Coming up: A good droid is mourned. Just like husbands, phones prove to be replaceable, and new hope arrives in the mail. Anchors aweigh as boats are laden with ginger and numbers tricke in on the week's gorgin progress. A weekly weigh-in challenges a prior reading to a duel. Who will rein supreme and what will it all mean?? Dates are celebrated with rampant running and special hombrage of the clandestine training calendar. Will the YMCA gym members quake in their addidas to see the DINK return?? And Adella goes orange in her hormonal regimen. Will her tango stand up to concentrated femininity or will she flee in a bout of exhaustion??
All this and more:
Socktober Victory - Paraphone Regained -
My brief spell of cellular liberation officially draws to an end. After only a day of withdrawal, Asurion has ensured my addiction can continue unabated. It took about an hour to reset things the way I like it, but I should be back to mindless droid-zombie in no time at all. In the future, I'll try to remember to exercise caution while taking photos with gloves, but I make no guarantees.
It was a good day, the day sans phone. Granted, I spent most of it at work and online, so the absence was limited mostly to group text messages that my mother forwarded to me. I admit, there were times when I did not necessarily know what time it was due to not owning a watch. And I do get a little antsy meeting somebody somewhere when I don't have an immediate means of (1) telling if it's time to meet them, (2) contacting them if something comes up.
Despite two such "meeting somebody somewhere" occasions, things went off without a hitch. I met Azita at the YMCA without any difficulties and we alit the sweaty stairs to workout domination.She's working her way up to more consistent running, so we are doing warm ups on the treadmill. It's only ten minutes of running plus the extra ten running there and back, but it's nice to add some of my impala-style hipping and hopping (have yet to leap into a car, but it's a matter of time) to the middle of the week. And, forcing myself to do a relentlessly steady pace from time to time is good for my character, despite my character generally being irredeemable at this stage in my professional "development" (lawyer joke, badumbum!). I'm starting to feel a bit big fish on steroids in medium sized goldfish bowl using the silver sneaker machines, since I am mostly at the top resistance bands there. It's cool to get to that point, but I may be getting askance glances from the other nice ladies (mostly ladies) who cycle through them.
Just like our workouts, gym friendships are so cyclical. We made a gym-friend in the locker room last month. She was a nice lady who sat around in the nude often as not, making polite conversation with us about the weather. I suspect the schedule for her water aerobics class changed, since I haven't seen her all month. We also have a friend who does the silver sneaker machines and whom Azita rapidly took into the cordiality fold. I don't know much about her except that her dog died on the 4th of July and she also likes the water aerobics class. Perhaps all of our old friends have been stolen from us by the blight that is water aerobics! Yesterday we made a new friend. I say "we" because I continue to be Azita's plus-one in conversational interactions at times like these. The woman is a very cheery lady named something like Salwanah.
She liked that Azita and Adella sound so much alike and said no wonder we were friends. Since human beings really are fairly. narcissistic little parakeets seeking out mirrors, I can't say that similarity in names wasn't a factor (hell, I am part of an A&A marriage). She also asked Azita if she was a western student, so I suspect we'll be happy to see her again in the future. I continue to be mostly too focused to make conversation during my actual work out, but I try to smile politely and make comments as appropriate between sets.
My other appointment was - we're on a Simler theme here - with Nate for a lesson. He showed me his closed silver routine and kept going on about how I shouldn't let his other students know that I'd picked the whole thing up in one day (bet he says that to all the students, blush blush). I should add that I managed to mostly functionally get through it once by the end and as of now have completely forgotten the hard parts, but I enjoy his irrationally convincing optimism. He said it felt performance ready by the end, and I suggested he had not been paying attention to my funny faces if he thought that.
As I frequently say, I love Nate's ability to see a person's unvarnished potential and to weigh that against their ambition. Somebody is vastly talented, but only wants to learn social dancing: he's on it. Somebody maybe has coordination issues but wants to get into competitions, he'll put them exactly in the right level and work them at exactly the right amount of pressure. I won't comment on his assessment of my ultimate potential/ability. I suspect it's pretty elevated, but I'm known for my lack of confidence.
We fortunately fall far afield of any weird "but you have so much potential if you'd only apply yourself!" conversations that lead me to go pout in the bathroom and tell him he's not my real dad. And yet, he gets that point across in a subtle enough way to perhaps reach "you could go far if that was what you wanted, but that's work and it's your priorities." Anyways, I never know what I want, except to have hips that move half as beautifully as his. But I bet that's a lot of work! In the meantime, I'll polish as I can. And yes, I've totally forgotten the entire routine from yesterday.
Today, I have a consult, so I'm trying to look slightly less free-spirited (euphemism for "slept in a large dumpster last night"). Fortunately I have a pair of pants that were way too large for me on standby. They're still a bit baggy, but not egregiously so at this point. Now to clean up the detritus littering my office before she comes... Ok, maybe I'll wait for another hour or two and panic right before she arrives. That's generally my preferred modus operandi. Boy is she in for a treat!
A very eerie Socktober date night -
We may be an old married couple, but we still adhere to our weekly date night policies (most of the time). Yesterday was the convenient niche in Mr. (W)right's recondite training calendar (naturally, we consulted the oracles with runes and some chicken gizzards to find the most propitious day), and thus plans were made. Plans being code for "an entry was made on our google calendars" to denote the temporal reservation.
Andrew spent the day driving around popping in on vendors to see why on earth various parts he'd ordered with a deadline of, oh, early August were not in fact assembled just yet. I hear that there are words of "plan B" percolating in his little project blue prints. This does not involve any kind of pill, but does seem to result from regrets over jumping into bed with a company that maybe looked better on a cursory glance than objective reality might warrant. We'll blame the employee that Andrew replaced, since it seems to have been his original choice. Anyways, I can assertively aver that this project has something to do with screws - roller screws, ball screws, quick and dirty screws... plates and shafts inevitably will make an appearance with a side of drilling. I love it when my husband talks dirty to me like that. We keep the passion alive, I tell ya.
Anyways, despite the (nestle brand) crunch associated with reinvisioning an entire component for Mr. (W)right's giant machine, he seemed in good enough sorts. Anyday that he is capable of driving and stringing together sentences in a semi-coherent - if abstruse - chain of declarations is a day he stands fit for date night. And I am glad to report that - despite an earlier bout of merrily mordant malice and swirling eyes - the hormonal roller coaster was steady at a lull for our grand connubial escapades.
Feeling "adventurous" I decided I might try a tofu teriyaki at a place called the Ginger Boat. I used to go there years ago with my mom and her boytoy. It was generally a pretty straightforward teriyaki joint that served their meal combos in plates that looked like little boats (I imagine some of the dishes always featured ginger, but that was less noticeable). It's been upscaled since then. They've got high class Christmas lights on the walls, a real paint job, and several laquered tables and chairs; oh and stumps (I'm not sure if the stumps are purely decorative or optional seating devices). They've also revamped their menu to include some fun frisky fusions in roll and "tapas" form. Feeling more adventurous than perhaps advised, I ordered the "veggie stick" which turned out to be a single passable kebab with soy sauce on the side. Not bad, but definitely appetizer sized.
Fortunately I had eaten not long before. Note to the world: sorghum cooks in the rice cooker quite well. Sorghum also can be microwaved to make miniature popcorn, but I think I prefer it cooked. The miniature popcorn is novel, and does make me feel like a gian in some erstwhile Super Mario level, but the yield is low enough that it feels like a waste and popcorn does the job just as easily with more efficient results.
The service at Ginger Boat was not quite upscaled, although our waitress did have us sit down to place our orders (used to be an order at the counter joint) and was sporting a fancy t-shirt advertising their new ROLLZ. Ok they didn't spell it that way, but something clever was afoot in presenting their roll combos. They were quite rapidly inundated by college students, and it was definitely a struggle for the cook and single waitress to keep up. So, I guess the wait times were upscaled a bit. Oh and the water glasses were quite fancy.
Despite still wanting to eat upon returning home, I did enjoy the ambience and found the excursion worth experimentation. And we still got home with plenty of time to play and impromptu game of hide and seek (hey it may be date night, but we never said we're quite grown ups) and settle into the couch for Spaced, which is a very strange show.
For whatever reason, the whole experience made it feel like a weekend and I am not sure I understand that today is Thursday. I'm glad it's Thursday, because that's trash day and boy do our recycling bins overfloweth. But I have yet another consult this morning so once again I have to look and act presentably. I'm really looking forward to real-Friday when I can return to "fashion police crime scene" and full file explosion I like a clean office an all, but it's impossible to work in such an environment!
Until then, I'll eke out what I can in my little treadmill corner of muss and fuss and wait for the weekend to truly arrive!
Socktober 18 - Finally Friday
After several false starts and false hopes, the weekend is nearly full baked and tickling my nostrils with the sweet redolence of succulent sloth. There's a final sprint through this crazy little thing called work (i.e. "being an adult"), and several half-baked ideas about what "ought" to be accomplished this week are nipping at my heels in pesky fashion. But once the weekend hits, who cares? Somebody more diligent and/or mentally coalesced than myself. I will continue to blame hormones, despite no particular evidence that this is anything out of the ordinary after a strange week and a turn towards fall.
I have added progesterone for the next two weeks to my lady-on-the-beach-in-white cocktail. Aside from raising my core body temperature a smidgen (is is hot in here or am I just taking funny orange tablets?), there seem to be no traceable ill-effects from the addition (knock on wood). Sure I'm spacey, and merrily mordant to an occasionally severe level of sneering impatience, but that was kind of already happening with just the estradiol. Who can say? I've still got a week to let the darned orange built up in my system. In the meantime, I remain occasionally moody and occasionally ... SQUIRREL! Wait what were we talking about? I got distracted by a speck of wall and spent the last ten minutes staring at it. Don't see it anymore, ah well. I'm sure it's there, since the building is still intact.
Despite the phasing in and out mentally, I've managed to mostly keep it together (I think, but we are awfully poor judges of our own present and future mental states). I continue to eat a boatload of food with regularity. Despite occasionally wanting to just let my legs go a saturnine spaghetti, I've managed to exert fealty to my Tuesday and Thursday workouts with Azita.She occasionally remarks on the fact that I set the treadmill to 8 for our warm ups, while she is at 5.5, but I think that we actually have an almost identical cadence at these respective speeds due to the discrepancies in height and leg length.
And while my head is more muddled than a mojito lime, I've managed to slog through two consults this week without too much sobbing or hysteria (on my part). I'd call that a win.
But enough with all this winning. Forget "the final sprint." This is a hobble across the finish line kind of day. I'm ready to tuck my head and free fall into freedom about now toward Friday afternoon!
Happy almost weekend everyone! CANNONBALL! WHEEEEE!
Socktober Romance and Return of the DINK-Gym-Day
A1: (slightly wired from a longish run and weights session, and even more so from the JUICE rush ensuing in the car ride home). So I realized that ... well, tonight I'm not dj-ing and I think it's really interesting because it was the perfect picture of total ambivalence in the classical sense of the word. Because I was like "oh man, I'm not dj-ing" and that made me really sad, but then at the exact same time I was thinking "holy crap I'm not dj-ing, so we can go home early! That rocks!!" and these contrary emotions were coexisting oblivious the fact that they should be engaged in a zero sum game of emotional supremacy.
A2:... yep, that does sound pretty ambivalent.
A1: Ok, so I've decided I'm going to hop in the shower really quickly while you upload yourself. We can reconnoiter around lunch.
A2: I may be a horrible boyfrianceband and just make myself lunch when we get back.
A1: Oh... ok... But if you do that, then you'll probably be done with lunch by the time I'm out of the shower and you'll be upstairs while I'm eating lunch and'we'll totally miss each other, and then we'll never talk or see each other again... and we'll drift apart... and... and we'll be divorced in like two months.
A1: Oh I'm just kidding. Nobody can get a divorce finalized in two months!!
A1: I'm hilarious.
A2: I love you (to rhyme with, "that's nice dear")
A1: you have no idea. But I really am hilarious.
As may be inferred from the above dialog, it was return to Yuppie-DINK run-gym day after an Andrew-hiatus. Also, it's our monthaversary. To clarify, it's our dating monthaversary, not wedding monthaversary, which we seem to acknowledge a little less rigidly. That's probably because the latter didn't make it onto the google calendar with the same alacrity that our dating one did. Somehow in those first months of dating, well, each month seems like a high-fivable accomplishment worth entering on eternal repeating entries. It's also conveniently always the same weekend as Tango Experience, so we kind of have a built in celebratory date/relentless reminder. But, more than that, it's our Yuppie-DINK run-gym day.
Yes, the almighty training calendar finally relented after many prayers. It has, in its goodwill, allowed us this special time of looking horrifyingly serious and coordinated with our respective beeping watches and other hardware. Actually, our watches were a touch taciturn this trip. Andrew is in "transition" and has thus doffed his pace guides. I enjoy this, because I personally think his watch was a big fat chirping nag, but also it's cool that he's really learned his body well enough to pace himself for a run without that help. He's coming to find a pretty consistent pace for himself. It's faster than his guided pace effort, so I took a few fewer detours and extra circles today, and we finished about seven minutes sooner than usual. I'm guessing that our turn-around point will be pushed back a bit. In the meantime, I made up the difference (and a little extra) on the treadmill at the Y. Since Andrew takes more time to do strength training than I do, the extra fifteen actually had us wrapping up at the same time.
And speaking of "days" that today is, it was weigh-in day at the (W)right household. The news was mixed. As suspected previously, the rapid gain of last week was likely influenced by water weight and not entirely accurate or indicative of ongoing trends. This week's is far more in line with what I'd have anticipated over the course of the last two weeks. I say this instead of "oh crap I lost a pound and a half!" Because really I don't think it was a useful pound and a half of anything relevant to my ultimate she-hulking-white-pants-on-beach-wearing goal. And bright side: because the water was apparently not inundating my pores today, the actual body fat percentage read out was back to 19% with a little extra percentage point encouragement to spare.
But it does remind me to keep paying attention. After the quick gains of last week and the uncomfortable sensation of actually fitting in most of my clothes (I am entirely unaccustomed to such sensations and immediately went into sweat pants withdrawal upon the third day of wearing fitted professional pants) I was starting to think I could cut back a little on the food. Instead, I'm keeping on keeping on. Especially after this morning's DINKathalon and in anticipation of my future tangoing this evening.
As an addendum, the tangoing went well. I was a little horrible and left far before Cinderella had her chance to make a grand entrance let alone exit. I blame the ORANGE barracuda (oooooh Barracuda), but I just was feeling somewhat off-balance and easily dazed. There were several unfamiliar dancers present, and few "old glove" leads to coddle me into an appropriate tango trance. I feel a touch guilty, as apparently some of these leads expressed a desire to dance with me to my darling husband around the time that I'd already donned my boots and hit the stairs in flight mode.
But before my wash-out, I did see Margi and Pam (whom I have not seen since the wedding) and taught a surprisingly decent lesson considering we started late and it was a somewhat difficult move.
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