Weekend Update
Jan. 26th, 2009 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieThis past weekend was a busy one, with yet more social engagements and a lot of catch-up work around the house, and unfortunately nowhere near enough time to get everything done. I had meant to work at least one day this weekend, but it just didn't pan out.
Saturday got off to its usual early start, with me toddling out of bed at too-damned-early-o'clock in order to get my lazy butt to the gym. I was solo this week, as neither![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fisherbear (upset stomach) nor monkeybard (conflicting engagement later in the morning) were able to come along. I had a good accelerated-weights-and-balance-work session, and was trundling along on the cardio-only portion of the workout when my sister appeared out of nowhere and hugged me hello. I knew that we belonged to the same gym, but we've never actually encountered each other there before. We had a nice bit of chat while she warmed up on the machine next to mine, and agreed that we really should get together sometime this weekend to chat. She then went on to her insane workout with her workout buddy, and I settled in to finish my cardio and then go stretch. On my way out, I saw her doing combinations in the heavy-weights area that involved very energetic pull-ups, and nearly fell over laughing at the intimidated expressions on the faces of a few of the "macho-men" would-be tough guys in her vicinity. Don't get me wrong - the way my sister can power through pull-ups is a thing of beauty and a wonder to behold. It's so far beyond my own abilities (I can only do pull-ups if I'm on a machine that takes away most of my weight) that I'm well past intimidation and well into pure admiration. I'm used to being intimidated (or at least impressed) by what people who seriously work out can accomplish, and I admire their efforts. I don't particularly admire the "guys-only" aura in certain parts of the gym, but I've learned to tolerate (and work around) the miasma of testosterone that hangs over the heavy-duty weight machine and free weights sections of the gym. To see my sister in that section blithely working her way through exercises that 90% of those weight-jockeys couldn't do at all, much less with her energy level and confidence...well. Let's just say that there were more than a few guys doing the "damn! I can't do that!" sidle while turning vaguely puce.
Saturday afternoon and evening we went to Uncle Andrew and Jake's house for a party celebrating a number of birthdays and other happy events. It was an impressively large shindig, featuring make-your-own-pizzas, lots of nibblies, tons of interesting conversations, and not a few anecdotes around things you'd really rather not know about people and their pets (Jake and several of her friends all being veterinarians, this kind of thing does tend to come up, and it makes for fascinating listening even when you're being squicked out).fisherbear and I had a fantastic time, although we both ate entirely too much.
Sunday is my one morning a week where I can sleep in if I want to. Naturally, I tend to try and catch up on my sleep that day. That's hard to do when M-cat gets it into his head to play with the humans burrowed under the covers. One of these years I'm going to punt him into next week. Rousted out of bed at a nearly-reasonable hour, I got coffee started the coffee pot and tackled some of the chaos in the kitchen. I enjoyed my coffee and breakfast while watching the lightest dusting of snowflakes swirling around on the air currents. It wasn't snowing much at all, and the flakes were light and fluffy enough that they almost never actually fell all the way to the ground, but instead flurried around up and down. The effect was just enough to make you feel like you were in an anemic snow globe. After breakfast, I decided that the refrigerator really needed a good clean-out; we had a few too many leftover containers that had been pushed to the back of shelves, and nowhere near the amount of free space in the fridge that we should have had. A not-short and somewhat-disturbing time later, we had much more space, many tupperware containers soaking, and a firm note to myself to check the back of the shelf where fisherbear likes to store his bread a bit more often. Ew.
Sunday afternoon fisherbear and I finally started tackling the question of being prepared for the great analog-to-digital switchover scheduled for next month. Yes, we've been putting it off. We're cable customers, so it would be nice if we didn't have to do anything, but our rat-bastard of a cable company has decided to switch over to an all-digital signal on their cable, too, in order to extort yet more money from their customers. (I strongly dislike our cable company.) We've been talking for years about getting a new TV, but the timing has never been right, and there have been issues with the new technology around HD that didn't work for me. Now we're looking this transition deadline in the face, and trying to decide whether to invest in a new set, lease the stupid converter boxes from the extortionate cable company (no, the government boxes won't solve the problem of the cable company's own propriatary encryption for most of the basic cable channels, see earlier rant), or some combination thereof. We went out to look at a few sets just to understand what we might be talking about in real terms. While we were out, we stopped by a favorite local music store, to which I happened to have an absurd number of their "you spent money at our store, here's a certificate dollar or five that you can redeem later for pittances" pieces of paper that had been accumulating (and possibly breeding) on top of the refrigerator for yonks. It turned out that fisherbear and I had accumulated enough of them to get two "free" (read: paid for by many, many previous purchases) CDs, which was a nice surprise. The state of the store was rather sad, though, and makes me wonder whether they are near to being yet more victims of the economic downturn. We'll have to wait and see.
Sunday evening fisherbear and I went to the new Greek restaurant in the neighborhood. I was going to meet my sister in the pub downstairs afterwards, but she called just as we were leaving the house, starving after yet another killer workout, so we invited her to join us at the restaurant. The menu was quite varied, and the food was mostly good, although the service was distinctly so-so. We had a nice social dinner, and even more good talk downstairs at the pub over Jolly Rogers (fisherbear and my sister) and cider (me). Some of that chat - about how busy people were and tended to be - was quite thought-provoking, and I'll probably blog on it later. Before I knew it, it was past 8:30, and time to head on home to get ready for another work week.
Weekends need to be longer. There's just no getting around it.
Saturday got off to its usual early start, with me toddling out of bed at too-damned-early-o'clock in order to get my lazy butt to the gym. I was solo this week, as neither
fisherbear (upset stomach) nor monkeybard (conflicting engagement later in the morning) were able to come along. I had a good accelerated-weights-and-balance-work session, and was trundling along on the cardio-only portion of the workout when my sister appeared out of nowhere and hugged me hello. I knew that we belonged to the same gym, but we've never actually encountered each other there before. We had a nice bit of chat while she warmed up on the machine next to mine, and agreed that we really should get together sometime this weekend to chat. She then went on to her insane workout with her workout buddy, and I settled in to finish my cardio and then go stretch. On my way out, I saw her doing combinations in the heavy-weights area that involved very energetic pull-ups, and nearly fell over laughing at the intimidated expressions on the faces of a few of the "macho-men" would-be tough guys in her vicinity. Don't get me wrong - the way my sister can power through pull-ups is a thing of beauty and a wonder to behold. It's so far beyond my own abilities (I can only do pull-ups if I'm on a machine that takes away most of my weight) that I'm well past intimidation and well into pure admiration. I'm used to being intimidated (or at least impressed) by what people who seriously work out can accomplish, and I admire their efforts. I don't particularly admire the "guys-only" aura in certain parts of the gym, but I've learned to tolerate (and work around) the miasma of testosterone that hangs over the heavy-duty weight machine and free weights sections of the gym. To see my sister in that section blithely working her way through exercises that 90% of those weight-jockeys couldn't do at all, much less with her energy level and confidence...well. Let's just say that there were more than a few guys doing the "damn! I can't do that!" sidle while turning vaguely puce.Saturday afternoon and evening we went to Uncle Andrew and Jake's house for a party celebrating a number of birthdays and other happy events. It was an impressively large shindig, featuring make-your-own-pizzas, lots of nibblies, tons of interesting conversations, and not a few anecdotes around things you'd really rather not know about people and their pets (Jake and several of her friends all being veterinarians, this kind of thing does tend to come up, and it makes for fascinating listening even when you're being squicked out).
fisherbear and I had a fantastic time, although we both ate entirely too much.Sunday is my one morning a week where I can sleep in if I want to. Naturally, I tend to try and catch up on my sleep that day. That's hard to do when M-cat gets it into his head to play with the humans burrowed under the covers. One of these years I'm going to punt him into next week. Rousted out of bed at a nearly-reasonable hour, I got coffee started the coffee pot and tackled some of the chaos in the kitchen. I enjoyed my coffee and breakfast while watching the lightest dusting of snowflakes swirling around on the air currents. It wasn't snowing much at all, and the flakes were light and fluffy enough that they almost never actually fell all the way to the ground, but instead flurried around up and down. The effect was just enough to make you feel like you were in an anemic snow globe. After breakfast, I decided that the refrigerator really needed a good clean-out; we had a few too many leftover containers that had been pushed to the back of shelves, and nowhere near the amount of free space in the fridge that we should have had. A not-short and somewhat-disturbing time later, we had much more space, many tupperware containers soaking, and a firm note to myself to check the back of the shelf where fisherbear likes to store his bread a bit more often. Ew.
Sunday afternoon fisherbear and I finally started tackling the question of being prepared for the great analog-to-digital switchover scheduled for next month. Yes, we've been putting it off. We're cable customers, so it would be nice if we didn't have to do anything, but our rat-bastard of a cable company has decided to switch over to an all-digital signal on their cable, too, in order to extort yet more money from their customers. (I strongly dislike our cable company.) We've been talking for years about getting a new TV, but the timing has never been right, and there have been issues with the new technology around HD that didn't work for me. Now we're looking this transition deadline in the face, and trying to decide whether to invest in a new set, lease the stupid converter boxes from the extortionate cable company (no, the government boxes won't solve the problem of the cable company's own propriatary encryption for most of the basic cable channels, see earlier rant), or some combination thereof. We went out to look at a few sets just to understand what we might be talking about in real terms. While we were out, we stopped by a favorite local music store, to which I happened to have an absurd number of their "you spent money at our store, here's a certificate dollar or five that you can redeem later for pittances" pieces of paper that had been accumulating (and possibly breeding) on top of the refrigerator for yonks. It turned out that fisherbear and I had accumulated enough of them to get two "free" (read: paid for by many, many previous purchases) CDs, which was a nice surprise. The state of the store was rather sad, though, and makes me wonder whether they are near to being yet more victims of the economic downturn. We'll have to wait and see.
Sunday evening fisherbear and I went to the new Greek restaurant in the neighborhood. I was going to meet my sister in the pub downstairs afterwards, but she called just as we were leaving the house, starving after yet another killer workout, so we invited her to join us at the restaurant. The menu was quite varied, and the food was mostly good, although the service was distinctly so-so. We had a nice social dinner, and even more good talk downstairs at the pub over Jolly Rogers (fisherbear and my sister) and cider (me). Some of that chat - about how busy people were and tended to be - was quite thought-provoking, and I'll probably blog on it later. Before I knew it, it was past 8:30, and time to head on home to get ready for another work week.
Weekends need to be longer. There's just no getting around it.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 10:18 pm (UTC)And after all that, it got shifted to 2pm, then to Sunday at 5ish. Leaving me with one outside commitment on Saturday instead of three, and three instead of two on Sunday. 114.1 miles of driving later, I didn't enjoy my Sunday very much.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 10:52 pm (UTC)Hopefully you can make it to the gym tonight?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 10:57 pm (UTC)Really Glad You Two Could Make It
Date: 2009-01-27 03:58 pm (UTC)Uncle Andrew