laura705

Here’s my usual Yay for Friday.  :)  The boss mentioned she wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and today she’s at home.  The other dept mgr has been sick and was coughing a lot yesterday.  I was in a meeting w/ both of them yesterday afternoon - hope I don’t catch anything from them.  On the upside, it’s nice being boss-less today. 

I was tired last night.  Been feeling that way for the past few days.  Maybe it’s the weather - it’s been dreary and rainy all week.  Or maybe it’s because I’ve been walking instead of cycling for the home-train station part of my commute.  The walking is better exercise for me - full weight-bearing exercise - so maybe that’s it.  Or maybe it’s because I haven’t been getting any formal exercise in a while.  Or maybe it’s because it’s PMS week.  Or a combination of everything.

Last night’s dinner was the last of the leftover chili - yum.  Bf needs to print off the recipe from wherever he found it online.  All I did was go through the mail and watch some tv.  Ho hum. 

I brought a sandwich for lunch and my snacks from home.  Nothing going this weekend.  Well, I have a blood donation appointment on Sunday.  And it’s the end of daylight savings time.  Everyone around here (including me) was confused about it - so it’ll be lighter in the morning?  darker in the evening?  Not sure why this is coming up this year but not really in previous years.  But I thought it through yesterday and figured it out.  (Right about now you’re thinking, gawd is she a dufus.)  Anyway, this morning I felt less foolish about doing that because the radio guy also admitted confusion too.  It’s not just me this year! 

Other plans for the weekend is some cooking and the continuation of sorting through my paper pile. 

Okay, nothing else to report, so I’ll publish. 

Almost Friday! 

Yesterday was good, but not too productive at work.  This was due to company fundraising activities in the afternoon.  They were fun, but also took me off track a bit with food.  I logged it all, then went home and had dinner since I was actually still hungry.   Dinner was marinated pork chops (on the grill), steamed green and yellow beans, and oven roasted potatoes (tossed in olive oil w/ garlic powder, onion powder and paprika).  I liked how the taters came out, which is good because I bought this big bag of potatoes and need to use them up because they seem to be going south quicker than I thought they would.  I should be storing them in the 3 season room where it’s cool.  Same for my onions.  Didn’t eat any snacks at home last night. 

Fell asleep on the sofa, so I guess I was pretty tired last night.  Dragged myself off the sofa to wash up and go to bed.  Didn’t even read in bed. 

Today I brought my snacks to work, but not lunch.  Lunch was a McD’s double cheeseburger and a side salad w/ LF balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  I know, I could do better, but I get tired of Subway, or bringing my own lunch, or trying to figure out the calories in foods from places where the nutr. info isn’t readily available.  And when I do estimate calories, I start to feel like the numbers are very weasely.  I don’t try to underestimate and look like I did great, but the numbers just seem sort of meaningless when you can’t confirm their accuracy.  I will bring my lunch fro home tomorrow. 

Need to get back to exercising, but I have been walking both ends of my commute this week now that it’s rather dark in the evenings.  I don’t feel safe cycling home on our dark streets.  I feel some soreness that I don’t know if is from the extra walking, or from my fall from the stoop on Tuesday.  My feet have been sore too, but I think it’s actually my sneakers and the orthotic.  Yeh, I’m wearing several hundred $ of shoes/orthotics and my feet still aren’t comfortable.  I’m going to ask the podiatrist if my orthotics can be redone.  I think the arch support areas are in the wrong spot, even though they’re based on an impression of my feet.  Or it might be that they put a smooth, slippery covering on the surface of the orthotics and my feet slide around on it.  How dumb is that?  I tried out a pair of over-the-counter orthotics before getting these custom ones and I think those might have been more comfortable.  I’m going to phone the dr office today. 

Okay, I’m rambling.  Better post and be done. 

Only Wed.  Darn.

Work was okay yesterday.  The meetings re open enrollment were helpful.  Have some thinking to do re HDHP vs. PPO.  I’ve always rejected the HD plan without really considering it because of that high deductible.  Now that I paid more attention to the particulars, it might be the better option.

The movie last night was “The Stepfather”.  It was alright.  More directed towards teen audiences I think.  Bf liked the original ones (this one’s a remake), so he may go with his friend this weekend to see this new one.  Even if it’s not as good as the original Stepfather movies, I’m sure he’ll enjoy watching the teen girlfriend character, who spends most of the movie in a bikini, LOL.  Of course, the ending let’s you know there’s almost certainly a sequel to come. 

Hmmm, what else?  The day after bf tripped off our front stoop and tweaked one ankle, I fell off completely and landed on both knees.  Didn’t tear my jeans (course not, it was an old pair I was wearing), but skinned both knees anyway.  Nothing really hurts, thankfully.  I’ve fallen off that @#$% stoop several times over the past ten years we’ve lived in this house.  I think it happens when there’s snow or leaves covering the part where the sidewalk ends and the adjacent garden bed begins, and if you step off the stoop at that part, that’s a problem.  Or maybe the stoop is just too small, or the sidewalk needs to be just as wide as the stoop.  Either way, the remedy is expensive concrete work.  Sigh.  Add it to the list of things to do when I have nothing else to spend my money on.  Like food, mortgage, insurance, etc. 

Food was much better yesterday because I remembered to bring my snacks and lunch to work.  Movie night dinners need to be quick, so I had a Smart Ones entree.  It was chicken santa fe with veggies.   Didn’t notice when I bought it that there was no rice or noodles with it.  Total calories, 140.  Not really a sufficient dinner.  I added 1/2 cup of leftover rice to it.  I brought pretzels and water to the movies for my snack.  When I got home I had a piece of wheat toast w/ peanut butter.  Yum.  Doggy, of course, was right there, sniffing at the peanut butter (don’t blame him), so bf gave him a biscuit w/ peanut butter (doggy’s own no-salt pb) in his treat ball.  He liked that.  Reminds me, I think I’ll make him a batch of his pnt btr dog cookies this weekend.   I brought my snacks and lunch to work again today.  Tonight’s dinner will be pork chops that I marinated yesterday with an allrecipes recipe.  We need to use up the sack of potatoes I bought a couple weeks ago, so maybe oven roasted potatoes and a frozen veggie will be the sides. 

Bf committed us to hosting the dessert portion of our block’s holiday party in mid-December.  At least I have time to plan AND obsess over it. 

Tuesday. 

Yesterday went okay at work.  I didn’t have any morning snack; lunch was subway.  I bought cookies for my afternoon snack when I stopped to buy a greeting card after lunch, and some Combos for the train ride.  Not the best choices.  I took the next earlier train home to give me more time to get to my doctor appt. 

Bf drove with me to the doctor because afterwards he wanted to go to half price pizza night at his favorite pizza place.  We arrived maybe a couple minutes late at the doctor, but I didn’t actually see the doc until 40 minutes later.  Grrr.  Next year I will schedule my appointment at the beginning of the day (1^st appointment), even if I have to take the day off to do it.  At least I had my book with me to read.  Bf almost fell asleep waiting in the car, lol.  Another annoyance was that they had me do a urine sample.  They didn’t tell me that when I made the appointment and of course I don’t remember that they want one since this is only a once a year appointment.  I don’t even know if there was enough to do the test.   Whatever.  Annoyance #3 was that the doctor scolded me for not getting my bone density test when I went in for my mammo a few weeks ago.  So, it would have been good to actually have this gyne exam before the mammo appointment so that the doc could tell me about the test and answer my questions before actually having it.  But I didn’t set it up that way this year.  So it’s really my fault, but I was still annoyed.  Anyway… the facility where I get the bone density test – same place where I get the mammo - is close to my house, so I don’t mind going in for a separate appointment, especially since the test is short and lets me keep all my clothes on and no one is squishing or probing any body parts. 

At the pizza place, the smell when we walked in was incredible.  Bf and I each had a cup of minestrone soup, and then pepperoni pizza.  I had 3 pieces, about one quarter of it, even though I would have liked to snarf down several more.  We brought home half the pizza.  Logged in to TDP, calories were around 1900 for the day, so it could have been worse.  Today I brought my lunch and snacks with me, so it should be a better day foodwise.  I actually enjoyed walking to and from the train station yesterday.  After a couple weeks of being mostly sedentery, it felt good to get some physical activity.

I had some conflicting meetings on my calendar this afternoon, so I was glad that one was just rescheduled to another day.  Now I can attend the others, which are related to our company’s open enrollment. 

Tonight’s movie night and I plan on going.  Not sure what we’re seeing yet, but I hadn’t voted yet when I received an e-mail asking if I was going, since there was a tie in the voting.  I hope my choices didn’t make it a 3-way tie!  I wanted to see Invention of Lying, but it starts too late for me.  My choices ended up being 1.  Law Abiding Citizen (I like Gerard Butler) and 2. The Stepfather. 

That’s about it for now, so I’ll post this and get back to work. 

Gloomy rainy Monday today.  I forgot my lunch and snacks at home today.  I actually got them all ready last night, and here I forget to take them with me this morning.  Boo.  Then I was almost to the train station (walked today), the battery on my iPod ran out and I had to listen to my radio, which I’ve come to hate.  The station I used to like now does traffic reports every 10 minutes.  Between traffic and commercials, there’s very little time left for anything else.  Heck, even our local National Public Radio station (my 2^nd choice station) does traffic reports now.  Then the train was delayed – stuck behind another train that was having problems.  Arrived at work about 30 min. late.  Not off to the best start today. 

Weekend was alright.  Took doggy for a walk Sat. afternoon.  He’s been very bad about eating his food since we got back from our trip, and he hadn’t eaten his morning meal, so I was surprised he was so full of energy!  He was running me around, zigzagging all over for the first several minutes of our jaunt.  I was tempted to just let go of the leash, but the way he was going, I’d probably never catch up to him. 

I started on the big paper pile Saturday afternoon.  Not finished by a long shot, so I need to continue with it during my evening tv sessions.  Bf and I bought a CO2 replacement cartridge for our Sodastream machine.  It ran out on Thursday or Friday and Bf was really missing his carbonation.  He even drank a bottle of Pepsi Zero I had sitting around (a freebie from Target).  Didn’t do anything special Saturday evening.

Sunday I got showered, went through the sale ads and my coupons and made a shopping list.  I hit the library for a couple books, ate lunch, and then went to the market.  When I got home, I started some chili for dinner.  Bf decides he going “make some really good chili” which ticked me off because he’s essentially implying he doesn’t like mine.  Annoyance number two about the chili was that he decides to choose a chili contest winning recipe and runs out to buy some special seasoning a bunch of the recipes called for.  When he got home I looked at the ingredients on the seasoning he bought and the first one listed is MSG.  Sure, we need more sodium in our diet.  Annoyance number three was that I had horrible gas after eating the chili.  I can’t really blame bf for that – I’d already added the kidney beans before he hijacked the chili-making.  And I think what really brought on the gas was the Curves granola bar I had a couple hours earlier.  They were on clearance at the market, so I bought a box and tried one.  High fiber, that’s for sure. 

Did a load of laundry, made some sandwiches for lunches this week, and that was about it for Sunday – sort of boring. 

My alarm clock has automatically changed itself for daylight savings time the past two days.  I can’t remember how many times it does that before it gives up.  Ever since the gov’t extended DST a couple years ago, that has happened because my clock doesn’t know the gov’t changed it and keeps to the old schedule programmed into the clock, and there’s no way to turn off the feature that automatically changes the time for DST.  What a nuisance.

I just had one short meeting this morning and have no others today.  Tonight is my gyne exam.  Ugh.  Perfect thing for a Monday like today.  Oh, BTW, I’ll have to watch my insurance on this.  Once again, the insurance denied this year’s mammo claim like they did last year.  Had to phone and get that corrected, again.  Apparently the mammo itself and the digital review are coded as two separate procedures and it doesn’t get handled properly by the insurance company’s claim system.  Grrr.

That’s about it for today, so I’ll publish and get on with it.    

I know I write this every Friday, but YAY FOR FRIDAY!  Even though I had vacation two days this week, worked only one day, and then went to a conference for 1.5 days, I’m glad the week is over.  Okay, it’s only 3-ish right now, but I’m not doing any more work at home today.

Wed. was a busy day at the office - spent a lot of time plowing through the e-mail, plus two meetings.  Thursday was a full conference day - five educational sessions and a two hour lunch at which a comedian entertained us.  Linda, I did suck it up and attended the networking/dinner that evening.  Not much “shop talk” so it was pleasant.  After the last session and before the dinner, the other manager in the department and I attended the happy hour, and also caught up with each other.  Some days at the office we barely see each other, let alone talk much, so that was nice to do.  I’m going to see if she wants to do lunch every once in a while because it’s good to discuss department stuff outside hearing of boss and other department members. 

Today was a half day at the conference, and I skipped out on the last session.  There were 3 to choose from and none were at all pertinent to the department or my job in particular, so I skipped it.  I stopped for lunch and came home.  I’ve gone through my e-mails for the last couple days and responded to some, and I really should at least spend some time cleaning up my inbox, but I’m just not in the mood to do anything.  I find that sitting through all those education sessions just sucks the energy out of me.  And if I consider that dinner last night as a work obligation, I’d say that makes up for blowing off part of an afternoon.  So there. 

Food and exercise have not been good for most of the week and I need to get back in the groove.  I find I lost my enthusiasm for the two cookbooks I’d previously thought might be worth purchasing.   Hmmm.  I like to cook and try new dishes, but it’s more realistic and important to me right now to prepare and eat home-cooked meals during the week.  I want to build a supply of meals that can become the “old reliables”.  Bf and I picked up some groceries the other night and I wasn’t happy that we bought a stack of frozen meals and virtually nothing else.  At least a couple bags of frozen veggies made their way into the cart. 

No firm plans this weekend.  It’s rainy and gloomy outside, so it’s too wet to be raking leaves.  I’ll go through my piles of paper.  Among other things, I want to find the receipt for furnace and humidifier filters we bought last year so we can see what we paid and order more.  Hope the rain stops and I can walk with the dog.   I haven’t renewed my newspaper subscription, so there’s an opportunity to replace my longstanding Sunday morning newspaper, tea, biscotti/bialy/what-have-you habit with something different.  Like, perhaps, a gym session followed by a few minutes in the sauna or steam room.   

Okay, my shoulders are getting tense because I’m using the laptop on the dining room table and it’s too high, so I’m going to stop typing and get this posted.  Have a good weekend everyone!

Back from vacation and here at work.    It’ll take a good chunk of the day to get through the e-mail and I’m taking a break from those right now.  I also have two meetings this afternoon. 

We got home Monday around 4-ish.  Vacation was good, but neither bf or I really liked the 6-hour drive. Next time we might take Amtrak and borrow or rent a car at our destination.  We spent daytime last Fri in downtown Paducah, including a visit to the National Quilt Museum, which was amazing.   We spent Fri evening and all Saturday with bf’s niece and grand-nephew. We went to Ft. Massac during the day, and even saw a battle reenactment (French-Indian War, I think - my knowlege of history is virtually nil).  Sat. evening was the baby’s first b-day mini celebration.

Sunday we drove to our friend’s house in Southern IL and they took us around to several wineries. That area has quite a lot of wineries - we bought a couple bottles of apple wine and a bottle of Kir from a winery that makes only non-grape wines.  It was a gorgeous Indian Summer day and it was just beautiful driving on those country roads.  The peacefulness was so nice.  We ended the day at the lodge at Giant City State Park, where we had dinner.  On the drive back to their house, the night sky was just beautiful. We can hardly see any stars in the Chicago metro area, so it was nice to be in an area where you can see so many stars. We drove home Monday - another nice sunny day.  After days of little physical activity, we took doggy for a nice long walk by the creek after we had unpacked.

I did okay with food while we were gone - not much snacking.  Didn’t do so good since we’ve returned though. Need to get back in the groove.

Yesterday I puttered around in the morning, and did some errands in the afternoon.  Last night was the movies - Couples Retreat.  It was entertaining and I was surprised it actually spent more time than I thought it would on the couples’ relationships outside of all those parts played strictly for laughs.  

Back to work today.  Boo.  Only one day though, because Thurs and Fri I have a conference to attend. Not far from home, so it’ll be a nice change of pace.  Not looking forward to it as much as I normally would, however, because work made a big deal of approving it this year due to budget constraints.  And a couple firms are hosting a joint dinner tomorrow night that I don’t want to attend because it doesn’t start until a couple hours after the last session ends, and I don’t want to have to sit through either happy hour or the dinner itself.  I’m not much into networking… But I feel like I should attend, just to add extra value to this conference.  I also think I should go to the dinner because the 2nd day of the conference ends at about noon and I don’t want to feel too guilty if I don’t really work much at home Friday afternoon except to respond to e-mails.  Sigh. 

Okay, time to publish and get back to the e-mails. 

Our drive down to Paducah was alright, but we were surprised the highway was just two lanes each way.  I mean, it’s an interstate highway!  There were also a lot of annoying lane closures, but it generally took the amount of time that we exected it to. 

The weather’s been crummy  - cold and gloomy, with some drizzle.  Hoping today will be better.  Tomorrow is supposed to be.

Food’s been none too good, but I’m trying to keep away from snacks to make up for the highly caloric meals.  Need to make some better choices.  Exercise has been nil - a lot of time in the car.

Did some sightseeing yesterday.  Went to a museum and saw some of the downtown area here.  Nice historic downtown.  Probably has it’s share of problems trying to compete with the mall and the wal-mart and other big stores, but it’s certainly  has more going on than the downtown where my mother lives.  Oh, better not go there…

It was nice to see bf’s niece and her baby, but I’m concerned about her finances because her job doesn’t seem very stable.  Her employment appears to be solely based on the whims of people who don’t know how to run a business properly.  I guess it’s like that for a lot of people.  Working for a big company, there are hopefully policies and procedures in place to insulate you from the irrational whims of individuals, but of course big companies have a whole other set of challenges.  But the niece is taking courses that will hopefully get her to a better place.  I hope she can hang in there. 

Today is some time w/ the niece and grand nephew doing some sightseeing and celebrating his 1st bday.  Tomorrow we check out and drive a short bit to see a couple we know and see some wineries in their area. 

That’s all for now.  Have to get dressed and out to the lobby for the free breakfast before it ends.  We missed it yesterday.  Need to stick with cereal and fruit. 

Don’t have much time today, with this my last day in the office before some time off. 

Yesterday was alright, but there was some annoyance with a vendor.  The boss, however, likes when I get tough with them, so one of my e-mails to them went over quite well with her, lol.  I have another one to send today…

Food was good yesterday.  Day before that was okay until bf and I put away a good chunk of a sourdough baguette we bought from Trader Joe’s.  Yum.  Not much exercise though so far this week.  Did some weights on Monday in front of the tv.  Yeserday bf and I took doggy for a walk.  Then I got back to doing more laundry, a continuation of the previous night. 

I also finally got a package ready to send my mother.  After not having a cell phone during her travel hell this past April, we decided to add her to our cell phone plan and are sending her a phone.  I doubt she would ever take the leap herself if we didn’t do this, so it’s more for our peace of mind than hers.  Anyway, we entered a bunch of phone numbers for her, set up her voicemail, selected a ringtone, bought her a car charger, and that’s that.  I wrote her a note basically saying, just do these two things – keep it charged and keep it with you.  I know there’ll be a lot more to it for her because she’s never had a cell phone (has rarely even used a computer), but she’ll just have to read some of the user guide, which BTW is in such small font and printed on such flimsy paper that even I had problems with it, and I’m not even at the reading glasses stage of life yet!

Well, not much more to report.  I’ve dealt with the most critical work stuff before going off on my 4 vacation days, so that’s good.  I do have one meeting this afternoon, and it’s with a bigshot and I do have a small part of the presentation, but it’s going to be a very short meeting, so I’m going to try not to get anxious about it.  Tonight will be packing for our road trip to visit bf’s niece.  I’m going to phone bf and hound him to get some housecleaning done because I will go off on him if I come home and he hasn’t put a dent in it.  I mean, c’mon, don’t you want the house to be somewhat tidy for your mother?  She’s dogsitting for us and deserves at lease a scrubbed toilet. 

Okay, no more time for rambling, so I’ll get this published. 

Monday again.  I didn’t even get close to getting done what I needed to get done this weekend.  Oh well.  I’ll be running around like a nut the next couple days to do it.

Friday - don’t recall what I did.  Oh, bf made a Rachel Ray recipe - Thai chicken with rice.  It was tasty, but next time we’d spice it up even more.  I used the last of the basil from the garden for it.  I’ll miss that, although I’m drying some of it.  Saturday I got my hair cut and colored.  I’m feeling some sensitity to the dye on my skin.  Not necessarily on my scalp, but where my hair it touches my ears and face since I’m wearing it down at the moment.  Think I’ll put it in back in the ponytail again now that it’s almost dry. 

Sat. afternoon took a dog walk, then went to lunch, Walmart, tire place, and the lighting place,  then suddenly it was time to leave for the bonfire.  It was rather cold and bf and I bundled up in our longies and parkas (and I wore my wool blend socks too).  The farm not only was nearly out of firewood, but a lot of it wasn’t seasoned, was still in huge logs, and was wet from the past week of rain.  So we never got either of our two fires going really good (one bonfire outside, one in the fireplace in the barn).  My lower half was cold all night, but I would never have lived it down if I’d worn my long down coat.  Still, it was a nice time.  I was happy, however, when I got to drive home with my seat warmer on high!  Bf kept asking me if I wanted to turn it off and I kept saying “NO!”.  LOL.  We want to find a new bonfire spot for next year, not so far away and more reliable.  I’d be fine with hosting a party at our place next year, but a little fire pit in the back yard isn’t nearly the same as a roaring bonfire. 

Sunday I watched some of the Chicago marathon broadcast on tv while I looked at the newspaper, and then it was more of the same with being out and about - Target, lunch, Trader Joe’s, and the auto supply store.  We came home to feed doggy and then left to visit our friends and their 7 wk old baby.  

Food wasn’t good Saturday night - a lot of munchies.  I don’t track on Sundays, but I did so-so.  Back to TDP today. 

No meetings at work today.  Brought snacks but not lunch.  Might go to Subway.  No plans for tonight.  Need to make a list of the to do’s for this week.  I might have done that on the train today but I was trying to update my checkbook.  I was trying to check my math, but the calculator on my cell phone was giving me trouble.  Somehow the last couple times I’ve used it, I can’t get it out of memory mode.  I feel like such a dufus.  Anyway, I wasted a bunch of time fooling w/ the darn thing and still didn’t figure it out.  Time for a new phone, LOL! 

Okay, better publish and get back to it.  Happy Columbus Day everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving to those in Canada!