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

Surprising the boy with a slow cooker batch of meatballs tomorrow. He’s been at a work retreat the past two nights and gets back tomorrow, and will do so to an apartment that will smell fabulous.

I’m still irritated at myself, with regard to my last post on countfour. And I’m finding it difficult to blog as well. It’s an election year in DC, I can’t really talk about work or politics (yay Hatch act!), and it seems crazier than normal (in no small matter because of the proliferation of political ads, since Virginia is in play this year). I did finally get new orthotics for running, after some drama with the PT shop (the first set was too wide/tall & had to be shaved down to fit; PT guy was clearly not happy when I brought them in for refitting, but we got it resolved). So now I can run again, and have been starting to get back to that.

We’ve put in a request for a proposal for a wedding venue. Like the place, options seem good, then it’s just picking a date. Oy. The only date we know we want/have to work around is July 6, which is next year’s Total 200 ride, which the boy has said he wants to do next year, and I’m game to ride with him.

1. I’m fat (by which I mean I’m well overweight, not that I’m fatally obese).
2. I don’t like what my body looks like, naked.
3. The state of my body and health embarrasses me.
4. Being overweight affects my self-confidence in all aspects of my life.
5. I do not have self-control over junk food.
6. My body is not forgiving, so my diet needs to be exemplary.
7. I’m an emotional eater.
8. When I don’t plan my eating, I don’t eat well.
9. I spend too much energy trying to find a perfect, total solution to these problems, rather than focusing on small, incremental changes.
10. I get angry when small setbacks occur.
11. I give in to the negative talk in my head.
12. I obsess over my flaws.
13. These things hold me back from being the person I want to be.

I enjoy the theater. Enough so that I have season tickets at the local one, three blocks from my apartment. And they’ve done a really good job since they reopened in their new facility (on the old grounds). But it seems like every season there’s one dud, and last night’s was it. A Long Day’s Journey into Night was more like A Long Night’s Attempt to Keep From Falling Asleep. Highlights from the audience:

• The boy said I’ve never been that fidgety in a play before.
• The one intermission came less than an hour into the play, which was three hours long.
• We both were checking our watched almost religiously to see when the three hour torture session would be over.
• In the first part one gentleman on the other side of the balcony was actually snoring (someone woke him, thankfully).
• Many, many heads were nodding, including the poor woman beside me.

Not good signs.

I understand why the play won the pulitzer; its treatment of addiction in a time when such things weren’t discussed would have been ground-breaking. But in today’s bare-all environment, references to being a “drug fiend” are merely quaint. And you’ve got to work on the pacing of that particular play. There were massively long segments that just weren’t interesting or engaging. At all.

Eh, as I said, they usually have one play that’s a dud, so this was it this season. The next two, The Music Man and The Normal Heart both look to be much more engaging. Thank heavens.

My Big Gubm’nt Agency (BGA) has fucked up something in its spending and internal controls, which means we get to report a violation of law. Was telling the boy about this yesterday evening, because it’s been dragging on for months now as we investigate, but we finally met with several senior managers and came to agreement that it is indeed a violation and so we have to report it per statutory and regulatory guidance. And somehow I got tasked with writing the first draft of the letters, which have to go to the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate (aka the Vice-President), the Comptroller General and the President himself, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Whee! Thankfully I’m not the one who will sign his name to the letters – someone much, much higher in the BGA gets to be that lucky stiff, but I have to write the majority of the story here.

The funny thing was that I didn’t consider this any big deal, it’s just part of my job. An annoying part, to be sure, but just part and parcel of working as an attorney for a BGA, practicing appropriations law. In mentioning that I had to write the letters, and who they’re going to, the boy did a double take, repeated the recipient list (with the phrase “you have to write letters to…”), and gave me a shocked look. I suppose it doesn’t help that he’s been watching the entire run-through of the show The West Wing lately, so he’s had politics on the brain.

It’s hard not to become jaded about such things, since they are part of my job, albeit a rare part. But it was interesting to see the reaction from someone who doesn’t live and breathe politics in his daily life.

Hauling a six year old around one of the most popular-with-kids museums in the Smithsonian system is tiring, to say the least. No sense of personal space, popping around wherever they can. The most amusing part was that she was rushing us through so she could get to what she truly wanted to do – go to the gift shop! She made out okay there, picking up a cherry blossom festival branded panda and some candy to take back to her sister.

It’s been a fun visit, though. Played some on the Wii with her, chatted with my brother, played tourist. Fun stuff. And after we put them on the train tomorrow, the boy has the rest of the afternoon off with me. Not a bad way to spend most of a week.

Spent most of the afternoon today cleaning up my apartment, preparing it for a visit by my brother and one of his daughters (so part of prep has been kid-proofing). I hardly spend any time here any more, since most nights are spent up at the boy’s place. Now that the clutter, which accumulates because of the aforementioned “no time here”, is all cleaned up and put away, the place looks pretty darned nice. It’s easy to forget how well I’d set it up for myself.

The first newbie triathlete class is going well, despite their goal race getting cancelled. The next class starts in three weeks (eeck!) and then we’ll have both going through the new goal race for the first class, in early July (three weeks later than the original). I think we’re up to the challenge, but it’s going to be tough.

The return to regular training after some time off is always the worst. Getting back to a plan for nine workouts a week (three each sport), and while I did the scheduled workouts for Monday and Tuesday, I’m skipping this morning’s run in favor of more recovery time (will play by ear whether I will hop back in the pool tonight). Not a bad thing, recovery is just as important as the actual workouts, and in some cases more important. The return did reveal some muscular weaknesses I need to address through weight training (most especially upper back/lats, based on soreness from yesterday’s run), which will get added in starting this weekend.

Orientation for the newbies is Saturday, then the gear clinic, then swim clinics. The only issue I’m having so far this year is trying to filter all the information I have in my head these days (yay coaching certification!) so as to only present newbie-appropriate information. At least with the return to the training fold I’m not feeling like a complete hypocrite this season (unlike last year’s lost season).

After not really looking at racing, I’m now suddenly filling up a mid-to-late summer schedule. I deferred Rocketts Landing from last year (July 22), just signed up for the new National Harbor half-Ironman (August 5) and it looks like the Regional championship is going to be the Nation’s Triathlon (September 9), so I’ll be signing up for that once it’s confirmed. Not bad for someone who spent the last two months bitching about losing out on the one race I had actually affirmatively signed up for but can’t attend (Columbia – May 20 – same weekend as the boy’s best friend’s wedding). And the time frames give me time to get back to half iron shape. Yay. And hell, maybe I’ll try for the DC Tri sprint (June 17) as a training race.

Should finally be the push I need to get back into my groove. I’ve missed that since the Ironman in 2010. Last year just fell apart completely, fitness wise, though I don’t regret taking the time to (sort of) prioritize dating over racing.

Next week will be 28 weeks out from the half, and the start of a new season for me. The following week I begin ‘formal’ coaching for the club newbies. Promises to be a busy and fun season.

I decided I’m not going to do an uberlist this year. I didn’t want to deal with coming up with 112 things to do over the course of the year, when my track record is getting only around half of them done. The list doesn’t change, but circumstances do, and I no longer find it a useful or fun tool. Instead I popped over onto Wunderlist and did up a number of lists in different areas (finances, health, “us” stuff, etc.) with some immediate goals, and a mind to checking in on them and updating them as life moves on. Goals are important, and reasonable, achievable ones even more so. We preach specificity of goals in coaching, so here I go. Won’t be posting them, but will be using them.

No clue what I’m going to do race-wise this year. I was signed up for one race, but we now have another event that weekend out of town, so no can do. Ugh. And I’m not thrilled with the local choices, mainly because I’ll be coaching folks through them. Might still do them (especially if I can get a comped entry or two), but at the moment I’d rather focus on my newbies.

Not quite done with the uberlist for 2012. Working on it. Overall, the year was not so bad. I didn’t race, but I did get engaged. And I’m now a certified coach. So, not so bad.