Zeus is in Hiding

Zeus is in hiding, if you need him contact the NSA. I'm reading books and taking a MESS-O-STATIC from myPeg ("So, now that the achilles is healed are you working out? No? Riding your bike? No?!"). It's obvious my wife has gotten to him.

I've been doing a fair amount of walking but this is outside of the myPeg paradigm of suffering and I'm pretty annoyed with him which is an indicator that he's probably right about getting into the gym thing. I'll "deal" with myPeg later.

I resume stumbling around the 'campus' this Monday, not that myPeg cares.

There are these wallet sized pictures of my son that are being given out at his graduation party. I've been trying to talk him into writing fortunes on the back like, "Never give up unless defeat arouses that girl in math class" or more cryptically, "Now is the time to make circles with mints, do not haste any longer." So far my latest really cool idea has fallen on deaf ears.

So what does one do when Zeus is away? toughMudder is full of ideas but none have struck me as "worth it" when Zeus returns and the whip comes down which was what got all those lesser Greek gods in trouble. Zeus always comes back.

Well it's noon and toughMudder and I are off to the movies, that CAB meeting can wait!

Bill, the Hamlet of Comments

Yeah, so our new CEO has a blog... tempting, tempting...

To comment, or not to comment, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous blogging,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of platitudes,
And by opposing end them: to be fired, broke
No more; and by a comment, to say we end
The idiocy, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Mind is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To comment and be fired,
To comment, perchance to be correct; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that comment of unemployment, what horrors may come,
When we have shuffled off this responsable coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long employment:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of disprized promotion, the review’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his comment make
With a bare pronouncement? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary blog entry,
But that the dread of something after a stupid comment,
The undiscovered Country, from whose firing
No employee returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather muzzle it,
Than spew comments that we know not of.
Thus sobriety does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of my innate brilliance
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of temperance,
And enterprises of great wit and commenting,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Zeus? During my one on ones, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Career Advancement

"I can't believe it's almost been an entire year since I didn't become a better person."  - @VikeeysSecret

Deep wisdom from Twitter. 

I'm drafting behind Bubbles and overDressedDude, keeping an eye on blondie and redHead incase they attempt a breakaway. Bubbles is clearly pontificating on something, but the music blaring in my ears forces me to interpret what she's talking about. It's either a swan mating ritual (doubtful) or something to do with girl biceps (probably). Though why overDressedDude is so interested ... sigh ... I'm certain there's a website devoted to girl biceps. Being at work - I won't confirm.

I'm wearing my Garmin and HR monitor, kinda hoping we wont have a repeat Monday, that was tough and Bubbles seems aware of whining after it. There's sudden activity! Blondie and  redHead are making a move, bubbles is gesticulating and shouting out drill-seargent/trainer instructions. The key one being, "Go to Frantz and turn left!" I try and duck in behind team Blondie/redHead but they're already well away, I tuck my head and make dogged pursuit. Sadly, they seem unaware.

It turns out when bubbles says, "Turn left on Frantz" (W Bridge St on the Map) she means "Turn left on Kilgour Pl." So I was a tad peeved at seeing them wrapping up ahead of me.

Sweating through my "Any Team but Duke" t-shirt, I spot some group picture being taken in the lobby and decide to photobomb it but I chicken out when I realize I'm going to actually pull it off (we're a very polite company and when some deranged, sweaty dude who's obviously suffering from heat stroke horns his way into your picture you just sorta grimace about it) and bust myself.

Only then do I notice the corporate CEO sitting on a table directly across from me staring me right in the eyes. Since the situation wasn't bad enough I decide to talk to him in my non-coorporate attire. We have a nice chat and then I decide to change out of my walk attire before filling up some box with my personal items.

When it comes to career advancement - don't look at me!


Musings from last night follow...

At the moment I'm kind of phoning it in but that's because I have yet another doctor's thing today so no bike ride in or anything like that. I check my MovBand and I'm told I'm 85% towards my goal but I don't know what my goal is or how it got set so WHATEVER. This is why I've attached my device to a paint can mixer...

nah... I'd rather man up to my various depravities. 

My heel hurts from Monday's stomping around the campus, the dog is in the next room shrieking holy hell about some chipmunk or duck in the backyard running from the back window to the front door like a lobotomized bearded lemur, pleading her case to anyone listening in dog language. It's kinda funny but incredibly annoying. If I had the will I'd get up and taze her, muttering, "calm down dickhead" while I lovingly pull the trigger.

I wonder if this heel bruise will blossom into seventy-five doctor's appointments. I'm in the age group where "there is no happy ending doctor visit" is just on the horizon. The MRI was much more fun then the root canal even with its "contrast IV" preview into my geriatric future. It's odd-ball percussion was entertaining and I tried to rap to it but couldn't because I'm white and not Emenem. Now I'm in that purgatory of waiting for the results and pretty much hoping that doesn't go south like my f-ing teeth have. 

I'm tired of the disruptions these appointments cause. I'm a creature of autistic routine but next have to run the gauntlet of two dentists appointments for the inevitable crown that is the dark underbelly of a root canal (now that the tooth is good and dead it will become brittle so ya need a crown ::frantic head nodding from the dentist and hygienist::). YAY

Darwin award candidate...

Turns out it's a hoax but so what? We're dudes so it is plausible!

Mothers - Go Figure.

So, how was your Mother's Day? I saw all those nice cards up on facebook about how much mom meant to the writer. Meanwhile my wife went insane interpreting this restful day as justification to go medieval on the 'honey-do' list, turning a rather frosty Sunday into a death camp of gutter cleaning, pond redecorating, lawn mowing and fertilizer spraying. According to this weird MOVABLE bracelet I'm wearing (side effects include obsessive compulsive disorder) I average 9,174 "moves" per day. Yesterday I did an incredible 14,841 "moves" which is ::counts fingers:: A LOT! Probably the equivalent of running seven back to back marathons. ::serious look::

I also broke my stupid Kindle - apparently they're not engineered to be stepped on. So I ran down to Best Buy and bought a Kindle Paperwhite which has a backlit display. It's the 5th Kindle I've had due to um accidents or things just not working right with them. Amazon is great about dealing with most of my issues but I figure me crushing the display of one probably isn't covered under their warranty and my soul is black enough that scamming them ("Look it just suddenly stopped displaying text ::mutters - after I crushed it with my heel::  so, you know, how about a new one?") just didn't feel right.

Anyway I really do like the built in backlight on this thing - it's great for night reading. Also I simply had to get it - I was an hour away from finishing the Mistborn Trilogy and no jury would convict me from needing to know what the Koloss, Kandra, Inquisitors, Vin and the rest of those folk in the deep, deep do-do were going to make out. Seriously. Read the trilogy if you want something a tad different and fun.

I just returned from stomping around the "campus" here at work on some hellish, self-inflicted death march. This couch to 5K thingy is handing me my butt and now I'm all sweaty and gross. Whatever. What I'm really irritated about is this weather - 40 degrees this morning? I'm not riding my bike in on those days, nope. Tomorrow is 70 and partly cloudy - dammit!

Zeus

My boss is doing half-marathons or something insane like that. The side effects are alarming, he undergoes some Hulk-like transformation because of the massive influx of endorphins and he makes us call him 'Zeus' until they wear off. We're coming up on the one week mark... the physical transformation is short lived (thank God!). toughMudder snapped a pic of him shortly after the most recent bout of improving himself:

Zeus

Me? I'm just jealous. That top is to die for!!!

This week has been consumed with appointments, the highlight being my very first root canal. I don't recommend them. It went down like this, they numbed me, hit the nerve – I screamed – they numbed me some more – hit the nerve – I screamed – they injected numbing stuff directly into the nerve WHILE I screamed and then all was well.

Good times, good times.

I've been doing the walking thing on Mondays and Wednesday and trying to figure out this movBand thingy. I'll hopefully be back on the bike next week for commuting and what not. We'll see.

Movable

My MOVABLE band came today! I registered it, created another account on their site so that I could further track my half-assedness. So I charged it and synced it and it's on my left wrist (after some debate - putting it on my right would periodically skew the data because I'm forever unclean... never mind!) and it looks like this:

Well sorta, the problem is along with my RoadID, Carolina Bandz and Livestrong elastic bracelets I'm beginning to think I might be a hair over the line and into the uncharted territory of 'uncool.' I pretty much look like an unbalanced Egyptian Princess drag queen with no fashion sense (two bracelets per arm IDIOT!) and my left hand just fell asleep from blood loss - so at the moment it's just the MOVband (look I'm not the marketing genius that makes these names up!) on the left wrist.

It's uh bigger than I thought, well wider, by that I mean deeper coming off my wrist like a monster tumor that tells time.

I'm suppose to wear it for a week to get a baseline reading AND THEN increase my numbers by 10% - these Movable people don't give a rat's ass what you do, just do 10% more of it and I guess keep increasing it until you end up like this MOVABLE girl who's merely trying to get her count a bit higher. She's probably legendary 'User #16546' who logged 58,356 'moves' yesterday - I'm certain to be hanging with this caliber of individual one day (maybe this weekend) at Walmart where all you haters can judge me and my MOVABLE ways.

So how should I approach this? Currently I'm in corpse mode, no sudden movements, nothing to trigger a counter uptick - in short a true baseline. Can I go a week with this nerd magnet strapped to my wrist? Am I cool enough to pull it off? Yes, yes I am, just watch the magic.

I've uploaded May 2nd's bike ride data to prove to myself that yes, I actually did bike to work that day but I'm already falling off on the myFitnessPal logging and have added this MOVABLE (why all caps marketing geniuses?) logging. I fall off the myFitnessPal wagon because I just don't want to deal with the consequences of a fist full of M&Ms and if I don't log it - it didn't happen!!! I'm gonna have to deal with that... soon.

I feel the need for Borderlands 2 where I shall shriek my Brave Heart battle cry:

Word.

But first prep the bike, toughMudder is riding in tomorrow and I'll need to counter his "Yeah, I biked in you pussy!" testosterone emanations.

So there was no stupid bike commute, my family needed me to walk the dog this morning due to unforeseen factors that would have been totally seen had I been paying attention. Look, I'm busy logging my lameness here - I have no time for family!

I've made 3,211 'moves' so far today... um... pray for me, I'm losing my mind.

A Pleasant Valley Something

Wednesday evening in suburbia and I'm done with moving mulch and weed whacking. Pleasant Valley Sunday pops up on the iPod and I grin. What exactly was the issue that 1960s multimillionaire rock stars had with suburbia? Who cares? The last shovel full of mulch is in the wheelbarrow and my son moves off to dump it on the neighbor's driveway, we're at capacity and I seriously doubt they'll notice their mound has grown by four of five loads.

I have to prep for tomorrow's bike ride. My back hurts, I'm tired, full of lactic bullshit and just not caring but for this itsy-bitsy voice whining, "You know it'll suck, but still it'll be somewhat slightly cool to ride in tomorrow - you know it's trueeeeeee, mmhmm walk the walk."

::sigh::

I prep for the ride. The reason prep is necessary is because I like to avoid things like cars and teenagers late for high school in the morning so I get to work farmer early. It's peaceful - I saw a coyote once smack down in the middle of all those houses that look the same. Grey patchy fur, scrawny, sizing me up, probably wishing he was a wolf so he could drag me down with his pack. I picture it, the howls, the baited breath of the pack as they close in on me. My frantic SOS-es emanating from my bike bell as they finally bring me down...

Nature, I loathe it.

Most likely that wont be a worry tomorrow, but soon. Mark my words.

This is one of the side effects of indifferent exercise, mild hallucinations to take your mind of the sheer tedium of doing one more whatever of whatever it is you're doing to improve yourself. Sadly, I've reverted to the state of where I go anaerobic just getting out of the car so these are the dues to be paid, or that regret filled death bed scene where you're muttering, "If only I had biked to work more..."

I'm still undecided.

So I rode in and it was a lovely ride, the sun rising, birds singing... one landed on my bike handle and started chirping a happy good morning song causing me to join in like this:

Yeah... pretty much just like that minus the lipstick.

So I got to the gym, said good morning to goodMood and did my pathetic calf raises. Now it's time for work with all it's drama and angst. I'm ready...

are you?

An Ode to Lactic Acid

OK, HIT IT!

The Black Dahlia is not pleased with my half-assed progress, "Do ten calf lifts on your left leg, followed by ten on your right. Then ten consecutive backflips and you had better land it this time!"

The former OSU gymnast turned physical therapist is cracking the whip today during our last session. I promise her that I'll do the calf lifts because frankly the ones off my bad leg were pathetic and she promptly dumps me. This is my lot in life when dealing with twenty-something former gymnasts.

Yesterday and today are a haze of lactic acid pain...

Temperature's rising
Fever is high
Can't see no future
Can't see no sky

My boss is telling me that he commented on yesterday's post and I can't find it. I've checked my blogger settings with the sinking feeling of that dude on the wrong side of the airlock in all those movies. The window is closing and I'll miss his wisdom which makes me sad. He's a creature of focus - you have his attention only for so long and then he's focused on someone else.

Lactic acid... I could barely do a flight of stairs yesterday much less commute home on the bike.

My feet are so heavy
So is my head
I wish I was a baby
I wish I was dead

It's lunch and I'm stomping around the area where I work on this Couch to 5K thing with my wife. The rat bastards left me (something about leaving on time ::roll::) - so first I had to waddle run after them to catch up and then covered in sweat and somewhat slightly wheezy, kinda sorta keep up. Thank God they blew the finish, all of them stopping to stretch before crossing the finish line while I doddered strolled past them to victory!

In your faces LOSERS!

Oh I'll be a good boy
Please make me well
I promise you anything
Get me out of this hell

Ponder the implications of the following... and no, that's NOT me!

Deep Thoughts on Being Half-Assed.

My wife insists this is a good idea. When the wheels come off and the killing starts you know who to blame.

I'm bringing various systems online for the umgajillionth time and wondering just exactly why I bother but I do - go figure. Myfitnesspal informs me that my weight has remained the same since I last bothered to weigh in last November 12th. I could take my blood pressure but I forgot my iPad which is the keeper of the blood pressure diary and I impulse bought this MOVband thingy and now in the harsh morning light of my monitor I'm wondering why.

So, I've got this blog where I poor my angst into it like a teenage girl, myfitnesspal where I monitor my calories, neck size and mass, along with plugging in my workout info (I'm burrito1 by the way - incase you want to log in and see that I haven't done anything for awhile). And although I can see the point of it if you're a believer I find it vaguely narcissistic but that's probably because I'm dealing with lactic acid and I'm grumpy.

My boss is the definition of how this myfitnesspal is suppose to work - this thing called discipline or something - but I'm watching him shed pounds and it's almost inspirational - then I remember how he likes to listen to his employees weeping on his iPod ("It's soothing") and I focus on other things.

It took awhile last night to get the commuter bike online, new batteries for the bike computer and charging up the Garmin so it could track my cadence and HR - all this monitoring for a 3.1 mile ride but it's part of the ritual. When I get home tonight I'll upload the data to another site that will record my incredible trek.

Tomorrow there will be no bike ride - I have to go to a physical therapist for my partially ruptured achilles tendon (my boss tenderly commented, "Why do you have to do everything half-assed?!").

Half-assedness is an increasing problem in our society. Even sissies are phoning it in now. I mean REALLY?! Lingerie firm launches women’s underwear for men. I'm certain not to get beat up (well, cruelly mocked anyway) when I explain to the guys (and ladies) at the gym that "These panties are for MEN! Gosh darn it!!!" while stomping my foot for emphasis. I mean how do you un-see something like that? Don't look at me, go back to the top of this post for 'who to blame.'

I can't leave you with that - here - this will help!

#caring