Kitty, I laughed pretty hard when I read that. It took me a minute to realize that the two sentences were not related -- I thought you were calling Saef an "antique"!

Yes, my second tri is this Sunday. On the one hand I'm less worried about it than I was about the other, because I did this one last year, the course is pretty flat, and the swim is in a 4-foot deep canal rather than a lake. On the other hand, I feel like my body has gotten slower and weaker over the two weeks since my last race. Sore legs today after running 30 mins at a 13:00/mile pace. That should have been a walk in the park, it shouldn't have left me with sore legs. HRM recorded an average heart rate of 168 during it too -- should have been much lower for that pace. After this race it's back to weight lifting for me I think.

Pat, what are the new meds for? I hate side effects.

I've never been to upstate NY. Silver, let me know if you plan to vacation there and maybe I'll fly out and visit. We still need to have a maintainer's group vacation/convention. Perhaps a leaf peeping New England cruise with lots of fresh seafood?

Saef, the hearing problem sounds really frustrating, but at least your hearing is returning. I know two people (a friend and a cousin) who are completely deaf in one ear and they manage pretty well.

Good luck for Sunday, Jessica! I'll be cheering you on and telling people 'I know her!'

Over-busy day but I am communicating with you from a new mattress & bedbase in my ancient bed. Almost antique, I suppose! It belonged to my grandparents and my father was born in it in 1925. Oh, it's so comfortable and I hope lots of aches and pains will get ironed out.

Two peacefully busy (?) workdays beckon. Almost alone in the building, just me, all my notes and a Lot of Packed Food. Gymn to start the day.

I am not losing weight nor, I think, inches but my face is all cheekboney and I keep remembering how tightly impossible these pyjama bottoms were two summers ago.

Ah, Paperclippy, if you only knew how close that really is to the truth. My high school reunion's approaching in a few weeks, and it's a big, round number. I hate to think how long it's been ... but to give you an idea, John Lennon's days on this earth were numbered after my graduation date.

And I'm likely not going to this reunion. Not because I'm avoiding it, but because I already went to one reunion five years ago, and I'm saving up my hard-earned vacation days for another trip Upstate later in August (to a perfectly enormous antique show that I always go to, in Bouckville NY) and for a stint as a house guest in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod. There's also a chance that I can go hiking in Montana later this fall with my cousin & his wife.

So, anyway: Lots of antiques to browse + Cape Cod + Montana > sitting around with the same people I sat around with five years ago, in a mediocre restaurant in a small town, having to peer at family pictures on iPhones & make my face look really interested for several hours straight.

Thank you, Pat. Some days, all I can manage are brief notes. Some days, I can manage words. And some days I run out entirely.

Those challenges people do. I'm in the middle of a personal 12 week challenge to lose 12lbs and to collect information. I'm holding steady - maintaining. What could be improved, in an ideal world, is more exercise (recurring 'injury' not allowing this) or improved food intake (that is within my grasp and I'm working on it). I usually eat well but the holidays and cronky pain are throwing that off.

Lots of work today, preparing for a tour of the south of England. I mean 'work work', trying to tie things up and put them on a memory stick so I can fiddle with drafts in the margins of doing my mother's tax return, going to the dump with my uncle and things like that. Some years ago, I wrote myself a series of 'tasks' amongst the Mum and Dad tasks like 'descale kettle', 'mend table', 'prune lavender' and so on. They say things like: SURVIVAL: DO LUNGES and POTENTIAL: I DO NOT EAT CAKE. They're good.

Must go. The DB has woken up. He and I have worked out that he is like a dog: needs at least two, preferably three, walks or serious exercise sessions a day. This usually happens naturally but there's been so much rain recently that it's been hard to get in. There's a gap in the rain so we're going biking/walking along this morning but it's got to be early so I can get on.

Silver, reading your posts makes me wish I lived in England!

The race yesterday was great! I met all my goals. Full race report is here: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/3416153-post87.html

Summary: I beat last year's time by a full half hour, made my swim goal of <16 mins, made my run goal of <38 mins, and blasted away my 57 min bike goal with a time of 50 mins. I'm really happy with the race and it was nice to do so well after being a little disappointed at not hitting my goals in the last race. Flat course and canal swim makes all the difference.

Of course my weight is up today though.

WTG, Jessica!
SB, your tasks sound more interesting than my tasks.

Well, tis August.....and I'm still where I was at the beginning of July. There's only one thing to do and it's to keep on keeping on. It comes down to the junk food, really. I'm instituting a "no junk food rule" except on Saturdays. I know it's not great to have it on Saturdays either, and I'll get to the point where it won't result in loss to eat junk food at all, but this is not working for me right now either. I'm getting irritated with myself.

Paperclippy - Congratulation on your race stats! I'm impressed!

SB - Enjoy your walk. I love you dog walking analogy. It makes exercise sound more like something to look forward to. Dogs certainly do.

Midwife - I hear you about the junk food. I was traveling recently and had to institute a "no more than 10" rule. No more than 10 chips, pretzels, french fries. Those are the things I can eat millions of. And I do find that I enjoy those 10 more, feel like I've had a little, and can put a lid on eating more than that.

I had a great non-scale victory this weekend. I'm taking a rowing class here in Baltimore. We went out on the water for the first time Saturday (this is week one) and our couch took video of us and emailed it. At first I thought "oh no, I'm sitting on my *** and I've been videoed, I will look enormous!" But I actually was quite happy with how I looked!

My goal this month is to incorporate some meditations three days a week, even if it's only 5 minutes. I'm stressed to the max and need some more alternative strategies for relaxing before I get so tense that I decide food will make me feel better.

Keep on keeping on everyone!

Jessica, I was wondering how your tri went. (Because you didn't post in the exercise thread you'd started, so I knew the Actual Moment was upon you, the thing you'd been training toward.) And you were worried in the days leading up to this Tri that you were running mooooore slooooowwwwly every day. Yeah, chick -- you were so slow that you actually beat your time in each event by an average of 20% over last year, if I remember right the details you gave in your other post. You kicked butt. I mean people kill themselves training to improve by tiny percentages, and look how much you improved. You are on the sweet side of the learning & training curve, is my guess. I bet you will do even better next year.

Now, could you please start another Moving in August thread? I promise I'll post each day individually, to make you feel less lonely. I don't know why but I like writing down what I've done every day. It's deeply satisfying to some obsessive part of me that needs a recording angel waching over me, tallying up all the effort. (I think it's a bit like how I love seeing at the bottom of a grocery store receipt that I saved whatever percentage due to shopping sales & using my club card.)

Great job, Jessica!! If I were you I wouldn't weigh for a few days and let that water settle.

I need to start posting in the "moving" thread as well, as I haven't been moving much for a couple weeks from dealing with the nausea. It's pretty much gone, but still left me without much appetite (this should be a good thing, right?) and being unable to eat much food at any meal. I'm sure I'll get past that, but right now things don't taste good and I actually get to a point where I can't force anymore - and it's a way lower point that ever before. I need to be a little more selective on the nutrition of what I'm eating if I'm only eating a little. WIth the nausea, it was whatever would stay down! - mostly bland, soft, and lukewarm. Spicy, which I usually love, hasn't come back into favor yet. (Jessica, since you asked last week, this is a new diabetes drug)

Dropped DH at the airport about 11am today. THen I went shopping! I have a couple new-to-me secondhand books, some yarn for wool hats, new "wipe your feet here" rugs for in front of the doors, new sheets, a new memory foam countoured bed pillow (we'll see how that goes), and - ta da! a new iPad! I'm so excited. It's charging so I can't play with it yet....

Will be even more intermittent than usual over the next couple of weeks - big road trip. Gives me a chance to test all those road-food boundaries. Fortunately, there should be a lot of hiking interspersed with the sitting still times. Wish me luck!

Thanks for the congrats guys! Pat, you're right, I think the week after my last tri I was up 1lb too which disappeared after a week, so it is probably the same right now. Up next is a 5k race this weekend, but it's not really a big deal for me so I don't care how fast I am. It's a race to benefit the symphony and we get free tickets for participating. DH was planning to do the 10k that is at the same time, so I was like, hey, I'll do the 5k, get a free ticket, and not get too bored while waiting for you to finish the 10k!

Can I just say how great it is that I can just sign up for a 5k race without having to worry about being ready for it or training or anything? Sure, 3.1 miles, no problem! And to think just a few years ago I couldn't even make it halfway around the 1/8 mile track.

Becky, have fun on the road trip and good luck with the food!

Pat, I'm so glad the nausea from the meds is gone. I've had med-related nausea and dizziness before and it really sucks. Let us know how you like the iPad.

Saef, you're right about the training curve. I'm sure the faster I get the more it will level out and my improvements won't be as much. For now though it's nice to see big gains. I try to remind myself of that when I feel so slow compared to everyone else. DH tells me, even though you're slow, you had to work way harder than them because they were always fit and you have to recover from 21 years spent sitting on your butt. It's very true.

In any case now that my races are done it's time to think about what's next. I'm thinking of going back to NRLW 2x/week over the winter, plus 1x/week swim, 2x/week run, and maybe 1x/week bike until the weather gets bad. Or maybe I'll focus on running for a while. Or maybe something else. In any case I need to focus on not eating too much since the number of calories I've been burning in tri training is far more than I'll be burning for the next few months.

Jessica, you really are rocking the whole tri thang WTG!
Saef, we passed the BLUE pLATE dINER ON THE WAY TO THE sPRUCE rIDGE Alpaca farm. Of course I thought of your favorite bouillabaisse. (Even mentioned it to DH. I referred to you as one of my internet friends). The kids and I are living upstate for the month, DH here for one week and weekends (i use up all my time off from work, DH has own business so cannot). Eating too much and not keeping good enough track but my scale is keeping me from losing all control.

I want to touch base with everyone but my eyes are closing. More tomorrow.
to all

Tell him it's a good place to eat, Kitty, just because your Internet friend says so. Maybe he'll take you for a nice night out when he joins you this weekend. (The kids can go play with alpacas in the meantime or something.) BTW, did you follow the media invasion covering the Chelsea Clinton wedding? But I'm guessing you're not down in Duchess County, you're up in Columbia County or parts adjacent.

I'm up .6 pounds over last week, which I expected.

On the other hand, one of our gym's Pilates instructors came back from her maternity leave & complimented me. Asked if I'd been going to the gym daily. She said it shows. I said it wasn't showing on my scale. She said my body composition had probably changed. (She hasn't seen me since mid-April.)

Also, one of the guys at the office asked me if I'd lost more weight since he'd last seen me in June. Probably less than 2 pounds, so I said, "Not much, really."

So something has changed, even if the scale is not reflecting the change.

I've had a stressful week, with a disappointing midyear performance review on the job, during which my boss told me that being superb at daily tasks isn't enough. I can't just do my job well & think that is adequate. I must also become a Visionary. I must Add Value to the Business by rethinking the product I support, for which I am a project manager, which means dabbling in product development. That isn't part of my job description, but my boss made it clear in the review that "above & beyond" is the name of the game now & that all kinds of things that aren't on the job description are really going to determine our performance for this year, and whether we're kept or put on notice. Ugh. So I remembered Silver's fine word, "resentment." Anyway, I did too much snacking yesterday, on nectarines & six or seven cashews or almonds at a time -- but too many times. Thus the scale's verdict this morning.

Now I need to head to the gym & see if I can snag an arc trainer.

The only product I really feel like developing today is me.

Kitty, sounds like it's a good vacation!

Saef, that sucks about the performance review. I hate how basically in order to move up in the world you have to do "above and beyond" the call of duty. It's like, if you expect me to do this extra stuff, why didn't you put it in the job description? Sad that being great at your job isn't enough to be promoted.

Hi Girls
Yes, we are in COlumbia COunty, 20 min north of Rhinebeck. There was much discussion of the Wedding
neighbors: what are u wearing?
me: haven't decided, you?
neighbors: will it be a rabbi or priest? heard the catering was kosher
me: think we'll be able to get down the Taconic pkwy or too much security?
neighbors: what time are you leaving?
....over the course of multiple days......

from these same neighbors I have in the last few days learned pickling, old world style, 2 diff eggplant dishes, also old world style (both of which I will share b/c they are OUTSTANDING!) and how to be less afraid of my cuisinart

Saef, I remember my first job eval at the same place I have now been employed for 15 years. One of the things I remember was the above and beyond discussion and wondering how on earth if I was wonderful at my job could I be so disappointed that I did not do spectacularly in this criterion as well. Luckily I am totally ok with being a scrub more pt care, less paperwork!

marvelous, fabulous vacation!