Books, Life, Travel

By kilax, September 27, 2018 6:50 am

• We’re going on a trip! Can you guess where?! HUGE thanks to Mica for helping us with our tickets!

• I finished Reborn on the Run and started A River of Stars, but didn’t make it very far before it was due at the library. It was well written, but I wasn’t really rooting for the main character, so I don’t think I’ll put a hold on it to finish it. I picked up a new novel, The Ensemble.

• We are joining the 21st Century and getting TSA Pre✓next week. I’m going to be traveling more for work (and have two personal trips coming up), and hope it will save me a little time and hassle. HOPE, ha.
• I got to trade in my huge laptop (required for the detail I was on earlier this year) in for a smaller one yesterday and YAY!!! It weighs a few pounds less, and takes up much less space in my backpack. WOOT.
• Ugh, I was bummed when Jordan Hasay dropped out of the Chicago Marathon, and now Amy Cragg too?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I am excited Gwen Jorgensen is running, but was really excited about Hasay and Cragg.

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 196

Life, Running + Training, Work + Design

By kilax, September 26, 2018 4:01 pm

Every time I wear this shirt, I think about the time someone asked me if I was pregnant, while wearing it.

I had a necklace on, but it broke. Womp womp.

I also think, geesh, I’ve had this blouse a long time. I hold on to clothing items (that I actually wear) forever (which is okay, except it’s like “is Kim wearing the polka dot blouse again?!”). Especially running things – I find what I love, and buy as much as I can. I don’t try new things or update my wardrobe often, and this sometimes backfires when I need to replace something, and it’s no longer in stock. I do NOT like to research and try out new things when I have something that worked and just needs to be replaced.

My city run at lunch break was interesting… I got yelled at (you dumb b*tch!) in two separate occasions for using the crosswalk – when I had the walk sign. Oh, Chicago. I also almost got hit later on, by a taxi running a red, after I had already waited for several cars to run the red before I used the crosswalk (again, with a walk sign). Typical. Infuriating.

My out and back away from traffic was peaceful, at least.

I also helped a tourist by giving them directions in Spanish, so that balanced out my run and made me feel neutral (rather than 100% pissed at the idiots, or 100% warm and fuzzy for helping someone).

Neutral/going through the motions describes me lately. And numb. I’m still sad about Data, and have a little crying outburst most days (DO NOT READ THE RAINBOW BRIDGE LETTER FROM THE VET OMG), but I get through the days. I have fun. I’m cheerful around people. I get my work done. But I do want to spend a lot of time napping. This will even out soon. Or I’ll want to nap every day for the rest of my life (<— more likely).

Work. I realized last week that I feel lonely at work (and wrote a whole post about it but this paragraph will suffice). I spend so much time in my own little world, working on my solo projects, and my team doesn’t communicate about what we’re up to, unless we have an issue or something interesting comes up. It feels odd to spend forty+ hours a week on something and not talk about it much (at work or outside of work), even though I don’t love it/am not passionate about it. I have a big desire this year for people to ask me questions. <— needy (and this is not a need for attention, but a need for my life to feel witnessed, outside of my marriage).

And to end on a funny (sad?) note from my day, I realized when I got to work that most of my food was peanut butter – I had oatmeal with peanut butter, peanut butter crackers, peanuts, a peanut butter sandwich, a peanut butter cup, and a peanut butter CLIF bar. Oops. I won’t be doing that again. (I also had some fruit, phew, and will have to eat all my veggies with dinner muah ha ha.)

NEED MOAR PB!!!! AND MOAR CARBS!!!

Since I am talking about food… someone recently asked me how I lost weight last year. It was not by eating peanut butter items all day long. I told them I stopped binge-eating things, only ate when I was actually hungry, and had one serving at dinner. What I forgot to mention to them was that I worked out a sh*t ton. Oops. But really, for most people, losing weight is about cleaning up their diet, anyway.

Thanks for reading my stream of consciousness post!

Life

By kilax, September 24, 2018 6:02 am

We had a productive weekend, and I feel good about that! Tired, but good!

We have guests coming in October (three of the four weekends!) and I want our house to look a little more “put together.”* Which for me, means organizing, purging, and MY FAVORITE THING – HANGING FRAMES!

I am not sure what it is about permanently hanging our framed art/photos that makes my heart SO happy, but it does. It really does.

These frames have been sitting on top of the book shelves around my desk since February 2016 – they look a lot better hung! Please disregard the sloppy shelves and desk – I haven’t tidied those up yet.

We also tidied up the office (obviously not shown), cleaned all the windows (inside and out), took apart the oven hood to clean, mowed the yard, fixed a tile on the roof, and sealed up some holes that bees were getting in to our house through. And did our normal weekend chores and errands. And researched new toaster ovens since someone accidentally started it on fire.

I found this gem in the office. Seems like Steven was meant to be a vegetarian. 

Gosh, it doesn’t sound like much when I list it out, but it took up a huge chunk of our weekend.

There was ONE special errand – Steven went to Milwaukee to get coffee beans and stopped and picked up vegan donuts!!! It was pretty awesome to come back from my long run Sunday and know that donuts would be at the house soon.

We watched Pitch Perfect 3 (Friday night) (again!), The Shape of Water (Saturday night) (luckily my snis had warned me about the cat scene, so we fast forwarded through that), part of The Family Man** (Sunday night), and several episodes of The Good Place (Saturday and Sunday lunch).

Kitties sleeping between us on the couch while we watched The Family Man.

I read a tiny bit of a new book this weekend about a pregnant lady, and subsequently had dreams that I had children (but somehow didn’t remember birthing them). I also dreamt that my house filled up with water, so, thank you, Shape of Water. This is why I can’t watch graphic stuff – my dreams are very influence-able. And on that boring note, Happy Monday! Five more days until the weekend!

(The title is a lie! Here are some cat pics. Both kittens are becoming lap cats, which makes me very happy!)

*Funny enough, the last guest of the month, my snis, would be SO helpful with getting the house put together… but she is visiting last!
**Steven was watching a Nic Cage interview and it made him want to watch a Nic Cage movie, and that is what we picked from Netflix…

Running + Training

By kilax, September 23, 2018 6:40 pm

Highlight of the Week: Wearing gloves for my Sunday run and having a place to wipe my snot!!!

Monday | September 17, 2018: 5 m run + teaching strength class
Loc: Chicago Lakefront Trail, Temp: 70°/71°, Time: 51:46, Pace: 10:20 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: a bit tired, hot
Strength: body bars, Felt: good, just sweaty and stinky!
Tuesday | September 18, 2018: 3 m run + massage
Loc: hood, Temp: 66°/66°, Time: 29:02, Pace: 9:40 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Wednesday | September 19, 2018: rest
Thursday | September 20, 2018: 5 m run (incl. hills x4)
Loc: hood, Temp: 79°/80°, Time: 51:44, Pace: 10:21 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: hot and heavy
Friday | September 21, 2018: teaching strength class + one-on-one + 1,008 yd swim + 11 m run
Strength: box and dumbbells, Felt: good, hot
Loc: FitNation, Time: 21:51, Pace: 2:10 min/100 yd, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good, happy to be back in the water!
Loc: ML/VP Woods Loop, Temp: 69°/69°, Time: 1:54:44, Pace: 10:25 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great, loved the breeze
Saturday | September 22, 2018: 3.6 m run
Loc: hood, Temp: 60°/60°, Time: 36:00, Pace: 10:00 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: fine, until I bonked the last mile
Sunday | September 23, 2018: 13 m run (incl. 6×400)
Loc: Lake Andrea/Outlet Mall Loop, Temp: 49°/59°, Time: 2:22:42, Pace: 10:44 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: fine, except for code brown

Notes:

• I got to swim this week, yay! It felt good to be back in the pool, even though it took me a while to get used to breathing in the water again.
• It was a treat to have cool temps on the weekend! Oddly, those were my worst runs of the week. I completely bonked a 4 miler and quit at 3.6 (huh?) and had a bathroom emergency during my long run on Sunday. Eh. Sh*t happens. Heh.

Link to Training Week 465

Books, Life

By kilax, September 20, 2018 6:18 am

• I finished Aurora. The ending was a let down, but I’m glad I read it, because it had a lot of interesting concepts. Now I’m reading Reborn on the Run, which is such an easy (and not always well written) read, compared to Aurora. I haven’t had to look up a single word yet! Ha!

• We finished Mad Men this week. What show will we start during lunch break today? Jack Ryan? Sharp Objects? We’ve watched a few episodes of Jack Ryan and it may be too graphic for me.
• I got an email last week about the Wisconsin Half Marathon registration opening and immediately found myself registering. What?! How does that happen? Looking at my records, I did the exact same thing last year. That turned out well, at least.
• Improvements continue on our street! It doesn’t look like the paved shoulder is going to be as wide as in my wildest imagination, but I will take anything I can get!

• We have an exciting end of the year coming up – lots of visitors and travel! Woo hoo!
• Yesterday Shitterfly had FREE unlimited magnets (up to 9,999 magnets… so not really unlimited, come on), but… they weren’t the size I order. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That’s okay. I didn’t have anything in my “magnets to make” folder anyway.
• I miss Data greeting me at the door when I come home.

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 195

Life

By kilax, September 19, 2018 12:55 pm

Over five years ago I wrote about* how short periods of “in-between” time between activities made me feel anxious. That it was not enough time to relax, and not enough time to start a new activity.

That anxiety is still a thing for me, only now, I don’t give myself as much free time between activities. Which sometimes works and sometimes backfires (like when I am rushing to take a shower and get somewhere after a run taking longer than I thought it would).

An article showed up in Feedly last week “Want to be more productive? Try skipping the schedule,” (pdf here) citing a few studies that show how people feel like they have less “usable” minutes in an open time block before an appointment/event.

We believe that when there’s an appointment looming, we direct our attention to it, whether it’s mentally preparing for it or simply dreading it. This makes the future appointment feel more substantial; as a result, the time interval leading up to the scheduled activity feels limited and insufficient.

YES. THANK YOU INTERNET FOR BEING MY THERAPIST AND EXPLAINING MY ANXIETY TO ME.

The author suggests keeping this in mind to fight “time famine” (the feeling of having too much to do without enough time to do it) – to remember that small things can be done in what appears to be a shortened amount of useful time before an event. Or that a task can be started and finished later**. And to schedule events back to back so you have a larger chunk of open time later. <— that method does actually work for me. Most of the time.

I’m not sharing this to start a contest of who is the busiest! Just that wow, for once, the studies quoted in an article are actually believable to me. I totally feel this way before an appointment. Do you?

*Several of the comments on that post were from people asking me what “in-between” time is, saying they never have “downtime.” Don’t be an arse. You know what I mean, and even if your day is packed, you probably have it.
**Ha, this does NOT work for many personalities – starting something and finishing it later. But it’s an idea. 

No related picture. So here are the kitties!

Sometimes I sit like a hooman der derr der.

Music

By kilax, September 18, 2018 6:12 pm

Gosh, music videos sure do make me go

But here is what I am listening to on repeat:

and

I hope Demi Lovato is okay after her August overdose. I felt sad when I heard about that (as opposed to not caring, as with most celebrities).

Is it still too early in the day to celebrate that I haven’t burned the house down as I almost did the last two Tuesdays?! Sigh. I’m not sure if the cabinet over the toaster oven is ever going to NOT have a slight smoke smell… guess I need to remodel the kitchen! Ha!

Life, Recipes + Food

By kilax, September 17, 2018 12:45 pm

My weekend was spent doing VERY important things. VERY.

Like photoshopping our friend Troy’s head on this body, then putting it on this machine. Ha.

This was a special request from his wife, Jen, to send to friends they play this game with.

And eating LOTS of these cookie bars that Steven made (he made them vegan by using an egg replacer).

And watching Steven hang up some things in the house. Go Steven go!

I hang things up using 3M strips, then when they fall down, we use real nails/screws

And spending time with the kittens on the hammock.

And napping with them.

This is how I wake up at night – Starbuck next to me, Apollo between my legs, Khali at my feet

And going to Jen and Troy’s son’s birthday party!

I wasn’t a lump for the entire weekend. I taught a class, did errands, did some chores, exercised, blah blah blah.

But I mostly just ate and hung with Steven and the kitties. And got about half of my to do list done. And that’s fine!

But I do need to get my ish together. I have two more free weekends until we have guests coming and I’d like my house to be “Grandma Level Clean” for them!

Running + Training

By kilax, September 16, 2018 9:47 am

Highlight of the Week: Feeling strong on my runs.

Monday | September 10, 2018: 5.2 m run (incl. hills x5)
Loc: hood, Temp: 67°/67°, Time: 52:38, Pace: 10:07 avg, Difficulty: mostly easy, Felt: good, warm
Strength: body bars and bands, Felt: good
Tuesday | September 11, 2018: 4 m run
Loc: hood, Temp: 73°/72°, Time: 38:08, Pace: 9:32 avg, Difficulty: mostly easy, Felt: great
Wednesday | September 12, 2018: rest
Thursday | September 13, 2018: 10 m run
Loc: Trumpet/VP Woods Loop, Temp: 56°/55°, Time: 1:44:06, Pace: 10:25 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: really good
Friday | September 14, 2018: teaching strength class + one-on-one + 5 m run
Strength: body bars and bands, Felt: good
Loc: hood, Temp: 79°/78°, Time: 50:43, Pace: 10:08, Difficulty: easy enough, Felt: hot
Saturday | September 15, 2018: 13 m ride + teaching fitness boxing + 3 m run
Indoor Ride Time: 55:18, Pace: 14.1 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Loc: hood, Temp: 76°/76°, Time: 28:58, Pace: 9:38 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: surprisingly good
Sunday | September 16, 2018: 14 m run (incl. 10×1:00)
Loc: Kilbourne/DPRT Loop, Temp: 65°/72°, Time: 2:23:51, Pace: 10:16 avg, Difficulty: mostly easy, Felt: great

Notes:

• During Tuesday’s run, I felt light on my feet, like I was getting my pep back. That feeling continued for most of the week – yay!
• It’s been fun to train one-on-one again. There’s a lot more I can do when I am only training one person (due to space, amount of equipment, and that I am only watching them).
• The pool opens back up today! I am looking forward to swimming next Friday.
• My schedule is all over the place next week.  I hope I can still get my normal amount of workouts in during the week and don’t save it all for the weekend.

Link to Training Week 464

Books, Life

By kilax, September 13, 2018 5:44 am

• A few weeks ago my favorite cartoonist, Nathan W Pyle, announced that he was doing commissions for cat or dog drawings. I was SO EXCITED when I saw that, and asked him to do one of Data. I love how he incorporated Data specific things – his love for toy mice, popcorn, and wearing a tie. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. Perfect timing to receive it too. Follow Nathan on insta – he’s great and will make you smile/laugh!

• On Monday they tore up the street we live off of. I was impressed they did that all in one day. I hope the repaving goes as quickly. Those new paved shoulders are going to be AMAZING!!!

• Alright, so I’ve gotten really in to the Aurora book (even though I don’t love the ship’s computer narrating it). Apparently I’m so in to it, that talking about it excitedly to a coworker yesterday made her add it to her library hold list, and pick up that day! I got to the page Tom Hanks hyped up, 321… My excitement was building as I got closer and closer. It didn’t affect me as much as him, but I can see why he said that.
• We weighed the kittens this week and Apollo is 5.72 pounds and Starbuck is 4.84. They’re growing so fast! Sad face! Will they be as adorable when they are full grown?!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 194