04 March 2006

The sun came out today....

we're born again there's new grass on the field.........

One of the best spring songs ever!!!

So we woke up to a beautiful sunny day today. When I saw how nice it was I just had to get out. I debated on biking but settled on a run. Once I started looking back I realized I haven't run in awhile - yikes!!! So I decided on 5 miles got dressed and headed out the door. It was an awesome run!!!

I learned a few things along the way today:

1) I enjoy the sounds of nature (cars) when doing short runs. I decided to leave the iPod at home and it was great, I really enjoyed it.

2) I run faster outdoors. This is counterintuitive but it's true. On the treadmill I have to keep it at a set pace and I've realized I don't run that way. I vary my speed, not by much, all during the run. On the treadmill I have a hard time constantly changing the speed.

It's funny how everytime I do something I learn something. It I pay attention there's always something to learn. Isn't that really true of all things in life????

03 March 2006

Another rainy day.

We were flooded again this morning. In fact, we had to get up at midnight to move our cars because our drive was flooding again. How much fun is it to get up at midnight, walk through cold standing water in the rain, move your car, and then walk back through it. When I got back to bed I couldn' t go back to sleep. Ugh!!! I finally made it to work around noon, just in time for lunch :) So, no training again today. Wait!!! I lied. I did 25 minutes on the elliptical this morning then hubby and I broke out the bikes and took a 1 hour ride looking at all the flooding devestation. We didn't go very far, just cruised along looking at all the damage caused by the rain and flooding. It's not good. We were incredibly lucky to survive unscathed. So that's it. Just another day in paradise.

02 March 2006

What I did on my midweek vacation...

So, it's been raining here for a couple of days (40) and the ground is pretty saturated. Around 3:00 a.m. we got hit with yet another storm that dumped tons and tons of rain. By 5:30 a.m. my front yard looked like this:



The trees mark the edge of our lot and beyond that is the road. That fence across the street has 3 horizontal rails. You might notice you can only see 2.











This is a car going through that standing water. Look closely, the water is almost up the top of the wheels.












There is a good side to all this rain. Look at all the waterfalls right in front of my house :)











And there's always a chance for a little surfing.
This is our neighbor being towed down the road by his friend's truck.










So this is what it was like by my house today. The roads were closed. There were numerous mudslides and our house almost got flooded twice. We've been all day making sure drains are clear and trying to keep water out of the house. It was a nightmare. I did take the day off work(okay, I couldn't get there the roads are closed :) It's been fun.

Nothing else has happened today. It's nice to laze around but when you are forced to and have to keep moving water around it's just not much fun. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

01 March 2006

Maybe stress can be a good thing.

I am totally stressing. Generally when I stress I eat. But when the stress gets really bad, like now, I can't eat and my stomach feels like crap. I'm eating Tums like candy and all the food I eat just seems to sit in my stomach and not digest. It's horrible. It's all the stuff that's going on right now. I'm hemorrhaging money - in the next 4-6 weeks I'll have to pay out over $7,000 which I don't really have and I don't know what's going to happen. That's the worst part the not knowing. If I had to pay out the money but at least knew where it all was going to end I'd be okay. But right now it seems like I don't have control of my own life and I can't take it. Do you think I might be a bit of a control freak???? Nah!!!!

Anyway, faced with the choice this morning of laying around and crying "Oh, woe is me" or getting out and working my butt off to try and relieve the stress, I chose the workout. So I went swimming, and it was amazing. I pushed myself -hard- because I wanted to burn off some of this stress. It didn't really help but I got a helluva workout.

200m warm-up: 5:39 (really cruising working on form)
4 x 50m: 1:09, 1:07, 1:08, 1:11 (look at those numbers - woo hoo!!!!)
200m pull: 5:53
4 x 50m: 1:15, 1:21, 1:28, 1:16 (not as good as the first round, but definitely acceptable)
200m kick: 11:03 (some commotion in the pool, I had to stop a couple of times)
4 x 50m: 1:10, 1:09, 1:24, 1:07 (again, woo hooo!!!!)
4 x 25m: :47,

Well, it seems that's all I got. My watch has a 30 lap limit and I reached my limit. Bummer. Anyway the total time was 56 minutes and I did a total of 1600m. I am very pleased with those numbers. I can't believe how on Feb 13th my fastest 50m was 1:17 and today it was 1:07. That's 10 seconds faster!! That's a lot. Now I need to work on consistency so all my laps are close in time.

So there's 3 1/2 weeks till my tri. If I work hard the next few weeks maybe I could do the 500m swim in 12 minutes. Wouldn't that be awesome.

Okay, I'm off to tour a shrimp farm- don't ask!!!

28 February 2006

Apparently poor customer service is the norm now.

I have a couple of things I've been trying to do over the last week and clearly customer service rates very, very low on the overall priority list.

Why on earth would companies that claim to want your business not return phone calls??? Do they have so much business they don't need mine??? Do they realize they'll never get my business??? For the last week or so I've been trying to get some information and have contacted 3 companies repeatedly but have yet to receive a return phone call.

I have also been haunting Craigslist looking for something. I have sent out about 10 e-mails (when they give you no other way to contact them) and have gotten 2 responses. One of the responses asked for additional information, which I provided, and then never heard from them again. Nice way to do business..

In another example; I had my website hosted through Yahoo. A couple of weeks ago I discovered it had gone down. I contacted Yahoo trying to find out what was wrong (they have been continuing to charge me for the site). I sent an e-mail and it took 2 days to get a response. In the response the person went on for like 3 paragraphs on their security and how they could not access my account unless I provide my domain name, blah, blah, blah. When I sent the e-mail there is an option to send a copy to yourself. Well, the copy I got shows my domain name right at the top. Was this person an idiot????? So I responded and never heard from them again. 4 days later I submitted another e-mail request for support. It took them 5 days to answer me and they were asking for information that was totally and completely unrelated to my problem. In those 5 days I figured out what was wrong, cancelled my Yahoo account, and got a new webhosting company. I responded to this email informing them of the above information plus explained how they had failed miserably and how I was going to spread the word. This morning I get a response asking for the same information that is totally unrelated to my original problem. Did they not read my response??? Do they not understand that I CANCELLED MY ACCOUNT!!!! What a bunch of complete and total idiots.

This is what I've been running into lately. It makes me believe that I am the smartest person in the world. And that scares the hell out of me!!!! Fools, I completely surrounded by fools!!!!!

Is it any wonder my weight has started creeping up??? Actually, I do know it's because of all the stress lately. I am a stress eater, just ask that bag of Oreo's over the weekend. Anyway, it's back on track with journaling every single bite that goes in my mouth. I knew I was in trouble this morning when I got up and wasn't hungry. When I'm eating right and training well, I'm hungry as soon as I get up in the morning. Well, this morning, no. So I went for my run without eating and by the time I was done, still not hungry. Showered, got ready for work, put breakfast/lunch together, still not hungry. Got to work and still not hungry. In fact, all I've eaten this morning is a banana and I'm still not hungry. That is not a good sign at all.

Okay, enough moaning and bitching. I'm going to force myself to eat breakfast and then get to work.

27 February 2006

Swimming

I'll try to recreate this mornings swim. It was so incredibly cold and windy when I got up it did cross my mind not to go swimming. Then I thought of all the bloggers who get up and go swimming when there is snow on the ground and I decided not to be a wimp. But it was so cold that the first part of my swim was a blur but I'll try to remember.

500m warm-up going really slow and working on form: 16:07
100m: 2:14, 2:34, 2:41, 2:42, 2:48,2:45
75m: 2:08, 2:06
250m: 7:19
400m: 9:33
100m cool down goofing off: 3.22
Total: 2000m 1:25:08

I think that was it. It's weird I know because I kept losing track of what I was doing. Not too shabby though. Considering I clearly was not focused on swimming I think I did okay. I'm rather impressed by that 400m, not sure how I did that, hhmmmmm.

Okay, that's it. Have to get to work and leave early so I'm outa here..

26 February 2006

As is typical, things did not go as planned.

I'm having a helluva time with my website. I know I'm not an HTML expert but I do okay. The hosting company offers a webbuilding program and it's not doing what I want it to. It's pissing me off. On top of that I have absolutely no patience for computer things. I'm really good at computers and programs of all kinds. I can pretty much get them to do what I want when I want without too much problem but I have no patience for them, I just don't. Some day I'll tell you about my brush with glory, when I actually got to see the infamous Jobs garage where Apple was born. I've been working on computers my entire life. My first job was a key punch operator on a mainframe. Okay, enough about that, the point is, my website is not ready and probably won't be until next weekend - aaarrrgghhh!!!!!

Moving on. This weekend was okay. We had truck issues and had to take the truck in on Saturday. Due to a last minute change of plans we did not take my car, we figured we'd just wait for the truck. Needless to say 5 hours later we were still there, aaaarrrgghhh!!!!! I know, it was our own fault but still!!!!! Anyway, the truck is fixed.

Moving on. This morning I had planned to bike ride up to a little area called Punaluu and look at a house we might be interested in. But, when I woke up it was pouring rain. Plan B: bust out the trainer and catch up on All My Children. So I had these grand plans of riding for 2 hours (what the hell was I smokin??). After 40 minutes my butt was screaming. I did manage to stretch it to an hour so I was pleased with that. Then I jumped on the treadmill for 15 minutes (must always run after riding) and that was good. Also managed to get a good stretch in, and that was good. So overall today was good :)

I'm feeling very strange today (can you tell by the way I'm writing??). Kind of goofy and a little off kilter. You know what's really pissing me off??? There is 2 hours of Dancing with the Stars - gag me!!!! They cancel Desperate Housewives for that, oh please!!!! At least Grey's Anatomy is on.

I sent in my money for the Iroquois Point Tri, so game on. I decided to go ahead and do it even though I have all this upheaval in my life because it'd be good to keep me training and focused on something other than my life. It's only a 400 m swim but I'm trying to plan my training for the next month so I do well in the swim section. I'm going to focus on swimming and running with the bike on the weekends. I've also decided that February is over. I'm not going to make my goals in running or biking so I'm going to call it a month and shoot for March. In the next couple of days I'll be posting my goals for March and my plans to meet them.

That's all I have to say. Things are going along and hopefully will be all settled soon. Once I get this settled I'll explain, I just don't want to jinx things by talking too soon. I'm a firm believer in karma and I don't need to screw mine up any more at this point in time.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I'm off to try and get something done on my website - aaaarrrgggghhh!!!!!!!

Conversation with Hubby

 So yesterday morning I presented my idea of working out at home to the Hubby. Once I presented it to him, he said he was in. I told him I h...