Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

My brother has all the social skills of your average slug.

He’s doing okay, and is out of the in-patient thing, but I think he’s determined to be as much of a little shit as he possibly can to the rest of the family, especially his wife. His life to mess up, but it’s tempting to strangle him from this distance.

Went through some rough stuff there with it, mentally. Took a couple days off work, went in late once or twice. Work was very understanding, despite this being the end of the fiscal year. Am doing much better now, and thank you for the good wishes.

Trying to get back into a groove with exercise. After the half last month, well, I just sort of stopped. At least nothing normal or in any sort of pattern or habit. Been trying to decide what it is I want of the off-season, and what I want for next year. Mostly I think what I need is some fat loss (so much easier to run without extra dead weight) and some overall strength training for the joints, as well as some concentrated core training.

Which would be better if I was more into strength training and crunches/pilates, but you do what you have to do, especially when you need to train to your weaknesses. I’m also going to do a reduced season next year. I know there’s at least 2 runs I want to do in the spring, but I can’t think of any triathlons that are just screaming for me to do them at this point. I may do two shorter seasons next year, a spring and fall season, with a break in between to get my groove back. This year was just too long to keep up.

Did get in a run this evening. Heart rate was, well, disgusting, and my foot pod seems to hate me in the opposite direction now (before it was registering too far, now not far enough – it claimed my 4 mile run was 3 miles tonight; normally it claims it’s 4.5). But it felt good to get out there again.

I think the worst part about dealing with my brother this time around is how helpless I feel this time.

My parents are in Iowa, on the way back from South Dakota, but won’t get back for two more weeks, so they’re not there to help him. My sister-in-law has an injured leg from a car accident, plus my two youngest nieces (18 and 4 months old), and, well, she’s not the most mature 29 y/o I’ve ever met. I’d go down, but there’s nothing I can do as long as he’s in the institution, where we hope he’ll stay for a good 30 days this time. It’s an involuntary commitment this time, so we’re hopeful it’ll have more lasting effects.

I don’t have the closest relationship with my family, due partially to distance. But it’s still a mess to feel so helpless up here.

Happy hour started at 3 today.

Let’s recap this week:

• Didn’t sleep well from allergy issues.
• BC’s car window got smashed outside my co-op.
• iPhone locked up while running late to work so couldn’t call in to let them know.
• 2nd to last week of the federal fiscal year (my crunch time at work).
• Richard lost one of his best friends to cancer.
• My brother attempted, not for the first time, to kill himself Thursday morning, and is now institutionalized.
• A friend succumbed to leukemia yesterday, despite signs he was getting better.

This after my family lost another friend to breast cancer a couple weeks ago (again, after she was seeming to do better), and one of Mom’s close friends had to deal with a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment earlier this year. Mom herself is a breast cancer survivor, and might be facing some more surgery because of scar tissue related to her previous surgeries (no mastectomy, but some scarring from the lumpectomies).

I’m done, I’m just done this week.

Hadn’t seen BC all week. Our schedules hadn’t meshed at all, so we hadn’t gotten together until this afternoon. When he walked in I just held him for several minutes. Hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him (and vice versa).

After a short while we went to go see D-War: Dragon Wars.

Worst.
Movie.
Ever.

This is so getting added to the cannon of bad movies. Thank heavens the theater was in no way, shape or form crowded, because I kept leaning into BC’s ear to MST3K the thing (actress: “Don’t we have a plan?” me: “Honey, you don’t even have a plot, of course you don’t have a plan!”). Lawdy, what a mess. Sudden scene changes with no warning or transition, people suddenly knowing all about this obscure Korean fairy tale, the Tim Gunn lookalike bad guy, it was all just dreadful. It was very difficult not to dissolve into loud laughter, though we did giggle a lot over in our little section of the theater. A lot of so-so CGI was really wasted there.

Checked in on ‘s pussy, who thankfully was still alive and happy. Off to an amazing dinner at Vegetate after that, then home to get in some needed alone time. He had to zip home, but we have a date set for tomorrow. Which is good, since I just spotted his sunglasses on the dining room table.

Prior to his arrival I was feeling quite blah this morning, so I spent a good bit of time cleaning, my default reaction to feeling out of sorts. The bathroom looks much better for it, as do all the floors. BC and I are going to go on a charity run next weekend, so I’ll finally get rid of a bunch of stuff I need to donate, and make room for some folding chairs I have, and my two clothes drying racks when not in use. I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts in general at home, and now that race season is almost over (with the big effort races out of the way), I can actually focus on home stuff. The whole “entertainment” portion of the main room is a bit of a mess, moreso since my PC is now on its last leg (the CPU fan is making a most disagreeable noise). The two pieces there, the large desk and the big shelving unit, were bought for my last, large bedroom, and not for this space. They sort-of-work, but not really. A more proper entertainment center with media storage and perhaps a small desk and book shelf would work much better.

Not that any of that is happening any time soon, mind you. Debt reduction first, more decorating later. Paying off that loan this week cut a good year off the total time it’ll take to kill off all remaining loans with that company (just two more there). That’s the company with the highest interest rate, so with the greatest chance for savings on interest by paying them off early. It’s definitely been nice to see the payoff date change from several years in the future to just a year and a half (well, less than that, but that’s date if I continue the current payments with no more early payoffs) with the two sub-loans paid off these past couple months.

Time enough, despite the fact that I feel like I would make a hummingbird look patient when it comes to these things.

Fun little race this morning, the Sprint Four the Cure 5k, sponsored by the Four Seasons hotel here in DC (hence the cutesy name). I had signed up on a lark, really going to run it with a friend who, while he’s been running, had not done a race yet. I figured this was a nice, low-key introduction, and for your admission price they provided breakfast, which was a big plus.

Got there in plenty of time. As I suspected from the announcement about race conditions (“this is not a chip timed race”), there were no race numbers, just your shirt and a lottery drawing ticket. My friend Stephen was in town and staying with me at the last minute, but was amenable to the race, so he joined Michael and I. Found Michael quickly, got the shirt (which I ended up carrying through the race), got ourselves some water and set up at the start line at 29th and M, headed downhill.

Starting gun went off, and off we raced. Sort of. The field got going, then got to the bottom of the hill and hit the first bottleneck – the turn onto the C&O canal tow path (the 2nd time in a week I’ve run on a canal tow path, though this was a bit less warm). The first mile had a lot of shifting between running and walking as we had to narrow down to the small path, then open back up again, then narrow, then back, etc. First split was about 12.5 minutes accordingly.

Up and over one of the bridges before that, then out to the turn around. Kept a nice, conversational pace with Michael for the first half out, chatting with him off and on. The turn around was simply two young ladies standing with an umbrella, but everyone filed around the chalk mark on the ground and started on the way back.

I picked up the pace a little bit on the way back but didn’t push too hard, finally coming in at 35:17. Definitely not my fastest 5k, but overall a nice little race. There were more folks there than I expected, and the breakfast spread was pretty nice (though I indulged only in some fruit, preferring to save my stomach for later). Michael had a good run, and finished nicely in just under 38 minutes, which was about a minute faster than he expected. Good times, and a good way to start the day.

I paid off another (sub)loan from one of my student loan providers today. I called to get a payoff amount and they offered to take the payment over the phone at no charge, so I paid it off. Two down from them, two to go. Good stuff.

Combine that with the race Sunday and I was ready to drink with coworkers tonight at our regular work happy hour. So I did. And it was fun. And drink-full.

And I miss my BC. Should see him tomorrow, but it’s been almost a week.

5k race on Saturday. Don’t care a whit about it, but it’s the first race for a friend who’s been running but not racing, so going to be support. Should be an interesting experience. At least the organizers offer a good breakfast after the race for free. Good stuff.

Weight is still down from before the race. We’ll see if it keeps up.

Someone at work today called me lazy because I took the elevator down a floor to find a working bathroom, rather than taking the stairs. I laughed and declined to point out that I went 70.3 miles on Sunday. Lazy. Ha.

Firefox 2.00000000000000000whatever sucks donkey balls on the Mac. Not all the tabs fit on the screen, each one has its own “X” button rather than a single button that would close the one active tab so you have to keep moving the stupid mouse cursor to shut them, hitting apple-key-W won’t close the entire window if it’s the last tab, and the font for the bookmarks menu is too large to hold all of my delicately balanced bookmarks on one page, like it all used to do just fine under version 1.5. I am not amused. Additional features are not always improvements, folks.

I remembered some more vignettes from the race that I want to put to writing later this evening. Should’ve been in the initial race report, but I wanted to get it up sooner rather than later.

It’s the last month of the federal fiscal year and I’m again one of the most popular attorneys in our office, if not the most popular one. The next month is going to be b-u-s-y.

That light coming from yon burning orb in the sky? It’s fall light, not summer light. No humidity to futz it up, and much cooler out than it has been. Clearer, but different in hue and tone. Nice to see, nicer to know I can throw the windows open and not waste electricity on the AC. But so not ready for it to get darker earlier.

The nice thing about being off work is having time to do a more involved breakfast. Toast with lemon-pear marmalade was a treat.

That said, I was about ready to give in and get the Bizzy Gal version of coffee this morning – the water was taking forever to boil.

Unlike my experience after running races, I’ve not had any sort of specific soreness. No torn quads, no knee pain, no problems walking, just a general, overall soreness. Everything is sore. Not in a debilitating way, at least not totally debilitating, just a general feeling of soreness and the knowledge that I should be taking it easy.

Took the rental minivan back to the car rental place this morning. As promised, because of the delay in getting the car on Saturday, they took a day off the rental. I should know this location’s a bit flakey, but I’ll take the freebie (this is the 2nd time this has happened – and I’m okay with an hour of my time spent getting 1/2 the cost knocked off). Afterward I was debating coffee at the little place around the corner when I remember that Sticky Fingers is now open on Mondays in their new location, which is right on the Green line.

Dragged a friend over to meet me, and had what was one of the best sticky buns I have ever had. It was precisely what I needed. Hit the grocery store on the way home, bought more fresh fruit so snack on today, and came home to zone out. And pop lots of ibuprofen.

Tried a nap at some point, but no go. Killed lots of monsters on Sacred, leveled up a couple of times. Thought, briefly, about doing a bike ride tomorrow as I was putting away clean jerseys, but very quickly thought better of it. No exercise tomorrow, likely not any on Wednesday, either. Recovery is more important than feeling like I need to get moving again. Although I think I’m going to go get new running shoes tomorrow. If I feel like wandering out, that is.

The current pair is, well, disgusting, a result of all the water dripping into them from the run, and the dirt of the road coating them. Not to mention they were getting old, and this was the end of them.

Past that the plan is to rest more, do some reading for work, and kill more monsters.

Oh, was down at least three pounds between Saturday morning and this morning. RNJTM pointed out that 7 hours was probably 7k calories, minus whatever calories I put in (nowhere near 7k), although most of it was likely water loss. We’ll see tomorrow morning after today’s eating.

Still processing the emotional impact of the race. 70.3 miles is a long way to travel, both mentally as well as physically. Unlike after the century ride I did in July, there was no sobbing this time, though there have been a few “whoa” moments. I’m sure it’ll process in the time it needs to process, though it would be nice if it didn’t wait until I was back at work to do anything too emotional.

If there’s one thing the iPhone has done for me, it’s brought my dislike for having anything on my hands to the fore. The screen is just such a good collector of schmutz.

I’ve always hated having stuff on my hands, specifically the palms and fingers. Lotion, sweat, grease, you name it, hate it all. As a result, I wash my hands fairly often, which isn’t very good for my eczema. I try to put lotion on, but that’s right up there in terms of ick factor.

And of course, by necessity, you have to get the lotion on yor palms in order to get it on the rest of your hands. Yuck. So it’s lotion, wipe, lotion, wipe, and washing as much as I can.

But no matter how clean I keep my fingers, they always collect more stuff. And it always drives me crazy.