Trying again...

Quote du jour: I always wanted a happy ending... now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
-- Gilda Radner

Site du jour: Who knew rescuing a pet was so hard these days? I can understand rescue organizations being picky, but this is a bit extreme.Not good enough to adopt a pet?


Updated link: HERE

Exercise du jour: Again, the goal is to take a lunch break, back away from the keyboard and walk. No one is forcing me to do that to myself. I will take a break! I have spoken.
Done! I didn't wanna do it -- not for any good reason, I just didn't wanna. But I did it anyway. Do that enough times and I'll have a habit.

Posted from DPad on my iPad

Blogging on a train

Geez, the personal details people talk about on cell phones. The guy on the train just called his son " to hear his voice," He asked the kid how his Christmas was. Apparently, the place where the man was being held, he wasn't allowed to make phone calls. He's in a halfway house now, so he can call any day except Sunday. And in a few months, he'll be able to find them both a place to live.

The other night on the train, a woman was yelling on her cell at her son. After she hung up, she called someone else and had a long conversation about how "DHS said she wasn't a good mother, so they wouldn't let her throw her son a birthday party."

I really hope it wasn't the same kid.

Exercise du jour: I am going to take a walk at lunch. No excuses. I'm posting this to publicly shame myself into doing it.

Damn it. I don't know whether to classify this as a WIN or a FAIl.

I mean -- was it my fault I was born female, and heir to all the exercise-inhibiting cramps that female flesh is heir to?

(That sounds so much more fancy than saying cramps stopped me from taking a walk at lunch. Gotta go with what sounds good.)

On the other hand, I was able to do 20 minutes on the elliptical this evening. Should that qualify me for a gold star? I think that I'm gonna call this a win, on the whole.

Posted from DPad on my iPad

Don't ask, don't tell

Egad, I got tagged. That's what I get for being so quiet.

One reason I haven't been posting is that if I share any issues, people will try to tell me what I should do, even if I'm not even remotely asking for advice. In fact, i wasn't sure I should even mention it. I'm afraid of getting some well-intentioned commenter saying "you don't want people to offer advice? Well here's what I think you should do about it..."

it sounds like a simple enough, even trivial issue. But it's not really. Not if it stops me from posting. It inhibits me. ("You find it inhibiting? Here's what you should do...") I mean, if i post about a problem and you want to tell me what you did in a similar situation, that's wonderful. I'll sit at your feet and listen attentively. I'd love for you to share your experiences of life. Just don't want people telling me what to do with mine.

Posted from DPad on my iPad

Update:it's Friday!

Ha! He's a swinger! I always suspected...

Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacey/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Trying something new

It is a dark and stormy night.

I am trying to see if I can blog on the iPad on the train.
If I can figure out how to sleep on the train, I'll really be doing well.


Posted from DPad on my iPad

Wait a minute... who turned the lights back on?

Whew! It's bright in here now.
Must be time for a spring cleaning, or something like that.
(It's warm enough for a spring cleaning... the weathermen were all warning about a huge storm, 'Snowmagedden' approaching. Turns out to be more like 'Slushmagedden.')

I've been good, and I've been bad, but mostly I've been tired.
My immediate goal for the week is simply to get to sleep before midnight, so I can get up before I have to already be at work, so that I can get to work at an early enough hour that I can leave at a decent hour so that I can get home in time to get to sleep before midnight so that I can...

Oi vey maria. Enough already. I'd like the universe to send me a job that doesn't involve spending 3+ hours a day commuting. Preferably one that includes a respectable salary, positive co-workers, interesting-but-not-extremely-stressful work. Also, I'd like the workplace to be populated with single, straight Hugh Jackman lookalikes. (I thought I'd throw that in. You never know.)

New year, new challenge

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Out with the old, on with the new. Challenge, that is.

One thing I noticed from going car-free for a month was that I spent more time going to the store and I spent more money at the store. Because I couldn't carry as much stuff on a bicycle, I shopped more often. The more I shop, the more I spend. Spending more is bad.

I wanted to try something different. I wanted to see if I could not go to the store for a month. Use up the food that I have in the pantry or the freezer. What would that be like? Can I do this? I have no idea. I want to find out.

So yesterday, I started up the evilSUV and went off to the grocery store. (I wanted to stock up on things like frozen vegetables and toliet paper.) Today, my freezer is stuffed to the gills with fruit and vegetables. If there's a power outage, I might have to re-think this idea.

I do realize it would be smarter to try this in the late summer, but I want to try it now. I'm curious. Maybe this will be a fabulous experience.


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Exercise du jour: 30 minutes on the elliptical. I can do it.
Done. I did it!

Survived the car-free month

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Made it through 30 days of being car-free -- well, almost car free. I did take the car to visit the mechanic, and I drove it yesterday because I wanted to buy a heap of stuff from the store and I couldn't carry it all home on a bicycle. Ordinarily, I would've waited until the month was up, but I needed the stuff for this month's challenge.

My thoughts on going car-free for a month:

• It's doable, in large part because I made a point of buying a house in a walkable neighborhood.
• It takes planning and organizing, skills that are not among my strong points. If I want to go to the library, the grocery store, and Home Depot, I have to figure out my route and make sure that the lights are working on my bicycle.
• I was limited in how much I could carry home at one time. Therefore, I shopped more often. Even though I bought fewer items each visit, I still bought more things because I was in the store more.
• Going car-free is great if you have a monthly pass and access to a train or light-rail. It stinks if you take the bus. I didn't know this before, but I am an elitist. I hate riding the bus. I don't like the bus drivers and I don't like the people who ride buses. One woman I rode next to, Ms. Contagion, had a long conversation on her cell phone describing in detail how sick she was and how she still had to go to work. (I really hope she doesn't work in a restaurant.) On another bus ride, Mrs. Sharp Elbows squeezed in next to me. She kept jabbing me in the ribs. Finally I worked my arm in between us, so she couldn't actually hurt me anymore, but it was still uncomfortable. Note: I only rode the bus a couple times. There might be intelligent, charming, polite and healthy people out there riding buses. I just didn't see them.
• Going car-free is a terrific way to work in exercise into your day. I love having exercise become part of my commute.
• Having a car-free commute saves a ton of money. A lot of people told me that they could ride the light rail, but their car got good mileage. I don't think they've actually sat down and ran the numbers. By taking the train instead of the car, I saved over $300 a month. Granted, my car is an SUV, so it doesn't get fantastic mileage. But even if a car does pretty good with the gas, it's much cheaper to take the train.

Will I continue to take the train to work? Definitely. Will I use the bicycle to do my shopping? Most of the time. Am I ready to toss the car keys away and walk everywhere? Not yet. But I think I can do a lot more without driving.

Site du jour: A family decided to get rid of their car and go car-free. And they're not living in a particularly walkable neighborhood.

It's Boxing Day -- not Kickboxing Day

Quote du jour: Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
- Kin Hubbard

I've never found a good explanation for why the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day. Even Scopes found it hard to explain. All I know is that it means I have to clean up wrapping paper and do some extra dishwashing.

Wait. It also means I have to go back to work tomorrow? Already? Jeez.

Something tells me that if I found a job that I loved to do and looked forward to every morning, I wouldn't have that reaction. Just a hunch.

Job hunt update: Got some nibbles, but most employers aren't really interested in hiring between Christmas and New Years. Still, I've updated the résumé, dusted off the interview outfit, and posted my latest info up on Monster. (Surprisingly, that's still a highly popular job site. I'd have expected a more tech-specific site, but that's where a lot of employers still look.)

Exercise update: I've been Suzy Slacker all week. Luckily, this blog is a guilt-free zone (or I'd have a lot to say to myself on this subject). Instead, I'm going to focus on getting something done exercise-wise every day this week. It's not that I'm incapable. I'm just totally unmotivated. Pretty sure I don't need to be motivated to exercise; I just need to be capable.
Plus, if I get up and work out this week, I'll end the year on an up note, which is always a good thing.

Winter is coming

It's dark outside.
It's too dark outside.
Therefore, it is entirely logical for me to think that it's too dark to:

• Exercise yes, that includes the elliptical in my bedroom, the one that is currently sulking from neglect


• Do yard work no, even if the sun is up for part of the day. Hey, it's going to get dark soon. No sense starting something I can't finish, right?


• Clean my house okay, so this one takes more rationalizing, but bear with me. It's cold outside and therefore unless I want to spend all my money on heating bills, it's going to be cold inside. Therefore, I think I will spend the rest of this month curled up in bed huddling under the covers.

I do realize that work is needed on the attitude front. On the plus side, I have been doing well on the car-free front. Not that I had much choice, since I had to take the car in to see Mr. Mechanic. I will have to drive today, since I can't pick up the car from the mechanic and also hie myself to work. (That's one drawback to taking a commuter train that doesn't run in the middle of the day.)

Exercise du jour: 4 miles of walking a day. I can, I can, IcanIcanIreallycan.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Can't go forward, don't want to go backward. Will tread.

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Quote du jour: Nothing will work unless you do.
- Maya Angelou

Feel a bit up in the air. Can't concentrate on exercise because I'm spending a lot of my time focusing on getting a job or fixing the one I've got. Going to see the manager of the department today to see if something can be done. Sent 5 résumés out last night. A couple of the jobs were pretty good fits for what I can do, another was a long shot, one was 'meh' and the last one was sent to a former co-worker whose new company might need somebody.

Exercise du jour: I will aim for 4 miles of walking a day. I know, I know, it's not pushing myself to do this. This week, maintenance is all I am asking of myself.

Would it be okay if I were assertive? Or I could just impersonate a doormat if you'd prefer

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Good: Legs not so swollen up, can walk without limping. Still don't know what the heck I did to earn that.
Bad: I don't know if I should even ask a doctor about it.

Remember a few months back, when I was talking to new recruiters every day? Every time it was the same routine:

1. They'd describe the job and ask what rate I'd expect.
2. I'd say the rate would depend on whether or not I'd have to pay for health insurance.

The responses fell into three basic categories:

• Most recruiters said "No insurance and oh my that's a high rate Merry."
• Some said "Welllll, we have a sort of reimbursement plan and oh my that's a high rate Merry."
• A rare few said "Oh yes, we offer health insurance and that rate is a bit high, but we can deal."

This job I'm at now, the conversation fell into the last category "but of course there's a waiting period." The waiting period is now up. And... they don't offer health insurance.

So I send them an email saying, essentially, "WTF?"

They sent back an email saying "let's chat." I was not interested in anything they had to say unless it was in writing, so I suggested email instead.

Now I get an email from them saying "Oh gosh! Turns out that when you first spoke to the recruiter we did offer health insurance, but by the time you got an offer from the company, we'd changed our policy. Still, since we're such nice people, we'll up your salary by an additional $300 a month so you can buy your own insurance."

Huh. Now I've got to sit down and figure out whether or not that's a good move. I'm not even sure I could get health insurance -- surely being overweight is a bad mark in the eyes of an insurance company?

Site du jour: Jennette Fulda wrote a post on insurance for the self-employed. I found it clear, comprehensive, and depressing. I think the best thing to do would be to marry a rich old man who had no close relatives. Preferably one who is Canadian.

How hard can it be?

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“In a sense the car has become a prosthetic, and though prosthetics are usually for injured or missing limbs, the auto-prosthetic is for a conceptually impaired body or a body impaired by the creation of a world that is no longer human in scale.”
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Yes, I thought up another 30 day challenge. It occurred to me, since my car is having difficulties, that this might be a good month to try going car-free. This might be considered making a virtue of necessity: my mechanic doesn't work weekends, so with my work schedule it's awkward trying to get the car to him right now. I'm going to try to work another week of four 10-hour days, so maybe I can drop the car off Friday, pick it up next Friday. Aside from that, I want to see if I can go without driving anywhere at all for a month.

What I've discovered so far is that I'm getting a lot more incidental exercise. Just shopping for groceries or picking up a DVD from the library involves walking or cycling for several miles. On the down side, I have to plan a lot better. Because it gets dark so much earlier, my bike ride had to be cut short yesterday when I found out that the batteries in my bike lights had quit working. Even so, I managed to cycle for about five miles. It's not much, but it's a start.

These 30-day challenge things seem a bit cheesy, but I've noticed that they get results. The other day, I was running out of steam at work at the end of my 12-hour stint. I picked up a packet of M&Ms to give me some energy, but I couldn't finish them. The first taste of chocolate was great, but after that I didn't enjoy the experience. It tasted as if I were eating wax flavored with a lot of chemicals. Probably I was. Maybe going a month sans car will lead me to automatically reach for my bike helmet instead of my car keys.

Site du jour: SuperMarket Sweep blog. Last weekend in San Francisco there was the 6th annual Supermarket Sweep race, where participants go to local grocery stores -- on their bicycles -- and haul food back to donate it to charity. The winners hauled 845 pounds in 2 hours. (It was a father-and-son team on a tandem. They had a long line of grocery carts, filled with groceries and linked together, that they hauled up and down S.F. hills.) Makes my little grocery run (1 pannier) look pretty wimpy.

Exercise du jour: This week, I'm aiming for 5 miles of walking a day and 15 minutes ellipticalling at night.
Most emphatic FAIL.
Yes, I did walk about 2 miles, what with my commute to the Max and the trek down to the cafeteria for the morning coffee, but other than that -- Pffft!
My legs felt swollen at the start of the day.
It only got worse as the day went on. I couldn't even touch my toes. (No, that's not normal. Usually I can almost touch my palms to the carpet.)
Don't ask me what the problem was today. I don't know. I didn't exercise at all yesterday, neither did I feel sore from the bike ride the day before. I'm pretty sure that starting my cycle wouldn't cause my hamstring muscles to throw a hissy fit. On the walk home, it was so bad that I was limping. Noticeably.
I think this is a sign that I should chalk the day up to Whatever and try again tomorrow.

Wake me up when it's December, 'k?

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Good: Thanks to the lack of car, I got a lot of walking done this weekend just from Getting Things Done. To wit, walked 7-1/2 miles this weekend.
Bad: Might not get any exercise at all this week.

The next seven days are going to be hellish. I don't get paid for hours I don't work, so I'm going to try to work three 12-hour days this week to make up for the loss of money from the holidays. Plus which, I'm going to be spending money, flying home for Thanksgiving and then on to Southern California for a family reunion. The odds of healthy eating, regular exercise, or enough sleep occurring this week are, unlike the woman typing these words, extremely slim.

Site du week: Eco Cat Lady has a great post on why Alarm Clocks are the Root of All Evil.

Getting crafty

Confession du jour: I'm trying to learn crafty things like crochet. (Yes, I know this photo shows Cary Grant trying to knit. Stretch your imagination a bit, okay? I defy you to produce a photo of a hunk crocheting. Must be something only women do.)

I figure that spending three hours a day commuting by public transport should provide the ideal time and place to learn this craft stuff. For one thing, you can't throw the tangled yarn down and run out the door screaming. Not while the train is moving, at any rate.

If all goes as planned, I will be able to do a bit more serious exercise today. Since I worked four 10-hour days, I get today off. So I have the time to exercise... presuming I don't spend it doing chores. Are chores more important than exercise? Clearly not. Well... unless you want to be able to find clean clothes, eat off clean plates, have the electric bill paid before they cut it off... pish! Trivial things like that.

Exercise du jour: I'm figuring two hours of ellipticalling: one in the morning, one in the evening.

Note: I don't know how this will go. I've been extremely lax on the elliptical lately, so this might prove too much for Damn Knee. Six weeks ago, this would've been an easy goal to do. Let's see what happens.


Photo courtesy of Noelle Noodle.

But baby it's cold outside

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Quote du jour: I was so cold the other day, I almost got married.
- Shelley Winters

Quiz du jour: Reader, I married him, a quiz about lines from well-known books in English literature. Some of them I could identify the book, some I could only identify the author. A couple, alas, I knew them not.

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling.
Sigh. Yes, again. Let's see if I can do the full stint this time, even though I hab a code and hab to sneeze before I can breed through my nodz. (Yes, having a cold does make me type like that. What? It doesn't affect your spelling?)

Done! With the help of drugs, so I won't qualify for any Olympic records (I'm sure Nyquil^TM is on the proscribed list), but it's done!

Every family has its own internal language

Quote du jour:
Me: What's this potted plant?
Mother: Oh, Cathy gave me that. It's to replace that plant we had by the front door, the one that died when the weather got below freezing. I forget the name... something that begins with 'P'...
Me: Hibiscus?
Mother: That's the one.

Site du jour: In case you missed it, A Mouse in France wrote a series of posts on how to avoid getting computer viruses. And since she deals with that sort of thing for a living, this is straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. (From the mouse's mouth? Whatever.)

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling.
Sigh. Yes, again. This will become a habit eventually. I just wish I had a precise definition of what 'eventually' means in this case.
Done. Finally. Actually, not quite done. I skimped on the walking (2-1/2 miles), because my body decided that since everyone else was sniffling and sneezing, it should join in the fun. Slowest 15 minutes of ellipticalling ever, but I got up and did it anyway, so I'm putting the star up.

Oh, gift me a break

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Quote du jour: I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
- Shirley Temple


Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling. It shall be done.
It has been done. That 'just 15 minutes' thing still works.

"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.

The Internet is making it harder for me to be a slacker

Here I was, spending time on the Internet because it was too dark and cold and gloomy to get off my ever-increasing bottom and get on my bicycle for a short 4-mile ride. (But it's so dark! It's so cold! It's so glooooooomy!)

Then I had to go and read Lynne's blog about her ride from Eugene to Beaverton.* (For those of you from elsewhere, she rode 136 miles that day. For those of you from somewhere with a more sensible measuring system, that's 218 kilometers.)

Damn. It's much harder to look my conscience in the eye and tell it that I can't do my simple get-the-chores-done ride.

Done! 4 miles on a bike

*Sorry, Julie, but even though I'd love to stop in for a visit, it ain't gonna be by bike.

The magic of 15 minutes

Quote du jour:It always seems impossible until it's done.
- Nelson Mandela

Thanks to the amazing MessyMimi, I now know that today is National Cliché day. And it is a cliché that you can do more than you think you can.


When I absolutely positively cannot in any way Get Up And Exercise... for some reason, I can almost always still manage to get on the elliptical for 15 minutes. Can't manage half an hour, 20 minutes is still too long. But just 15 minutes, well, the bar is set low enough that the weary brain can grasp the concept and see it as doable. As often as not, I find that once I'm going, I can go a little further.

Exercise du jour: Yes, another 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling. (Merry, when are you going to change the routine? A - when it becomes easy.)
Done! I'm claiming the star even though I did 30 minutes ellipticalling and no minutes walking. I figure I deserve it on humanitarian grounds, for even though I had a rotten day and really wanted nothing more than to crawl into my home/cave at the end of the day, I got on the elliptical machine. Of course, I wouldn't have done it if you -- yes, you right there, don't look away -- hadn't had faith that I could do it. The guilt of letting you down, well, I was ready to get up there and go through the motions to placate that guilt. Then, once I was going through the motions, it was easy enough to put a good tune on the headphones and get some real exercise.
I think the formula is Friends + Guilt + iTunes = Workout.