February Failure

March 5, 2013March 5, 2013 ~ meh ~ 3 Comments

February Fitness was largely spent doing the above. That’s really all there is to it. But here are my monthly totals anyway:

Yoga: 4 hours + two semi-successful peacocks (I am temporarily suspended from attending my normal yoga class and have been trying to find a reasonable alternative, but that’s another story for another time)

Swim: 17,500 yards / 5hrs 30min

Run: 60.5 miles / 9hrs 15min

Geesh. Not really a ramp up from what I normally do, but…whatevs.

I cut 2 of my longer runs short this month due to feeling less than stellar. Even so, not too worried about the half marathon. But I did walk to work a whole bunch of times (4 miles round trip), which maybe might count for something sort of.

BUT!! To counter all of this, one of my masters swimmers broke 100K yards of swimming this month, so I will take that as a personal victory (this guy would literally come to the pool 6 days a week and swim up to 7K BY HIMSELF. what.)

There’s always next year.

Weekend

February 25, 2013March 26, 2013 ~ meh ~ 1 Comment

This picture is so creepy. Yes, we are the weird neighbors that the kids dare each other to ring the doorbell.

The girls have had a change of heart the past 2 weeks. I don’t want to jinx it, but we’ve been consistently getting big, beautiful, fully-shelled eggs. It’s wonderful. This one had a few calcium deposits on the shell, maybe they don’t need all of those oyster shells? Whatever.

Helping Paul get his work done. Always.

Dammit. My pretty blue shoes. That mudhole just looked like dirt.

Sunday morning pancakes. I haven’t made pancakes in forever, I never think to. They were delicious. I ate 4.

So yes, things here are HAPPENING.

Be happy for no reason

February 20, 2013March 5, 2013 ~ meh ~ 1 Comment

“Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.”

– Deepak Chopra

(This is the only picture I have hanging in my cube at work…it was passed around the webs a while ago, I don’t know where it came from or who to credit, but I love it. )

Peacock

February 18, 2013January 6, 2015 ~ meh ~ 2 Comments

url photo via

I’ve been doing a lot of yoga lately. I like it for a few reasons:

Most of my exercise routine is cardio (running, swimming, (kind of) biking), so the change of pace is nice.
Trainers and PTs have consistently told me since breaking my back that hamstring flexibility and core strength are particularly important for me to maintain.
Since breaking my elbow I’ve been wary of weights, so I find this and TRX to be a nice alternatives for strength.
It makes my arms look good.

There is only one class I really find challenging and worthwhile. I love it. And not just because the teacher, who is most definitely stoned all the time, plays music during class and every time a Grateful Dead song comes on walks by me and goes, “Hey, California!”

There is one drawback: his favorite pose is this thing called peacock.

That is peacock. And, like most yoga poses, no, I have no idea how that resembles a peacock. At all. And yes, it’s as ridiculous as it looks. But he makes us try it every. single. day.

I’ve been attending this class regularly for about a year and a half. That’s a lot of unsuccessful peacock.

The first year or so I mostly just worked on getting my fingers pointing towards my feet with my elbows and forearms touching under my belly, with my legs still on the ground (hard to do with my gimp elbow.) That took a while.

Once I mastered just getting my hands in that position, next was me putting any weight at all on my hands. This usually lasted about .0003 seconds before I face planted into the floor. Over and over. Until I gave up and just laid there, face down, defeated.

Last week I was doing my usual flopping around, doing my best to look like I was actually trying so the teacher wouldn’t come over and pay attention to me, and suddenly…my legs were off the floor. Like magic. Not up high in the air, like the dude up there, but OFF THE FLOOR. I WAS FLYING.

…and then I promptly did something weird to my shoulder and had to take the week off.

And that, my friends, is my February Fitness success story.

Valentines Day Gift from the Girls

February 14, 2013 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

The ladies have decided to start laying normal eggs again. For the most part. I think they’re liking the (slightly) warmer weather and sun coming up at 7 instead of 8.

Then we got this.

Interesting. And kind of normal. It has a shell (albeit partially deformed and discolored) and has not been eaten. I’ll take it.

Happy Valentines Day.

February Fitness…is halfway done

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

Wow, I really dropped the ball on this one. I feel so irresponsible.

Of course, the February Fitness Challenge has rolled around once again. And as a masters swimming coach, it is my job to remind you that if you haven’t already pulled out your speedo (or, if you aren’t a swimmer, your running shoes, or your climbing gear, or whatever it is you do) and gotten started, it’s never too late! We still have more than half the month left.

Aside from giving out some awesome 5-6K yard workouts involving some speed sets (many of which I’ve stolen from other sources), yelling “GOOD!” every time I hear someone in the pool say, “I seriously think I’m going to barf”, and using the slow cooker to make some ridiculously amazing carnitas, I haven’t really contributed a whole lot to the cause.

IMG_20130213_081900 mmmmm carnitas….

I tweaked my shoulder last week and have been giving it a rest from swimming since. Maybe I can negative split this thing and set a back-half record. We’ll see.

P.S. An Affenpinscher (what?) named Banana Joe won Best in Show at Westminster this year. Huge fan.

To every season

February 12, 2013February 12, 2013 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

“Dogs are not our whole lives, but they make our lives whole.”
~Roger Caras

This week is the Westminster Dog Show (which is always, of course, an amazing display of wonderful mixed with the bizarre). Sadly, this same week, the world also lost a great dog.

After a long, happy life chasing gophers and eating anything he could get his tiny paws on, yesterday Barkley headed up to that big beach in the sky, where I’m sure he will find lots of sun to lounge in, bottomless bags of hot dog buns to chow down on, and plenty of disgusting things to roll in. And since his accomplishments have been highlighted on here a few times, I figured a tribute was appropriate.

RIP Barkley. You are missed.

Winter Woes

February 3, 2013February 3, 2013 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

I have spent this past week daydreaming about the day that the outdoor pools open. I can’t help it.

We actually had some warm weather this week. 70 degrees on Tuesday…70!…which meant a nice after work run with Paul in SHORT SLEEVES…followed by this:

Of course. Complete with tornado warnings and severe weather sirens. Thursday was back in the single digits, and Friday we woke up to a light dusting of snow, and 8 degrees outside with a wind chill at -4. Hurrah.

Saturday morning we woke up to some pow-pow. First real snow of the season. Some were HAAAAPPPYYYYYYYYY.

Others were not.Did not want to come out of the coop…and pretty much didn’t all weekend. (I didn’t know this, but in the winter time a lot of chickens can actually get cabin fever from never wanting to come out of the coop. They do not like snow.)

I was scheduled to do my long(er) run of the week Saturday morning. Woke up to way too much snow and ice on the sidewalks. Which meant this.

9 miles on the treadmill at the Y. Baaaaaaaaaaarf.

I usually limit my runs on the treadmill to an hour/7ish miles. Max.

But with snow predicted all weekend and limited options, I sucked it up and JMFDIGDI. Broke the run up into: 2 mile warm up, followed by 2 x 3-mile efforts at a faster pace with a half mile jog in between the efforts and again at the end as a sort of warm down. So much easier to digest mentally.

And 1.5 episodes of Real Housewives of Atlanta later, I was done.

The rest of the weekend was hijacked by Gone Girl, which I started reading on Thursday and just finished this afternoon. So now I have my life back.

I won’t lie, I’m not too sad to see January gone. If it hasn’t been obvious, things here have been very slow. And cold. I’m ready for sun and gardens and thunderstorms and spring. One step closer.

Why did the chicken…

January 28, 2013January 28, 2013 ~ meh ~ Leave a comment

Let me tell you what I dream of. I dream of a better world where chickens just lay their eggs, with shells, and don’t take part in cannibalistic infanticide.

The past few weeks we’ve seen a few more rubber eggs, which had me concerned, followed by…nothing. We’ve actually had a few days where no eggs have been laid, and many days with just one egg.

I was starting to freak, thinking dammit, it’s over, we’re going to have to send Romy to the big freezer in the sky…when I came across this:

It’s the middle of winter. You’re getting very few eggs from your flock, if any at all. They’re still in the stages of molting, or they’re just finishing up their last molt. …

Many chickens cease laying during molting as they need to channel all that energy — and all available protein — into growing out their feathers, which are almost purely protein (keratin fiber, to be exact).

Oh, Garden Betty. You’re good for more than just Xmas presents. Though, in addition to putting our coop to shame, she also makes me feel like a negligent chicken owner.

Our chickens are molting?

I’ve maybe seen a few extra feathers lying around, but no piles of discarded down or balding spots on the ladies or “crazed porcupine” necks. Nothing freakish.

This change did coincide with a few weeks of no sun, meaning it stayed dark until well past 8am, and a pretty extreme drop in temps (I went running the other morning–17 degrees out, felt like 3.) So it is possible.

Paul spoke with the woman at Southern States, who assured us that the feed we’re buying is infused with plenty of protein for winter. So…fingers crossed that I am just unobservant and this is what’s going on.

P.S. Thanks goes out to Uncle Joe for the opening picture.

Safety Dance

January 21, 2013 ~ meh ~ 1 Comment

This is what happens when it’s icy and dark until 8am and the sun doesn’t shine for 3 weeks (literally). Fuzzy Xmas socks that I normally sleep in, worn to work with my narsty old flats because my feet are too cold without them. Awful. On so many levels.

Despite the nastiness outside, I have refused to go back to running on the treadmill. Partially because every time I run on the treadmill my headphones shock me, so the whole time I am on there I’m in a state of perpetual anxiety. But mostly because the treadmill is boring. And inside.

So what does that mean? It means I’ve been breaking my hard rule and about running alone in the dark. And I justify it by bringing Spike.

I’m not sure how I convince myself that he will protect me, or at the very least deter someone from attacking me. Because a 15 lb mutt in a tiny jacket with a blinking light on his back is probably about as useful as a butter knife.

I do have mace, but I’ve been hesitant to bring it because I would guess, with relative certainty, that given enough time I’ll end up spraying myself or the dog or some innocent child walking to school in the early morning. I do, however, always wear my Road ID, so when someone finds my body at the very least they’ll know what allergies I have and who to call.

It’s time for me to re-evaluate my safety system. And for the days to get a little longer.

I’m ready for summer.