I slept for 2 hours after work, 'cause even though I slept like ass Sunday night I still slept like ass Monday night.

J suggested I take a nap and then see about working out, and I said I'd figured we'd be keeping to a similar schedule to M/W, i.e. working out around 6:30. Got in bed about 4:15, was asleep by 4:30. J woke me up at 6:30 and I still felt tired. He went in the livingroom to wait for me to wake up, which was good 'cause I was *this* close to saying fuckit and going back to sleep. Then the guilt set in because I'd get nothing done, no workout or anything, and probably end up making it hard to sleep again. So I hauled my ass up, got dressed for the gym, and we went. Got there about 7, left about 10 till 8. I totally was dripping sweat. Recumbent bike was taken, so I grabbed a regular one. I hate those. The handles are too far away from the seat for me to sit properly on them, and the seat only adjusts higher or lower and the handles are part of the whole console thing so they don't move at all. They encourage bad posture in order to stay in the seat right. If I want to have my back straight it means leaning forward, which means if I tilt my hips properly to go with that I put entirely too much pressure on my groin to be remotely comfortable. If I sit straight up I can't reach the handles enough to do more than touch them with my fingers, but I want to use the heart monitor which means having both hands all the way on the closest part of the handles. But then I slide a bunch in the seat and am sitting more on the narrow part than the ass part. The only way to sit so it's remotely comfortable is to tilt my hips forward and lean my shoulders forward also, thus arching my back quite a bit into a heay slouch posture. And in the end my ass is still bruised today.

Anyway, I used the manual programming after entering height/weight 'cause that still shows the 60% and 80% of my target heart rate on the display. I aimed for the 80% and mostly stayed there. I used the rhythm of whatever song was on to pedal to, upping the resistance for slow and lowering it for fast. A Destiny's Child song had me up to 86rpm, which really started me sweating just to keep up and got my heart rate bpm over my 80% goal. Oops. The rest of the time I was able to drop it to within 4 though, so it's all good. I did that for a full 30 minutes and then it automatically ran a 5 minute cooldown at low resistance for me, during which I pedaled at like 30-36rpm and focused on breathing calmly and deeply. I stretched before and after, though I noticed later last night I forgot my calves. Oops.

Ended up not eating dinner till 9. Not terribly good. Didn't get any clothes put away like I wanted, also bad. Wanted to soak in the tub to relax some of my stiff and sore back muscles, didn't do that either 'cause it was after 10 before I would've been able to get in.

I totally need to get my dad or J's stepdad to adjust my back. My mid-lower back (above the sacrum thankfully) is misaligned, and it's making the left side of my lower back incredibly sore almost to where it feels bruised inside. That's making me have a hard time getting comfortable for sleeping, which is making my back seriously stiff higher up.

Got an appointment at the dermatologist's on Oct. 22. Hopefully I can find a much better solution than friggin coal tar (T-Gel). Ought to make an appointment with my regular doc to (a) figure out what's up with the whole circulation thing, (b) see about getting my hearing tested, and (c) finding out how to get the results given to them when I go get my allergy test done, so they can use those to make a serum to give me shots of.

(Yes, I only just finished cleaning the damn bathroom about 10 minutes ago. Bleargh.)

1. Am I the only one that thinks this way: Hair on heads, fur on animals = a-OK. Shed hair or fur of any kind, particularly when there's enough of it to make a surface, for instance a bathroom counter or floor, appear dirty = AUGH SO GROSS!! I can't be the only one who feels this way...

2. Where can I buy replacement suction cups for our corner shower shelves? On one of 'em, they totally seem to have lost their suck, even after making sure the tile is 100% clean, the suction cups are 100% clean, and there's a bit of moisture for them to stick right. Plus, somehow I managed to buy one that was missing one of the four. They're 3" with, I dunno, a 1/4" nipple on 'em to snap them into the plastic of the shelf. (These are sort of bucket-like shelves, so that they're deep and bottles won't tip over, and the suction cups go into the two straight sides, two apiece.)

I think I've come up with a rough time line for the week in terms of what to do. The one I had for today got a little blown outta the water, because I left work about 45 minutes late. But I can adapt. And yes, this is probably more for me than for any of you guys; I figure if I have it somewhere I can call it up whenever I want, and other eyeballs seeing what I plan, it'll put more onus on me to actually stick to it however much is possible.

Tonight

8:15 to 9pm

clean the main bathroom

9pm to 10pm

computer time, either WoW or wishlist PHP coding & MT layout coding

10pm

bedtime (loosely defined of course; not strictly lights out)

Tuesday

4pm to 4:30

intarweb stuff (i.e. webcomics, LJ friends lists catchup, email, etc.)

4:30pm to 5pm

pick up some of my clothes from the massive pile and either put away or toss down the chute

5pm to 5:30

free time, woot!

5:30 to 6pm

dinner

6pm to 6:15

get dressed & whatever for the gym

6:15 to 7:45pm

gym, including to & from

7:45 to 8pm

cooldown

8pm to 9pm

nice happy soak in the tub

9pm to 10pm

computer time

10pm

bedtime

Wednesday

4pm to 4:30pm

Intarweb stuff

4:30 to 5pm

Clothing cleanup

5pm to 5:30

free time

5:30 to 6pm

dinner

6pm to 6:15

get dressed for gym

6:15 to 7:45

body toning class, including drive time

7:45 to 8pm

cooldown

8pm to 8:30

shower

8:30 to 10pm

computer time

10pm

bedtime

Thursday

3:30 to 5:30

hair appointment, including to & from

5:30 to 6pm

dinner

6pm to 6:15

get dressed for gym

6:15 to 7:45

gym

7:45 to 8pm

cooldown

8pm to 8:30

shower

8:30 to 9pm

clothing cleanup (hope to be finishing that here)

9pm to 10pm

Intarweb stuff + computer time

10pm

bedtime

Subject to change; for instance, free time and dinner might be switched around, hair appointment might take more time or less time, etc. But, that kinda outlines how I should be able to fit in time to get stuff done. Like getting into the bathroom post haste tonight.

1. A consistent bed time
2. Fairly consistent meal times
3. More visits to the gym than just my body toning class, during which I'll probably be doing some type of cardio

Plus, two weeks from tonight (or maybe the Wed. right after that) I asked the toning instructor how much of a correlation there was between muscle tone and good circulation, 'cause mine seems to suck. If I sit on the floor in any one position for more than 5-10 minutes, my feet usually start to tingle. Also, I have a hard time doing pushups on the exercise mats 'cause I do them on my palms (don't have the wrist strength for fist pushups) and my hands, especially my right one, dig into the mat enough that my fingers start falling asleep and no one else seems to have that complaint (I'm not the heaviest one in the class either, so that's not it). While J said that there is a direct link, the instructor also talked to me after class tonight and said the person she works with on exercises suggested I really ought to mention it to my doc. I've thought about it a little more, talked with J about it, etc., and while it might be a bit hereditary the cause is likely different. My maternal grandmother always, particularly in her later years, seemed to have circulatory problems, as did my great grandmother (her mom). However, I dunno about my great grandmother but my grandmother also typically had pretty darn low blood pressure. I don't; I seem to be square in the middle of normal, and am quite consistent. So... yeah, that ain't it.

Side note: I'm also geeky enough that since I hardly ever use definition markup, I went and looked it up so I could write all that in some sort of organized fashion. (Obviously I xHTML-ized it, properly closing all my definition term and description tags. )

Today is the day of posting bulleted points with subheadings. Or, I'm trying to keep myself from being too verbose given I need to be out the door in 20 minutes for my toning class.

Past

• My Cenarion Circle warlock is now level 14, and is well on her way to 14. She actually has skill points in cooking, fishing, herbalism, and alchemy. No talent points allotted yet; haven't really played a 'lock enough to know what might be good to put them in.
• Cats have had their general checkup with rabies & FeLV shots
• My husband and I partied with mladyjade, retropixiechic, ceraunnos, and kinkis and had great fun. Had Mexican food at the Cantina downtown, came back & watched Robin Williams on his HBO thing he did in '02 *puts face in elbow*, and J introduced retropixiechic to Katamari Damacy. I agree with her about the background music... blergh.

Present

• Body toning's gonna be hard, 'cause I missed last Wednesday's class due to the cold.
• Work was pretty fun today for the most part, learning a bit about Spring and getting back into our chart vertical slice.
• I banged my left elbow on my chair catching my eraser, and twanged the nerve in there really bad. Now I can't put any weight on my elbow point 'cause it hangles. Yeouch.

Future

• Must do this week:
  • Make an appointment with the dermatologist
  • Call my regular doc's office to find out precisely what steps I need to take to get started on allergy shots
  • Call the trash company and bitch at them 'cause they didn't pick up our trash; I checked and a full payment to them went through on the 14th
  • Start cleaning up the bottomless pit that is the pile of clothes I've made in the bedroom, breaking it into chunks so I'm not overwhelmed
  • Start doing cardio at roughly the same time as my workout class so I can burn calories... no one will see the muscle tone I get at the toning class if there's a thick layer of fat all over it
  • [Edit:] Give the main bathroom a good scrub [/Edit]
• Things I want to do some time soon:
  • Hook up the scanner
  • Scan in the doodles I've done at work... I kinda want to get some opinion on whether they show enough talent to bother with some drawing classes at the local community college
  • Finish expanding my wishlist code so that I can have ideas for other family members in it that various other family members can view with a password
  • Get my damn forum upgraded so it's not a holey security nightmare
  • Get a custom image gallery cobbled together so that it integrates my main website template

North Shore Animal League has a gift shop, and in their cat store they sell a hard keyboard cover that you can drop over the keyboard when you get up.

They're probably not the only ones who sell such, and you may be able to find that kinda thing in an Office Depot or pet store, but just to let you all know they're out there. I'm seriously considering looking for one myself, just in case.

This stupid cold doesn't want to let go. I was definitely sneezing and blowing my nose more towards the end of the day than the beginning. I didn't go to my toning class, figuring they wouldn't appreciate me honking my nose after every set. I'll try to do some of the exercises I can remember on Friday afternoon. Would be today, but... yeah. I slept horribly. I took some Nyquil figuring maybe it'd help. Wrong. 45 minutes later, around 10:30, I gave up on it kicking in and turned out the light anyway. I did eventually fall asleep, and was barely conscious when J came in and offered to snuggle to make me feel better. I was feeling pretty warm already, and I think I had a tissue shoved into a nostril, so I declined as niceliy as I could and told him I love him, then went back to sleep. Some time after that I started having those half-waking sort of thinking/dreaming things going on, and tossing a lot. That lasted until, I dunno, 4pm or so when I woke up fully to Pele on the bed (wow, twice in one week!) coughing. That's something that'll get a body nice & worried; cats just sound so pitiful when they cough. It's really more of a drawn out wheeze. Anyway, we both sat up and pet her trying to calm her a bit, and she quit coughing and jumped down. She hung around the foot of the bed near my bedpost for a bit, then I lay back down. I finally fell decently asleep with none of that half awake bullshit shortly after that, till my alarm went off at 5:30. Too early. I ended up in and out of consciousness until about 6:15, and only in and out rather than straight out 'cause part of my mind was wanting to keep an eye on the clock so I didn't totally oversleep.

I hauled my ass out of bed, grabbed a quick shower and did my morning stuff, and hauled myself to work. With badge, this time. But damn, I want nothing more than to be in bed right now. I'm just starting in on the dark circles. I think I could probably lie down when I get home this afternoon and sleep until my alarm tomorrow. Guess I should have J wake me for food at some point in that though. Guh. Just. Want. Sleep.

I really think bits of brain tissue must come running out whenever I'm sick, and ends up in my tissues when I blow my nose. Sure, it eventually regenerates (mostly?) but in the interim I'm left not much better than a gibbering simpleton.

I forgot my badge for the first time since I started carrying a purse. Literally the first time, not "almost". See, once I got a purse I always clipped it on the base of where the handle attaches, and always on the same side even. Since I had to grab my purse to go to work (can't go very far without keys), that meant always having my badge. Occasionally while out, say at a bar or something, it'd go inside the purse instead of clipped outside.

The wing we got relocated to has a smart badge keeping it locked. The one we're normally in is almost hooked up for it too, but the last bit hasn't come in yet so they're just waiting until that's in (door's usually just left braced open). So, I started using a lanyard instead. It's the one that came with my SanDisk thumb drive. The problem with this, is that I can no longer clip the badge to my purse. It's kind of a pain to dig stuff out of there as it is, so I started hanging it on the wall phone jack, you know the kind where it's all big and sticks out? And ours sticks out a lot 'cause we have a wall unit DSL filter on there since they gave us one; there's no actual phone hanging from it directly, since the phone's just sitting on the little utility cart right by it. Perfect place for it, immediately above my purse.

Except I didn't grab it today. Just grabbed a yogurt cup to take for breakfast and my purse, ran out the door. Didn't even think about it until I got out of my car... looked in the purse hoping maybe I'd put it in there for a change, no dice.

Damn.

So I go all the way down to the lobby, which I hadn't seen since they renovated it for the FCS program when they moved in. Everything was different, wow. Totally rearranged. Anyway, so I got a temp building badge from the front desk non-Boeing guard, then she told me where to find the Boeing guard. They're still using paper badges. Ooh, but they go in little plastic sleeves now. Whoopty shit. That doesn't get me into my wing. The policy is that they don't give out temporary smart badges. (Yes, all Boeing employees who work in this building have to have 2 badges: one that scans you into the building entrances, and one that's your actual Boeing badge.) Then I was even further stupid... I walked down the hallway from the lobby, once I wound around to where you can do that (they've really, really changed around everything in that building like crazy), and I walked too far. I headed up to the 3rd floor and... I was staring at where I normally work, with the door wide open. Damn. So I went down a flight of stairs, since both the 1st and 2nd floors have building-connecting hallways and headed to the right building, then back up. Fortunately I got lucky enough to be able to follow someone into the wing once I got up there. Also, it turns out I don't have to go to the other wing (which also needs a badge-in) to get coffee; there is some in our wing and one of my coworkers was nice enough to show me where it was this morning. However, I had to use the bathroom and had to wait for someone else to be coming into the building.

I would've awakened J but I already woke him to be my hero and mush a big fast moving scary spider for me that I found in the bathroom. So I think I'll see if he'd be willing to meet us for lunch and bring my badge. My building badge won't work till I return the temp one, but at least I'd have my company badge to get into our wing. And I'd be able to return the temporary badges when I leave instead of doing it tomorrow morning.

I shoulda stayed home today. Not 'cause I still feel like ass; mostly I'm just tired. But apparently I'm in desperate need to regen some of those brain cells I lost with all my nose blowing.

I forgot, in my addle-brained state where I was rushing to post before our power might go out (it didn't, wonder of wonders), to post the most important thing of yesterday.

stolenmilkcrate, author of Catharsis, was a huge sweetie, and made a little clay doodle wolf and polar bear, the former for me and the latter for my husband. They arrived yesterday! Eeeee! The mail was late, and wasn't there when I got home from work. My husband stepped out to look for it right before we headed to the civic center and brought in a ton of stuff, including a box. I started opening it and was going to open the first of the two white boxes inside when J reminded me we were gonna be late. So I left everything on the counter and the very first thing I did after we got back, before getting water or changing or anything, was to finish opening the package. I'd have taken pics, but they wouldn't have turned out as nicely as the ones she took. We both love 'em, and they're already in our front room together.

Would've posted this earlier, but... yeah, I'm sick. I took a shower after I posted last night, and was in there a long time 'cause of my damn hair and scalp issues (totally need to get hold of a dermatologist ). Well, I started sneezing while I was in there. No biggie, I hadn't taken my meds for the night and occasionally if I spend a looooong time in there I get sneezy, and it eventually dies away. No such luck. J and I were gonna have a little, erm, fun, but after it was apparent my sneezes weren't going away so easily, we hit Steak 'n' Shake 'cause he was hungry. They let me order off the kid's menu (yay!) so I could eat a tiny bit even though I wasn't really hungry, and we watched the rain go from regular to pour and back again, and the lightning play all over. House still had power when we went home, but the sneezing came back, only having been chased away by eating and being super cold (for some reason that S'n'S is hella cold).

Ended up blowing my nose off and on all damn night. Ugh. By the time my alarm went off my throat was unhappy from the drainage, my nose was really unhappy, and I had a headache. Managed to fall asleep, woke up again and it was 6:30, so I got up long enough to send an email to work saying I'd not be in. Stayed in bed until something like 4:30 or 5pm, sleeping off & on. Pele was a sweetie and did what she rarely does anymore: kept me company in bed. She was there most of the night, from at least 1am to when I got up to send my email. Then she got up again around... noon? 1pm? No idea, a little before J got outta bed after staying to keep me company, and she stayed until a little before I hauled myself up to visit the bathroom. Wish she'd invite herself up on the bed more often like she used to.

Anyway, around 8:15 J went out and got Penn Station and eating made me feel better. Tuesdays are free cookie day, too, so we each had a cookie. I might pile a little benadryl on top of my zyrtec so I can maybe be knocked out enough to sleep through my sinuses so I can be human and go to work tomorrow. I missed out on a really good learning session where we were all going to be doing some good group coding, too. Though I also "missed out" on more potential coworker craziness from the one whose brain doesn't seem to do the whole learning and critical thinking thing, so being home maybe wasn't a total loss, hehe.

Body toning was rough. I didn't realize how much my back helps, even if I'm using proper form and my abs properly, until it got to where the whole damn thing is screwed up from stress and bad posture. In combination. Yeeeeah. Need to fix that.

Work is... yeah. Our coworker is slowly hanging himself. We keep having to tell him how to FTP a file down, edit it, then upload it again. He flipped out some of our customers last week as well as created a little confusion within the developers on our primary source system. I hate to say it, but I kinda pity the guy. The best he can really hope for is that they encourage him to retire, and he doesn't even know it.

BAM! Typing and suddenly huge lightning strike.

Anyway, um... I know I had more to say, but I can't come up with it. Lightning boom distracted the fuck out of me and now my head's suddenly more jumbled than it already was.

Oh yeah. WoW. I now have a human warlock on Cenarion Circle, in Northrend Commonwealth, by the name of Ashtarael. She's level 13. Figure I might pay to move my hunter from Whisperwind to there, if it's not too much money, so why work on the new hunter. And damn, the dimming of the lights is starting to get annoying. I may be showering in the dark.

I haven't played WoW in a while, simply because I like to play for more than an hour at a time, but often it keeps me up later than I ought to be and thus makes me extra tired when I get up for work.

I finally was going to play tonight. It was only 6:30 or so when I started the patch downloading, and I was fully updated, along with updating WoWReader, in a half hour or so. Between the time J logged on (around 6) and when I tried to log on, the servers started going all to pieces. Now "technically" all the servers are up, but of course most of them are low pop (if you can get the realm status page to even show; I can't even as I type this) because the login servers are fucked still, with very little exception.

All I wanted to do was create a new character on Cenarion Circle. I'd even done the hardest part for me, which was to pick a name. But after close to 3 hours of trying I'm getting quite sleepy and I really need to be in bed. So much for that.

Doesn't that just really inspire an even increased desire to play? /sarcasm

They're so very cool when you're lying in a nice warm bed and they're rumbling on in. You can just go back to sleep as they roll in, listening to the rain and thunder. They're so very uncool when you have to drive in them, with the outside dark as night and the roads wet, and when you have to run from your car to keep from getting soaked.

Last night's body toning class I noticed that I'm starting to do better on the soreness; my neck hasn't been stiff and sore since the soreness of the first class, and I'm getting slightly better at most of the exercises. Did 15 pushups yesterday, full form, without stopping. J and I will probably work out Friday as well. I'll get in my cardio that way.

Not much else to say... work has been busy, been eating a little bit healthier for dinner esp. since J has cooked Mon & Wed and it's been yummy and a good mix of veggies and meat and such. Not been getting enough sleep yet.

And, off to another all day meeting... won't even bother starting up IM 'cause I won't be at my desk.

If you didn't see it already, Scott Kurtz of PvPonline posted a link to a group that FEMA has allowed back into the hurricane areas in order to rescue animals that had to be left behind. That group is the North Shore Animal League. I'd been wanting to know a good organization for this, and knowing that they're not only accepting donations for animal rescue, but that they're already down there doing the hard work is icing on the cake. I've made my decision: this is where my money is going. If possible I'm going to attempt to get our company to make good on its dollar-for-dollar matching for this charity. If not, they'll at least get my money anyway.

Step 1: Invite a bunch of people to a Tuesday afternoon virtual meeting (i.e. telecon) on Monday, stating that telecon details will be sent in a future communication.

Step 2: Don't send any information out about the telecon, like what number and password to dial in with, or the webex (like NetMeeting) information to get into the visual portion.

Step 3: ...

Step 4: Profit!

Yeeeah. Pulled out of our design meeting to go to this 3pm meeting only to find out I hadn't gotten any of that precious "future communication" info I need to actually get into the meeting. An email sent to the coordinator has elicted no response, and it's now almost a half hour into an hour long meeting. Fuck 'em, and if they end up mad I wasn't there then they can redirect that to the coordinator who made sure I was left out. Obviously that person didn't think it was all that important, nor was it important to communicate to either some or all that it wasn't happening, was gonna be rescheduled, or we weren't needed, or whatever.

I think I'm going to hurt worse from this class than the first one. What's worse, is usually the day after doesn't start out so bad, by night I'm really sort, and the next day is really I-need-someone-to-push-me-outta-bed bad. Which will be the day of the next class. That's going to be rough.

But... we did almost the same time on abs, with a few different things. Plus we did pushups. I'm awesome; I was the only woman out of roughly 16 who did them from my toes (straight back, no butt in the air) instead of my knees or instead of standing at a wall arm's length away. And I did a dozen of 'em. Go me! I want to get back to the 30 I could do at one point (she talked about setting end-of-session goals for ourselves). Other than that... yeeeah. Rough city. I had real trouble with some of the ab workouts, especially. I kept up OK for the tricep and bicep ones though. (Triceps = bend at the hips till your back is straight and horizontal to the floor, feet apart and knees bent a little as necessary; tuck elbows at waist with forearms down with a weight in each hand; one hand at a time straighten one arm without moving the elbow, then back again. Biceps = curls with elbows at waist.) Really the ones I couldn't do more than 2/3 of were the abs, which is my worst area. The rest I could do most or all of, even if it was only barely and through force of will.

We'll see how my progress goes... I really like the lady who runs the classes though, she's very nice and friendly, and knows her shit and it shows. So I just have to keep with it. Hell, I paid the money, no matter how hard it is I'm too stubborn not to attend every class unless I'm down for one or two with something really big that keeps me outta work a couple days.

Oh, and dinner was pretty light too; we figured light before and light after, but I'm not hungry at all after. Had a bowl of salad each, and then the half of my Thai dinner from last week that I brought home we also split (didn't bother to take the rice home or make fresh either, so just the meat, veggies, and sauce). So that's good, too. Maybe if we're feeling ambitious we'll go up right after I get home or something and just use the gym. If I'm lucky that bike'll be available again...

My version of phpBB is very, very old, as I did mods to it and such that I haven't looked at in a long time, which has made it difficult to remember what was modded where, and thus difficult to update. Since there are lots of exploits I've at least gone in and disabled the entire thing (I hope that nixes most or all of the exploits, dunno) and will probably be starting from scratch. I hope the admin panel will give me database backups (users and their info, threads & posts, forum settings, etc.) that a new installation would be able to import somehow and that it would be able to upgrade as needed with the available tables. Otherwise I'll probably end up just updating the whole thing after attempting to note what mods I'm going to have to reinstall so I can do that all over again. Either way, it's a bit dead for now. Of course, I could hear the crickets in there anyway, so I doubt anyone's going to cry.

I had the name wrong. Slimnastics is probably one of the other classes I looked at and couldn't go to. I'm in Body Toning. My abs, upper arms, back, and legs are all like jelly right now, and are going to be all bitching at me in the morning. We spent a half hour on just abs. She changes things up class to class, so next class might not be as much of the abs, but today we "got out of" pushups, so they're almost guaranteed on Monday. Lots of free hand weight usage.

I know I sound like I'm complaining and don't like it at all. Well... I will go so far as to say I don't really like exercise, and that given my natural tendencies would prefer to remain a lazy slouch. However, it's a... good complaining, I guess. I don't know how much this class, in and of itself, will help me lose weight. Probably not a ton by itself. I'm not going to be adding so much muscle mass that I'll drastically change my metabolism; this is a (relatively) slow process, as it's meant more to tone than to add bulk. But it will make me stronger, and it will give shape to a routine, and I can possibly use that as increased impetus to do more on the other days, particularly the cardio to just plain burn calories. (We did arrive about a half hour early, and the recumbent bike was actually free, so I spent about 15 minutes on that. Before that I finally noticed the leg sled, and found I can easily still do 100 pounds, and probably can do at least what I could last time I measured (at least 7 years ago, when I was lighter and more active) at 115. The biggest block there is my crappy weak knees.)

What I also need to do, is to use this to make a better eating schedule and habits. I did manage to bring some fruit yogurt for breakfast, but I forgot all about prepping a light snack (grapes, carrots, or whatever) for after lunch. See, usually I eat a pretty small lunch (sammich and iced tea, not a lot of fries if any, or an alternate side like fruit yogurt or a small salad where available), but then I'm ravenous by 5pm so I'm used to a larger dinner. Class is 6:30-7:30. I don't want to eat a bunch before that, because then my muscles and my stomach will end up fighting over the blood supply. I don't want to go from 11:30 or so until something like 8pm or later with no food, either. So I was thinking I could keep with the small lunches, snack on hand-mouth fruits & veggies a little at around 2pm at my desk, then we could have something similar to that around 4:30 or 5. Then a small, but larger than a snack, meal afterwards. That way I'm not still freshly digesting while I work out, but I'm not running on E and so shaky I want to collapse at the end of the workout.

If we get into some habit like that, since J's going with me and using the treadmills and weights and such while I'm in class, I think we'd have healthier eating habits, keep our blood sugar a little more constant so our overall energy is better, etc. Plus it'd be that much more consistent, and it'd be easier to go work out with different stuff on days I don't have class. He could do mostly cardio on class days or something, and weights when we're both in the weight room, or vice versa, whatever he wants to do. So we'd be working out 4 days a week most weeks and start seeing a good benefit.

Right now I'm jonesin' for some greens. A tremendously good salad, maybe some grilled veggies of some sort, etc. Not a lot of good places to get that around here. Plus it's already 8pm on a Wednesday night. Only things gonna be open by the time J's cooled off (he ran 2 miles plus did weights) are Applebees, Denny's, Steak 'n' Shake, and Waffle House. Not interested in heavy, greasy breakfast food, so there go two of 'em. Applebees' salads are OK, but even their half orders are too big, plus they're all fancy with fried chicken this, steak that, and their grilled vegetables suck balls. And Steak 'n' Shake only has their basic, Americanized, wimpy salad, and no veggies outside of baked beans or cole slaw. If it weren't for the fact that neither of us wants to lift a finger to cook, I'd say we just hop on over to Shop 'n Save (24 hours) and buy enough to make it ourselves. Drop some broccoli, cauliflower, baby carrots, and maybe some summer squash & zucchini into a pan with just a bit of olive oil, liberally add garlic & onion powder, grill 'em just enough that they're not fully crisp. Get a little baby spinach, romaine, a small red onion, etc. and toss a salad. Maybe put half that onion in with the grilled veggies. That sounds wonderful to me. But the arm fatigue is already starting to set in, and I know J isn't going to feel up to it. Plus I'd imagine since he had a much sweatier and heart-rate-upping workout he's going to want a bit of protein in there, which usually means meat which means browning it for a while. But a girl can dream, can't she?

(And no, J, I'm not poking fun at you or saying you should feel like cooking! Just saying what sounds good, and what I wish we had available done right from a restaurant that's open past 9 on a week day. We need more people living around here who like to eat the way the Europeans do -- dinner doesn't start until at least 8pm!)

Today: Dinner at my grandfather's house. His sister-in-law is in town from Hilton Head, so we're all getting together. My sister has even been able to come in.

Tomorrow: First day of "slimnastics" at the civic center. First step into getting more active and less overweight.

Thursday: "long" hair appointment. Probably gonna go with the dark brown lowlights that were added in minute amounts 6 weeks ago, though with perhaps a dab of red added into it.

Work: Got an email that was sent around 6pm Friday night that most of us are being relocated, probably later today (yay for no notice whatsoever!) to the web factory. (These guys are the group that was put together to go out and learn all the latest web development tech and best practices, and spread that knowledge by mentoring other groups such as ours who are doing such development.) It'll be a good thing, but we're all kinda ticked that we were not told ahead of time at all. Plus we're wondering whether we have to get facilities involved to move those of us with desktops, or if "cube fairies" will take care of it. One sentence of note kinda pissed me off, but I guess she had to pick somebody and whoever she picked wouldn't be thrilled: "[I], in addition to the new development, will be the primary production support developer requesting assistance from the other developers [...] as needed." Joy. Y'all can all feel my joy through your monitors it's so huge, right? /sarcasm At least I won't be spending much time on the "front line" of support, but it still means that I'm evidently the first line in terms of making coding changes to the existing system, regardless of whether it's an area where I know dickall about the data. While there is the whole "requesting assistance" clause in there, I'm not a high enough level to be "assigning work" so if it's something that would take 10 minutes for someone else to write, but all day for me to write 'cause I don't know the code or data whatsoever that probably means it'll take at least 2/3 of the day 'cause all I can do is ask what files I need to look in and, if applicable, what DB tables I need to know about. I doubt I'll be able to do more than ask for help that will mitigate me needing to do all the research myself.

Friday night J and I left around 7 or so to go to his parents' for a visit. Got stuck in traffic around Wright City, so J got off and took the outer road to Warrenton and got back on. Had 2 or 3 other short hangups in traffic where we couldn't reroute. Ended up getting in about 9:30 or so, instead of the 8:40ish we normally would have. They were nice enough to hold dinner for us, and it was yummy.

Saturday J and I slept in. Woke up about 11:30. It was pretty quiet, turns out that J's brother was watching his little sis and she was being pretty quite. Turns out his stepdad had a few Saturday morning appointments to keep from getting slammed the rest of the week due to not having any on Monday. Then we had a somewhat lazy day. Spent an hour or so (no idea how long for sure) playing in their pool after lunch. It was early enough in the day not to worry about horse flies, which was very nice. Then while J's mom played with the power washer around the pool and his stepdad rode around on the mower, I played with Elizabeth in her play area outside. I pulled the lid off the sandbox for her, but we saw a ton of ants which it was hard to scatter (they were storing eggs it looked like) plus there was a rather large wolf spider lurking at the edge of the lid. Eep! So we spent the time with her swinging either on the regular swing with me pushing her or on the two-person one where you can push with your feet. Went inside at some point. I helped out in the afternoon by wiping down the table in the cabana and cutting a bunch of round steak into strips for pepper steak later. Found that Michelob Ultra is a fairly enjoyable beer while I was cutting meat.

Sunday we were up earlyish so we could all drive out to Hermann. We met up with J's grandma and his grandma's sister's son and his wife who were in MO for a few days. I'd never met them before, though their daughter (J's second cousin) was at the reunion held in Noel, MO (wayyyy in the SW corner of MO) last year I think. They were cool. We sat in the shade at picnic benches 'cause it was quite sunny and very humid out. We were there for a couple hours, then it was 1:30 and J and I needed to leave and I guess everyone else did too, so we all parted ways.

We called my parents and worked it out that we didn't need cooler space for the picnic, but that we would like to follow them down to the park. So we spent a very short time, say 15 minutes or so, at home, then went back out to grab some Lee's chicken then get to my parents' before the 3:30 departure time. Got there about 5-10 minutes before, and my grandfather got there as we were walking around from the side of the house to the front. We helped corral their fuzzy widdle kittens (so kyooot still!) out of the livingroom with J carrying the boy kitty, Eddie, and me carrying the girl kitty, Dusty, and cuddling them in the hallway while my parents finished packing everything of theirs and my grandfather's into the trunk of their car. Got to the park around 4, spent time just talking and such for quite a while, because no one showed up until at least 5. One of my parents' friends was wearing a Firefox t-shirt, which I complimented him on. Then J thought (minirant upcoming) his friends were coming over whenever he let them know we were home, so around 6 or so we left and J started calling folks. Couldn't get hold of anyone, nothing but parents and answering machines and voice mail. He called the person he started with again right before we got home, and he answered this time. Turns out they all forgot to tell us they'd decided Monday would be better instead of Sunday, if that was OK. ??? So we could've stayed the whole picnic (till dusk) and such, but instead we left way early with some people only having arrived a few minutes before. Instead we rushed to get calling people only to find out no one was coming. It's a full half hour down to the park, so with gas prices where they're at and everything else, we didn't want to head back. (If we'd gotten a hold of the person he called first, the first time, we weren't even back on 170 yet, so we could easily have turned back around. Not his fault in that respect, of course, it just kinda sucked.)

Sooo... J and I did manage to find other ways to occupy our time, hehe, and after that we spent the evening relaxing. J got to go to the Sunday night MC run in WoW, though they'd started already. (They decided to start at 6pm server time, aka pacific time, instead of 8pm, but he's mostly been taking a break from the game 'cause he's a little burned out on it, so he didn't know.) They can always use more healers and rezzers though, so he was immediately invited and he booked his way over. They finally killed the first boss, Lucifron. At that point it was midnight and everyone was just very happy they'd finally figured him out now, so no one wanted to try and go on after that. I'd wanted to get Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, but since it was way late for that we went to Steak 'n' Shake instead and got to-go dark chocolate shakes (well, a malt for J). I went to bed around... I dunno, about 2 I guess, and J came in around 4. He's been hitting the Katamari Damacy pretty hard since he picked it up earlier in the week, hehe. He's beaten it already and is now working on improving his scores and such.

Yesterday J's friends came over. Slept later than I should've, but it felt so good. Headed to The Mills, had lunch at Fuzio's, mmmm. Went to Soda Jerks to get a case of Sprecher root beer, and since they had orange soda too we grabbed a case of Sunkist bottles. Good thing J knew the closest entrance, and that we were able to park close there, those boxes were very heavy! J's friends started showing up around 2:30 (we'd said 1:30-2 as a guesstimate time). For some reason I was way sleepy so I napped on and off from about 4 to 6:30ish. Pele was *gasp* on the bed near Zephyr when I went in, but of course I pet her for 2 seconds and she got down. When I was waking up for good and needing to get in the shower, Pele and Zephyr were both on the bed once again (even as halfawake as I was I never realized she'd gotten back up) quite close to each other. I was on my back with my legs in a V and Pele was inside the V up against my right leg and Zephyr was kind of slopped on both sides of my left leg. Of course as soon as I carefully sat up and started petting Pele she got down. I knew J's friends were all going to be wanting to go grab food somewhere soon so I hopped in the shower. Sure enough J peeked in to tell me they were probably wanting food in a bit. Got done, lotioned for a change (I should do that every day), and dressed. Since we weren't 100% sure if anyone'd be open on Labor Day J called Krieger's and they were open till 10. Headed down there, had a slow waitress who was good at not making many appearances and didn't even offer to split the bill for us. Ended up everyone could pay cash cept for one, so she paid with debit (she had more than enough to cover) and got all the cash.

I had been wanting to change the design of my wishlist so at 10pm I sat down to see how fast I could hammer one out. I didn't make it to the deadline I'd set for J to have his friends leave (11pm) or when a few of the last ones who were finishing out a game actually left (everyone was very quiet though, kudos to them). But I completed it, colors and all, in 2 hours. Text only, no images. Got color inspiration from one of the recent CSS Zen Garden designs. Now I'm itching to make a similar main-site layout, but perhaps with my own images if I can come up with some. Still need to update the wishlist to remove old stuff that isn't available, stuff I've gotten, etc., and add new.

This cartoon squirrel has pretty much nailed it all on the head, in terms of the situation in Louisiana.

Just one more little chuzzle. I couldn't pass up a screenshot from zen mode where a li'l dude with shades just happened to show up, and he was blue. (They show up with whacked out sunglasses every so often, pretty darn rarely. Nothing overtly special about getting 'em, just... neat.)

Forgot to mention that Monday night, before J got to the toilets, we watched Bad Company on TV, the one with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock. I would definitely recommend it. It's not too terribly heavy on the bad language if excessive cussing bothers you (there's a little, and of course it was edited for TV, but it wasn't every other word). It had an obligatory steamy scene or two but not really enough to make one feel like a total voyeur. Lots of seriousness, including Chris Rock playing serious parts in it (he plays both parts of a set of twins who are very different from each other), and you get to hear Sir Anthony Hopkins call Chris Rock a bitch. Twice. XD I thought the plot and action moved pretty well, nothing really dragged but in spite of it being a Bruckheimer film I didn't feel utterly exhausted after watching it.

Last night we had fun. First we tried out O'Charley's. It's a newish restaraunt built into the plaza in Lindbergh that they redid a while back. We tried to eat there once a month or two after it opened and there was a 45 minute wait so we left. No waiting last night, and very good and interesting food. Took a while to decide what to even order 'cause we had to read the whole menu. Good food, better IMO than Applebees fair though the selections, in the most general sense, are along a similar vibe (various appetizers, pastas, steaks, salads, chicken entreés, etc.). They know how to actually prepare the food a bit better though.

Then we hit GameStop briefly to pick up a couple games J was looking for, and one for his brother for his birthday. They had two of the games he wanted, and one was shipped yesterday and they hadn't gotten it yet. After that we hit Barnes & Noble since I had 2 gift cards for it still sitting unused and it's in the same plaza as the restaurant and game store. We bought 6 or 8 books. I got the other two Song of Ice and Fire trilogy books finally, like I'd meant to ages ago; we picked up Orson Scott Card's Shadow Puppets after having been interested in it from the teaser first few pages included in the previous book; there was also a horror novel by someone I hadn't read yet (don't remember the name). I'll try that out at some point to see if I like the guy. We picked up a polar bear calendar we just happened to spot that has extra pictures, since it also has one each for this year's May-August and September-December time frames. The pictures are really pretty awesome. J is having me hold onto it until Christmas so he doesn't feel as guilty buying a calendar for next year so early. There are a couple other books in there, I think, that I'm too lazy to go find out what they are. Oh yeah, one is a "Bad Cats" little book with pics of cats doing funny and sometimes naughty things, with little snippets of text accompanying each one.

Girly Victoria's Secret bra shopping stuff to follow, plus today's stuff...

Finally, I had a $10 birthday gift card from Victoria's Secret through having their Angels gold card, plus it came with a certificate to redeem for a free eau de parfum of a fragrance that actually smelled decent, if I spent $10 at their store. I had to use them in August, and yesterday was the last day in that month, so we went up to Jamestown Mall so I could use 'em. The bad: I'm now a 38C. For so long I was a 34C, and have kept buying in that size. I did notice that new second skin satin bras were tighter than they used to be, and I figured I probably ought to be buying a 36C but figured since I could still fit them, and you can buy extenders from places like the Vermont Country Store, no biggie. Well... she measured me when I said 34 and said I was coming out to 38. Plus, I still measured out to a C (A = 1 inch diff between chest and bust, B = 2 inches, etc.). ??? I figured a 38C's cups would be too big, surely even if my back had gained enough fat in that area to make that much difference, my boobs hadn't changed all that much. Wrong! I tried on the Ipex (seamless with the wire hidden from the front line, etc.) in the 34C, 36C, 38B, and 38C. I couldn't make the 34 close, at all; even though their satin demis were just fairly tight they would still close. The 36 I probably could've closed but I didn't try very hard. The 38 fit quite well, though I was just barely getting the secondary hump forming from the cups actually being slightly too small. !! She brought the last one and it fit perfectly. !!!!

However, the Ipex has a slight problem that takes away from its otherwise perfect comfort. Where the wire ends at the edges, the fabric there is apparently a bit thin, and the inside plastic corner sticks out just enough to be all jabby near the armpit area. Bleh. Not a comfortable thing at all. Only on the left for me, but noticable. So she brought two others, a demi from their Body line and one from their Sexy line. Both were more comfortable 'cause they didn't have the wire jutting anywhere, and I don't wear tight enough shirts that really make use of the seamlessness of the Ipex anyway. I got two Body demis for comfort; one in nude for under white and one in lavendar 'cause I didn't want black, white, or the pale pink, and the rest of their colors were icky. (I don't like coral orange, light teal, or hot pink). I also bought a Sexy demi in black (it has a bit of lace at the bottom between the cups) because when I had it on and threw my t-shirt on, the pushup effect (without double boobs or other weirdness) was quite evident. I actually said, "Wow, where did those come from?" out loud so the sales lady and J could hear me. So I had to get one.

The good: both the Body bra and the Sexy bra are noticably cheaper than the Ipex. The other bad: they're still over $35. The good: a really good quality, comfortable bra is often hard to find, and is worth extra money. The last bad: what if the exercise class I'm in along with whatever other exercising I do beyond that, makes them too loose in 6-8 months, with the bras still being perfectly wearable and not worn out? Can't add extra hooks to a bra to make it tighter, and you can't shrink the cups either. So I might've wasted my money, since a 36 with extenders might've tided me over until that time, so would've lasted me longer. Plus, I'll probably get spoiled by these and want to replace them with a smaller size once I get to where I absolutely cannot wear them, which is another money hit.

After that we went to EB Games, who actually already had the game J was going to head back to GameStop for in a couple days, so we bought it there instead.

Today is laundry day, yea! I was just about out of my good underwear, particularly that which is low cut and doesn't come up above my pants. In fact, because of twice wearing briefs this week, I have an alternate meaning for the Three Fold Law: # of times one has to fold over the waist band on a pair of VS high-leg brief underwear in order to make it not stick up over low cut pants. So looking forward to not doing that anymore.