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

I hate when recipes lie. “Simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes.” 40 minutes my ass, how about 2 hours? Liars. And I think this happens more often than people think with cookbooks (because, really, if it said “2 hours” would most people try the recipe? no).

Finally got snow. I was debating biking to work tomorrow, then MG reminded me that no one will know how to drive tomorrow and I really didn’t want to be on the road with those fools. Point taken, I’ll walk. Did go run this afternoon and with 15 minutes to go the snow started (tiny little stuff, but snow nonetheless). That was fun, been a while since I’d run in snow.

Of course, if it sticks around, it won’t be the last time this week, either. Provided it’s not too icy.

Picked up gobs and gobs of groceries yesterday, before I realized it was going to snow. Needed tons of staples, so off I went to pack my little bag lady cart and subsequently my limited cabinets with lotsa food. Forgot coffee, though. Will have to pick up more after the pool. Was otherwise feeling a little bit of my hermit-mood for the weekend. Did go see a play with Richard, his much belated birthday gift, this evening, and MG was over last night and today, but was feeling the urge to just stay in and nest. Trying to break out of that some, but it was a particularly social week, with two happy hours, so perhaps I was just burnt out.

It’s a good thing I normally bike commute, and thus had an extra pair of pants in my office to replace the ones that got soaked on my walk to work this morning. Whee.

Gorgeous day, after the rain ended. Slept for crap last night, though, so a rest day for me. Had a cult co-op meeting tonight which was going well until the issue of discriminatory pricing came up at the end (we charge less for seniors to use the fitness center, even though we’re all supposedly equal members of the corporation; it’s the only place where anyone pays anything different for “extra” services past the carrying charges). Nerve touched, on all sides. Fun, fun. Should be an interesting election season for the board in two months.

Get fitted for new orthotics tomorrow (yay new orthotics, yay killing off the deductible in one fell swoop). Mine are fine, except the little front part is about the sheer off. Will have to talk about whether it makes sense to have 2 pairs, given how much abuse I heap on them. We’ll see. In any case, the old ones will reside at work until they die so I don’t have to keep hauling them on the bike. Every ounce not carried is a good thing.

I alternate between really bored and really excited about projects at work. There are two long-term things on the desk that I absolutely dread working on because they’re just terribly dull, complicated, and seemingly never-ending. Then there are some more fun projects that I keep trying to get to, that are equally important as the other two dull ones, but which never seem to be able to come to the top of the stack, despite ongoing talks with various folks about the status thereof. I need to just knuckle down and kill off the dreaded tasks, but they always manage to sap my will to live.

And they wonder why I don’t want to be a manager.

Did finally manage to motivate myself to hit the grocery store and pick up a few foodstuffs on the way home. Had meant to yesterday, but came directly home, had something simple from the cupboard, and crashed semi-early after doing a couple of things around the house. Slept really, really well, and really, really late (for me), but needed the catch-up from the weekend and the return to work.

Haven’t touched the uberlist yet for this upcoming year. I’ve thought about it some, but not put thought to file just yet. Soon. Oh, and I’m debating a change in my normal new year’s day routine. Normally I go on a run, commemorating my return to running from 2000 after having mono. Just me, no electronic devices, no watch, nada. Just a run. But this year my club is having a ride that morning at 10, and I think I want to go do that. I joined the club so I’d have folks to train with, and part of moving down to Southwest was to get over to Hains Point and practice with them, but I’ve not really taken advantage of the proximity like I had intended to, so I’m thinking it’s time to get out and practice with them. Still could run, but I suspect a slightly more social beginning to the year should be in order.

After biking all over creation today (well, not quite, but more than the usual for me as I had errands to run, post-gym), and swimming for an hour, I feel much, much better. Moose + Exercise = Much Better Mood. It also = much hungrier Moose, but that’s par for the course.  It helped that it was insanely warm here in DC today, around 70 F (~21 C) for the high, where the normal high is about 23 degrees cooler than that, around 47 F (~8 C) or so. So after all that it was home to wash clothes, grab some leftover soup and chill out.

Work is in that odd state of not-quite-fully-loaded-up, but not-quite-on-down-time either. We always expect it to be quieter, but somehow the inevitable last minute crises appear. At least it’s not completely dead, though then I would be able to catch up on filing and clear off my desk.

Party tomorrow evening, and seeing MG for probably the last time before he takes off for his trip back home for the holiday. Office party is also tomorrow (my particular section, as opposed to my larger attorney office, which was last week). My boss asked one of the organizers if it was going to be a dry party. We assured her it was not, so she zipped off the requisite mother-may-I letter to the building manager and got our permission (long gone are the days when feds could legally keep liquor in their offices without any check or fear or reprimand).

Not sure if I’ll get a run in tomorrow morning or not. If not, so be it. If so, yay. Would be better with, to stave off the party calories, but that’s what the rest of the week is for.

Went from a week of so-so sleep to a night of no sleep Friday and it absolutely wrecked my Saturday. Couldn’t nap to save my life, didn’t do any of the errands I’d wanted to do, and I was a snarling, irritated mess. Thankfully I was able to spend the majority of it alone, and did get better sleep last night, which meant I was able to run those errands today, but didn’t do a lot more than that.

Part of the sleep thing is that MG is a restless sleeper, and I’m not the deepest sleeper in the world, so when he’s tossing or talking, it can wake me up. I may have to try ear plugs or something. He’s told me to wake him up, but that’s not my wont. Something will have to be found, and I’m sure we will, but working it out in the meantime has left me irritated.

Did take the time to make a good batch of soup today. I’d bought the veggies earlier this week and just hadn’t gotten around to making the soup itself. And let me just say, whoevver invented curry powder has my undying gratitude. Love, love, love the stuff. Combine it with peanut butter and I’m in heaven. Folks who’ve been to my previous soup night parties will have had this, the African Bean Soup. So had good soup, put some in the fridge, and several servings in the freezer.

I’m also thinking it’s finally time to have a soup night party soon. Haven’t had a get-together in the new place yet, so sometime after the new year I’ll have one.

Gradually returning to the land of the living. This cold has sucked ass. Not so much with the breathing, that’s actually been mostly okay, but this one has just left me incredibly drained of energy. I’ve been able to sleep, eschewing sudafed in the evenings in favor of sleep and depending on the humidifier, which has worked well. But that has meant that each evening around dinner time the sudafed has worn off, and without pumping another stimulant into my system I’ve not had the energy to do squat. Yay for funky dreams.

Am definitely feeling better this evening, and am hopeful that a run might be attemptable tomorrow.

Pretty much done with shopping for the immediate family, just waiting for the last bits to arrive early this upcoming week before I head down to see them next weekend. Can’t wait to see how the 2nd niece has grown (she’s 9 months old now), and to play with the older niece. But first, gotta kill off the last of this cold.

I love watching people trying to parallel park. I can see tourists doing so all day long on Independence Avenue outside my office window and it provides no end of amusement.

Speaking of amusement, day two of sudafed (yay head cold) is progressing nicely through the floaty feeling stage of the drug. Makes critical thinking oh so much fun. Did manage to avoid taking it last night before bed, so wasn’t up all night, but I did have several fun dreams as I floated in and out of consciouness (I usually don’t remember dreams unless I’m not really deeply sleeping).

The first was a scenario where I was working at a summer camp, likely a scout camp (but not the one I worked at up in Maine). I remember being really excited because I could keep up my triathlon training, though on my mountain bike, not the tri bike (dirt roads), and get in some much needed open water swimming practice. As well as getting some skin cancer sun exposure.

The second I’ve now forgotten. I don’t recall that it was terribly long.

The third and last one was teaching English to junior high school students in Taiwan, which involved me speaking a lot of Mandarin. While it was good to exercise those attrophying language muscles, it made for an odd dream (trying to explain to these kids where the term “alphabet” came from? why?).

Anyway, was good to sleep without drugs (though with a humidifier), but not the most restful night I’ve had. I’m hopeful I can avoid the almost inevitable sleepless night that comes with most of my head colds (and thus causes me to miss a day of work – because if you can’t infect your co-workers, why bother having a cold?).

I’m fighting off a head cold at the moment. Stayed over at MG’s place on Saturday and he had a fan going to keep the air circulating, and I temporarily forgot that fan blowing across Moose’s face = dry nose = head cold susceptibility. You’d think with the AC drama over the summer I’d remember that, but no. My own fault, but still annoying. Lotsa vitamin C & B being consumed (yay for Emergen-C) at the moment.

Tonight was a non-food night of shopping at the grocery store. Needed those lovely home staples of bleach, toilet paper, etc., so grabbed the requisite coupons and dragged myself up for it. Didn’t get home early enough to do whites (for which I needed the aforementioned bleach), but I can do that later this week. Did get in a swim after work, drill work this time, and felt good doing it and after. The bike ride home tends to feel a tad chilly, even after I dry off thoroughly, but it’s short enough not to be a hassle.

Oh, and I managed to lose my work badge. Which isn’t such a big deal, except that the policy of the security people is to drive you batty by punishing you for being a dork make you wait ten working days to get a new badge, even though the technology exists to print out a new one on the spot (as well as cancelling the old one). So, metal detector city for me for the next two weeks.  Thankfully that’s pretty easy when I bike in since everything but my keys (metal-wise) is already in my bag from the commute in. So once I come back from visiting my family over the weekend of the 8th I’ll be re-badged.

Did a massage exchange yesterday with a gentleman whom I’ve exchanged massages with before (for those unfamiliar, it’s simply a “you massage me, I massage you” arrangement). He could use some technique pointers, but overall is pretty good. Haven’t done one of those in ages, so was nice to get a little body work done.

And now, time to crash to help sleep off the cold.

I love going to the dentist for a filling. First they numb you up so even now, hours later, I still feel like a stroke victim who’s lost control over half of his face. Then they run a drill which was just as annoying to listen to when it wasn’t inside my mouth as it was (I checked, it was).  Then, when it was all over, I find out that evidently while they’re filing insurance on our behalf, they’re not taking payment from the insurance company – now they file, but you pay it all up front and get reimbursed by the insurance company. Whee.

Good thing I love my dentist (who gave me a lottery ticket for referring a co-worker to him – I won $1.00).

Add to the grumpiness the unseasonably warm, wet weather (I like warm weather, I like wet weather, but not together and not in November when it’s supposed to be cooler) and that the anesthetic has lead to a slight nausea and you have a fun morning.

In slightly better news™, my boss loved a memo I wrote yesterday for the front office, had no changes for it, simply asked that it be put on letterhead and signed out. Sweet. I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen, so is a good, good thing. Also, had a conference call over a payment issue that’s stretched out for months now, and it looks like we’re finally going to get to make some payments in a law suit now that everyone’s on board with the right database info and numbers. Whew. I will be happy to have that little thing off our plate. Now if I could just kill off the other two big projects that won’t die, I can get back to more normal matters…

It’s hard not to feel bitter this morning since I’m not out there racing the Marine Corps Marathon. The knee did not improve sufficiently over the week to feel comfortable doing a race of this length, and discretion is the better part of valor, or however that goes, and so I’m skipping the thing this year. There will be other races, and my ego was not so invested that this is a crippling event psychologically, but it’s still disappointing after all the training.

Not helping the mood is that I just paid out the ass so I can not listen to/watch a bunch of useless Continuing Legal Education courses so I can keep my law license. One does like to stay employed, but one wishes it weren’t so expensive, nor such a waste of time (there are no CLEs in my practice area).
Did sit down this week and look at next season’s races. I’ve picked several that I think I can do. Unsure as to whether I’ll sign up for another marathon (did put a half marathon in the mix, early in the season), but picked out a couple of triathlons, and I’m seriously considering doing a half ironman toward the end of the season (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run).  Added into the mix this year has to be more serious weight and core training. The IT band troubles I’ve had this past week are the proof of that, and I’d really rather avoid this sort of thing again if at all possible. The weights and core work will help stabilize stuff, and I’ve known that (intellectually), but not really felt the need for it (emotionally). Well, now I can’t afford to neglect it, so back to the weight room I go.

Thankfully, for the runners, it’s a gorgeous morning here in DC, and it looks to stay that way through the entire race. You couldn’t ask for better conditions. Which will make going out to watch pretty nice, too.