Maintainers Weekly Chat December 30 - January 5

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  • Welcome week containing New Years with its challenges to stay the path.

    We're in for some major cold according to the weather predictions. It'll be useful if I get out - I'm one of those who believes that I burn extra calories just keeping warm. It'll be harmful if I squat on the couch and mourn that I'm not moving about, LOL.

    One measure of our good Christmas is the three full recycle-bins of cardboard and spent wrapping paper going to the curb this morning. The kids and spouses opened presents here. It was as if they were little kids since we wrap up a lot of fun, but low cost gifts to make it a brouhaha.
  • Glad you had a good Christmas Bill.

    Our last entertaining for the holidays was last night. The water that's been leaking out of the shower for 2 months finally started leaking through the living room ceiling 20 minutes before the guests arrived. I just started laughing and made a joke out of the large plastic tub that sat under the leak when my relatives arrived.

    These are the relatives that I really so we had a great evening. My paella turned out really well, the conversation flowed, and no one checked their phones even though there were 2 teenagers present. They joined in the conversation and went through our music collection and picked out a bunch of stuff and DJ'ed. Nice girls!

    DH polished off all but one of the holiday beers AFTER he had cleaned up the dishes - I was in bed by then - and I threw out whatever remained of holiday food just now.

    We will have a quiet dinner of healthy food New Year's Eve (protein and salad probably) and probably go see 47 Ronin before that. I have given up staying up late and drinking on NYE so will be in bed by 10.

    I want my first weigh-in in 2014, on January 7, to be : and will be working toward that.

    What would an astronaut do? YOu all will be seeing that a lot in my posts for a bit - I'm totally enamoured of Chris Hadfield's book right now.

    Dagmar


  • We had our 4 good Christmas celebrations (home, mom, inlaws, dad) and now just have the Cajun cookoff on New Year's Eve. Apparently, it's become extremely difficult to find crawfish tails in Michigan, so some of the dishes will have to change.

    The last week seemed like a really long one. I need to decide if I'm going to take the vacation days I have planned for Thurs/Fri. Right now, and I know this sounds weird, I am so hungry to get back to "normal routine" that I think I'm going to go back to work Thursday and save those two days for the times that I need it more. Thursday also means it will be sooner before I can take all the Christmas cookies in and leave them by the coffee machine.

    Coffee is ready and I have an important task this morning - Purple Heart will be arriving later to pick up anything I want to donate, and I am motivated to try to make it a really big bag(s). "De-nesting" always feels really good.
  • I spent about eight hours in movie theaters this past weekend, seeing "Inside Llewyn Davis," "The Wolf of Wall Street," and then, as a corrective to all the testosterone in the latter, off to the estrogen-heavy "Blue Is the Warmest Color."

    Yesterday was darkly comical. Around the holidays a good friend holds an annual Rugelach Ramble in Manhattan, visiting famed bakeries in Brooklyn and Manhattan, focusing solely on rugelach. He invites about 30 people who join up with him at whatever bakery they choose. Of course, you know how I freaked out I am by the spectacle of such reckless carb consumption. But he's a great guy and his friends are a smart, witty bunch, so I struggled with my anxiety and finally pushed myself out the door yesterday to meet them at Breads Bakery on 16th Street in Union Square neighborhood. Sat there drinking coffee for 20 minutes & no one showed, so I headed off to a movie theater. Only to discover later that I'd gotten the date wrong. It's today, while I am working, not Sunday! All that mental strife and fretting happened over absolutely nothing. I wish I'd checked the date, which also would have saved me from schlepping around in pouring rain yesterday, which practically dissolved some of my paper shopping bags.

    Today I've got a cup of coffee in front of me, and having put in my treadmill time, am back at work. I've got just one more year-end evaluation to write up. I've got a meeting at noon, introducing a new hire to an analyst with a writing job for her. I need to listen yet again to a recording of a conference presentation and try to transcribe some of the speech in preparation to turning it into a piece of writing.

    I'm thinking that I need to take vacation days later in January to make up for this stint of working while others are walking around all day sampling rugelach and having a good time.
  • We went to see the Wolf of Wall Street yesterday. I had no idea it was a true story. Very good movie. Wednesday we'll see either Inside Llewyn Davis or American Hustle.

    Two beautiful days of golf this weekend and we're hoping for a repeat next weekend. It's nice to get out in the fresh air.
  • Hey all!

    I spent the ice storm and then Xmas Eve and Xmas eating myself silly. I have not eaten that much that many days in a row - since at least 2010. We had a fun Xmas and, as always, there was a little guilt involved in getting SO MUCH when there are people with so little. I know my dogs got more from friends and relatives then some children get.

    I had to work the day after Xmas. I weighed myself that morning and was 12 - yes I said 12 - pounds higher then before the ice storm!! When I worked out that day in my normal shorts, I had a huge roll over the shorts and could literally see water RIPPLING in my stomach. I took this to be a sign that I was going to gain all the weight back.

    I am now on a mandatory vacation and have regained MOST of my control. I did a long run outside yesterday - the side of the roads were still ice covered, but I ran in the rural roads - I find drivers tend to be really nice towards runners. I was rewarded this morning with being .1 UNDER my redline. I still have work to do, but it has eased my mind. We do nothing special for New Year's so I should not have a challenge for a while.

    Saef - I have been to the movies ONCE since 2009 - to see Star Trek last MAY. We got a $40 gift card for Xmas to our local movies, so maybe you can make some recommendations to me?

    Jen
  • Dagmar.... Glad you could laugh at the link rather than cry!

    It sounds like most of us are ready for some normalcy. I'm trying very hard to be under 130 for January 1 but I'll try not to be too hard on myself if I'm not. I was 130.2 today but I've got some big food challenges coming.

    I'm not feeling great either. Dh's cold has got him snoring horribly so I'm not sleeping well. I gave up last night and retreated to the couch. I woke up with a headache and sore throat. I'm hoping it's just from the heat in the house.

    Jen-- wow! You have some wild weight fluctuations! Glad you're back down. My goal in 2014 is to get back under my redline. If I could just figure out how to do that....
  • Like traveling_michele, I have a sick DH, complete with the snoring and not much sleep for me. I'm determined not to get sick, too, and drinking lots of water and thinking positive thoughts to aid that process.
  • Quote: Like traveling_michele, I have a sick DH, complete with the snoring and not much sleep for me. I'm determined not to get sick, too, and drinking lots of water and thinking positive thoughts to aid that process.
    Good luck! My throat is very sore and I'm not happy about it!
  • Hi maintainers, I've been fairly absent from these threads partially because I'm now using an iPad instead of my barely working laptop and find that writing on forums and blogs comes a bit less naturally on this sort of interface. This whole post is actually being written by Siri, so if you find any comical errors that's why.

    BF had a friend visit this Saturday and poor guy spent the entire night being violently ill from some kind of stomach bug. Naturally, we are quaking in fear that we may be carrying it around, and it's only a matter of time before we are stricken with the same debilitating symptoms.

    Maybe worth mentioning but I haven't felt quite myself regarding my stomach since the day after Christmas. I feel guilty about all the time not spent in the gym, but I also have hardly any appetite.

    My weight has stayed about the same. There wasn't too much holiday overindulgence on my end.

    Looking forward to not doing much of anything this New Year's Eve. A lot of my friends will be watching the Phish show broadcasted live on TV. That sounds like a bit of a snore but it will definitely not be expensive...
  • My DH is also sick, as are all of my coworkers. My head and ears are still congested, and now it is spreading to my chest. I'm done with the sick. LOL

    I worked today after being off last week. I'm using my last vacation day tomorrow. Woo!

    I don't know what my weight is. I ate too much the last week, and my scale died on 12/23 and I haven't bothered to buy more batteries. It's an excuse, I know.
  • Someone from another chat board mentioned she had been sick and now her DH is sick and they've determined that they both had/have H1N1 flu. She said it was two days of the worst kind of bad in every way possible. She's finally feeling better but her husband is asking her how on earth she survived. I guess there are several cases of it up near where they live (MA?).

    Stay well and stay hydrated!

    I'd like to blame my scale for a weird blip, but maybe it does need batteries. But seemingly overnight it jumped 6 pounds but on re-weighing directly again it was only up one.
  • Jen, I wonder what's playing in your area? I wish I knew better what your taste in movies is like. Then I'd try to match you up with something that I think you'd enjoy.

    Still on my list for the end-of-year is "Her," "American Hustle" and "Nebraska," which are all playing nearby.

    There are three foreign-language films that I very much want to catch: "The Great Beauty," "The Hunt" and "The Past." For those, I'll have to go downtown.

    Traditionally this is how I spend New Year's Day: Seeing at least two and possibly three movies.
  • My cousin and his kids saw "American Hustle" and recommended it. I thought "All is Lost" was amazing. We are going to go see "47 Ronin" on New Year's Day - not because we think it'll be a great movie but because we think it'll be a gobbler with fantastic visuals.

    Dagmar
  • I have absolutely no desire to see 47 Ronin, but DH does. I don't know if that means we'll see it or we'll wait for it to come out on DVD or PPV. I think DH decided we'll see Inside Llewyn Davis tomorrow after a lunch out with DS and my in-laws.

    We're having a crisis at our house. Well, not really a crisis but we've recently had a spate of glass breaking. Someone broke a glass over Thanksgiving. I broke one of DH's new Scotch glasses while washing it right after that. Last weekend DH broke another glass and this morning one of the cats knocked over a glass of water and broke it. Thankfully no one has been injured but I sure have a lot of mismatched glasses.