Thursday, February 26, 2009

Beginning of the End?

No this is not about 2012 or Armageddon - though in 2 years it may be...

The End of the upstairs rotten shower --

We've gone back and forth on the shower debacle - the last visit to Home Despot left Rob ready to rip down all the walls and re-drywall and slap a pre-fab shower in... That left me completely freaked out and flashing me forward to some home improvement disaster show on HGTV - and Rob and I the guest stars...

Now I have *full* confidence in Rob's ability to do home improvement - he's shocked me w his prowess in doing electrical related 'stuff' - which esp scares ME. But we did buy a new shower door for him in August - which is still leaned up against his bathroom wall... so I do worry about what sometimes feels like the insurmountable wall (or shower door?) between 'what it takes to function every day - chores, job, pets, laundry, etc.' and ' that + the energy to also do a bunch of home improvement stuff.' I have this argument internally all the time - how do I fit in exercise? if it's this hard now, how do we fit in kids?'
It's also a lot easier to get used to status quo - even if that means sharing a shower - than to change... it's like that old chemistry lesson - entropy vs enthalpy... a body tends toward the least amount of energy/effort, etc.

SO where we landed - we did call the tile guy... after some rescheduled appts, he finally made it here Monday night. He's given us what I think is a super reasonable quote - to take out all the concrete down to subfloor, replace the pan (if needed), then re-concrete, tile, etc. Since all this is timed around bonus and tax refunds, the fix is much easier to absorb...

It'll take about 3 days - given the time to dry/cure, etc. And am hoping he starts soon - like by this weekend...
The End (I hope) of my current plateau --

Lap-band wise I'm a little discouraged -- both last week and this week (weighed this AM) I've stayed on the same whole lb# -- now's when I wish I were actually noting the decimals!
I'm surprised to hit a plateau this quickly time-wise - though I realize I've dropped more than 40lbs - so weight-wise a plateau doesn't surprise me. It is however DAMN discouraging when you're eating less than 1K cals a day though... the deprivation feels that much deeper - and sorta more pointless...
I however will NOT be discouraged - and in fact I had a check up Monday - and am going in for another fill next week. Luckily the fill is IN THE OFFICE - woohoo - so it will be a small one (they have a limit on how much they can fill in office) - but hopefully cheaper... the office visits so far haven't even cost a co-pay - I think they're being accounted for as part of the surgical 'followups' - woohoo! Cross your fingers for me!

That will mean next week is liquids Tues/Weds, mushies Thurs/Fri - and back to solids on Saturday... thank goodness it's just in time to be done for our Phish weekend - full of houseguests - and then a # of work lunch mtgs...

The End of paying $15 a mos for a crappy gym I don't use --

We have a gym at work. Now in McLean (NOVA) our office bldg is like 14 stories - w the gym in the lobby. So really no sweat sneaking down at lunch or right after work, etc. In Richmond, the gym is in a separate bldg - our conference center - so really you have to deliberately leave whatever bldg you work in to go to the gym.
Our Richmond office is basically like a college campus - except unlike college, there's no delayed start to your meetings to account for walking between the bldgs. Most of us who say work in bldg 1 and have to walk to bldg 6 (my daily 'commute') - end up running there if we're in back to back meetings - arriving flushed, out of breath, w shin splints - and well late - every time... OR like me, folks just drive bldg to bldg - which is a crapshoot - bc the parking lots are large open land lots for the most part - which means your walk in from the lot can be as long as walking through 2 bldgs - and it introduces more of the outside elements...

Anyway, our gym is effin inconvenient to 'drop in' to during the day w/o hours open to accomodate it.

Our gym is also dominated by networking men and crummy staff. In NOVA, there was a great staff who were friendly, knew you by name and I even would catch up pretty frequently w one of the girls there. They made themselves available for any questions and were really helpful but also didn't force them and their training, etc. on you. In RIC, they all appear to be 19 years old, disinterested in even saying a pleasant 'hi' when you come in and appear pretty stand-offish...

I also do NOT enjoy working out w my coworkers - esp since the gym is about the sq ft of my house... I esp hate it that some coworkers seem to use it as their way of 'getting in good' w the sr folks at work - like I knew someone who would come in at a certain time to work out so he could chat it up w muckity mucks... whereas our former co-president of the entire company used to work out in NOVA - hat on, head down, super focussed - folks didn't try to grab a machine near him or anything just to suck up... that vibe sorta permeates our RIC gym and generally to me has completely turned me off to going there...

They also do things like forget to turn on the room music... and since they're so damn unapproachable I have no desire to go bitch about it...
SO long story short, I'm quitting it... gimme my $15/mos back!
The timing works out very well bc we have a new Golds coming into our area -- like a crazy awesome new gym - 40K+ sq ft, w a cardio cinema (watch a movie on the treadmill) , a pool (critical for me bc of my back issues), a women's only section designed like a curves for circuit training, saunas, hot tub, racquet ball, smoothie bar, kidsitting, 100s of machines, abs only area, 2 diff workout studios...
And they're running a special to 'pre-sell' memberships - so my $15 dues which to me were so cheap for a gym, I figured I'd never join another one - turns into $30/mos (cheaper than my discount at the Y) and I get a state of the art awesome gym to go to - w hopefully very few run-ins w co-workers and a TON of stuff to do. TVs in each cardio piece, etc. -- it opens 3/15.

We got a 'family' membership for $60/mos for the 2 of us, I got almost all the fees waived for joining. And we can use all 3 area Golds (they've also redone the older 2 to compete)... so I'm pretty damn happy w my negotiating - and the rate. It's 2 yrs and then mos to mos locked in 'forever'

Score one for Kate!

The End of pig as savory -- Mo's Bacon Bar --
Bacon + Chocolate?!
The last part I will actually leave to my friend Yhippa's blog - his post does this more justice than I could... I went on my quest to find the Bacon Chocolate Bar at Joe's Market and got the last one...

1 comment:

Megan Van Fleet said...

Where is the blogging at, girl? I need pictures, updates, and sarcasm ASAP!!! Glad to hear the tractor is moving!