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December 31, 2005

2005 Highs and Lows

Seeing as how it's New Years Eve, my father has been badgering us for our highs and lows. We do it every year. Here were my 2004 highs and lows.

First we'll start with the highs, because there are many of them:

1) Buying our first house. It's been a bit stressful and (very) expensive at times, but there is a lot to be said for feeling like you finally own something of your very own and you're no longer endlessly throwing money into rent.

2) Getting Roxy. I wasn't sure if I should categorize her as a high or a low. :) She's certainly also stressed us out at times but she's also brought a lot of joy and happiness into our lives. She's a handful. If you ever feel unloved, she'll fix that up in a jiffy!

3) Completing 9 more credits towards my masters. It will take me forever to finish it, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel a little. I'm probably only about 1/2 done, but I'm almost finished with classwork. Big bonus!

4) Starting a new process at work. This process has greatly increased my work satisfaction and feeling of usefulness in the clinical setting. I feel challenged daily at work and feel as if I've broadened my clinical skills greatly.

5) Going on our Hilton Head vacation this past summer. Vacations are always a highlight for the year aren't they? :) This was no exception. As long as my parents will have us, I'm sure we'll keep going too... :)

And the lows:

1) I really only have a few, but the biggest and ugliest low of them all has got to be the running situation. I've essentially been injured for 9 months of 2005, not a very good ratio to uninjured time! The first 3-4 months were the hamstring injury and then since July, the feet. I've definitely not had a year this injury ridden before. I feel pretty comfortable in saying 2005 has been my worst running year ever (but only because I couldn't run at all!). Probably the hardest part of it all is, I'm not too sure if my feet are getting better. They feel much better overall, but still have their bad days and I'm not certain I wouldn't be right back to where I started if I tried running full time again. My biggest hope for 2006 is that they will allow me to train enough to compete in some triathlons, even if I can only run 2-3 days/week. I can only trust that God has a plan for me and my feet!

2) I had some low points in the year with school/work as well. Nothing horrible in particular but I remember twice (once in the spring and once in the fall) feeling really overwhelmed with things going on at work, added to lots of schoolwork, etc... That's probably bound to happen occasionally so my goal is just to try and keep the stress to a minimum and deal with it as I can!

And that's it! I'm always excited to see what a New Year will bring.

As for today, the YMCA was closed so I couldn't workout. Instead O and I cleaned the whole house when we got up and then took Roxy on a long walk. Now we are getting ready to hit up the malls for some more shopping. We have movies ready for tonight to watch until midnight. Neither of us are drinkers or much for parties so we usually stay in and off the roads (biggest night for auto accidents in case you were wondering...)

Summary for the week:

Sunday - off (Merry Christmas!)
Monday - 45 minutes elliptical and weights
Tuesday - 2300 yd swimming (5 sets of 1x100 yd, 2x50 yd kick), core and feet exercises
Wednesday - 1 hour spinning and weights
Thursday - 45 minutes elliptical and core and feet exercises
Friday - 2200 yd swimming (5x100 yd, 10x50 yd kick) and 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Saturday - off

PS Almost totally forgot the book update - exactly 125 pages left and about 9 hours to go. I think I just might get it done!

Posted by beth at 2:05 PM | Comments (3)

December 30, 2005

Two Days On, Three Off

I could get used to the 2 day work week. Five days is way too much to handle. Two days is more my style. But I still want to be paid the same amount. You think my boss would go for it? :) I'm sure she wouldn't but for now I'm enjoying the fact that I just worked a 2 day week and now I have 3 days off in a row! Sweet!

After work today I went straight to the YMCA for some pool time. I just bought new goggles so I thought I would try them out. I'm thinking they are for outdoor swimming because they are tinted, like sunglasses, but they worked well indoors too. They are orange. My swimcap is purple and my swimsuit is red and black. I am quite the fashion statement! :) Anyway, here's what I did

2200 yd total

400 yd easy
200 yd kick easy
200 yd easy

5x100 yd hard w/15 sec rest
10x50 yd kick hard w/10 sec rest

400 yd easy

The bad news of the day is, our neighbor apparently got another deer because as I was pulling into our garage via our back alley way, I caught him in the act of hanging another one on the tree behind our houses. What the heck?! This is crazy. This deer was hanging from his front feet though. It's not good man. When does deer season end? :)

Hope everyone has a great start to their weekends!

Posted by beth at 4:45 PM | Comments (3)

December 29, 2005

Ho Hum

Back to work today. It was a bit painful. Once I'm at work I'm fine; I like what I do. But after I've had several days off and tasted the good life, it's hard to get back into the routine.

After work I did my core and feet exercises and then headed to the YMCA for 45 minutes on the elliptical. Although I don't like to read on the elliptical that much I read about 50 pages of my book. It's crunch time folks, I gotta push my limits! With 2 days to go, I have about 100 pages standing in my way to reading 3 books this year. It's so pathetic it makes you want to either laugh or cry. :)

In other news, O (he has the whole week off from teaching so he has some extra tasks) installed a programmable thermostat in our house today. We previously had one of those circular dial thermostats that you manually turn. We bought the new once because (1) it's digital and more accurate and (2) you can program it to lower the heat during the day and night when we are either away or sleeping. This is an attempt to save on gas costs. Our last gas bill was close to $200 and it's not even cold yet!

We can tell already that our old thermostat was not accurate. We have the new one set on 67 degrees and it freezing in here whereas we had the old one set on 66 degrees and it was cozy warm. Hmm...makes sense that our bill was so high! During the day the temp will drop to 58 (put on your coat Roxy!) and at night it will be 60 degrees, rising just before we get up in the morning. I'll report back as to whether this helps out with the gas bill, or doesn't really make a darn difference. :)

Posted by beth at 8:27 PM | Comments (1)

December 28, 2005

Goals

I've been thinking a lot about goals lately.

The hospital I work for has a big party for the employees that have 100% attendence. Their time frame is the fiscal year vs the calender year so they have the party in July for anyone who successfully didn't call off since the previous July. I didn't get to go last year (I maybe had 2 or 3 call offs?) but had made it my goal to have 100% attendence this year. Well it turns out that I didn't even make it half of the year because I called off today! My cold turned ugly last night - I just felt awful. One of those nights where you sleep about 3 hours because you continually wake up to cough, blow your nose, and just because you are feeling down right crummy. When my alarm went off I actually did feel a little better but knew I would be miserably tired if I did go into work. So I called off, crept under the covers and slept for another 4 hours. Heaven! And after I woke up I laid in bed for another 4 hours reading. Needless to say I'm feeling much better. It's amazing what a little R&R can do!

So at the loss of one goal, I think I'm about to achieve another one. My goal to read 3 books this year took a very encouraging jump today as I finished my 2nd book and only have about 150 pages of my 3rd book to read. At least today wasn't a total loss... :)

And I did still go to the YMCA tonight with O. I really did feel much better so I went with the goal of lifting and only doing the spinning class I had signed up for if I felt okay after the lift. I felt fine so O and I both took the spinning class. And I still feel fine. Good deal!

In other goal news, O and I evaluated our 2005 goals and formulated our 2006 goals last night. We achieved all but 2 of our 2005 goals, one of which was a goal that was for me only, to run under 19 minutes in a 5K and under 40 minutes in a 10K. Given the fact that I've been injured for 9 of the 12 months this year, I'll excuse myself from that goal. :)

Some of our 2006 goals are the same as 2005, but just beefed up. Instead of reading 3 books each we have to read 4 books! (I know, I know...I must start earlier this time! :) Instead of doing 2 outreach activities with the church we are aiming to do 3, etc... And some of the goals are new. I don't have any running goals but instead have made a goal of completing 2 triathlons. We each also added some career goals. It should be interesting. I highly recommend doing this goal thing. I'm very, very driven by achieving goals so it's a very good activity for me, but I think it would work for just about anyone. A lot of our goals aren't necessarily earth shattering but are designed to get us to do stuff we would probably enjoy, but just wouldn't do otherwise (aka reading :).

Anyway, I'm not off to plant my flower. It's an amaryllis that you plant in a pot and it grows indoor. It was a Christmas gift. I know nothing about flowers, or anything that grows in the ground for that matter, so this will be a learning experience. Perhaps one of my 2006 book should be around gardening! :)

Posted by beth at 8:09 PM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2005

Under the Weather

I'm starting to get a cold. It's not very bad yet though, and will hopefully stay that way. Just a sore throat and stuffy nose. No vice grip on my head yet. :)

Today I hit the pool. I was a bit confused as to when the pool was actually open. I was thinking in my head I could swim laps any time from 7 am to 2 pm. As I was getting ready to leave around 8:45 am however I took a quick look at the pool schedule again and saw that the pool was not available from 9:00 to 11:30 am! AHHH!! It's times like these that I miss running when you can go whenever you want!

So I tooled around for a while, did my core and feet exercises, cleaned underneath the stove (it was bothering me that there was visible crud under there), read 3 chapters of my book (I still have a long way to go!), did some laundry, etc... and then left for the pool around 11:15.

Today the pool was actually pretty busy and busy with people that looked like they were really good at swimming. I usually share lanes with men and women > 75 years old, but today all the youngins were out! When I was swimming the hard part of my workout I was trying desperately to keep up with the women in my lane who I believe was just doing drills and warming up. It kept me occupied though and probably made me swim harder than I would have otherwise.

I did the following:

400 yd easy
200 yd kick easy
200 yd easy

5 sets of (1x100 yd hard, 2x50 yd kick hard each with 10 sec rest) and 1 minute rest between sets

500 yd easy

It was 2300 yds total and it took me somewhere between 45 and 50 minutes including all the rests and water breaks, etc...

Now O and I are getting ready to face the malls. I actually think it may not be too bad as most people probably had to go back to work today. The gift cards we got for Christmas are burning holes in our pockets!

Posted by beth at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2005

Back to Business (sort of...)

The day after Christmas is always a little sad to me. I guess that happens after any big event which has a lot of hoopla leading up to it. The truth is though that there is still a lot to look forward to! My parents are still here (and coming to our house tonight for dinner!) and I have today and tomorrow off work yet. Next weekend is another holiday as well.

Today I went to the YMCA which felt good after 2 days off (Sat and Sun). The place was packed. I suppose a lot of people have the day off from work and were trying to work off all the extra candy they ate. :) When I got there there were no ellipticals available so I lifted first. And after the lift I did 45 minutes on the elliptical. I was feeling a bit frisky so I went a little hard. The ellipticals at our YMCA have the arm handles with heart rate sensors. I have a very hard time getting my heart rate up above 160 on them usually but today I was plugging away at 165-170. Good deal!

Posted by beth at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2005

Let the Holidays Begin!

Soooooooo happy that I have a break from work, family all in town, and Christmas is fast approaching! And it's not even that cold here (despite all the complaints from my Southern living family including North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida :).

This morning I headed to the pool. I had the day off work so I got to sleep in until 6:30 am! I did the following workout:

400 yd easy
200 yd kick easy
200 yd easy

10x100 yd hard w/10-15 sec rest

500 yd easy
200 yd kick easy

This has been my longest pool workout - 2500 yd total with 1000 yd hard. I was really breathing hard on the last 2-3 100 repeats. I equated the workout to doing 400s on the track. You start out feeling good and fully catching your breath on the rests, progressing to feeling quite tired and still breathing very hard when it's time to go again on the next interval!

Yesterday I kind of ran out of time to go to the YMCA. After I got home from work I was totally beat and "needed" a nap. After all, my motto is, "when in doubt, take a nap". :) By the time I got up O and I had to get cracking on cleaning up the house before my sister and her husband arrived from North Carolina. And the YMCA got squeezed out. Oh well. Worse things have happened. I will actually be taking the next two days off as well because they YMCA is closed. Again, worse things have happened. :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! Merry Christmas! :)

Summary for the week:

Sunday - 45 minute elliptical, core and feet exercises
Monday - 1 hour spinning and lifting
Tuesday - 45 minute elliptical, core and feet exercises
Wednesday - 1 hour spinning and lifting
Thursday - off
Friday - 2500 yd swim w/10x100 yd hard, 2x25 pushups and 2x100 crunchups
Saturday - off

Posted by beth at 6:54 PM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2005

Killer Quads Part II

My spinning class didn't help my quad situation at all today. I still had fun anyway. O joined me. We lifted beforehand as has become the Wednesday routine. I was trying to imagine today that I was Lance powering up hills and sprinting to the finish line, etc... I truly have a new respect for cyclists now. Not that spinning in anyway can be compared to true cyclists, but it is quite challenging nonetheless!

In other news, O and I signed Roxy up for obedience school last night. She's not bad per se but she just... okay, she's bad. ;) In our defense I think that her former owners must have let her do a lot of things that we don't want her to do, but either way she needs to learn some manners and we don't know how to teach her. The class starts in Jan and runs for 7 weeks - 1 night a week for an hour. I told her we would take her picture on her first day of school so as to cherish it forever. :)

My paper is coming along alarmingly well. Good thing because it's due to the journal editors January 1st! I have to figure out how to obtain permission from a publisher/editor (?) to use a figure I swiped from a textbook. I was told you can sometimes do this online? We shall see...

First things first - we need groceries!!! :) Good night!

Posted by beth at 7:54 PM | Comments (4)

December 20, 2005

Killer Quads

Um yeah - my quads are T-I-R-E-D today! The spinning must have got me. They better recover fast though because I'm signed up for another spinning class tomorrow! :)

Today I had an "easy" day. I did my core and feet exercises after work and then went to the YMCA to do the elliptical for 45 minutes.

And now I'm working on "the" paper that is almost done! I will say I'm very excited because my advisor (who has published 100s of articles, book chapters, heck she wrote 3 books of her own, etc..) helped me out a little. She is also an author on the paper so she took what I had and made it sound respectable. It reads so much better. Now I know why she's famous in our circles and I'm not. :)

Posted by beth at 9:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

Killer Spinning

There was an evil lady leading our spinning class this evening. I've never went to one of her classes before. Man was it rough! I liked it because it was super challenging but there was more than occasion in which I feared my heart was going to explode from my chest and/or my quads were going to disintegrate into nothingness. Whew. The class was almost full which is rarely the case in the other classe I've been to so I think this particular teacher is well liked. I can see why, even if she is evil. :)

O and I also lifted BEFORE spinning since the class didn't start until 6:15 pm. That may have contributed to my quad soreness/tiredness.

And now I'm really tired and anxious to go to bed! I can't believe Christmas is this weekend. I actually work Christmas Day but have Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday off around the holiday. Yippppeeee!!

Posted by beth at 8:50 PM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2005

Successful Procrastination

I've successfully put off working on my paper for 2 and 2/3 days. That's talent if you ask me. I hadn't really planned on working on it Friday or Saturday but today I should. No, I "have" to. But thus far, church, reading the newspaper, taking a 2 hour nap, eating lunch, watching some football (Go Steelers!) and going to the YMCA has filled my day. And now it's dinner time and we must eat dinner! I've sort of run out of things to do though so after dinner will be paper time. Ugh. When will this paper ever be finished?

I did a little cross training at the YMCA today. When I got there all the ellipticals were being used so I did my core exercises and then the stairclimber for 10 minutes until one opened up. Then I did the elliptical for 35 minutes and called it a day.

Good night everyone!

Posted by beth at 5:11 PM | Comments (1)

December 17, 2005

Parenting 101

Rule #1 - Don't leave bowl of chocolates on coffee table where dog (aka Roxy) can get to them, especially given the fact that chocolate can be toxic to dogs if eaten in large enough amounts.

What a fiasco! The chocolates in question had been sitting on the same table since the time we got Roxy and she hadn't given them a 2nd look, but for some reason last night while we were away, she went hog wild and ate the lot of them. What the heck? The only remants were chewed up wrappers. All in all about 10-15 mini Butterfinger, Nestle Crunch and Baby Ruth bars had been consumed.

We were instantly in a bit of a panic having heard stories about chocolate toxicity in dogs before. She looked fine but our internet research told us that given her size, anything more than about 20 oz of milk chocolate would probably be the end of her. You should have seen us frantically trying to figure out how much chocolate 1 mini Butterfinger bar has! Exactly what we wanted to do with our night... After calling the vet and doing some more computing, we determined that she probably didn't eat enough to cause harm and she wasn't exhibiting any of the symptoms of chocolate overdose. So we put her in the basement (in the event that she would get sick) and decided our best plan of action would be to check on her often and wait to see how she did.

Turns out she was fine (still is but I guess we have to wait a full 36 hours to be sure) but she absolutely detested being put in the basement again (after all last week when she was sick with something else) and barked, whined and scratched at the door all night. At one point O actually went down and laid with her on the cold concrete floor! (meanwhile I was off in lala land sleeping the night away...) She finally shut up around 5:30 am after O fed her dinner and took her for a walk. We were both exhausted but O much more so than me. We are pretty sure we are going to be awful parents and very tired awful parents at that... :)

Anyway, the good news is, Roxy is still alive and well. Can one be indicted on dog murder? (it would have been more like suicide though...) And the chocolates are so high now I can barely reach them myself. Whew. Disaster averted!

In all the disarray and lack of sleep, I didn't get make my wakeup call to hit the pool before spinning today. I actually could have made it as I was moved to a later spinning class because the one I had signed up for was cancelled. It's a long boring story but the moral is, I did a 30 minute spinning class (instead of the usual hour long ones) and then did the elliptical for 30 minutes. It might have been okay that I didn't swim because my arms and back were really sore when I woke up this morning anyway.

Summary for the week:

Sunday - 20 min bike/35 min elliptical, core and feet exercises
Monday - 45 min bike and weights
Tuesday - off
Wednesday - 45 min elliptical and 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchups
Thursday - 2200 yd swimming (5x100 yd hard, 10x50 yd kick hard), core and feet exercises
Friday - 2000 yd swimming (5 sets of 4x25 yd yard, 2x50 yd kick hard) and weights
Saturday - 30 min spinning/30 min elliptical, core and feet exercises

Posted by beth at 4:51 PM | Comments (1)

December 16, 2005

12 Hours Later...

I didn't really plan it this way but exactly 12 hours from the time I started my swim workout last night, I was back in the pool again starting another swim workout. When I was getting in the pool this morning I glanced at my watch and thought it was funny that it was 8:09 again, just AM instead of PM. Oh the things that amuse me!

The workout today was 2000 yds:

300 yd easy
200 yd kick easy
100 yd easy

5 sets of
4x25 yd hard w/5 sec rest
2x50 yd kick hard w/10 sec rest

400 yd easy

After the swimming I lifted which was a challenge considering my tired arms. It feels odd for my legs to be fine and my arms to be REALLY tired. It's usually quite the reverse. My pushups weren't the prettiest but I survived. :)

I love days off work. Just had to mention that.

So now I have some odds and ends to do and I might even sneak in some reading as my 3 book deadline is quickly approaching. I'm trying at all costs to avoid the paper that needs to be worked on. I'm usually pretty good at homework avoidance! Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted by beth at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2005

Late Night Swim

More winter storming going on here. It's actually not that bad. Very, very rarely do these storms turn out as bad as the news people make them out to be in my opinion. Nevertheless, most of the population gets in a flurry about it.

Anyway, the commute in was fine but snow/ice/sleet started during the day. The roads were in various states of cleanliness on the commute home, most of them were just wet, but traffic just crawled. O came home from his conference early and actually ended up in Oakland where I work, so we drove home together. I was glad because instead of taking 40 minutes to get home it took 2 hours. Bah. At least I had company. I also think I fell asleep at one point. :)

When I finally did get home I had already missed my spin class. So O and I ate dinner, cleaned up the house some, he unpacked and then we went to the YMCA around 8 pm so I could swim and he could play basketball. There weren't too many people there. It was late and the weather was bad so I had the pool to myself!

I did this workout:

400 yd easy
200 yd kick easy
200 yd easy

5x100 yd hard w/15 sec rest
10x50 yd kich hard w/10 sec rest

400 yd easy

I think that totals to 2200 yds. I felt good swimming. The 5x100 wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I'm planning on swimming the next two days though so by Saturday I'm sure my swimming muscles will be tired.

Now I'm icing my feet and waiting for the snack I just ate to digest so I can do my core exercises. I have tomorrow off work which is so VERY exciting! The bad news is that I met with my advisor today and the paper I'm working on needs oh so much more work. Boo. Looks like my computer and I will be busy this weekend!

Posted by beth at 9:46 PM | Comments (3)

December 14, 2005

Almost Friday

Tomorrow is my "Friday" since I worked Sunday - Thursday this week and I CANNOT wait! O is also getting home tomorrow night. I feel like I've had several hard weeks in a row and this is finally the end. I told my bed last night that we were going to have some serious together time coming this weekend! :)

Anyway, today I was a little off schedule. Doggie duty has been putting me behind. I didn't get to work until after 7 am (usually there between 6:15 and 6:45 am) and therefore didn't leave from work or get home until later. And instead of going straight to the gym or YMCA I went home to let the pooch out, feed the pooch, walk the pooch...etc... It wasn't until around 5:20 pm that I got to the YMCA, usually about the time I'm finishing. Humph. So although I had planned to do the elliptical for 45 minutes and lift, I really only did the ellpitical for 45 minutes, skipped the lifting, did situps and pushups instead, and headed to Subway to pick up a quick dinner. I'll lift on Friday when I have the day off work.

In other exciting news, I sat in something wet today at work. Now sitting in something wet is never a good thing, but it's especially disasterous when you sit in something wet at a hospital. My lab coat took the biggest hit and thankfully, the coat wasn't stained red as if I had just doused myself in someone else's blood. I'm hoping it was water or perhaps even lemonade but nobody would own up to spilling anything. Yuck. I think I need to go boil myself.

And now for Alison's game. Okay, it's not really "Alison's" game, but she was playing so I guess I'll play too.

I won't copy the rules exactly but basically you have to write 5 random facts about yourself and then make 5 other people do it. I won't do the last part, but I will divulge 5 utterly uninteresting things that you may not know from reading my blog.

1) I worked on an ostrich farm in high school. Very interesting work if I do say so myself. This farm in particular raised the ostriches for their meat (very lean meat I might add) but eventually moved the operation down south where the ostriches could better survive the winters. I was mainly responsible for taking care of the little chicks. They were cute, but dirty. They also chirped a lot if I remember correctly.

2) Keeping with the animal theme - I rode horses for quite a number of years growing up. Both my sister and I at one time had our own horse, both of which were grey. My horse's name was TJ. We rode English (like you might see in the Olympics) vs. Western which involves cowboy boots and hats. I loved horses and still do, but as I grew older and got into running, the horse thing faded away. The good news is, riding a horse is like riding a bike. I could get on a horse now and remember exactly what to do! (in case I ever have any extra money laying around and decide to buy myself a pony for Christmas)

3) I've wanted to be a dietitian since I was a junior in high school and never once questioned my decision through college or since. I think that's an odd thing. I remember most people in college really struggling with their choice of major or interests. Truthfully I didn't really know what a dietitian actually did until I became one (still not sure I'm 100% on that... :), but I do love what I do. I find it very rewarding to help someone through what is likely one of the worst things that will ever happen to them (remember I work in a trauma ICU) and even though about 99% of them will never know who I am or what I did for them, I take pride in the fact that I work hard each day to make sure each patient is fed exactly as then need to be to survive. My role in getting these patients through alive is EXTREMELY small as compared to what doctors or nurses do, but nonetheless is an important role.

4) I grew up in a Methodist church but didn't really understand what God was all about until college. My roommate my freshman year (and then again my junior year) was a big factor in my understanding Christianity as well as O, who I met my sophomore year in college. I was baptized (by submersion) when I was 20 in O's home church, the church we later were married at and by the pastor that married us. Although I don't talk about it much, our relationship with God (which I don't think is exactly the same thing as religion) is a big part of our lives (O and I that is). Although I fail miserably time and time again, I wake up each morning with the goal of honoring and serving God in everything I do.

5) I'm running out of random facts here. Umm... Okay, how about his one. Exactly 4 years and 362 days ago (yeah - almost 5 years), O asked me to marry him. I thought about it for a while and then decided it wasn't such a bad idea. HA! Just kidding - of course I didn't have to think about it! By the way, I know this fact only because I remember he asked me around this time - so I actually had to look it up and do the math to figure out the years. Regardless, I was a senior in college, he was in his 1st year of his masters. We married each other about one and a half years later and the rest is history. This June we will have been married for 4 years! What's up with that?

If you've actually read this far and haven't fallen asleep I commend you!

Posted by beth at 7:22 PM | Comments (4)

December 13, 2005

Kicking Back

Having no class this evening has been quite the blessing! I am really going to enjoy not having class until Jan 4th, that's for sure. I still decided to take today as my day off from "training" so I came home, let Roxy out, and then parked myself on the couch for 45 minutes. I don't think I'd like to be a couch potato in general but it sure felt great today. Roxy and I did go on a 40 minute walk after she ate dinner, but other than that, I haven't done much. I may even read some of my book tonight. I have about 200 pages left in my current book and then a whole other book to read to achieve my goal of reading 3 books this year. Considering the fact that it's December 13th, one would assume this might be a problem. Never underestimate my determination to reach a goal though. If I'm up for 2 days straight on December 30th and 31st, so be it - I will finish those 3 books! I may have to pick a 3rd book that's only 10 pages long, but I will finish 3 books... :)

Good night all!

Posted by beth at 7:28 PM | Comments (2)

December 12, 2005

Keeping the Peepers Open Part II

I think I'm going to need to sleep for about 24 hours straight to shake this feeling of overwhelming sleepiness! I was so sleepy again this afternoon. I was struggling like none other to keep my eyes open. Around 2 pm someone paged me and it startled me from my slumber. That's not a good thing... My co-worker once told me that she was reading back through one of her notes in a patient's chart and she had randomly written the word "wagon" in the note, totally out of context and having nothing to do with the situation. I'm relatively certain I probably wrote some very inappropriate things today. Good thing nobody actually reads progress notes in patients' charts. :)

I did hit the gym after work though which always wakes me up a little. This is finals week at Pitt so the gym is pretty empty. I did the bike for 45 minutes with 3x5 minutes of tougher resistance while still maintaining the same RPM. I also lifted. Pretty standard Monday gym day.

Deer update:
O informed me that it's gone. It's probably getting chopped up somewhere. Yuck. I'm just glad it's not hanging from the tree anymore though!

Dog update:
She's better. Although she has figured out how to escape from the basement. I've started calling her Houdini. Regardless, I'm a little anxious about the fact that O is going away for 3 days to a conference and I have dog duty 100%. O usually takes Roxy for her walks but it will now be my job. This week may just get harder before it gets any easier... :)

Posted by beth at 7:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2005

Keeping the Peepers Open

I was really struggling today to keep my eyes open at work. It was work just to keep myself moving in the right direction! But I survived and when I went to the Pitt gym afterwards, the exercise woke me up a little. Regardless, I think tonight I will definitely have to go to bed on the earlier side.

35 minutes elliptical
core exercises
20 minutes bike

and then at home...

feet exercises

Deer update:
It's still hanging there per O. My co-worker (who is an avid hunter) tells me that they hang them like that (and other animals like pigs and cows) before they slaughter them so all the meat can "settle". Now that's gross. Don't get me wrong - I like to eat meat, but I really prefer not to know the "behind the scenes" as to how it shows up nicely packaged at the local grocery store... :)

Posted by beth at 8:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2005

Busy Day

We have been busy today! First order of business...sleeping in. Long week = not waking up until 8:20 am. Very nice. Next the YMCA for 1 hour spinning (with O again) and 30 minute elliptical. I had planned on a swim workout but the pool was closed for a YMCA swim meet. I've never seen so many rugrats in swimcaps and sandals. Regardless, while doing the elliptical I learned that giraffes only sleep on average 20 minutes a day. I thought that would be pretty cool - just think of how much you could accomplish if you only had to sleep for 20 minutes!

Next cleaning the house. This was a rather large undertaking. Not sure why but it took us longer than usual. We weren't that motivated and got off to a slow start. That could have been part of the reason. O also had to scrub down the whole basement in bleach. Big job.

Then we got ready for, drove to, and attended the Christmas party that my boss holds at her house every year. It's a lot of fun. As I've mentioned time and time again, I like the people that I work with so we usually have a good time no matter where we are. Now we are back and unfortunately I have to go to bed soon because I work tomorrow. Bah.

In other news there is a dead deer hanging from a tree two houses down from ours. I find it rather disturbing to tell you the truth. So does Roxy (who is feeling better by the way). This is a big hunting area so I've theorized that this deer will soon be chopped up for meat - but for the time being is hanging (literally) by it's two back legs from a tree in these people's back yard. It's belly is all bloody. I don't like it one bit, I will tell you that. I wish they would hurry up and chop the sucker up so I don't have to look at it anymore.

Regardless, it's time to go to bed! Good night all!

Summary for the week:

Sunday - 2000 yd swimming, 4 sets (3x50, 4x25 kick), core and feet exercises
Monday - 45 minutes bike and weights
Tuesday - off
Wednesday - 45 minute elliptical and weights
Thursday - 1 hour spinning, core and feet exercises
Friday - 1800 yd swimming, 4 sets (3x50, 4x25 kick), 2x25 pushups and 2x100 crunchups
Saturday - 1 hour spinning, 30 min elliptical, core and feet exercises

Posted by beth at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)

December 9, 2005

Early Morning Swimming and Blogging

Well the snow did come - maybe 5 inches or so? The roads are pretty good though; my little Saturn charged right up our back alley way no problem! And so I headed over to the YMCA this morning for an early morning swim. I was fearful that it would be closed because of the weather but it was indeed open. I arrived at 5:05 am, was in the pool at 5:10 am and when I left at about 6:15 am, there were still only 3 people (including myself) signed in. The worker to member ratio was 1:1. Three people working out and then one lady at the front desk and 2 lifeguards. The Y was kicking this morning! :)

I had the pool all to myself. It was kind of fun. The workout I did was:

300 easy
200 kick easy
100 easy

4 sets of (3x50, 4x25 hard) with 90 seconds rest between sets

200 easy

If I did the math right, I think that's 1800 yards total. My body felt tired in the water, either because it was early or because this has been an exhausing week for me. Regardless, I made it through just fine.

So now I'm eating breakfast, icing my feet and blogging. I swam before work instead of after because a couple of us are going to happy hour after work. (I don't really have a start or stop time at work, I just kind of come and go when I want, as long as I get my stuff done) I don't drink but I do like the people I work with and so I'm sure we'll have fun. They always pick a place that has good food too so I can get something yummy to eat while they drink themselves silly. :)

HAVE A GREAT DAY EVERYONE! And thus ends my earliest blog to date... :)

Posted by beth at 6:18 AM | Comments (2)

December 8, 2005

Un-cranked

Well the dog is still sick and the garage door opener still doesn't work, but I'm must less cranky. I think that's a good thing. I did get a free lunch today at work - that might have had something to do with it. :)

After work O and I both went to spinning. It was his first time and I think he liked it although he might have lost 2-3 pounds in sweat! I tried to challenge myself with the resistance. Lots of those "jumps" which really kill my quads! I also did my core exercises and feet exercises today.

This seems like quite possibly the longest week of my life, although it's almost coming to a close! Tomorrow should prove to be a doosey as we are supposed to get 4-7 inches of snow (or 3-5 inches depending on which station you watch) and everyone is freaking out. For the life of me I will never understand such behavior. Really people, WE LIVE IN PITTSBURGH! It snows here a lot and there are more salt trucks than one could possibly imagine. I can understand if it was going to snow 6 inches in say...Florida...but come on! The drivers tomorrow will be horrendous - like they've never seen snow before in their lives. Ahh...maybe it will miss us altogether?! :)

Have a great night everyone! Let it snow! :)

Posted by beth at 7:47 PM | Comments (0)

December 7, 2005

Cranky and Tired

I think O would agree, I'm cranky and tired today and there's just no nice way to put it. Nothing seems to be going right, although it's that type of attitude that often causes things to go wrong. UGH.

The main problem seems to be Roxy and her sickness. I told her today that it was time for her to get better. She licked me. I don't think she understood. But sick dog aside, the garage door isn't working, I washed new scrubs (which are a wine color) with O's white shirts this morning and everything came out pink (I know, not a smart move), our house smells funny, all the lights went out when I was down in the basement and I could not for the life of me figure out which breaker it was that tripped. I also found out our flashlight no longer works. Okay, now that I read what my "problems" are, they don't seem to bad. I'm still cranky anyway. :)

Regardless, I did make it to the YMCA after work where I did the elliptical for 45 minutes and lifted. Some guy in the weight room told me that I was one of the only women he's ever seen do squats correctly. I wanted to tell him that he's obviously never been around many women athletes because just about female I know knows how to do squats just fine, but instead I thanked him and told him I had good teachers. My crankiness cannot be contained!

Alas, it's time for me to straighten myself up and get to work. We have floors to steam clean! :) Here's to becoming UN-cranky ASAP! :)

Posted by beth at 7:01 PM | Comments (1)

December 6, 2005

More Good Stuff

I have no exercising to write about as I've spent the last 14 hours of my life either at work, in class or going between the two...but I would like to mention just one thing: THIS WAS MY LAST CLASS FOR THE SEMESTER AND THAT MAKES ME VERY HAPPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wouldn't say that I hated this class - hate is such a strong word - but I certainly didn't like it, and I certainly won't miss it. My binder is already cleaned out.

That's the good stuff. The bad stuff is that I still haven't finished my independent study credits (aka the paper that I've been whining about for ages) although it's in the final stages and I can smell the finish line around the corner.

Other bad stuff - Roxy is sick again! What the heck man? She was good for about a day and then more trouble this afternoon. Good thing I was at school. Poor O, so unsuspecting! :) She's been banished to the basement again. A call to the vet is soon going to be in order.

And now my bed calls...

Posted by beth at 9:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 5, 2005

Good Stuff

Lots of good stuff going on here today. First and foremost, the pooch is better. No more barf or other smelly, nasty fluids emitting from either end. She's crazy now though. Lots of pent up energy from being penned up in the basement for 1.5 days. And she dug another hole in the garden. Actually it was more like a row instead of a hole. Roxy is quite the little gardener!

Other good stuff includes learning today that I got a raise! I had asked for one about a month ago, my bosses agreed with me, and luckily, I found out HR agreed today too. My next paycheck will reflect the changes and that is ever such good news. Raises rank high on the list of ways to make one's day spectactular!

But with the good comes the bad...I discovered when I was lifting today that my all-time favorite t-shirt has a large hole in the armpit. Very sad. It's not unexpected really. I wear the shirt approximately every other day and it's about 4 years old and thin as can be. The hole won't stop me from wearing it of course but I will restrict where I wear it now - no more going to the mall in it! I guess you can't win them all.

Regardless, after a busy day of work I went to the gym, rode the bike for 45 minutes (while watching NEXT on MTV) and then lifted. I upped the weight on some more exercises today - nothing big but enough to make me struggle some. I determined the other day that in the swim portion of a triathlon I should make it my goal to minimize the amount of work my legs do and try to mostly use my arms in hopes of salvaging some leg strength on the bike/run when I would need it most. If I am to do this, I need some serious arm strength, of which I think I'm slowly developing. I can certainly do 30 good pushups in a pop, no problem now, whereas I used to struggle with 15 or 20 (please refrain from loud laughter).

Alas, it's time I get something done this evening other than my blog. Tomorrow is right around the corner! :)

Posted by beth at 7:05 PM | Comments (1)

December 4, 2005

One Sick Puppy

Our little Roxy dog is giving new meaning to the term "sick as a dog". Oh man. I'll spare you the gory details but let's just say bad things have been coming out of her - from both ends. Major yuck. Of course after we realized what was happening she was banished to the basement which is much easier to clean, but we still had bad stuff to clean up on the carpet too. We know more about carpent cleaning products than any one person should know. But the good news is, carpet does come clean and she seems to be feeling better. She lapped up her dinner like there was no tomorrow whereas last night she wouldn't even touch it, and she's been wagging her tail and jumping all around as is her usual style. She's still in the basement - but she's working her way up and I suspect tomorrow night she'll be allowed back in the carpeted house. Poor thing. We both feel bad for her but she really needs to learn how to use the toilet. :)

Anyway, between hosting my friends yesterday (we had a ball on Friday night and then on Saturday before they left) and cleaning up after Roxy, I didn't make it to the YMCA yesterday. It actually closed right around when my friends were leaving and when we discovered that Roxy was sick, so I obviously wasn't going to get a workout in. That's okay.

Today, after more cleaning and other various odds and ends, I did make it to the YMCA. I started with a swim workout, 2000 yds total with 4 sets of (3x50 yd hard, 4x25 yd kick hard) in there. This time I took smaller rests between the sets (90 sec instead of 2 minutes) and I think that made it harder. After the swim I changed and did the elliptical for 30 minutes while I watched the Steelers lose. Bad news man, they are in jeopardy of not making the playoffs and that makes for a very depressed City of Pittsburgh. Regardless, my legs were quite tired on the elliptical indicating that I must have worked hard in the pool. Swimming is so different from running - you can work really hard and your legs don't really "hurt" per say vs running where they may very well kill. Not that swimming is in any way easier - I think it's just the difference between a weight bearing and non weight bearing sport. Seems to me that running tears down your muscles a lot more.

So that's my story. I can't believe it's already Sunday night and I must return to work tomorrow! I've got some work to do on my school paper tonight and then it's bed time. Cleaning up after Roxy was quite a tiring experience!

Summary for last week:

Sunday - 45 minutes elliptical, core and feet exercises
Monday - 45 minutes bike and weights
Tuesday - off (class)
Wednesday - 1 hour spinning and weights
Thursday - 35 min elliptical, 10 min bike, core and feet exercises
Friday - 1750 yd swimming 5x(4x25 yd, 2x50 yd kick), 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchups
Saturday - off
Sunday - 2000 yd swimming 4x(3x50 yd, 4x25 yd kick), 30 min elliptical, core and feet exercises

Posted by beth at 4:52 PM | Comments (1)

December 2, 2005

It's Freezing!

My, my is it cold here. In the 20s with a dreadful windchill. Not helping the dry skin situation I've got going on here. That's what you get for living in Pittsburgh. It could be worse - I could live in Maine.

Anyway, today after work, which was filled with sad patients by the way (try being 29 yo, living with cystic fibrosis your whole life and now being about ready to die despite having a double lung tx in Feb 05 - now that's a downer!)... Umm...back on track - after work today I went to the YMCA with O. We both swam. I enjoy having him there because he provides entertainment and encouragement and despite the fact that he doesn't get very far, he gets a workout in because his swimming is extremely inefficient! :)

My workout was:

300 easy
200 kick easy
100 easy

5 sets of 4x25 hard, 2x50 kick hard

150 easy

That's 1750 yds total. All the hard stuff had 5 seconds rest but there was a 2 minute rest between sets which I thought was way to long. After the first 2 minute rest I was thinking of cutting it down to 1 minute but I didn't want to get cocky, take less rest and then die at the end. After it was all said and done though, I think the next time I do this workout I will only take 1 minute. Regardless, it was a good workout. I would have swam longer but I ran out of time before swim team practice.

Now I'm sitting at my computer, icing my feet, eating pretzels and wearing my winter coat and scarf because I'm cold. Shower time next. And then my friends will soon be here! :) Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted by beth at 5:20 PM | Comments (1)

December 1, 2005

Mini Entry

>core exercises
>10 minutes bike (waiting for an elliptical)
>1x15 pullups/dips/chinups (waiting for an elliptical, using that assist device to help you do the full range of the exercise but not use all your weight)
>35 minutes elliptical (finally)
>feet exercises (at home)

Clean house, grocery shopping, play with dog, fix yard where dog dug a big hole (O's job, not mine).
Company tomorrow! 3 of my college roomates, one of their husbands. I can't wait!

I think I've recovered from my pizza fest yesterday. So much so that I ate pizza for dinner tonight. No joke.

Good night!

Posted by beth at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)