Month: April 2009

I hurt. I’m being punished for adding squats and lunges to my routine yesterday.  I could feel it when I ran this morning, but it wasn’t until I got back and squatted down to feed the dogs that my legs really started to ache.  It’s a good ache, but it’s going to be very hard to repeat those exercises tomorrow morning.  At least I seem to have solved my shoe problem.  I loosened the laces a ton this morning, leaving just enough to tie a tiny bow, and my feet didn’t hurt.   Yay!

I finally watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog the other day.  Love it!  And I want more.  Neil Patrick Harris is just too cool.  I watched Enchanted yesterday, too.  It was surprisingly good.  Not great, but there are parts of it I want to see again.  Like the big musical number in Central Park.  And I think I really like Amy Adams.  Junebug and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day are on my Netflix list.

My day was over by about 4pm today.  I’m still awake, yes, so technically my day is still going on, but since I’m essentially sleepwalking, this doesn’t count.  I am SO tired.  We didn’t get to bed early last night like we planned (the last time I remember looking at the clock it was around eleven), and we got up at five this morning.  John thinks we should take credit for 4:30, since that’s about when I got anxious and started bouncing around, according to him.  Anyway, we were out the door by 5:40 to make sure we got to Alexandria in time to park the car and catch the shuttle bus to the starting line of the 25th Annual George Washington Parkway Classic.  (The 5K starting line.  There was a 10-miler, too.)

I’m practically asleep at the keyboard.  I think the details of the race will have to wait until tomorrow.  I just talked to Mom and Dad, who are trying to decide whether or not buy this house in Shelbyville that sounds really nice.

Tonight is definitely going to be an early night.  Oh, breakfast at the Royal Restaurant in Alexandria?  Not good.  I do not recommend it.  Not terrible or anything, but we (me, John, Erik) got the buffet and no one went back for more.

Okay, my eyes are going to kill me if I don’t take out my contacts, and once my contacts are out, I’m pretty much unconscious.  See ya.

Another very nice day.  I like when they occur one right after the other.  I was planning on doing some planting this weekend, but I think it’s going to be too hot.  Besides, I have a little more research to do for my flower bed.  We will make some tree decisions, though.  Then, because homeowners’ associations SUCK, we have to submit an architectural change application, with landscaping diagram, just to plant three trees!  We need to replace the poor dying one in the front yard, and we’d like to plant a couple near the deck for eventual shade.  I have no idea how long it will take to get this change approved.

But that sounds negative, and I don’t feel negative today.  John is about to head to Leesburg to get some help from a guy at work with something car-related.  I will take the dogs for a walk, and when he gets back, we’ll eat dinner.  It’s a beautiful warm evening, and I think our walk will be very pleasant.  Is it weird for me to say “our walk” instead of “my walk” when that “our” consists of me and two dogs?  It doesn’t feel like just MY walk.  They’ll enjoy it too, I’m sure.

Hooray for Friday nights!

I’m calling today a wonderful day now.  I know it’s early, but it’s been really good so far.  My run this morning was very nice (very encouraging, considering how not fun they’ve been the last few days), it’s beautiful outside, and I spent the first hour I was at work rearranging my office.  I have stuff to do today, but one of our deadlines was yesterday, so all the pressure and craziness associated with that is over.  I just feel really good.

I have a headache, and I’ve been trying to finish my book all day long.  I can solve both of these problems by going to bed now, I think.  John and I just watched another episode of Kings, and I’m that much closer to giving up on that show.  I just don’t care about the plot, and most of the characters annoy me.  There’s one little mystery I kinda want to see solved, but only if that happens in the next week or two.  If it doesn’t, I think I’m done with Kings.

A small thunderstorm came up out of nowhere this afternoon.  (I’m sure someone knew it was coming, but I didn’t.)  I drove through it on my way home.  When I got home it was already moving away to the east, and as I looked down our hill, I saw TWO rainbows!  One right on top of the other!  Maybe you think I’m a little too excited about this, but I don’t care.  It looked cool.  See?

Also,

It almost doesn’t matter what happens on any given Monday.  It could be a good day, a bad day, a normal day…it still takes forever.  Today wasn’t any particular kind of day.  Work was busy, but in a good way.  The company band had its first meeting of the year tonight, and that was both fun and frustrating.  I didn’t get home until about 8 o’clock, which kinda sucks, but the dogs were fine and I didn’t have anything to do anyway.  I watched some TV (last week’s episode of Fringe may have been the grossest yet), and I think I’m going to crawl into bed and read.  This is the one night a week the dogs get to come upstairs with me, at least until John gets home.  They keep me company when I’m alone in the house.  Oops.  It’s later than I thought and Roxy needs her medicine.

Lemon out.

I think it’s easier to have wonderful weekends as the weather gets nicer.  Saturday we got up, I ran (badly – I think 60 degrees is when it gets officially too hot for Roxy), we had breakfast, and then John worked on his car and I ran errands.  I went to a nearby nursery and talked to a guy about trees and what I should plant in my flower bed so I can do the least amount of upkeep.  And I showed him a picture of the poor stunted tree in our front yard.  He said it has been infested with wood-boring insects and is slowly dying, so we should just take it out and put something else in.  John and I kind of thought we might have to do that, so then I talked to the guy about what kind of tree we should put in, and what kinds of trees we should plant near the deck for shade (someday).  Very nice guy.

We had a very nice time with Christina and Will that night (dinner, Wii, alcohol – perfect combination!), and then didn’t get enough sleep before we had to get up this morning so we could run before heading to Ballston to have brunch with Erik (always fun).  So we’re caught up with all his news, we ate entirely too much brunch (that’s what we get for going to the Cheesecake Factory), and then we ran more errands on the way home.

Our weekends are always full of errands.

In other news, John and I are running in the George Washington Parkway Classic (the 5K, not the 10-miler) next Sunday morning in Alexandria (Old Town).  The race starts at 8am, and for us, it ends around 8:30.  Erik has promised to come out and cheer for us (and join us for breakfast afterward), and it would be really cool if anyone else local wants to come out, too.  Check out the website and the race map and let us know!

My books came early!  I love Amazon.  I ordered 10 books the other day.  They were scheduled to arrive this coming Monday, but they were on the porch when I got home.  Yay!  Of course, I’m still finishing the Otherland series, and I have another book to read for the book club before the first Tuesday in May, but who cares?  I have new books!

I just sneezed, and Riley came over to check on me.  Or to steal my attention away from the computer.  Maybe both.  He hates being ignored.  Silly dog, with his big brown eyes and very wet nose.

I thought of a bunch of songs I want to put on my running playlist, so…I’m off to do that.

I know this isn’t really a word I use, but go with me here.  I don’t feel centered.  I feel like I’m lurching from thing to thing, reacting to everything but not really choosing what happens next.  I’m not really worried about anything (I’m always worried about something, but those things are on the back burner for now), but I don’t feel like I’m in control.  Some of it is work; I don’t really know what my priorities are supposed to be.  I feel like I’ve let some things slide, but I can’t really pinpoint what.  And at home…I always have this list of things to do to balance against what I want to do.  And what I want to do wins out probably more than it should, so I feel guilty about shirking responsibilities and I can’t enjoy the things I want to do.  Perhaps I need more lists.  I have lists of things that need to get done and things I want to do.  Maybe I need an actual daily list of Things I Am Going To Do.

Tomorrow:

• Run three miles before breakfast
• Eat right (no pigging out!)
• Clean the kitchen and family room
• Set aside 30 minutes (at least) to read (uninterrupted)

I can do that.  The weekend will include more cleaning and some yard stuff.  John has homework and a quiz, so we’ll probably have some quality alone time.

Well, almost no distractions.  There’s the internet, but I can mostly ignore that.  I’m volunteering again, but since the staff members are out of town, we (the volunteers) just signed up to watch the office in 2-hour shifts.  I’ve got less than an hour left now, but since there’s nothing to do (no calls to make, no data to enter), I’ve been reading.  I’m not in the most comfortable chair, though, and my butt is slowly going numb.

I haven’t been sleeping well the past few nights, and I think it’s because of my book.  One of the characters is a really creepy psychopath, and he’s kind of freaking me out.  I’m not going to stop reading it (it’s the last book in the series and I want to know how it ends), but it makes me nervous.  I need to find something calming to read/watch/do (meditate?) before I go to sleep.

Half hour to go here, and I’m going back to my book.  Whatever calming mechanism I decide on will have to wait until I get home.

I feel like I’m waiting for summer vacation to get here so I can relax, but I don’t get summer vacation anymore.  Does that mean I’ll never get to relax?  That’s a depressing thought.  And I don’t mean that I’m particularly tense right now, anyway.  I just feel like there’s always so much to do and to worry about.  I want a break.  A LONG one.  No responsibility.  And lots of sleep.  Where can I get that?  Besides jail.

Apparently, yardwork makes my legs hurt.  I am sore from my butt all the way down the backs of both legs to my ankles.  I’m not exactly sure why that’s what hurts, but it must be from the yardwork.  I didn’t run all weekend, but we spent five or six hours in the yard on Sunday.  We cleaned up after the dogs, mowed, started to tear apart the side of the yard (by the chimney, where it was a jungle last summer), weeded the flower bed, and pulled dandelions.  And mulched a few areas.  And John dug up that woody, bamboo-ish plant that takes over the flower bed every year.  Its root system was HUGE.  I’m not sure we got it all, but John thinks it won’t come back this year.  He doesn’t think it’ll recover that quickly, assuming we didn’t get all of it.

Sunday evening we grilled lamb and caught up on Heroes.  (We caught up on Lost Friday night.)  Saturday morning was the perfect rainy weekend morning.  We woke up, heard the rain beating down, rolled over and went back to sleep.  When we woke up again, it was still raining hard, but hunger (and whining dogs) drove us downstairs.  We had bagels and watched TV and lazed around until we decided to do something.  John went into the garage to work on his car and I did our taxes.  (Boo taxes – we owe for the first time ever!)  But even that wasn’t so terrible.  John was covered in grease by the time he stopped working on the car, so after he cleaned himself up, we went to the mall to return a part at Sears and pick up his new suit!  Said new suit was ready, but when he tried it on, the jacket still wasn’t right.  So they’re fixing that.  Then we went to Borders (yay bookstores!), dinner (I guess dinner was before Sears, but whatever – you don’t care), and ice cream!  Lovely day.

This morning I had cream cheese and jelly on matzo ( I really don’t like to spell it like that) for breakfast.  You know what?  It was really good.  I probably won’t make a habit of it, but I’m sure I’ll be eating for the next week or so, until I run out of matzo.  Or cream cheese.  Or jelly.  Cream cheese doesn’t belong in my diet, really, but matzo is better (calorie-wise) than a bagel, so it evens out.  ?  Not really.  But I can live with it.

To do this weekend:

1. TAXES!!!!!!  Yes, I waited until the last minute.
2. Update book and movies lists.
3. Yardwork.  Lots of it.  I hate it, but there’s a lot that needs to be done.

Okay, yardwork needs to be in the #2 spot, and I’m sure I’ll add more to this list later.  Right now, I need to get to work.

Today was much better than yesterday.  Yesterday I couldn’t keep my eyes open most of the day.  I desperately needed a nap around midday, and then I nearly fell asleep in the dentist chair.  Went to bed early, slept in instead of running.  I’m still tired, but it’s much more of a normal kind of tired today.

Noah Wyle is trying to get me to help save the polar bears.  Cute videos of baby polar bears go a long way towards convincing me to donate.

I really need to stop trying to write while sitting in front of the TV.  Concentrating is impossible.  Of course, it would help if I had anything to talk about.

There must be something wrong with me.  I like working for campaigns.  I mean, even doing the low-level stuff like calling strangers about supporting the candidate and entering the results of those calls into the database.  I like the people who work on the campaigns.  And my buddy Jordan (from the Leesburg office for the Obama campaign) is an intern in the Loudoun office!  So that’s cool.  I don’t plan to give them as much time as I did for Obama last fall, but I definitely want to help out.  I’m still really tired, but I feel so much better about going over there tonight.  I’m very glad I went.

I stayed up entirely too late last night watching the game.  It was only the second basketball game I’ve watched in years, i think.  I’d like to watch the women’s championship game tonight (woo Louisville!), but I promised to volunteer for the gubernatorial campaign from 7-9.  I have to leave in less than 20 minutes, and I SO don’t want to.  I’m really tired, and I just don’t want to leave the house again.

I’m watching Girl, Interrupted, and it’s really freaking me out that the main character’s name is Susannah.  She doesn’t spell it right, though.  No time to finish the movie now, either.  Gotta go volunteer!