laura705

Work ended okay yesterday - didn’t stay in panic mode all day. 

At the train station at home, I unlocked and wheeled my bike away from the rack and then felt like fool when I was paddling madly for a few seconds (through an intersection of course) and realized the chain had fallen off.  That never happened with my old bike!  Grrr.  So I hopped off, walked it to the sidewalk, pulled over on someone’s lawn, flipped over the bike and put it back on.  Thank goodness for the wipes I keep in my backpack!  Not sure why that happened.  No mishaps so far today. 

Okay, made it to the gym last night, so yay for me (and bf).  Warmed up for 5 minutes on the elliptical and then did weights on all major parts, and did some ab work.  Next gym day is Wednesday.  Before we got to the gym, bf and I drove the back way that I would come if I cycled to the gym.  At first we thought we couldn’t find a back way that would help me avoid the major intersection where the gym’s at, but then we found a non-car entrance off a sidestreet that would also help me avoid most of the parking lot.  I’ll have to give that a go sometime.

Dinner was my free Kashi frozen meal, chicken florentine.  It was sort of odd having that with orzo and whatever other grain was in there (instead of regular pasta), but it was tasty.  I also had a piece of garlic naan (Trader Joe’s).

No meetings today, and boss has stayed away from the cube so far.  I like the comment re the boss staying away from everyone until after 10 am, LOL.  I think everyone should stay away from each other first thing in the morning!  My walk from the train requires recovery from the frustration of walking behind smokers and dawdlers, so it’s best to let me get settled and stocked with my hot tea and cold water before approaching me with work stuff. 

Breakfast was a bowl of life cereal and then I bought a McD’s yogurt parfait.  It was a dollar menu size, so couldn’t have been too damaging.  Better than a bagel w/ cream cheese I’m sure.   Except I’m still hungry.  But it’s almost lunch time.

Did not bring lunch from home today.  If it’s not raining I want to go for a short walk at lunchtime.  I need fresh air, even if it makes my allergies act up.  Speaking of fresh air… I will need to get a small fan.  The facilities manager wasn’t very sympathetic to my complaint about the poor ventilation (”has anyone else complained?”), but did follow up and said the building engineers hadn’t done anything to change ventilation on our floor and also said she requested that they check the fan boxes.  Right.  Anyway, I need a fan because I’m tired of being cranky about this. 

Nothing much else to report.  I’m skipping the movies tonight and going to a library program instead. 

Weekend was alright.  On Friday bf and I were deciding to go out to eat, but at the last moment I decided to get the veg garden planted before the rain came.  Bf helped me and it went in fairly quickly.  Dinner was salad, steak, and a baked sweet potato. 

It rained during the night and Saturday morning.  I puttered around the house and then went to my hair appointment.  The rain had stopped around 10 am and the skies finally cleared and it turned into a nice day.  Lunch was a turkey blt sandwich.  Bf worked on my new bike – switching over reflectors, the basket and the rear fender from my other bike.  In the meantime, I showered and got dressed for the graduation party.  The party was nice – glad the weather cooperated.  There was karaoke, so that was fun.  Food was so-so, so after a small beef sandwich, a small portion of pasta and a brownie, that was pretty much it, except for too much white wine.  It was a late night and I was so tired when we finally got home, I only cleaned my contacts and did a quick brushing of my teeth before going to bed.  I almost never go to bed with makeup on my face, so waking up with my mascara on felt icky.  I cleaned up right away.

I lounged around most of Sunday, only doing a couple loads of laundry.  The weather was very nice and I spent most of the day outdoors in the yard.  Food was not good – I succumbed to a taste for coffee cake (morning) and hot dogs (lunch).  Didn’t overeat either of those, but still – I shouldn’t be so self-indulgent.  We also had homemade lemonade.  Later in the day I felt lazy having mostly sat around all day reading the newspaper and my book, so bf and I went for a half hour bike ride around our neighborhood.  I rode my new bike and bf rode my mountain bike.  I’ll have to get used to this new bike. 

I didn’t accomplish all that much over the weekend, but it was relaxing and enjoyable.  The nice weather was very welcome!

Today didn’t get off to a great start.  I’m not sure I like how the new bike rides, and my new thick cable is still all coiled up and it’s hard to stretch out for locking my bike.  I’ll get accustomed to both hopefully. 

The boss visited my cube about 4 times during my first 45 min. here at work today and it was annoying, so that wasn’t a good start to the workweek.  I’m feeling stressed with a lot to do and everyone’s life and job seems much better than mine right now and of course playing the lottery sounds appealing.  Yup, that’s what I do when I get really sick of my job.  Oh well, I can’t make any changes right now, so I need to do the best I can right now and try to appreciate my work. 

Tonight will be the gym.  I need to get back to where I just changed into exercise clothes and went and exercised.  Not wonder if bf is going or not, not talk myself out of it because it’s raining, because the weather’s too nice or because I’m tired or whatever other excuse I come up with.  It’s an hour or so of my life and quite frankly, that time is not otherwise being spent on anything healthy or productive.  So there.  

Yay, Friday!  Thinking of that old Snoopy cartoon that went around in the pre-e-mail days showing the days of the week and Snoopy’s mood throughout.  Just found it online - scroll way down to see it:   Snoopy\’s work week

Yay, it’s sunny!  Amazing what that does to my mood!  I have no meetings today either, so that’s good. 

Last night I went to the shoe store and briefly talked with a salesman who thought it would be best if I scheduled an appointment with their pedorthist to have my feet evaluated and get me into some comfortable shoes.  The sales guy didn’t seem to have much good news re solutions.  He said not many shoes have good arch support anymore, and that if I buy a shoe that fits my forefoot and if it’s too loose in the heel part, that’s what happens.  I don’t know if he just wanted me to see the pedorthist and let that guy deal with me, but he certainly didn’t seem all that optimistic for an employee in a shoe store that caters to fitting you into the right size shoe.  I mean, I could go out right now and buy a pair of shoes in a wider width, insert a ready made arch support and some kind of thing to put in the heel to snug it up and be done with it, but he didn’t mention that.  The pedorthist appointment is no cost to me, but the store might be trying to get whatever they charge for making custom orthotics and who knows whatever extra services.  I dunno.  I have to follow up with my podiatrist to see if they just issue a prescription for custom orthotics, or if they also offer (SELL) custom made orthotics out of their office.  I’m being very suspicious, but the way they offered to call up the insurance carrier to see if orthotics are covered seems kind of pushy.  Their office is closed today, so it’ll have to wait. 

Enough rambling about my feet. 

Dinner last night was fish tacos at a local restaurant.  Yum.  Bf and I loved them and would like to make some at home.  No exercise last night.

Tonight, no plans.  Should go to the gym because I’m getting further off track than I want to be! 

Our new living room tables are being delivered today!  That’ll be really nice.  Now we have to sell our old ones.  I think the whitewashed finish really dates them, but they’re in good condition and who knows who might want them “as is”, or they’d look great if they were painted. 

Tomorrow I hope to do some more gardeining/yardwork, but rain is forecast for overnight/early morning and the soil will not be dry enough to dig into.  No worry, there’s plenty of other outdoor work – spreading 20 bags of mulch in the front garden beds, and trimming some of the shrubs.  And it’s easier to pull weeds in moist soil!  Oh fun. Wait, I have a hair appointment, so there goes 2 hours of my Saturday.  Groan. 

In the evening, there’s a graduation party to attend for the kid of some friend of bf’s.  Party pooper that I am, I don’t want to go, of course, but I probably will.  I will, however, drive myself home when I please and bf can come along or crash with someone. I’m good til midnight or 1 am, but after that, forget it.  Old fogey needs to go to bed.

Sunday is supposed to be the better day of the weekend, so maybe we can get out for a bike ride.  I think bf has purchased all the parts we need to put together the roof rack for the bikes, so I’ll hound him to do that. 

That’s about it, so I’ll publish and go off to lunch.  I still have a LC frozen meal in the freezer here from, hmmm, Tuesday?, but I don’t want it.  Out I go to get some sun and fresh air.  Have a good weekend everyone. 

The week is going fast.  Of course it is, I have a jillion things going at work. 

Yesterday  afternoon I passed along my input for our project to the boss and other mgr.  The alarm for the appointment the boss sent us just to remind us went off and it was sort of like “pencils down”.  I could have used more time, but we’ll get together this morning and patch together info from all our input and move on with it.  This seems like a big project, but the timeframe seemed a bit short.  I don’t know if my boss sat on this a while before giving it to us or what, but the timing was very poor.  I have other projects with deadlines looming.

I started feeling icky yesterday afternoon – headache, feeling warm, queasy – right after finishing that icky project stuff, so that figures.  Actually, I chalk this up to the stuffiness of the air in the office.  Ventilation is definitely not as good as it was in our previous office space.  The fresh air on the way home helped.

The weather had turned nice at the end of the day, so when I went home, I changed and decided to take the dog for a 30 min. walk.  It felt good to get some fresh air, but I also felt queasy.  For lunch I had a cup of cream soup at the caf with my ½ rf salami sandwich.  Wonder if that combo caused it. 

I sorted my laundry and did a load of almost all dress slacks, with some tops.  Seven pairs of slacks and only a couple I still like, and each of those two of course, have a little chewed looking section at the right leg hem where it got caught in the chain of my bike before I really got serious about using a band around my pant leg to prevent that.  Yeh, closing the barn door, blah blah…So I need to do some pants shopping.  I think I’ll focus on finding pairs of black and brown slacks.  Maybe two pair of black ones.  I don’t care much for light colored slacks. 

No exercise last night except the dog walk and a few sets of biceps and triceps exercises with weights.  Dinner was a grilled cheese sandwich and baked beans.  I read my book. 

It’s another gray, cool, rainy day.  I need to stop reporting this, but it’s really making me gloomy myself.  Seems like this is the last week of school for the kids in our area.  Maybe it’ll finally turn more summer-like for them, if not for us adults. 

Tonight.  Well it’s Thursday and both of the shoe stores that bill themselves as having a wide range of sizes and fitting hard to fit feet, etc. are open until 8 pm.  I wonder if I should visit one to see what they have.  Maybe I can lure bf to come with me by going out to dinner afterwards.  Usually I avoid shopping for stuff like this with him because he’s always annoyed when I look at the price of something, but since I already know I’ll be spending a lot of money, what the heck.

Okay, meeting coming up, so I’m going to cut, paste and publish. 

Yesterday was alright.  Work is work.  It’s okay if I just plow through and try not to get distracted. 

Dinner was a bowl of homemade lentil soup and a tuna sandwich.  The movie “I Love You Man” was alright.  Kind of cute, although there was a bit of raunchiness to it.  Oh well, it was much likely better than one of the other choices - “Drag Me to Hell”.  I’m totally not into the horror and gore movies.  I didn’t have popcorn, but I succumbed to a sweets craving and bought a box of mini butterfingers. 

It’s another gray, rainy day.  I think the rain will move out, but there’s a chance for more tonight.  Ugh.  This is getting really old and depressing. 

Nothing special today at work, except I have to work on a project that includes my boss and the other manager and we have to pass along our input to each other late this afternoon.  I realized that the deadline for another project I have going is not Monday the 15^th, but the week of the 15^th.  I’ve got a little breathing room there. 

Tonight will be exercise. 

Better get on with the day. 

Yesterday at work I started into panic mode because of some upcoming project deadlines.  What else is new?

After work I went directly to my foot doc appt.  I guess there are two kinds of bunion and mine is the less serious type, just a bony thing.  The more serious one is when the long foot bone that connects to the big toe starts to angle out.  An x-ray was taken and the doc measured the angle and mine is normal-sized – whew!  They can do surgery on both types, but for now I’m just going to try and prevent any further problems.  I learned that insufficient arch support can lead to problems, as can shoes that are too narrow in the forefoot, and also shoes where the fit allows too much movement of the foot in the shoe.   So, in the future I’ll be shoe shopping at stores where someone can help me find shoes that fit properly and have good arch support.  The doc’s office is calling my insurance to determine if orthotics are covered by my insurance, and maybe I’ll consider those.  But first I just want to try good fitting shoes.  I have a feeling my Asics caused problems for me due to a lack of arch support.  I never had arch problems, so that was something I never specifically looked for in a shoe.  Learning that lack of arch support can cause other problems was really helpful. 

I was able to take the train to my appointment - just one stop further than my usual one – but I didn’t catch a train home until 8:30!  I wish I’d realized that – I would have just gone home and driven over to my appointment.  But it turned into a beautiful evening and I walked around the downtown area, sat by a fountain, phoned my mother, read my book.  It was nice.  Bf ended up in a very long online customer service chat trying to load a driver for his printer and he couldn’t pick me up.  He grilled pork chops for dinner. 

Not much else to report.  Tonight is the movie “I Love You Man” at the cheap theater.  Nothing else appealed to me, and that’s what ended up being selected. 

Okay, back to work!

Well, Monday again.  Not happy to be at work.  I guess I’m just a slacker at heart, LOL.  No, I shouldn’t put it that way.  I think maybe I’m just not as driven as other people.  Sure, I like getting a paycheck and having benefits (and need both, to be sure), and working in a safe, generally pleasant environment.  But my heart isn’t in my work.  Just a necessary evil.  Sigh.

The weekend.  Friday was grilled chicken w/ rice & bean mix and steamed broccoli for dinner, and then some tv.  Saturday I did some planting (hanging pots, and transplanted daffodil bulbs) before it got chilly and rained.  I didn’t, however, get my veggies in.  I went shopping while bf mowed the lawn and tilled the veg patch, finishing as it began raining.  I bought gas, groceries, and some stuff from the dollar store.

I made Chex mix for the book club, and then went to book club.  It was fine.  Everyone like the book, which I figured - Carl Hiaasen is a good writer and very funny. 

Sunday morning I hurried to get myself dressed, but just as I was about to go out in the yard, it began raining.  Grrr.  I wanted to rake the weeds that bf had tilled up in the veg patch and then plant my tomato and basil, but it was not to be.  It didn’t rain much, but enough to preclude working in the soil.  After it stopped, I turned on the soaker hose for our new shrubs.  I also picked some more peonies and put them in vases.  Pretty, and such a nice scent.

I hung around the house a bit, ate some soup for lunch, got bored and decided to go shopping.  I went to the library and picked up some books and magazines.  I went to Tuesday Morning and bought a couple new sheet sets, and strawberries on sale at Aldi.  (Kelly, I saw a box of 250 fancy paper cupcake liners at Tuesday Morning and thought of you!)  I was going to check out a furniture store that had some end tables I saw in an ad and was interested in, but I decided that I’d want bf to see them as well, so I went home and bf and I went together instead.  

We decided they’d work for the ends of our sofa (End Table), and we also found a third table (Oval table) for between our two easy chairs.  Yay.  We’d originally wanted tables that have more storage - like a drawer on top and then a shelves hidden by a door below.  I looked for a long time and we never found anything like that, so we finally gave up.  The tables we bought have a good sized drawer and a shelf below.  Good enough.  I can’t wait to get rid of our old tables, which date back to my condo and have to be about, hmmm, 18 years old.  They don’t go with anything, are too low and have no storage. 

Dinner was pizza.  BF made ice cream with the strawberries, yum.  I printed out some planting instructions for bf so he could plant my tomatoes sometime this week, otherwise I’d be waiting til next weekend.  We read our library books and that was about it. 

I woke around 5 am to a thunder storm and heavy rain and didn’t sleep much more, but I stayed in bed until the alarm and 2 snoozes went off.  No veggie planting today.  The rain stopped in time for me to cycle to the train, but more rain is expected later.  I forgot my umbrella, so we’ll see what happens at lunch - I brought another frozen entree from home and was going to run out and buy a mcd’s side salad to go with it.   I brought an apple as a snack.  An Argo tea shop just opened a block from work, so I bought an iced chai and a chocolate muffin, so that was my morning snack. 

I intended to go to the gym tonight with bf, but I forgot I have my podiatrist appointment tonight.  Oops.   We’ll see how the timing goes.  I might end up exercising in the basement instead.   Reminds me I need to jot down everything I want to discuss with the doc.  I’ll start a doc and type items as I think about them.

That’s about it.  Better get on with the day.

Yuck, the project we discussed in this morning’s meeting is not easy - we have to actually think, LOL.  Why did the boss have to give us this project on Friday?  Shouldn’t Friday’s be easier?  At least it’ll be relatively short - it’s due in two weeks.

My other discontent for today is that I decided to wear a pair of chino-type pants that are still within our business casual dress code, but more casual than the dress pants I usually wear to work.  They are several years old and I’d forgotten that the length has been shrinking (they still fit fine in other areas) and now they make me look like I’m waiting for a flood.  And the zipper no longer wants to stay all the way up.  These will go into the laundry and then the donate pile this weekend.  A new pair of chinos is in order.  More shopping I need to do that I will put off until who knows when. 

Okay, it’s after 4 pm now and so the weekend is only 1.25 hours away - YAY.

I did get out of Mcd’s w/ just a side salad yesterday.  No robot act, but I was very firm with my order, more for my own benefit, LOL. 

Nothing much else to report for yesterday.  We ate dinner out - big bowl of soup, and two pcs bread, which filled me up so that I at one pc of steak quesadilla and that was it.  But I couldn’t resist the chocolate ice cream (this is a rest. that includes dessert in the meal).  I was full.  Too much dinner.  Too bad, I had a good food day til then.

Stopped at the pharm after dinner.  We now have fresh ibuprofen, and only 100 tablets.

For the weekend - nothing planned for tonight. Book club is tomorrow night - need to finish my audio book!  Any suggestions on what to bring for a snack??? Help!  The book doesn’t have any food ideas that lend itself to a theme type snack.  I need to plant my veggies and hanging flower pots, and we need to buy and spread mulch in the front. 

Okay, yucky meeting coming up in a few.  Yucky because it’s a new project.  More work.  Groan.

Work was okay yesterday.  We had a fire drill in the afternoon, so that was something different.  Bf and I went to the gym together last night.  We got there a bit later and it wasn’t as crowded as it is even 30 min earlier.  Since my workout the day before was mostly upper body, I did a lower body workout with some back and ab work thrown in.  We started off with a 5 min warmup on the elliptical and then went to the squat machine.  BF and I alternated sets on that, and then we moved on to the leg extension and leg curl machines and it was fun working out together like that (usually we both go our own separate ways).  We’ve both been sort of out of the gym/exercise groove the past few weeks, so I think that perked us up.  We left around 8:30 and it was nice that it was still light out.  Dinner was a strange Michelina frozen snack thingy – little bread-like rolls with ham and cheese inside.  Not bad, but nothing I’d go out of my way to purchase again.  It wasn’t filling enough, so I had some crackers w/ ff dip.  Not a great dinner.

Nothing going on today – no meetings, so hopefully I’ll be left alone.  I brought a frozen LC for lunch.  I’m going to run over to McD’s and, like a robot, buy a $1 side salad and nothing more.  That will accompany my LC and will hopefully be enough to satisfy me.  For snacks I brought cottage cheese and a Laughing Cow wedge w/ a few multigrain crackers.  I have an apple from yesterday too.  Apples are rather boring to me, although I generally enjoy them when I do eat them.  Many times, though, they just sit there at my desk for a day or two until the mood strikes me.  Can’t wait to eat some of those summer fruits – nectarines, watermelon – yum!

Nothing planned for tonight.  I notice that bf has some marinated chicken breasts thawing in the fridge, so I imagine we’ll grill those.  Yum.  We have broccoli to steam; and not sure what the other side will be. 

It’s another sunny day here, but still cool.  Tomorrow will be a bit warmer.  Hope the weather is rainless this weekend because I want to do more gardening.  Two more days til the weekend!