Fun and Games Dept

So I am sitting in a cafe at the Eastview Mall near Rochester eating lunch. I’m eating lunch kind of early; it’s 11:30 as I write this, but I’m rather hungry and the timing just worked for this little lunch adventure.

Normally I would opt to eat at Tom Wahl’s, my favorite fast food establishment in this area, but attitudes change when you’re trying to lead a healthier lifestyle, so I am eating at a place called Colie’s Cafe. My meal consists of a roasted vegetable soup and a Very Veggie wrap. The side is chips and salsa in lieu of fries. This cafe reminds me of Panera a little bit, though I like the food choices better.

I am going to be meeting some of my co-workers for the first time in a little while and I’m looking forward to that part of this adventure. It’s always good to meet people in person, especially when you work as part of a collaborative team. Electronic introductions, as much as people rely on them, are not a suitable replacement for an in person ‘hello’ and a friendly handshake.

Today is my husband’s birthday. We celebrated with a homemade supper last night (I made turkey meatloaf) and I gave him two of his presents. He’ll get another present today. Since I will be away on business tonight, this will be the first time that I haven’t spent his birthday with him. This distresses me a little bit, but at least I was able to wake up next to him this morning and hop out of bed in the wee hours to give him his birthday card and some husbandly affection. He said I shouldn’t worry about my absence, since we are movers and shakers.

So late on Friday afternoon I found out that I was selected to go on another trip for work. This Wednesday I’ll be gone for one night on business. We are traveling to the outskirts of Toronto, where we will see another company using the software that I help support. I’m looking forward to the adventure. It’s a little stressful, having to be outside of my comfort zone and all that, but I think the positives far outweigh this little negative, so I’m good with it.

One thing that I’m stressing about is that I will be so close to Toronto but that it will be for such a brief amount of time (less than 24 hours). I haven’t been in Toronto in a couple of years. I look forward to the opportunity to visit for vacation like activities again. But not this trip.

Looking at our family calendar (which we share on all our electronic devices), there’s a lot of travel coming up. I fly to the outskirts of Dallas for a week in a few weeks, we are going to Disney, we are going to play with the other bears in Chicago in May, there’s a trip to North Carolina in the works and Earl and I are already planning our summer road trip, which will involve the likes of Wisconsin and Arkansas and all points in between.

I am a lucky man.

The thought of travel is helping me keep the winter blahs at a minimum. Just the thought of a change of pace is putting a little spring in my step. It’ll be nice when spring is actually here.

So I’m taking my Friday afternoon lunch hour a couple of hours later than usual. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been in a training class all week. I have spent the better part of the last four days staring at a 14-inch laptop screen, trying to follow along with an instructor that is piped in via VoIP and then doing the exercises as indicated. The instructor seemed very nice and he knew his stuff, but he didn’t believe in stopping for a break. He took one 15 minute break the first day of the class and yesterday he took a seven minute break. Other than that, if there was a need for the latrine or something, you were on your own. One hoped that they didn’t miss any important information while they were answering the calls of nature.

I need to take a break every so often when I’m working. I even need to take a break from play sometime. Taking a break helps keep me focused. I did find my attention wandering a little at times during the class, but I would walk around within the length of my headset cord and look at something other than a computer screen for a few moments and find my focus again.

I still think breaks are really important, though. When I work at the office I join a couple of my co-workers and we do laps around the parking lot. It’s a good way to stretch the legs, get a little bit of exercise and to enjoy a few moments of fresh air. We go out in most weather conditions, though we tend to avoid the more drenching episodes of rain.

I’m going to go for a walk now and stretch my legs a bit. I hear it’s fairly nice out for these parts. I need to get a breath of fresh air.

This is post 4001. I don’t think that I have ever commented on the number of posts I have posted in a post before, so I thought I would do it this time, because 4001 looks like a nifty number to me.

To celebrate my 4001th post (and 11 1/2 years of doing this blogging thing), we shall celebrate with a song. I consider it my theme song and it is best enjoyed in a 2011 Jeep Rubicon with the top off, my husband at my side, the Cub in the back seat and the sun shining down on us as we drive the Interstates together.

DJ Antoine
“This Time (Radio Edit)”
2006
Ultra Records

So I woke up this morning at 5:30 after a solid night’s sleep. It’s a wonderful feeling, waking up fully refreshed and ready to go for the day when you’re suppose to feel that way. The day has gone very well thus far and I think it is because of the good night’s sleep I had last night.

After feeling all refreshed and wide awake I looked out the window and was reminded that it was still dark outside. It’s still winter. As I looked out onto the driveway, I could see the shiny evidence of the sleet and ice mixture that they had predicted; the pinging of ice pellets against the window confirmed this observation. And there was no sign of a sunrise.

I love the darkness in that I love the vibe of it, but physically my body craves sunlight. It craves the warmth of the sun and I haven’t been feeling that lately. I’ve been very chilled and I want to be warmed to the core of my soul. I don’t want to be sunburned, I just want to feel warm.

Over the last couple of weeks I have gotten in the habit of wearing two jackets simultaneously to work. I wear my “trailer park hoodie” (as I call it) and then I wear my Carhartt jacket over that. This helps with some of the warmth that I’m looking for. I only wear this combination to work; when we go out to dinner or something I wear my leather jacket and I always feel chilled in that. I should wear my motorcycle jacket, but I have been told that I look too intimidating in that when walking into a nicer restaurant. Now that I’m typing this paragraph, I’ve discovered that I am in the mood to go somewhere to wear that motorcycle jacket. I think I have a goal for this coming weekend.

I still feel chilled though. I’m looking forward to our vacation in March. Sunny Florida does wonders to chase the chill away, and this time I’ll have a head start with the work travel I’ll be doing in a couple of weeks.

I just need to find some warmth. Some sunlight would be wonderful. I don’t like labels, but that whole Seasonal Affectation Disorder thing, though I try very hard to fight it, sometimes comes in with a vengeance.

And it’s presence always comes with a chill.

So yesterday the weather radio blared out another Lake Effect Storm Warning. The National Weather Service predicted 4-10 inches of snow in lake effect snow bands and the warning included our area. I didn’t think much of it, these things are suppose to happen all the time in January in this neck of the woods.

This morning when Earl and I got up for work (at 5:30 a.m.), there was evidence that it had snowed a little bit. Earl said that it looked like “a little more than a dusting.” As I hopped out of the shower a half hour later, I noticed that it was snowing a little more than it was earlier.

After getting myself together and out the door, I started the trek to get on the Thruway. The roads were in pretty bad shape, but this is nothing out of the ordinary, as we live on a county maintained road. When I got to the state maintained portion, the conditions didn’t improve. In fact, they got worse. Popping the Jeep into four-wheel drive, I decided to truck on.

Twenty minutes later I was at the Thruway entrance. I had driven six miles in 20 minutes. Looking at the Thruway, which runs parallel to the freeway I was on, traffic was moving at about the same pace. At that rate, I’d get to work well into mid-morning.

I decided to turn around and head home. And this is the part where I get a little braggy: instead of hopping back into bed for an hour, I decided to just start my day. I was feeling good, I was in the mood to be productive and I actually was in the mood to work. So I sent an email off to those that cared as to my whereabouts and settled down to the day’s work. I’m glad I made the decision to stay back, it started snowing even harder and it continued throughout the morning.

Snow falling. Photo taken through an open door, that’s the actual snowflakes in the air.

Now that I’m sitting in the kitchen enjoying my lunch, I’m noticing that it looks beautiful outside and there’s still a few flakes in the air here and there.

Winter ain’t so bad when you put your mind to it.

So this weekend I am flying solo at The Manor. Jamie is in Chicago figuring out the logistics to the next chapter of his life (slated to start later this spring) and Earl is out of town at a retreat until Sunday afternoon. His absence was a last minute decision and I’m glad that he made the decision to take advantage of the opportunity. It’s weird having him off the grid but it’s ok too; I’ve done some weekend traveling myself from time to time so he should be afforded the same opportunities.

Some people get nervous when I mention that Earl and I occasionally do things separately. It doesn’t make us nervous, so I don’t know why it makes others nervous. One of the beautiful things about being in the perfect marriage is that we allow each other to grow and to blossom and to experience all we can on our path. Usually we do these things together but once in a while I will want to do something that he’s not interested in and vice versa. It’s ok. We are still blissfully happy, foolishly in love and we act nowhere near our biological age. I wouldn’t ask for anything different and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is perfection.

So I have this weekend to chill, do laundry and probably be a geek. My iMac is still in the shop so I’m not going to be making any remixes this weekend, but I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied. I’m actually planning on making some treats for our little SuperBowl party. It’ll be a nice surprise when Earl gets back on Sunday.

I had some ideas of going on a road trip this weekend but the weather doesn’t seem too cooperative. Two or three inches of snow has fallen since 5 p.m. (2 1/2 hours ago). Apparently the snow bands off Lake Ontario are focused in our direction. It’s nothing to complain about, it’s just something to enjoy.

Always enjoy. Life is too short to be miserable.

So I have been trying not to buy new gadgets but I ended up buying something this week. We have had the same bathroom scale for 15 years. It’s electronic. It zaps your body with some low voltage current to determine your BMI. It is suppose to be highly accurate.

I don’t know if I have drop-kicked it one too many times or what, but Monday morning it told me that I weighed 188. This was impossible, because the day before I had weighed 176, and there was no way I could put 12 pounds on in one day. So I hopped off the scale, refrained from yelling or kicking anything, reset the scale to zero and I hopped on again.

I weighed 142. (Just call me Karen).

I tried again.

I weighed 191.4.

Since the numbers were not getting any better I decided that the scale had finally died and it was time to order a new one. A quick hop on Amazon, a little Prime membership shipping and I am happy to say that today we will have a new scale that is synchronized with our FitBit and MyFitnessPal accounts. I have a hunch that there will be no way to jimmy the numbers in our favor. It will be what it is and it will be recorded as such.

I guess I’m really a geek if I’m excited about a new scale arriving. I don’t find it at all odd that I have to connect to the scale with a web browser and configure it; any sort of odd feelings of this nature dissipated when I had to reboot the dishwasher after a firmware upgrade.

Ain’t the 21st century grand?

My domestic ways are kicking into high gear again and I think this is a good thing. Last night before bed I emptied the dishwasher and readied the table for breakfast. Instead of running off and reading the latest tech news during my lunch hour, I got a head start on dinner. Tonight we are having a roast via the crock pot. I am already making plans for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Working from home is certainly help with all this.

There is something quite satisfying of taking proper care of your home. I have always been impressed with people that strive to keep their homes neat and tidy. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a home that has plenty of indicators that it is a lived in house, I mean, who would want to live in a museum? But I do appreciate the amount of effort it takes to keep your home looking its best.

I’m working at the office today. Under these circumstances I normally join a couple of co-workers for a couple of laps around the parking lot. We take this little jaunt twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It does wonders for stretching, getting out of the cubicle for a moment and regaining our vision after staring at the computer for an hour or two at a time.

Since it was barely above 0ºF this morning at 10:00 a.m. (it was -19ºF when I left for work this morning), the weather wasn’t really prime for walking around the parking lot at a brisk pace. Not even at a very brisk pace. On the off chance that I would be crazy enough to do such a thing I did wear two coats, a hat and gloves to work but that wasn’t going to be enough.

I briefly considered doing what others were doing and just skipping the walk altogether, but I couldn’t bring myself to not get some exercise this morning. When I work from home and it’s unbearably cold, I ride the exercise bike for 15 minutes. I forgot to pack it in the Jeep (not that I really could have done that) and so I opted to walk laps around the office building. This isn’t an uncommon activity and the building is designed to readily accommodate this sort of thing. I walked ’round and ’round for 15 minutes. It was somewhat boring but it was energizing. I was definitely more productive after my walk vs beforehand.

This got me thinking about what I can do to energize the first half of my morning as well. I’ve gotten in the habit of waking up to my alarm and grabbing my iDevice to catch up on emails and the like while snuggled under the covers in bed. This is not an optimal way to wake up, but I suspect that it is becoming more and more common in this modern world. So tomorrow morning, even though it will be a Friday morning, I am going to modify my wake-up routine and force myself to get up and get moving a little bit. Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean that I can’t get up and do something, despite the winter morning darkness and cold. Who knows, if all goes well it might turn into a habit.