush hour, which is not the same thing as Merry Transport Time.) So I can either haul myself out of bed at an early hour or take the evil SUV, spending much gas and taking almost as much time to get to work.

I am not, by nature, one of those people blessed with an early morning mindset. I think mornings are something best enjoyed from a warm, cozy bed. Given my druthers, I would crawl out of bed by 9 o'clock. Or 10, at least. 11 o'clock, definitely.

Okay, okay, I've done with the whining. No doubt re-inventing myself will prove an interesting and worthwhile experience. Maybe. It's possible, anyway.





Exercise du jour: Okay, I will try this again. Didn't always managed to do both 15 measly minutes on the elliptical and 4 miles of walking. Maybe it'll be easier this week. Maybe I'm getting used to this new schedule. Only one way to find out.





Done! Well, close enough. Only 3.5 miles of walking, but I made up for it with 30 minutes ellipticalling. According to Theresa's formula, that should work. And she's a doctor and everything, so even if she can't take my temperature she should at least be able to do complicated Ph.D-ish computations.

I'm not the only one who's glad it's Friday

Why yes, I am Happy It's Friday!

Quote du jour: People are surprised at how down-to-earth I am. I like to stay home on Friday nights and listen to 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama.
- Carmen Electra



Exercise du jour: Closing out the week with one more round of 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling. I will do it, damn it.
I'm giving myself the gold star, even though I only did 1-1/2 miles of walking and 30 minutes on the elliptical. I'm doing this because even though I really wanted to give up and go to bed, I got up and worked out instead. That's your fault, of course, so you should really get the credit. If I hadn't known that you -- yes, I do mean you right there reading this -- were trusting me to get this done, I would have bailed. Thank you.

George courtesy of Nicogenin.

Almost there

A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
- Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

Two days to the weekend. I think I can make it.

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes elliptical. Again. And again. 'Til it becomes a habit.
Done. 4 miles walking, 20 minutes elliptical. Clinging on to the routine. I'm getting there.

Photo courtesy of lovestruck.

I love looking at leaves I don't have to rake

(Alas, these are leaves I do have to rake)

Quote du jour: How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
- John Burroughs


Video clip du jour: There's a website hosting a Dance Your Dissertation contest. No, it's not for people getting a Ph.D in Interpretive Dance. It's for people in the sciences. No wonder it's so hard for people to finish a Ph.D if they know they're going to be critiqued for the ability to do the Rumba while defending their research. Oi.

This is last year's winner. Maureen McKeague did an interpretive dance on "Selection of a DNA aptamer for homocysteine using Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment."


Y'know, if people are creative enough to think up things like that, I should be able to figure out how to organize my life.

I've more than doubled my commute, spending more than 2 hours a day commuting. I know that's not a big deal to some people, but it's causing me to have to re-figure my day. I don't have time to spare if I want to exercise and eat and sleep as well as that work stuff.

While I can't... yet... cycle to work (it's 30 miles one way), I can save much money by taking the local light rail. And the second half of the train trip actually has free WiFi, which is totally awesome. I love the idea of checking my mail, getting in touch with people, while whizzing through the countryside.

If I play this right, I will be able to organize my time so that I can get a lot of dull-but-necessary stuff done during the commute. Maybe. And if I can force myself to get up from my desk and walk at lunch, that could work too.

Originally I'd planned to walk from the train to work, which would add three miles to my daily commute. But I'm rethinking that idea, at least for now. It would involve walking along busy streets in the dark. No sidewalk, few streetlights, sharing the shoulder with bicyclists. I might hold off on that. There is a shuttle that takes me from the train to within ten feet of my building's front door. Hard to argue with that. Plus, I get to admire the beautiful fall countryside on my way to work.

Site du jour: Speaking of beautiful fall countryside, I love the pictures on True Calling's blog.

Exercise du jour: Again, I'm going to go for the 15 minutes ellipticalling, and a 2 mile walk at lunch. No interpretive dance for me.
Done. Barely. There's something about just having to do 15 minutes that works for me... much easier to face than 20 minutes of exercise.

How to sneak exercise into your work day

I'm trying to psyche myself into finding ways to exercise more during the day.

1. Exercising on the sly can make you feel guilty. Adopt the mindset that you are entitled to exercise. Make entitlement work for you. Often I tend to think I have to be at my desk for 8 hours straight or I won't get things done. Wrong. A quick break wakes me up so that I am more effective, get more done.
   
2. Be on the lookout for low-hanging fruit on the exercise tree, such as drinking so much tea that you have to walk to the bathroom frequently. It doesn't matter what gets you up and moving -- anything that gets you up and away from the desk is a good thing.
   
3. Get a job in a place where moving is built into the routine. Seriously, it's a quarter-mile walk at this place just to get a cup of coffee in the morning. I figure that will add up.
4. Sneak in a walk. According to a map, if I walk the hallways, following the perimeter of the building on the inside, the distance is about 3/4 of a mile. If I happen to take such a walk while carrying a notepad or folder, then it will look like I'm on my way to a meeting or something, right? And therefore it really wouldn't look like I was doing something frivolous like getting exercise during the work day.
   

None of these are going to get the heart beating fast enough to count as cardio exercise, but I do believe they will help. There have been enough studies to convince me that even incidental exercise, just keeping moving through the day, helps to keep people fit.

I wish that this work place had stairs. That was the perfect way to get the heart rate up. As it is, I will have to plan some cardio in the day as well. Meager as it sounds, I'm going to plan for the following this week:

• 15 measly minutes on the elliptical in the morning
• 2 walks (1/2 mile) to and from the train, morning and evening
• 2 walks (3/4 mile) each at morning and afternoon breaks
• 1 walk (2 miles) at lunch

4 miles of easy walking and 15 minutes of ellipticalling. I'll try that for the week and see how it goes.

Done! Well, technically it's a semi-fail, since I only managed 2.4 miles of walking. But to make up for it, I did 30 minutes on the elliptical. I told myself that I only had to do 15 minutes on the elliptical. Then once I started, I was able to spin it out to 30. To my mind, that qualifies the star.

Site du jour: Cranky Fitness has some good ideas on how to sneak exercise into your day. I might be biased, since the inestimable Crabby McSlacker let me post there sometimes, but I think it's a great site.

Cartoon courtesy of brainpop_uk.

Dashing... very dashing indeed

Quote du jour: For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
- Doug Larson

Where the frack did the week go?

Oh, right. At work.

I've been putting in a little extra time trying to come up to speed on this insanely convoluted workflow. It's all good. Or it will be all good. I think. No one else is asking me to push myself; I want to do it. I won't feel at ease until I'm able to sink my teeth into the job and rip it to shreds.

That metaphor really doesn't work. Makes me feel like I'm supposed to masticate, which is a nasty word. I mean just the way the word sounds is nasty.

I'm tired. That makes me ramble more than usual, which is saying something. Still, walked two miles yesterday, thanks to Crabby's timely comment. Plus, I've discovered the company website has walking maps. They've even got a map for walking inside. If I went around the inside perimeter of the building, it would be almost 3/4 of a mile. That might come in handy when it's absolutely stinking rotten outside in the winter. (The building doesn't have any stairs, alas.)

Best Moment in Science du jour: Best abstract ever. (From the Annals of Improbable Research.)

Exercise du jour: I have to be home early today to let in contractors. (Hence all the insane work hours to make up the time ahead of time, if that makes any sense.) So no lunch walks. I am going to find time to fit in the elliptical. Somehow. I promise.
Done! Go figure. I sit at a desk for hours at a time, and I can just *feel* the knee swelling up. But half an hour on the elliptical? If knees were kittens, this one would be purring. Very strange.

Photo courtesy of Eva Rinaldi Live Music.

What, again? I exercised Yesterday, damn it!

Quote du jour: I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.
- Salvador Dali

Well fine. If I have to exercise again, then I suppose I will get it done.
Self-pitying sigh

Really, I will remember how to be an Employed Person again soon. In the meantime, I'll use guilt to get me moving.

Exercise du jour: Again, another two friggin' miles of walking. This is setting the bar so low that it is pitiable. At the same time, it's setting the bar so low that I don't have any face-saving way to avoid exercising. What I'm after right now is, like a nun, getting back into the habit.

done?it's hard enough typing On an ip ad (sic), don't expect a gold star. I done the walk.

Okay, maybe it was just a crazy idea

My knee is as strong as it was before, if not stronger, and it's a matter of getting my leg strong. I lost six years of strength in about six month's time, so it's going to take another year or two to get that leg back up to full strength, but I'm good to go so far.
Picabo Street

One of my faults is that I am so easily distracted by bright shiny things. Did almost no exercise last week. Other things took priority. My mindset went totally into Work Mode Only. I know it's possible to combine work and exercise. I've done it before. Can't remember how, but I know I did it. Just couldn't seem to get the balance this week.

Okay, inner slug, I'll give you the first week of work is crazy.
Enough of that.

In my defense, I really did the good girl thing re making a healthy lunch, full of vegetables and good calories, and taking it to work each day. Didn't help much, since people kept saying 'let's go out to lunch' each day. (I mean, you can't say 'no' to that sort of thing. You really can't, especially in the first week. But damn I am sick of Chinese food now.)

Another weird thing to note is that Damn Knee has gotten more cranky this week rather than less. All that complaining it was doing about doing more than an hour on the elliptical? It complains even more if I don't exercise. It's not as consistently loud complaining -- it more takes the form of suddenly it's painful to get up from a chair. Not always, sometimes it's fine. But sometimes -- ouch. I think I need to strengthen the muscles around the knee more.

Yes, I am babbling. Tangent woman needs to focus. I am setting the bar low so that I can get back into the habit of exercise.

Exercise du jour: Okay, inner slug, here's the deal. All you have to do is walk two miles. Given that one of those miles is covered by walking to/from the Max, that means all the exercise you have to go out and achieve is One - Friggin' - Mile. That's all you need to do today.
Done! Walked at lunch. A bit. But hey, I set a goal and I made it. Maybe this will become a habit.

It's a mixture of good news and bad news

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Depressing Study du Jour:Female unemployment at its highest in 15 years... outlook bleak.
That study was in England. I'm not looking for a job in the UK. I keep telling myself that makes a difference.

Good: I don't have to worry about a crazy work schedule any more.
Bad: I don't have a job, but still have bills to pay.

I am surprised that they indulged in another round of layoffs when the company is already so short-staffed. It bodes ominous in terms of the quality of the output. Maybe the layoffs mean more money for the ones who are still there. A lot of people were quitting because the company hadn't given any raises in three years, and the engineers could find higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

Luckily, this now means that I know a bunch of people who are now employed in other companies. Companies that might be hiring.

I know I should feel panicked about losing the steady paycheck, and I probably will panic shortly. But right now I feel as if I've been let out of prison.

Also on the Bad side is the fact that I really can't exercise at present. A couple weeks ago I tripped and fell, landing on my hands and knees. My left arm was so swollen that I couldn't bend it more than 90 degrees for several days. The left leg didn't feel so bad at first, but as the arm has gotten better, the knee has gotten steadily worse.

Went to a doctor, who admired all my bruises (not to brag, but they were impressive). All he said was "well, if it hurts then rest it." Seems to me that it should be showing some sign of getting better by this time. I don't think the skin should still feel numb to the touch after two weeks. Going to see another doc next week. Maybe he can recommend a brace, or stretching exercises, or something.

At present, I can only exercise using my right arm and leg. Know any good one-sided workouts? I'm thinking I could get back into running, but only if I could find someone to share in a three-legged race.

In the meantime, I'm working on that Positive Thinking stuff.

The New York Times has their own take on this ... turn yourself into a start-up. Lots of advice, ending with:

Finally, you have to strengthen the muscles of resilience. “You may have seen the news that [the] online radio service Pandora went public the other week,” Hoffman said. “What’s lesser known is that in the early days [the founder] pitched his idea more than 300 times to V.C.’s with no luck.”

Someday soon, I'm going to work out. Really. Honest. Would I lie? To you? Naaaaah.

Quote du jour: Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?
- J. Paul Getty

I think I am coming to the end of the latest series of 15-hour work days. Regularly scheduled exercising, sleeping, and blogging will re-commence shortly. Probably.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh wait...






Photo courtesy Theophile Escargot

February, you've outstayed your welcome

I am bored with winter.
And with trying to exercise in winter.
And with whining about trying to exercise in winter.

But wait! I know how to cheer myself up -- I'll write something brilliant and funny and heart-warming and endearing and totally, like, interesting and all that stuff! I am creative! I can write anything!

Um... no. Not today. Thus the urge toward self-expression is thwarted and diverted into the default behavior of searching on Google to see if someone else has something interesting to say.



I thought there might be some good sites out there on How To Make Exercising Interesting Even If It Is February, but they all involve me doing something that resembles hard work. So I found some other sites instead.

Equine Insanity wrote a good post about fear and animals.

The Ironic Catholic noted that a worldwide chocolate shortage brings people closer to God.



My new love Chart Porn posted a graph that charts women's earnings against men's earnings in the same field. Useful tip: don't go into banking if you're female.



An old post from An American Girl in Singapore led me to a fascinating study. You know how people of European ancestry used to complain that all Asians look alike? Turns out from the Asian perspective all Europeans look alike too. Caucasians and Asians don't examine faces in the same way.


A humorous site, stolen leveraged from PastaQueen, is the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator. Create a best-seller, just by clicking!



And a video: Don't you ever interrupt me while I'm reading a book! (Stolen shamelessly from Librarians are weird.)


Photos of a hibiscus and condo on Maui, plus a random beach on Molokai. Sigh.

That kind of day

Quote du jour: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.
- Ranier Maria Rilke

Do you love your job? And if so, why?

Interesting fact du jour: The new Starbucks drink, the Trenta, is actually larger than the average human stomach.

But-it-sounds-so-true du jour: U.S. renews its contract with ground squirrels.

The Department of the Interior announced this week that ongoing negotiations with the nation's population of spotted ground squirrels have been resolved and that the rodents are now contracted to continue activities on U.S. soil through Dec. 31, 2015. [Source The Onion.]

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes with my stairmeister, Fred A. Stairs. Plus, squats, walking.
Done! Total of 1056 steps.

Impressive-looking graph courtesy of Webber.

Is it okay if I'm assertive?

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Quote du jour: I'd like to be assertive, if that's all right with everyone.

Site du jour: Get up from your chair every four hours, or else. Another study that finds sitting at a desk all day is unhealthy, even if you do exercise each day. Getting up even for a minute or two trims the waistline. The article suggests that the act of rising up from the chair, using the large muscles of the legs, provides a small but significant workout. (Another reason to do squat!)

I need to be reminded about this. When work is all about pressure, I feel guilty for taking a lunch break to eat -- I eat at my desk instead. (See? I'm a good, hard worker. I sacrifice my lunch time for work.) And taking a whole hour to get out of the building and run around in the rain seems utterly frivolous.

This is all in my head. So long as the work gets done, nobody cares if I get all self-sacrificial. My problem is that the amount of work I need to do, and the time I have to do it in, are not realistic. Not when you consider that they want it perfect.

The heck with all that. I'm back in the habit of exercising every day, and I'm not going to give that up, gain weight, lose momentum, and stress myself out just to make needless brownie points.

So today I am going to ignore the nagging little tug of guilt at the back of my mind, and put myself first at lunch time. I Have Spoken. (And putting that assertion up here is another way of making sure I don't cave in when lunch time rolls around.)

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles around the track. It shall be done. At lunch.
And behold! I did run at lunch. Odd weather: the sky was blue instead of grey, and this was this bright yellow thing up in the sky that made the run much hotter than a normal January workout.

Summary: week of Ornish and yoga

Very stressful week, working very long hours and not enough time for sleep.

At first I thought that it was just evil chance that I'd get hit with this load of work when I was trying a little extra exercise. Now I'm wondering if maybe that was the point God was trying to make. The yoga sessions were the only change that I made this week; I gave in and ate quick (bad, high fat/sugar) food for energy or to shut the stomach up while I typed. Didn't lose any pounds this week.

Despite all the stress, the yoga helped. Not on the scale, though. (Though since I didn't gain despite all the bad eating, maybe it did help. Hard to tell.)

I do think it helped me fall asleep once I went to bed; usually, after a stressful day, I tend to lie awake stressing some more, but this week I dropped off right away.

So... I didn't see any dramatic improvement, but I didn't slide back during this week. And despite all the long work hours and short sleep hours, I feel pretty good about life. Though I need to schedule sleep in there somewhere.

And the week of Ornish quotes -- I need to change my behavior when chaos reigns around me. I tend to get resentful, which is natural but unhelpful. My work comes at the process, after a long line of other people's jobs, and if other people take longer than expected, the pressure is on me to complete the job on schedule even if that means working late hours and going short on sleep. Geez. I can't even describe it without resentment coming into the paragraph. That needs to change.

Keep it simple, Merry

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I'm lowering my standards.
All I ask is that I do some kind of damn exercise.

Cranky? I've been working 12-17 hour days for the last week. Haven't had a day off in a couple weeks. HELL yes I'm cranky. The end is in sight. I'm hoping to get the next weekend off. Not too soon. I've barely gone near a vegetable; my only criterion for food selection is that it be fast. And yes, I've gained a few pounds and need to sleep for a couple days. On the plus side, my whining skills are in fine fettle. (What the hell is a fettle, anyway?)

Anywhere... where was I? Oh yes, of course. Whining. Anyway, the point is, tonight I'm going to run two miles. Oh all right. One damn mile. That's all I ask.

Exercise du jour: Running 1 mile.
Done! One thing about setting my goals low, it's much less stress worrying about whether I'll make them. Plus, the thought came to me about about 1/2 mile, what I'm doing here is mostly training the mind, not the muscles. Extend my mental stamina and the rest is easy peasy. (More or less. Mostly more.)

p.s. Fettle (n): State or condition of health, fitness, wholeness, spirit or form.
Next step: look up words like 'health' and 'fitness.'

Need to pla n ahea

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The good news: after this week, I will have time to sleep and clean house and even exercise.
The bad news: this week, I don't see how I can get all three done.

Several deadlines decided to all shift to this week. Pressure? What pressure?

I prepared by buying a week's worth of 'healthy' frozen dinners. Can you survive a week eating only food taken from the freezer? Will report back with details.

Exercise du jour: Need to find time to squeeze in a 3-mile jog.
Done! A messy house is a sure sign of a woman who's determined to exercise. That's my story, anyway.

If it weren't for work, I could get so much done...

Tired.
Very tired.
Very, very tired.
Need to finish up last week's tasks so I can focus on this week's to do list.
Need a day off from work so I can clean the house and pet the dog and sleep.

Hey, maybe jogging will perk me up. Caffeine ain't doing it.

Inspirational story du jour: Hurdler overcomes many hurdles to win hurdle race. If it weren't for The Onion, there wouldn't be motivational stories like that.

Exericse du jour: 3 2 miles jogging
One route to success is re-defining goals. I'm called this a success.