Just got back from Crossfit and.....drum roll please....a yoga and pilates class! And I actually liked it. I NEED to do this. It's being run right after one of the CrossFit sessions by one of our CrossFit members who has been teaching yoga and pilates for years. She's astoundingly strong and tiny. Looks like a walking anatomy chart. She has a Russian accent and sometimes scrambles her words so we were instructed at one point to "pull your heels to your toes". Huh? She meant palms to toes.

I realized in the middle of the workout that my core is not nearly as strong as I thought. I can do sit ups all day, but could not "climb my leg". Also realized that one of the reasons that I've loathed previous yoga classes is because they have all been taught in low-light yoga studios and I couldn't see the instructor.

Pat- Nope, I don't get paid for overtime That would be nice, but I'd hate clocking my hours and our non-exempt employees are not allowed to clock more than 40 hours per week.

Time to start weekend chores.

Mel

Mel - you don't have to clock your hours?! I'm a salaried employee and have to make sure to put my time in. Some people actually have different 'buckets' where they have to mark how many hours they worked within each during the week. I work on so many things that I'd have 20 buckets with 15 minutes here and there.

Midwife: Really?! No basements there either. Wow. Well, lets just say I'm a midwestern through and through and as one, I just think I need to have a basement to run to in case of oh I don't know, a wind storm with an attitude. We call them tornadoes here.

Basements are a great place for storage like, holiday decorations and small children..oh I mean their clothes. Seriously though, I would like a walkout basement that would double as a hang out for my sons and their friends. If I can keep them home but not underfoot, I always know where they are, who there with, and what's going on (to some extent I won't be delusional here). What I don't want to do is share my family room on the main floor with this same group of people. Its just too close for me. I am someone who really really needs my quiet space and I know that I would be more comfortable with that added room as a buffer. But, that's just me.

Mel: I'm SO HAPPY that you are having a good Yoga experience. : In my opinion the movements are a beautiful display of human strength inside and out.

Beautiful sunny day here and I'm almost finished painting a bedroom. Contacted my realtor for my home in Columbus and meeting up with her on Tuesday. Rock On.

Ah, yes, tornado alley! Those little details in life...

When I first moved to Colorado and was looking at buying houses, basements freaked me out. Being from California, I only knew basements as things in horror movies where the killer was located.

Nelie that's so funny! I totally get that though. And for me...I like the idea of being able to "get under my house" for more space...to store...whatever... I would subconsciously feel trapped in my house without a basement under me.

K. Off to finish off my floors. I'm putting a "glaze" on the hardwood. Looks beautiful but I'm only halfway here.

lol, nelie! I've never lived in a house without a basement. Where would I put the freezer, power tools, paint cans, cat boxes and kids?

mel

That is what garages are for!

Our basement is our gym and also storage. We also don't have a garage.

I agree - well except for the kids! We have a daylight basement under the main house, and we built it with 2 bedrooms (currently my office and my craft room), a laundry room and a larger family room/shop/whatever. What we don't have is a bathroom down here - we built in the late 70's when people still had one bathroom! We'll have to face the music and add one before we well, or we can't call these two rooms bedrooms. We also put an addition on our house in the late 90's, and it has a crawl space which is where all the decorations, extra paint, etc. live.

DH has safely arrived in Massachusetts. Called me about two things he'd forgotten! I'm making lists of what to take, and thinking a lot about packing, but I haven't done it yet. I leave Wed night. I do have a hair appt tomorrow, and will get my snow tires off on Wed. Oh, and a dental appt on Tues. What a fun week....

Good luck house hunting Lydia!

I am catching up after the weekend. I did skim over the posts last night but I had no time to write. It seems to be that I frittered away the entire Sunday. On Saturday, I had a major headache and Advil did not help much so I went to bed at 10 pm and took 2 Tylenols PM (I have never had 2 Tylenols PM before).
I flipped through magz maybe for 20 minutes and then I went to sleep. I woke up at 8:48 a.m. on Sunday (!!!) after a long and very complicated dream and I still felt like in slow motion.
I went to my yoga class (I sweated horribly, I bet I am the only person who sweats in yoga class - it was a brutal one though). Got home, showered, changed and drove about 20 km to another town to have a lunch with a friend who moved away and whom I haven't seen for ages. I think I got there at 1:25 pm, she was already there. Our tongues and vocal cords got a BIG workout!!!
We both had nice butternut squash soup and Sonoma Valley Salad (mesclun mix, red peppers, some seeds, feta) with grilled chicken boob, light citrusy dressing on the side. I could not believe, when I got back into my car, that the clock on the dashboard read 4:55 p.m. It felt likely we talked barely 2 hours.

Lydia,
I agree, a house must have a basement and a garage. I would find a house without a basement very odd. Also, where would the washer and dryer go, not to mention the furnace, the water heater, and other stuff.

Mel,
Good job on the Crossfit, yoga AND Pilates. Please do tell, how does one climb one's own leg?

Pat,
Where in New England are you headed? Enjoy your vacation!

My shoulders are still sore from Saturday's TRX.

Midwife, Nelie, Rabbit, Birchie -

Alena

Oh by the way, this is a BRILLIANT idea!!!

Tried to post earlier and lost it somehow... Sadness.

Good exercise the last several days. Lots of running, still following Krista's 3 day Intermediate FB workout (going to try to make it four weeks with the same workout before I dive into Pat's PN stuff...), lots of stationary biking. I have now gotten up and done some yoga every morning for the last seven days, pretty exciting. Alena, I sweat during it too. Even the one titled 'no sweat yoga'. Hrm.

Lydia - sorry about the house! I have never lived in a house with a basement, but I covet one.

Pat - enjoy your trip and be safe!

Nelie - you aren't docked if you don't make 40 hours in a week are you? Making a salaried employee 'clock' for other than commission or billing purposes is a little sketchy with the DOL rules, even more so if they try to dock you for less than 40.

Mel - Glad you enjoyed the yoga! I do find that it helps my core. I can't 'climb my leg' well either, but it is because of my tight hips and hamstrings more than my core.

Good day everyone!

This is the only company I've worked for so I had assumed all salaried employees had to record their hours.

As for working less than 40, its complicated. In my area, we are expected to work 45 hours/week, if you don't then you basically won't ever get promoted and will get smaller increases in salary. Your hours over 40 go into a pool of sorts which you can use if you get sick or need to take off a couple hours here and there. When your pool goes into the negative though, you aren't looked at favorably. Meaning if you work exactly 40 hours every week and then get sick and have to take a day off, then you go -8, you are expected to make up those hours sometime to bring your pool into the positive. If your pool reaches a certain point (-50?), you can be told that you have to switch to vacation time or take unpaid time off.

nelie-, if you have to track your hours in "buckets" it's probably more for project management stats than keeping tabs on you. The only time I've had to do that is when working on multiple projects in IT.

I feel awful today. I woke up felling fine and did cardio and my normal morning routine, but got slammed with one of those brain-sloshing headaches while on the train, and it just went downhill from there. I tried CrossFit, but left after doing the warm up and about 6 pathetic snatches and feeling like I was going to keel over between each one.

I CANNOT get sick this week! We are doing a dry run of our systems conversion this weekend, and I've so many training calls and data validation to get done, SICK is just not an option. Aside from the little issue of actually still having clients and real work to do

Alena- Lunch sounded lovely! Isn't it fun when that happens? The food sounded good too.

Mel

Alena - we'll be in Mass, south of Boston (sister in Plymouth, SIL in Wrentham) and also a trip to Western Mass (Amherst) as DH is looking for a friend's PhD thesis so wants to visit the UMass library. Also Maine (BIL in Waldoboro, niece in Freeport). Whew. Then I get on a plane on Fri 4/30 and go to Clearwater, FL for a long weekend with a long-time GF. She has a

Trying to fit in some exercise between now and Wed. Today I had a haircut, and tomorrow I need to trek into ANchorage to the dentist - boo! Sometime I need to pack and clean the house and do one last load of laundry (housesitter = clean sheets )

to you all. Hope you feel better, Mel. I know about those times that you cannot be sick....

Mel: Virus be gone. Hopefully that will work.
Pat: You sound crazy busy too. Enjoy the trips. It seems that you will be traveling for a while...who's running the town while your gone?!

Shannon: Don't you hate it when your post goes off into the great unknown. Great job with getting on the mat early in the morning. I'm dreaming of an empty sunfilled room with floor to ceiling windows that look out into the outdoors and nice hardwood floors while streaming in a yoga podcast. Maybe one wall with a full mirror to check the pose once in a while. Wouldn't that be awesome? :

I'm focusing upon a workout tomorrow after I meet with the realtor about my current house. I. cant. wait. Unless I decide to just go back to bed after talking with her.