Off the request line.

I owe someone a little something from a few posts ago, so this one's for you, Jacket.
That's my muscle, fools. I've been working on it.

I'm just over a year into my Going to The Gym to Get Ripped Initiative and I've hit a bit of a plateau. I worked with a trainer for my first month and a half; this was as much as I could afford (it is a swank, swank gym that I can only attend through the miracle of My Big Corporate Employer's health care plan subsidy). I'd been doing that plan--with results, no doubt--but I was starting to feel like I wasn't making more progress. So I took a preview class for a little something they call BURN. Which burns, by the way. The miniclass was 30 minutes and I was sweating like a sweaty pig--I can only guess that in the full hour class I would have been in a pile of sweaty soreness on the floor. But I felt great afterwards and, just like the trainer predicted, I find that my body is craving the increased heart rate, the sweat, and the deep breaths that I get from the cardio portion as well as the soreness and wrung out feeling from the weight work. So I've been picking up the literal pace of my workout. This fast walk/jog/run/jog/walk/run/jog/run/walk flies in the face of my prior attitude to moving at anything other than a swift walk. I have even been known to express the sentiment that I don't even run to catch a bus, if I'm late for work. But I do now, because damn if it don't feel fine.

14 June

Today, we are 29. This is the "pushing 30" year, the one about which many people are giving me that look. That look that implies that somehow this is the last good year.

I hate that look.

They're wrong, of course. I'm really excited about getting older; my grey hair is coming in quite evenly; I'm in the best shape of my life; my parents are still alive. I love my career, even though I hate my current job, and I have high hopes for the next step, which could be here even before the calendar year closes. I love my friends, even though I live near so few of them right now. I have a comfortable, small, lived-in apartment with a well-edited collection of books that only just fill the shelves and homemade art on the walls. I like my neighborhood even if I don't like my city. I do what I want, mostly, and am looking forward to the next thing.

Not too shabby, I must say.

All of the week

Q: So, Nora, what have you been up to?
A: Oh, not much. Working and not working, sleeping and not sleeping, reading, sweating, not cooking, and taking cold showers.

Q: Whatcha reading?
A: Well, I just finished re-reading Tipping the Velvet and last weekend I ripped through All the Pretty Horses, the writing style of which reminded me of Faulkner, but somehow I was able to stand it--can't say the same for Faulkner. I'm late to the party on Cormac McCarthy, and I've wanted to read The Road ever since that guy I interviewed with at The Retail Bookstore back in September mentioned that he was loving it (you can always trust employee recommendations of that sort) but I am concerned I will lose some cred reading an Oprah book. She ruins everything. But still...the book existed before she picked it, and there's some comfort in the fact that a post-apocalyptic novel of ruination and devastation will be in the hands of many people more used to things like guest appearances by Dr. Phil or Best Friend Gail. Right now I'm tackling Anna Karenina. Little light beach reading, you know...

Q: Bitchin' hot, no?
A: It was worse yesterday (Wednesday). The power outages in the New York City region must have rolled over the main technology office of My Big Employer, because all systems out of their New Jersey office went down around 4:00 so we all beat it. When I got home it was too hot to move. I put on my home-wear only hippie dress and cuddled a kyew-jay-oh-eye-doubleyou (Quart Jar Of Ice Water) and waited to feel normal. Never did. The cat is barfing up puddles of clear, thick liquid, which is a little unsettling, but he's drinking alright and eating about what one would expect in this heat. I'm eating less too, all of it raw and most of it green. Our power went off for about half an hour around 8:45, but all I lost was the radio and the ceiling fan, so I wasn't out much. The community board on LiveJournal was buzzing with much bitching about losing the AC for a time. I have zero sympathy for that, frankly. If you have AC you don't have the opportunity to feel that finest thing of the summer: cooler breezes in the night, through your open bedroom window.

Q: Heard you had a rough Tuesday.
A: Yeeeaah, I did. All I wanted was to come home from the 94-degree day and have a big quick green salad with the arugula I bought at the farmer's market, drink a G&T, and go to gamelan rehearsal. But my smoke alarm was going off. There was no fire (I checked) and there had been no fire for the three hours my neighbour reported it had been shrieking (note to neighbour: times like that, a call to the landlord might be in order. Just might, is all I'm saying). The cat was mightily freaked and the ringing exacerbated my dehydration headache, setting me just enough on edge that I must have sounded a treat in my phone message to the landlord. If only he'd addressed this smoke alarm the first time I had trouble, all of this might not have happened, or might have happened anyway... Anyway, to his great credit he left a grill-out at his house to come pry at the wires hanging out of my ceiling and determined that the unit itself--not the wiring or the backup battery--was faulty, and the alarm company would make amends and fix the thingy. So instead of fab dinner, I had half a glass of water and two ibuprofin. Nummy. It's been a bad week for the cat--later that night the cheap-o roller blind freed itself somehow from its bracket and fell on him, and my head.

Q: I bet you're glad that you have tomorrow off. You'd been saying how one of the finest aspects of Your Big Employer is the every-other-Friday-off summer hours.
A: Yeah, I was pumped until this morning when I got the email that informed me that the meeting tomorrow morning is actually mandatory, not "you are cordially invited to." My Big Employer really needs to work on its importance language. So I have to go in to work in time to be ready to sit down for a town hall meeting about our just-publicly announced merger; this meeting begins, for the alphabet group that encompasses "Rocket," at 9:00 AM sharp. I am thereby denied the finest pleasure of the day off--sleeping in--and obliged to scoot my brunch plan considerably. I am much inconvenienced by this and at this time, just past midnight when Thursday has turned to Friday, am considering just not going and trying to pass it off like I went. I won't actually do this, of course.

Q: Dude, a thousand natural shocks.
A: Don't I know it.

Q: That gives you a nice early start for your day, though.
A: It does, and in the end it'll work out okay--I'm going to get one of the first entry times for the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA for sure, and that'll be a gasser. Really looking forward to going to the museum. Then I'd like to come home, catch a nap, watch some of the flix on my shelf, and bake something dessert-y like for the My Alma Mater alumni picnic. The alphabet group that encompasses "Rocket" was tasked with desserts, and I think I'm going to bake that rhubarb cake that Jo does so well. S'posed to be cooler tomorrow too, so I might not be a total insane maniac for thinking about turning on the oven. Gawd, washing the dishes in the dark last night was hot enough; baking a cake for 30 minutes at 350 might be complete folly. I may just buy some Oreos and call it a day.

Q: No you won't.
A: You're right, I won't. Oreos are good, though.