Sucker's Remorse

They installed a salad bar at the grocery store across from my office a few weeks ago.  I often stop at the store before work because coming straight to the office from dropping The Boy off at school gets me here about 45 minutes early.  It's a good opportunity to pick up this or that without making myself late for anything else.  It seems that ANYTHING I add in to my schedule at this point is at the expense of someone or something else.

I've often wished that they would open the salad bar in the morning so that I could have a nice salad for lunch without actually having to venture out of my office at lunch time.  It's cold out and if I'm not writing this I'm reading others' blogs, exploring the Cheezburger network or participating in some other culturally and educationally bankrupt internet activity.

Well yesterday morning I stopped to pick up frozen lunches and milk to keep at work, and I noticed that the salad bar was open.  Yay!  They read my mind!  Wait, can they hear me thinking this??

But there were no tongs or spoons with which to move the veggies from their recessed, refrigerated, previously covered bins into my eagerly waiting plastic container. 

I went to the prepared foods counter which is near to the salad bar and said "Excuse me.  There are no tongs or anything" and was rewarded with a gruff "fine we'll take care of it" from the grocery store equivalent of your typical hairnet-equipped lunch lady.  I said thank you as sweetly as I knew how and I waited.  She lumbered into the back and loudly announced that there was a customer at the salad bar who needed tongs and spoons.  A sweet young gentleman came out, followed by the lunch lady, and apologized for not having readied the salad bar.  He said that it's not "technically open" and that he had only uncovered it so that he could empty out the previous day's leftovers and ready it for the scheduled opening at 10 am.  I thanked him and started to move along.

Then the lunch lady said "I can give you some tongs if you want".  I said "No, it's ok, thanks".  She says "You sure?  Here you go" and she's holding tongs out to me. 

I asked the nice young gentleman if the bar had been covered all night and he assured me that it had.

What could I do? (don't answer that).

So I took the tongs and started to assemble my salad.  Upon closer inspection it was clear that these really were last night's leftovers and, while they had been refrigerated and covered, they they were looking pretty sad.  I tried to pick and choose items that looked less than disgusting (because isn't "less than disgusting" what we all hope for in a meal?) and couldn't really put together a salad that I thought would seem even remotely edible four hours later.

But they were watching me.

I considered closing up the container, smiling and saying thank you, and then stashing it elsewhere in the store...but this would leave my mess for some other innocent store employee to clean up or, worse, would come to the attention of the lunch lady who would later stick pins into a fat, redheaded voodoo doll.

It took some serious screwing up of determination for me to sheepishly walk up to the counter and say "I'm really sorry.  It just doesn't look good so I'm going to pass.  Sorry...again.  Have a good day!"

My apologies, and my handing over of my partially made salad, were met with cold stares from both the previously polite young man and the lunch lady.

I slunk away in shame.

Given my reaction to this situation, it should come to no surprise that I fell for high pressure sales at the Personal Training Department at my gym.

Yes folks, I've seen the error of my ways and I will be cancelling my training contract this evening, 48 hours into the 72 hour window during which I can cancel without penalty.

Talking to The Boss yesterday, I told him that I signed up for 12 months but that Chris told me that I could cancel after two.  He urged me to take a very close look at my contract (which I totally should have done in the first place rather than being a trusting doofus) because, while it's a decent facility in a great location with reasonable membership prices, he has had less than positive experiences with regard to the integrity of the PT sales staff.

Sho'nuf, when I got home I pulled out my contract and I can cancel.....if I have a documented medical condition that prohibits me from exercising or if I move more than 25 miles from any Urban Active facility.

Shit.

So I sat down to pay bills and work on my budget and allocate to which debtors I want to divvy up my impending tax refund in the hopes that I'd discover a few thousand extra dollars stashed between the electric bill and gas bill, and I came to the conclusion that I had no business even committing to two months of this expense, much less twelve.  I have to cancel.  End of story.

So tonight I'll go over there with my contract in hand, try not to make eye contact, and tell them that I need to cancel. 

I'm sure I will involuntarily apologize profusely.  It's a form of tourettes I tellya.

I'm going to have to revamp my schedule but my plan is to attend two "Urban Iron" classes per week.  There's one at 10 am on Saturdays (admittedly FAR preferable to my 8:30 PT appointment) which will be no problem at all, but the other two are at 5:30 Monday and Wednesday.  Currently I work out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so some shuffling will be required, which involves the schedules of The Man and The Ex, in order to get there either Monday or Wednesday.  

Have I mentioned....shit?

Tonight after I weasel out of my contract I'm going to try to do the full circuit (I at least learned that strength training is as important as cardio) and then spend as much time as possible on the elliptical with my e-book.

Right now I'm reading "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin.  I've seen Steve Martin books at the bookstore and thought, isn't that funny, an author with the same name as the commedian.  Did you know it's the same guy??  This book is VERY strange...it's about a guy with...I guess he has OCD.  It's very strange on the heels of Portia de Rossi's book.  A bit too mujch mental illness in my reading lately I guess.  But I'm a couple hundred pages in so I may as well continue and just make sure the next book I read is a nice, healthy murder mystery.

One thing that happens when we reach 40 or so years of age is that post-exercise pain takes longer to set in.  Where I used to be sore the day after a workout, now it takes 48 hours.  Today my legs are SCREAMING.  And I wonder if it's the workout or the voodoo doll.

Today's Lunch:  Amy's Macaroni and Soy Cheese.  The best part is the over-cooked burned on crunchy cheese around the edges.  I wonder what would happen if I cooked it like five times as long as it calls for?  Would it become one chunk of the yummy crunchy cheese? 

A Moment of Silence

I can't write today, in honor of the latest Hyperbole and a Half blog entry.  I bow to Allie Brosh's superior blogging abilities.

Plus there are pictures.

And....I ran out of time to write.

Today's lunch...6" Tuna Sub from Subway.  Ooey gooey goodness.

Bugging Me

I had such productive plans for this morning.  The UPS guy brought my BodyBugg yesterday, so last night I broke out the user's manual hoping to get it all set up and, of course, it had to charge for 3 hours before I could do anything.  The manual said to hook it up to my computer using the provided USB cable, so I naively did exactly that, and I snuggled into bed with a good book. 

Oh...the book.  Thursday night I finished What The Night Knows by Dean Koontz, which The Man bought me in hard cover.  I really love anything Dean Koontz writes, and this book was no exception, but ever since I got the Tablet/E-Reader dealio I've been just wishing I could get done with it so I could get my first eBook.

So last night I got Someone Will be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan from Amazon for my Cruz.  I've been a subscriber to O Magazine for years and Lisa's column has always been my favorite part of the every issue.  I've been looking SO SO forward to reading her book since it came out nearly a year ago, but neither Barnes & Noble nor Borders carries it in-store.  Bastards.

Anyway, my plan for this morning was to get up at the crack of 8, register my Bugg, pair it to my phone, strap it to my flabby upper arm, throw the Cruz in the gym bag and head for the Y.

But when I tried to mess with the Bugg, the battery was still dead! Boo, hiss.

It seems that the crucial piece of missing information in the extremely short and not-so-informative User's Guide is that simply plugging it in is not sufficient to begin charging.  Yesterday when I plugged it in nothing happened.  No flashing, no lights, no "Greetings Fatass. Thank you for plugging me in, I will charge my battery now".  Nothing.  But now that it's registered and the software is on my computer it is flashing red, indicating that the battery is critically low. Crap.  It's supposed to take three hours to charge and will flash green when it's done.  After that I'll still need to pair it with my phone before I can use it.  Since I have to have both dogs at the vets in 3 hours there is no chance of wearing it to the gym today.

Of course I could still GO to the gym...but yesterday I took the morning off work and did a fairly thorough cleaning of my kitchen and downstairs bath (I'm a wild woman, huh?).  To be clear, I LOATHE cleaning, but it does feel really, really good to walk through those two nicely clean rooms.  So I think I'll take advantage of what history tells us will be a short-lived burst of motivation and clean the living room and this disgusting office rather than going to the gym today.  Oh it would be SO nice if I could accurately calculate the calories I burn while I clean....if only there was a gadget that would do that....sigh.

Ooh ooh...it's flashing yellow now instead of red.  This is progress.

Since my dirty breakfast plate is still sitting here (I told you my office is disgusting) I can call this a Blog Over Breakfast and tell you that I had a sandwich consisting of two deliciously fried eggs, a piece of mild cheddar cheese, exactly one serving of olive oil mayonnaise on two pieces of whole wheat toast, with ten grapes.  Clearly I was planning to burn off some serious calories at the gym.

Maybe I'll Write, Maybe I Won't

Yesterday I just DID NOT feel like writing.  I was in a horrible mood due to several factors that I should not have let get to me, but I did.  And I let a perceived obligation to write add just one more factor to the horrible mood making list.

So this morning I was trying to figure out what to write about today and it occurred to me that I don't HAVE to write every single day.  This may seem obvious to you, so now you know that I'm not that bright.

I would rather read six words from Miranda Pinero than a novel by almost anyone else, and in spite of my extensive stalking searching I haven't been able to find anything by her more recent than her last Tweet on December 29th.  The fact that she hasn't updated it since last April doesn't make her blog any less brilliant.  I could read her older essays, found here, over and over and over again.  I mean the woman refers to caffeine as her "sweet demon bride".  I want to be her when I grow up.

My point is that I think she's a fabulous writer and she doesn't just pump out words for the sake of words.

My favorite current blog, http://www.hyperboleandahalf.com/, is only updated maybe once a month.  I don't know how I stumbled across it but the first entry I read was this one and I was instantly obsessed with the woman's writing.  But I waited and I waited and it was like a month before she posted again.  Was this such a bad thing?  Not really.  I look SO forward to each entry, probably because they are unique, well crafted and have really funny cartoons with them. 

Yes...I have blog envy.

My point is that I'm going to work harder to turn out a quality product, though the quantity may decrease.  I know you're wondering how you will ever survive without my endless rambling about trying to think of something to write, peppered with the occasional weight-related post.  But trust me Sweetie, you'll be fine.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder or some such rubbish.

Today's lunch: I wandered into Subway for breakfast because I had some time to kill before Office Max opened.  I got an egg white muffin.  While I was there I figured I'd get lunch and dinner, since I have to work late tonight.  So I just had half of my foot long ham on wheat.  The other half awaits for later.  A whole day's food for $8.00.  Clearly I need to work on applying that "quality instead of quantity" concept to other areas of my life as well.