Childhoods

It sounds like there's a lot more to this story. I'm looking forward to seeing what V posts tomorrow.

Wisdom

"I'm ready for something new and exciting in my life," I said, posing dramatically. "And you have to help me."

"Go to bed," Sean replied.

Well...fair enough.

Saturday

Wow, I have a lot of time

I got up at 5 am today because I needed to update some videos from last night's football coverage for work. I was thinking I would just go back to bed after that and sleep away my weekend like usual, but once I was finished working (it barely took any time at all) I really wasn't tired anymore. So I stayed up and cooked Sean some bacon, sunny-side-up eggs, and grits.

I have finally learned how to cook bacon properly! It's only taken me, what, 15 years? What I've been doing wrong all this time is getting impatient and turning the heat up too high. Also, apparently it's best to start with a cold pan? I learned that tip over at Cooking for Engineers.

Sean thought the bacon was awesome. So I was very pleased. I also ate two pieces and liked them a lot better than the oh-so-crispy bacon from the other day.

After eating breakfast, Sean went to bed. I had cleaned the kitchen while I was cooking, so I fiddled around online a little, but ultimately decided to get my walk over with before it got too hot. The sun was already rising.

Then it occurred to me: why not go biking instead? It's the weekend and there's plenty of time. So I detached the bike from its stand, carted it out to the car, popped a wheel off, and slid it into the back. Let me say that it is much easier to get the bike in there once the front wheel is removed!

I went up to the Greeneway. I figured that would be best since it's a solid surface and quite shaded, which would both help me since I hadn't biked in quite some time. I also intended to go to work after biking and see about rearranging my office, and the Greeneway is quite close by, whereas the Canal entrance I like to bike from is on the complete opposite side of town.

I decided to start from the Rapids parking/Martintown Road entrance, where the bridge is, because I honestly didn't know how far I was going to be able to make it, and I really wanted to be able to reach a goal, like the Pisgah Road end of the Greeneway. Getting the bike out of the car and reassembled was a breeze, and then I was off.

And wow. I knew it was going to be bad, but I was still unprepared for how winded I felt right at the beginning. I countered this by slowing down. Back in the day I would try to stay above 8 mph (12 was optimal); today I averaged about 6.4. But I was able to make it all the way to the end, and I only stopped to rest once in the middle.

I was right about the shade being beneficial. It actually felt like a nice, cool spring morning. It apparently rained last night, which probably helped (and added to the "springy" feel). The upshot is that I wasn't uncomfortable at all, especially when I was moving. It felt like there was a cool breeze.

I also had my Outspokin' water bottle with me and I made sure to stay hydrated, drinking lots of water when I stopped for a break and when I got to the end.

The ride back was what I'd been waiting for. As longtime readers and Greeneway frequenters know, it's downhill. It's not hard to get to 12mph downhill, which I did. I also rode no-handed the entire way, save for when I had to cross the street or pass people.

I may be out of shape, but I can still ride a bicycle no-handed, damn it! :D

Riding no-handed forced me to pedal pretty much the entire time in order to better keep my balance, so while the workout on the way back obviously wasn't as high-intensity as the way up, it wasn't just me coasting along, either.

It did feel great, though--the cool air whipping around me, my arms at my sides, my feet casually pushing the pedals.

In all I rode 3.2 miles, which sounds really pathetic to me, but it's a first step. I was pretty pathetic back when I originally started biking, too, and I got to where I was pretty awesome after awhile. It'll come back.

I did go to the office after that, and I did pull my desk away from the wall, but then I noticed some cables going into my video encoder that don't exist on the other wall. I'll have to look into what those are and see if it's possible to have them on the other side of the room. I have no problem with running two CAT 5 cables across the floor and lying a big rug over the cords, which I will have to do in order to have enough internet connections at my desk, but I don't want to get ridiculous with it.

My office is large, but the shape is problematic, as I've mentioned before. Ultimately I want to be able to sit in a corner with my back to the wall so people aren't constantly behind me, but it seems like it's going to be very difficult to achieve that.

After seeing the extra wires, I decided to leave things as they were until I had consulted with the IT guy. So I shoved the desk back into position and headed home.

I got here at around 9 o'clock. 9 o'clock! Look at everything I've done today, and all way before I would be going into work on a weekday. Today I don't have work...so what am I going to fill all those extra hours with?

Well, I'm thinking about finally driving out to see the dam. I'm also considering going to Lincolnton.

For now, though, I'm going to stay in the cool and rest a bit, eat a bowl of cereal, and watch some Touch, which I started watching yet again the other day.

Never mind

So I got involved writing a critique of a poem Jered wrote (actually I gave him the poem as a "homework assignment"), and now the sun's like way up and I'm sure it's hot as hell out there. I think what I'm going to do is just stay in, work on lunches and dinner, maybe watch some anime, and try to go over to the Y on my lunch break. ;P

Tonight's going to be interesting; I'm supposed to do some work for my regular job at around 11:30pm. This will happen every Friday for the rest of the football season. Originally it wasn't going to be me doing it, but I'm a control freak and ended up volunteering, since it involves using my work computer.

Normally, of course, I would be asleep at that time. So we'll see how this goes!

4 o'clock fluke

On Wednesday I woke up at 4 o'clock. I was able to cook breakfast and dinner, as well as get in a workout and do some freelance work as I'd done the day before.

I tried to do the same yesterday, because I planned to go to my freelance job earlier and I wanted to get some sort of workout in before that, but I ended up getting up at 5:30, which didn't seem like enough time to work out properly and still manage to feed Sean. I did go to the grocery store instead, though, and on my way back I got Sean a couple of breakfast biscuits from McDonald's. But I barely had time to put anything away, I didn't cook that night's dinner, I was only able to pack a lunch because there were still some leftovers from Wednesday, and the kitchen was a mess.

This morning I woke up even later, at 6:30. I called the guy I'm doing freelance for and told him I couldn't make it today. The purpose of getting up early was to get in a workout, get my meals prepared, and spend time with Sean, not to have time for a second job. While I will appreciate the extra income, the other things take priority. I'm still easing into this, as evidenced by my inability to get up ridiculously early on a consistent basis, but I don't want to let the important things slide.

Disenhearteningly (which is apparently not a word), I awoke with that same raspiness (also not a word) in my chest and throat. Lovely.

(I'm enjoying Firefox's spell-checker. But come on, I think it's past time for spellchecker to be all one word.)

I've been feeling pretty good this week, overall.

I did get the lab results back from the doctor, and I'll go and talk with him about them on Tuesday. My cholesterol is high. My thyroid is borderline. The endocrinologist called me back to ask that I add a complete metabolic profile to the labs she requested, which I will be having drawn sometime next month (I have to start the progesterone on the 1st, and then have the labs done on day 2 or 3 of my period).

In response to the cholesterol I am trying to figure out ways to include more veggies in my diet, and less meats. It turns out I can steam frozen veggies in the microwave at work pretty easily, so if nothing else I can always grab a bag from the freezer to put in my lunch. I'd love to eat more salad, but it seems like when I buy bagged salads they go bad before I eat them. Now I'm considering the tried and true head of lettuce method.

Today's lunch is going to be a BLT, I think, because I have leftover bacon from Wednesday and I just bought tomatoes. No lettuce though...

As far as my productivity, I feel that it's up, but there are still things I need to deal with, like getting the desk in the second bedroom disassembled so a work friend can take it, dealing with the weird smell in that room, finding a smaller desk to put in there, and assembling our second media cabinet for the living room. I'm also planning to rearrange my office at work soon, which has kept me thinking. It's really an awkward space with awkward furniture; hopefully the idea I have in mind will work out.

Speaking of working out (har), I'd better get outside for my walk before it gets too much hotter.

New schedule

I woke up this morning at around 4 o'clock. Due to a combination of not really feeling tired and Sean's talking and laughing floating through the door, I couldn't get back to sleep. I'd set the alarm for 6, thinking that if I woke up earlier I'd go ahead and get up, but when I thought "earlier" I was thinking 5 or 5:30, so this seemed a little ridiculous at first.

Still, I got up, and went ahead and put on my workout clothes and put up my hair. (It's long enough now that I can do those goofy pigtails on either side of my head, which I do in order to lessen the sweatosity. Sure, sweatosity's a word.)

Then I cleaned the kitchen, which just involved getting everything in the sink into the dishwasher.

I asked Sean if he was hungry and if he wanted breakfast or dinner. Even though for him this would be his last meal of the day, he always wants to have breakfast in the Circadian morning. So that's what he asked for. This sort of put a crimp in my plans to make a dinner and then pack up my half for lunch, but I improvised and cooked breakfast and dinner at the same time.

Breakfast consisted of eggs, bacon, and pancakes made from the batter I'd made a couple days ago. I thinned the batter out with some milk and the pancakes seemed to turn out better. Does my batter need to be left in the fridge for awhile and then thinned, or is this just due to the Bisquick being a little old? In any case, I also considered grits, but I decided the preceding was plenty of food.

For dinner, I found a recipe in my Taste of Home cookbook for meatloaf, so I whipped that up, even chopping an onion for it. I used part of the onion in the eggs and put the rest in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. Unfortunately I don't have a loaf pan so the meatloaf went into a cake pan...hope it's not too dry.

I also made some sour cream and chive scalloped potatoes a la Betty Crocker, starting them later than the meatloaf (they take less time to cook--though I guess I don't really need to have everything come out at the same time when I'm cooking in advance. Habit, I suppose).

I'll top all that off with broccoli. Sean says he doesn't want to take his dinner to work, so I'm taking frozen veggies with me to steam in the work microwave, and I'll make his veggies tonight when I get home so he'll have them when he gets here at 11:45.

As soon as the sun came up I went on my walk. It was longer than I thought it was; I got back at 7:30, which meant either I would have to leave things unfinished or go to my freelance work late. Freelance took the hit because I wanted to have time to dress, pack lunches, and finish this post.

After the freelance work I'll head to regular work, just like yesterday.

This seems like a pretty decent schedule. The rush towards the end isn't great, but I'm trapped by the time the sun comes up and the time the freelance place opens. Then again, I won't be doing freelance work every morning, so I suppose it'll be okay every once in awhile. Weather.com says the sun rose at 6:55, which is later than the 6:45 I was assuming, so that explains the rush a little. I don't guess this is going to work as well once fall gets here.

Another issue is that I'm really not all that hungry in the morning, so most of my lovely breakfast remained uneaten. Then again, I suppose that's good for my diet ;> I think I'll shift to cooking breakfast just for Sean tomorrow (it'll be good to ensure he's getting at least two square meals) and grab a bowl of cereal or Slim-Fast for myself.

Good news! You're wearing contaminated clothes!

China - The leading exporter of biohazards

Scientists in New Zealand have found formaldehyde, which is used to give clothing a permanent press and to prevent mildew, at levels of up to 500 times greater than that considered safe for humans in woolen and cotton clothing made in China.

Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that exposure to concentrations of formaldehyde of 20 parts per million (ppm) can cause eye, skin and nasal irritation, respiratory problems, asthma, and cancer. Consumers normally are advised to wash and air clothing before wearing it for the first time.

That's just a little scary, isn't it? Would washing the clothes first get rid of the formaldehyde? I normally do that, but there have been times when I haven't...

Sheesh, you can't eat the food exports and now you can't wear the clothes. Time to start paying out the nose for everything :>

Women prefer pink

Researchers speculate that because women largely picked colors close to the pink end of the blue spectrum in a study, this means that women have evolved to prefer those colors.

The participants were grown women, who've been indoctrinated into their culture(s). Don't you think nurture might also have a part to play, not just nature?

Of course, the news article might have left out some reasoning, just like they left out where the sample came from (just England? English-speaking countries? Around the world?) and how many people were sampled. ("A group"...sounds comprehensive!) And we do have to consider that this is just the researchers' theory. But are they even looking into the environmental possibility?

I would redo this study with babies. And I would redo it on people from a multitude of different cultures.

One of the best paragraphs ever

Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton's life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.

If you're curious about why this happened, you'll be disappointed, as they're still looking into it. But here's the rest of the story anyway.

I agree with James Brown (although I didn't know that I would)

This morning I awakened with the distinct impression that I was about to have an awful Charley horse in my left calf. There are things you can do to stop them, or to lessen their impact, so I set about keeping my leg as still as possible while I attempted to get out of bed so I could stand with my foot flat on the floor. It was mostly successful, though there in the middle I had a huge jolt of pain.

Despite that, though, I noticed something as I was waking up: I felt good.

Not only did I feel like I had gotten enough sleep, but my heart wasn't racing, and I felt like I could breathe--almost normally.

This good feeling carried me through my morning routine and out the door for a 25-minute walk around the neighborhood, during which I never once had to gasp for air. By the end of it I was a little winded, but I recovered almost immediately.

What the hell?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but this is so different from how I've been feeling. I've been essentially unwilling to try to do anything due to how horrible my chest made me feel. Yesterday I was so annoyed about it that I broke down and had McDonald's for lunch, complete with sweet tea.

I can think of two environmental things that have changed recently that might explain this. First, I haven't spent a whole lot of time outside since last Wednesday, when I took a brief walk.

Second, we've been keeping the door to the second bedroom closed the past few days because of a really weird smell in there.

I thought at first that another lizard had gotten in and died, but I've scoured that room, moving the furniture even, and I can't find a damn thing. Plus, oddly, the smell occasionally goes away.

We're keeping the door shut so we don't have to smell it, but I think it'll also help contain the smell and make it stronger so when I finally call maintenance they'll know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, it's possible I'm allergic to whatever I'm smelling in there.

Or maybe it's neither of those two. I hope it's not the outdoors thing, because I don't want to seal myself away inside all the time.

Regardless, I haven't felt this good since the day I decided to start getting up earlier, right before I got gastroenteritis. Hope it continues!

I make teh gud jokez

Yesterday I was on the phone with my brother Ben, whose birthday is today.

"Wait, how old are you?" I asked him.

"Tomorrow I'll be 26," he said.

"26, eh? I remember when I turned 26," I said. "I was like, 'Uh oh!'"

I think I had somewhere I was going with that, some joke I was going to make, but it never quite happened and that ended up being all I said.

Sean, overhearing this, started cracking up.

Plane explodes after landing

I guess we can call this "odd news", because all the passengers escaped safely and terrorism isn't suspected. And it's weird!

Mainichi has the best coverage.

Taiwanese jet explodes into flames at Okinawa airport, no passengers hurt

Here's Asahi's, just to be fair.

China Airlines aircraft explodes soon after landing at Naha Airport; all 165 people on board escape

What is it?

I'm trying to figure out what has caused this downward spiral in my health.

My initial reaction was to blame it all on emotional distress from the fire. While that may be a factor, at this point I don't think it accounts for everything. After all, I was still riding a bike after the fire. As soon as I was able to get one, I rode when I could while we were still living with Sean's parents. Back then I didn't have full time work and was able to do things according to my own schedule, but I was also healing emotionally, and I also didn't really have a place to call my own...so I wasn't as vigilant as I had been, but I was very eager to get our own place so I could get back into the swing of my life.

I got my current job around the same time we moved into this apartment. At first I was going on walks or to the Y during my lunch break all the time. I knew I wasn't in as good shape as I once was, but I was determined to get back to it.

But something happened and I didn't stick to it. Why did I stop working out at lunch?

Sometimes I wouldn't take a lunch. And then I got into the habit of eating out for lunch, which meant I had to have time to pick something up to eat, which meant I usually didn't think I had enough time to work out as well.

Also, since we've lived here, I've only been to the Canal once, and I haven't biked the Greeneway at all. For some reason I've felt like it was too much trouble or it took too much time. But that makes no sense. At the old apartment, I had to lug the bike up and down three flights of stairs, and I did it without complaint. Here, all I'd have to do is walk it out the door. So why am I not biking before or after work, or on the weekends for that matter?

And why do my weekends solely consist of sitting around on the computer and/or watching DVDs? Why don't I go places anymore? Every Friday I think, "I want to do something this weekend," and then every Saturday and Sunday I think, "I'll do it later," and then it's Monday and I haven't done anything.

Is this horrible out-of-breath-all-the-time thing a product of my slow decrease in activity? If so, how did I let this happen?

Or is my slow decrease in activity caused by being out of breath all the time? Is there something in my environment maybe that makes me less desirous to move around? Am I allergic to something in the apartment, or at work?

I don't want to just assume I'm a victim of my environment. Obviously I'm going to ask my general practitioner about this when I seem him in another week.

This is all just making me so mad. I can't draw a clear line of how this has happened to me--how I've let myself go this badly.

The more you do, the more you are able to do. The more you do it, the more you are able to do it.

The less you do, the less you are able to do. The less you do it, the less you are able to do it.

Is that all there is to this? Am I where I am now because my laziness gradually grew? Because I stopped packing lunches and cooking dinners? Because I never "feel like" taking the bike out for a spin?

How can I correct this if I get winded after thirty seconds of mild physical activity?

I will find out more when I see the doctor again. I hope I can figure something out.

The hill just got a lot steeper

Yesterday I finally put my bike onto the stand so I can ride it like a stationary. (There has got to be a shorter way to say that.) It works great. I got a stand with magnetized resistance rather than air because the guy at Outspokin' said it was quieter, but it's still kind of noisy, so I'll have to pick and choose when and where I use it.

At first I was thinking the front of my bike would fit under the bar table, so I had set the bike up over there, but the handlebars turned out to be too high, plus the front wheel hits the cross braces at the bottom of the table legs. I could probably jerry-rig something, but do I really want to dismantle my bicycle?

So I lugged it across the room to the dining area, so I can see the TV screen over the back of Sean's couch while I'm riding.

And let me tell you, that was not easy. The stand is very heavy, to provide stability, and leaving it attached to the bike made the whole ensemble awkward to move. I couldn't just shove it, because the stand's folding legs kept trying to collapse. I basically had to lift the stand and then lean the bike to cause it to roll in the direction I wanted.

When I got it into the dining room, I had to stop and sit down. I was gasping for air. It was weird. I'm having that experience more and more often, where I feel like I can't get air fast enough. My muscles never get anywhere near the point of feeling tired before I'm unable to breathe. I had thought maybe it was allergies, and the hope was that exercising indoors would help me avoid that experience, but apparently not. It looks like it's something I'm going to have to deal with regardless of when and how I work out.

So I sat on the couch for a long time, sucking air in through my mouth and releasing it the same way, waiting for my heart to stop pounding and my body to feel ready to move again. Finally I was able to position the bike, which didn't take as much effort. I tried it out and everything seemed good, but since I was afraid of being winded again I didn't stay on the bike for long.

Writing about how pathetic this is, and thinking wistfully back to my kung fu days when I was in the best shape of my life, will do me no good. It's a situation I just have to accept and deal with, unfortunately. Small steps.