Coming up: Sticks will rattle and roll, as losses are barely minimized across Eastern Europe! Will arches fall at the tread-altars of President's past? Winged deltoids charge forth slinging syllables with savagery. Our heroes flee the cinereal screen up mountains of mud and ware-mongering Winco lots. Will Andrew managed to soar off something steep to his doom, or will he survive yet again to savor the ski-jumping shenanigans. Treadmills shall roar and rattle. Will Adella run-walk her way to Arch-aureateness or will a sly shoelace send her into the land of concussion??
Read on if you dare...
Ice Ice Baby: An Olympic Medley of Cold Toes and Spandex.
I love the smell of icing in the morning; it smells like hot dogs. In between occasional Comcast paroxysms I'm back for some Gold Zone hockey this morning. Apparently the referee did something "real strange" involving raising "four fingers "while "making the call." I think this means that the players must doff their jerseys and don hawaiian mumus (plus leis) for the next four minutes.
Or somebody is in trouble for "slashing." This sounds somewhat serious! I don't see any blood on the ice, but there's a lot of ice to cover in these Olympic sized rinks.
Team USA appears to be playing Slovenia, a team which appears to carry far less knee-tremoring gravitas than the Russian team yesterday morning. At least, it seems like the announcers are ragging on the US for having a 4-0 lead. Like, holy crap guys, can't you totally humiliate this risible travesty of a "team" and then maybe sally with their womenfolk on the ice while singing mocking songs about those drug-addled Slovenian prostitutes who birthed the Slovenian hockey team? ... The announcers eventually got bored and started talking about the much closer Russia-Slo*vak*ia game was. They were none too hesitant to switch to streaming that immediately upon the final 5-1 closing.
Andrew came downstairs at some point during hockey roulette, and eventually the rhinestone and glitter besieged the ice in his honor. While large men with sticks fled in terror, it was time for ice dancing. Which is still going on and will likely continue for the next several hours given the number of teams involved. I'm guessing I'll continue to miss most of it, since I'm about to head out shopping.
Far more impressive than hurtling through the air without an invisible jet at 90 mph (ok, ski jumping is pretty damned impressive), was our very (W)right gym run-walking-treadmill excursion yesterday morning. Most of the walking was mine, since my protocol only called for three mini-intervals of running. I misunderstood the directions a little bit, of course. Instead of doing four minutes of walking, one of running, four of walking, one of running... etc. I did four intervals of one minute runs between two minute walks. So a whole 130% of the original plan. But since Andrew joined me in the cardio throne room, we got to "run" together for the first time in 2014, which was really nice. And my foot didn't explode in pyrotechnical agony, so apparently I'm good for the actual phase 2 of the protocol.
After I was done with my piffle of a "run workout" I tilted the treadmill up to 15% and got at least a reasonably hearty power walk for the rest of Andrew's interval workout. Recognizing there are some things a husband and some things a wife must do by him- or herself, we parted ways for the strength training component. Andrew went charging forth into the grunting sweaty dude section while I retreated to my pastoral lea of matrix machines, buttercup-presses, singing mice, bouncy balls, and dancing pixies. We briefly reconvened before Andrew charged off again in search of rain, mud, and that inevitable death-by-falling-off-a-mountain. Survived yet again! Phew.
Today, it's off to the trails again for Mr. (W)right, but in a far more selfless fashion: he's braving the wind and rain to do a trail maintenance day with the local mountain bike association. I'm staying indoors, and considering some local maintenance of the paths between the couch and our bedroom (possibly the couch to the bathroom if I'm feeling really ambitious, but no promises).
But first, to Winco, where every one's a winner and the hockey sticks remain in the parking lot.
Another Morning, Another Olympic Hockey Routing- And other tales of Olympic run-walk rehab for the gold!
To my Amuricuhn friends, Happy President's Day! This is the day in which we offer idle encomiums to those leaders long past (whose myriad sins have doubtlessly been whitewashed by an absence of twitter in their times, and more than compensated for by their contribution to a whole day off work for us busy-beavers). To celebrate, let us sleep in as we are able, and possibly swarm the nearest ski resort where I am told (by my vigilant weather advisory notification system) there may have been some snow.
Me? I'm at work, but for once I'm not here to work. I'm exclusively here for the treadmill desk. I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to run on it with all its accoutrements in the way, but I'm going to try it out. Since my "run-walk" protocol includes a pretty minimal amount of actual earth-moving pummelling, I figure it's worth a shot.
This morning's Olympic fare seems to be US women's hockey. It would appear to be that the US is a stronger team than Sweden by a comfortable margin. Also, they are apparently one of the most "vocal" teams in hockey ever, which I can discern from the various yips and yells pinballing about the arena under the more vociferous announcers. I'm impressed with these particular commentators for staying engaged in a way that the commentators from yesterday just couldn't manage. They're delicately implying that USA is trying to conserve its energy and hasn't really had to use their defense all game, but they're also trying to sound excited.
Ok... run-walk time... and you're here for the psuedo-live experience. Buckle your seat belts and put on those safety helmets friends, because it's time for the first two minutes BUM BUM BUUUUM
Well that was anticlimactic. Not rattling teacups, bashed arms or aerial keyboard flips.
Ok, the ladies have won and the commentators are salivating over the next US-Canada game. I've done two of my two-minute intervals. No tears or smoking treadmills as yet. I'll given myself a hearty pat on the back and a good luck as I trot forward for the next stage of tediously slow transitional running nonsense.
Of course disaster would come in the form of an untied shoelace on the third outing, but somehow I managed not to blunder my way into a busted face as a result! Phew. I'd like to thank all the past presidents for their contribution to my continuing lack of an embarrassing concussion. Especially Millard Fillmore, who has always had my back.
Depo-a-go-go: H-E and a couple of Hockey Sticks!
This has to be the most hockey I've watched in... well, four years. Of course "watched' is a bit of a wiggle-word. But the most "hockey stadium cheering as backdrop to my daily nonsense" is a bit of a mouthful for your textual viands. Russia and Norway menfolk, today. Mostly, I'm noticing the jaunty wurlitzer stylings of some distant stereo speaker. Although, the announcers seem to be offering eloquent elegies to Norway's struggle to lose by only-a-little. Losing to Russia by two is virtually winning from what I can tell.
Having appropriately lauded our long-gone former founding fathers and funny-uncles, we're back to a normal schedule. We've shed our hearts and our brief pauses of civic filiality, and are just revving the engines for green grog in the coming month ahead.
And that means... deposition time! Whoooooooo! And that whooo is fluttering about entangled in a mess of air quotes. "Whoooooooo" really stands for something like "ugh." On the bright side, they're not my depositions this time. I don't have to repeat my asinine drive to some non-descript insurance headquarters in Gehenna of downtown Seattle for several hours of waiting, so that I may answer "I don't remember" and head back to the parking garage to confirm the absolute opprobrium of driving oneself about. On the more crepuscular side, it is for a client in a tough place and these are going to be very hard for her. They've proven logistically challenging all around, actually. As one can expect of a family law case that's already made its way to depositions (fairly rare in our practice), this is a complicated case featuring several different attorneys and some satellite court appointed what-have-yous, as well as a few restraining order type thingies between various deposees. The timing will have to be more accurate than a German precision-engineered farce.
Depositions are dumb, by the way. Necessary in certain litigation contexts, but completely unconcerned with any truth beyond that narrow little bastard of "legal truth". It isn't about figuring out what's really happening, as much as sussing out how various parties can be prodded and flummoxed into unintentional contradiction or other strands of self-sabotage. From direct experience, I can tell you that the things that spring to mind when asked even simple questions in this artificial context are not the most accurate things. They're kind of the brain's panicky free-style rhapsodic farrago of borrowed and fabricated memories based on the expectations implicit in the question's framing, and whatever color the backwall happens to be. But you'll be stuck with them, having once uttered them. In part, because the more you tell a story, the more you "remember" it as fact. Because every time you recall something, you also redraw it in your mind. But also because you just maundered into that asseveration under oath with a trial lurking several years away and licking its chops for impeachment opportunities. Needless to say, I feel a palpable distaste for the upcoming events of this afternoon.
Fortunately, I'll probably be at the gym hippety hopping with Azita and Aragaraconiselcius the Third (a/k/a, Adam). No depositions and swarm of officious legal professionals and their entourages for me, thank you much! I'll take elderly men in pjs grunting with unknown gravidity while birthing little hernias in the free weight section any day of the week.
Andrew, to complete the rooster of A-enhanced individuals associated with Adella, will be at work. He is currently the only man on his original project left standing... at least in Mukilteo. All the other involved engineers are off on site for various other projects/quagmires (long story on the second category). I'm still waiting for something very big to happen while he's all on his lonesome. So far, it's been limited to a call with the downstream customer, but he knew about that already. While awaiting the inevitable snag or eruption, Andrew has turned his attentions to a new project involving destruction (er "testing") of some machine part. He's also found himself a new carpool buddy!
We know nothing about "Brent" yet except he lives in town, and is a Mech-E (which I still insist is actually Mechie!) at EI(EIOOOOOO). Hopefully he is also awesome.
Awesome, coincidentally, is what I hope your day will be!
Run-amble Lola, Run-Amble - Another day, another Olympic Archscapade.
To the ariose soundtrack of Russia-Finland-Hockey, I am commencing my work day with stage three of the run-walk rehab program. This is a whole 3 minutes of straight running separated by 4 minutes of walking (rinse and repeat a few times). I feel so diligent following a program like this. And so much closer to my insane husband with his (Mountain Bike) Bible thumping, training and cross training nonsense. Just like him I have structured interval workouts and special cross training and stretching programs in the evenings. Granted, mine involve funny little muscles that nobody had ever conceived into existence prior to the invention of the blue stretchy band; mine are also mostly quirky exercises like balancing with my eyes closed atop a sporty houndstooth blanket (ok, flailing desperately in an attempt to do so) or doing calf raises and drops from one of Andrew's old engineering books. But it's gosh darned close! At least we can be next to each other on the treadmill and maybe I can do "my PT" (I feel so grown up - first I had "my lawyer" and now I have "my financial person" and now I have "my PT") while Andrew does his stretching. Or before he gets home during a less exciting part of my quotidian Olympic replay.
Speaking of Olympic replays, my award for most awesome commentator goes to Dara Howell, the Olympic gold medalist in women's slopestyle this year. She was paired up with some soft-spoken British chap for the ski halfpipe commentating. A merry blend of stoner, surfer girl, ski-drunk teenager rounded off with a good shot of Canuck diphthongerie. I'd love to get her and Milla Jovovich together for some kind of commentating commentary to be commemorated.
Although if we're valuing commentators, one of our Liams in suits quoted Dostoevsky out of nowhere. Awww, he did so because the Russians lost their ice hockey game. This is to be expected when your opponent has massive WINGS on their jersey shoulders. Major kudos to the sartorial choices of Northern Europe. Understated but impressive all at once. Also, definitely, extra consonants. I'm pretty sure the majority of Finnish players have three or four consonants (or maybe a few choice double vowels) to spare apiece. That kind of thing can really help out in a pinch! As somebody with a double-l in her spiritual-but-not-religious given name and a W, G, AND H fortifying her surname, I know whereof I speak. I'm seriously considering altering my agnomen to Aaaadhella (add hella awesome baby), and pronouncing it "An"
And seeing as the office is an oven even with a wide open and blaring fan, I am now a marshland of run-walk exudation! But my foot doesn't hurt! And, Finland has a date with Sweden! Oooooooh... Finland and Sweden sittin' in a tree... hitting each other with hockey sticks until nobody has any teeth!
Time for some ladies in sparklies to skate around a lot. Let's face it, US isn't seriously in the running, so I get my choice between Mao, Yuna, or Yulia. Or I'll just root for Johnny Weir, as he happens to be upstaging all of the ladies with his sparkly black suit and netted undershirt. That hair! How did he do that to his hair? I'd like him to meander out onto the ice and just spend some time shaking his head to music. Swan costume optional.
Happy Dromedary Day! I'm in denial about the office shenanigans (a SIX HOUR deposition with all kinds of sturm und drang?? No thank you, bring me sparkles and seven tomes of meaningless emails to chronologize). Wait, what? Work! Sparkly squirrel!
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