A Slow Start and Night Geocaching

I wish I could say the New Year started out just as awesome as I wanted it to, but I’d be lying. I know we’re only three days in, but at this point, I’d kind of like a do-over. The truth is, it’s been another rough week in a series of rough weeks. I don’t know how much I can blame on the weather (my first instinct is to blame all of it on the weather) and how much personal responsibility I have to take for being so grumpy and bitter.  I’m working through it in my own way, and like all the other times I was angry at something or someone, I know this will pass. Eventually.

There have been some good things though. I’ve already finished a couple of really good books. I’m also beta reading a book for a friend, something I enjoy doing. I haven’t made as much progress in revising my own novel, but I do have a plan to finish it and recruit a few more beta readers before trying to get it published. It’s strange…I never wanted to revise before, but now that I’m doing it, I’m suddenly filled with inspiration to revise and submit several of my other works as well. Maybe 2014 is the year this happens.

I’m also doing well with staying active. Again, I know we’re only three days in, but making an effort every day has made me feel accomplished. I’ve been especially good about walking on breaks and lunches at work. In fact, I hit my step goal today before work was even over. Go me!

After work, Jon went to the game store for Friday Night Magic, and since I hadn’t made plans to do anything else, I just hung out with myself for awhile. Originally I was going to go on an Amanda Date Night, but I ended up playing it low key. I don’t normally leave MHK when Jon games (too much driving and gas), but tonight I did. After stopping at home to change and grab a quick snack, I made it to the rec center for a walk. The weather was nice today, and I wanted to take advantage of it. In hindsight, I should have stuck to walking a few laps. Being outdoors improved my mood greatly and I would have liked to be out in it longer. However,  I only did one lap since I tried to do a C25k session. Again, I didn’t get very far, but I’m going to keep trying.

It didn’t help that after a few runs, I got a sudden headache. I think this might have been due to lack of food today. Not that I didn’t eat, I just didn’t eat a lot. I don’t actively diet, though I try to sta conscious of what I eat and how much. Somedays, like today, I’m not overly hungry and so don’t actually end up eating a whole lot. But if I’m going to get serious about this fitness and running thing, I’m going to have to learn the best nutrition for doing so.

I finished my lap, grabbed some dinner, and came home to chill before picking Jon up. While I was vegging, I got a text from one of the other area geocachers. He was having trouble finding one that Jon and I had found and was wondering if I could help him and another cacher out since they’d been hunting for awhile.  I don’t have the best memory, but I told him what I could before heading out to help them. They’d found it by the time I got there, so I followed them to get another one down the road that I hadn’t yet marked with a smiley face.

Because I tend to be overly cautious, it’s kind of cool when I let myself go on one of these little mini-adventures. I’d prefer to adventure with Jon, just because I like hanging out with him and he’s my navigator, but going solo reminds me that I can do things on my own, and I can be brave, even if it’s in small doses (I’d like to be a more fearless this year).

After standing outside and chatting with my fellow cachers for a bit, we parted ways, and I headed to MHK to wait for Jon to get done gaming. To kill time, I went to Hastings for a black and white mocha and some reading time. FNM got done early tonight, so I was only there for a short while before Jon texted that he was done for the night.

We’re supposed to get snow tomorrow and tomorrow night, so the tentative goal is to get out in the morning for either some geocaching or for a longish walk around the track. Or both. It’s supposed to be cold, but if I can get an  outdoors mood boost, it’s totally worth braving the chill. At least that’s how I feel right now. When actually confronted with the cold, that opinion could change very quickly. I’m fickle that way.

Now it’s time to sleep.

A.

Quiet Days and Post-Christmas Indulgence

Work today was weird, but in a good way. There weren’t very many people in the office (there weren’t many people in the whole building, to be honest), so it was really quiet. I managed to get a bunch of stuff done with a minimum of stress. Definitely my kind of Friday.

However, it was also a very indulgent Friday. I took an early break to get Starbucks for me and some others in the office who were craving a treat. I had failed to get breakfast before coming to work, so I was starving. My choice of treat from the ‘Bucks was a creme brulee latte and a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich. To avoid any delays or limits in the drive thru, I went in to place the order and was greeted by this guy:

Then for lunch…which arrived way sooner than I expected due to the flying of time today…I ventured out and picked up a Little Caesar’s Hot ‘n Ready and some crazy bread for the few of us who were feeling the pizza action. It was delicious, but it was definitely feeling.

I walked on my breaks, but that didn’t seem to help overmuch with the fullness. My current thing is walking and reading. My Kobo Mini is the perfect size to carry in my hand, and since I’ve gotten better at walking, I can now do it on autopilot, which means I can read and still navigate the halls. I’m actually finding this enjoyable, which is good, because it means I’m apt to take more walks and get more steps. I haven’t tried it on the treadmill yet, though I’m sure it would work fine. I wouldn’t even have to hold it, I could just prop it up on the panel. Maybe I’ll try this soon. Might be good for “recovery” days, because…

…I’ve decided to go ahead and try the Couch to 5k program again…this time training to RUN. I’m kind of excited about this.  Though I wanted to get the Zombies, Run! 5K app, I think I’m going to hold off and keep it simple for now. I have the free app that Jon and I started doing when I was upping my walk endurance, and I’m going to make some playlists specifically for training. I’ll still do the Zombie missions on most recovery days, and the reading and walking (or reading and doing the sit down machine) will help change things up so I don’t get bored.

I realize this isn’t going to be easy, but I’m up for the challenge. I mean, heck, I couldn’t even walk at the beginning of 2013, and anytime someone said the word “run,” I pretty much figured that was never going to be something I’d do. But I’ve managed to surprise myself by being able to run the zombie chases. Maybe by the end of 2014, I’ll be able to run a short distance.

I figure that even if I run slow, it’s still more fun than walking. And like walking, I’ll slowly but surely increase the length of time I can run at once, since that’s kind of how these things work. We don’t start out awesome, but we can eventually get to a point of awesomeness. My first goal will be to run a mile without stopping. Right now, that goal seems pretty impossible, so just wait until I reach it…that moment is going to get its own reward and blog post.

To kick off this decision, I went to the track today and did the first day of the C25k program, just to get an idea of where I’m starting from. As expected, I’m starting on a pretty low rung of the running ladder. I managed to get through half of the thirty minute session before I reverted to just walking. The program is five minutes of walking to warm up, then alternating sessions of a minute of running and a minute and a half of walking. At the halfway mark, I gave up running for a couple reasons. One, there was ice on the track that I had to be careful of, especially because I was out there without Jon tonight. Two, my ankles were cramping (I really need to figure out a good way to relieve that). Three, for a healthy dose of TMI, I really had to go to the bathroom and since the bathrooms at the rec center aren’t open, I had to be careful of how I moved. I mean…I really had to go.

Walking through the parking lot lake also added to the discomfort, since my feet were nice and wet.

As I said, I’m starting off slow, but I’m actually proud of being able to do that first session for fifteen minutes. Now the first short term goal is to be able to do it for a full thirty minutes. Once I can do that, I can progress into the actual program. Go me! Even that little bit of running was effective. My legs are really sore tonight.

I showered right after getting home, and even though I didn’t check off much of my to-do list today, I think I’m ready to lay down and read for a little while. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, so Jon and I are going to Topeka. We have to do a little bit of clothes shopping anyway, so we’re making a day of it. We’re going to the zoo and then probably to walk around Gage Park. We might do some geocaching, we might see a cheap movie, we might just cruise around and find ways to get into trouble. Either way, I’m really looking forward to getting out into some good weather.

A.

Good Times, Late Times

In Amanda time, it is super late. I just got home, and I’m going to try to phone this post in before the battery dies.

Jon and I kicked off our second C25K week, and it wasn’t so bad. Then I took him to the game store and killed time at the library until dinner.

Some of our on-the-road work associates are in town for training so a bunch of us went out to dinner with them. Afterwards, a few of us went to Houlihans for some drinks and visiting. It was a blast! This morning I’d felt grumpy and not sure if I was going to go, but I’m happy I did.

I didn’t drink, but apparently I can have a good time on just water. Who knew?

Not going to get much else in, so I’m calling it there. Off to bed!

A.

Uneventful Monday

Nothing of note happened today. Work was okay. My Lean Cuisine pizza for lunch was disappointing.

We did our third day of the week for C25K at the mall. Neither of us wanted to, but we did it anyway. Like the horrible traffic and the slow pedestrians on their cell phones, the increase in mall activity was a reminder that school is back in session.

I’m glad we got the walk in though. It means all fitness goals have been met this past week.

Made a pit stop at the library and then to get gas before heading home. We were both exhausted, so no geocaching. I killed some zombies when we got home and am trying to get the energy to do 20 minutes of housecleaning. I want to make it a daily habit to combat my laziness. But the heat in our apartment makes most things harder to deal with.

The only other thing of note is that we changed our weekend plans and will not be doing our juice fast. If we did, it would mean more time in this stuffy apartment. Plus, we’d rather go out and do things than fast, so that’s the plan. Not sure what we’re going to do, but we’ll find something.

On that note, maybe it’s time to give the AC another chance.

A.

Goals, Cemeteries, and Zombies

Today was a good day.

We slept in a little bit but were out of the house by 10, which was later than we wanted to be out, but it was still early enough to accomplish something. Our first stop was the Wamego rec field to walk our second day of C25K.  When we’d originally planned to do this, we thought we’d be up before it got too hot. It didn’t work out that way, so this walk was tougher than it might have been had we gone back to the mall.  As hard as it was, we still finished, though the urge to just go home after that was pretty strong.  Right now, we’re just picking up the walking pace. It’s going to be killer if we ever graduate to running.

Along the way, we found one of the geocaches we hadn’t been able to find previously, so that was pretty awesome. While I’m working up to doing the whole 30 minute set without breaking, I’m not quite there yet, so stopping to search was a nice break.

We decided to go ahead and hit some more geocaches in the area before heading into Manhattan. Today was a day for cemeteries, including one called the Vieux Family Cemetery.  The area was interesting and a little creepy, not because of the graveyard, but because of the hidden shelter through the trees.

Go ahead…go in. I dare you.

The graveyard was beautiful but sad.  The history there was amazing, but the graves were mostly for children who didn’t live much past the age of one, if that. There were also several that were marked “unknown.” Not sure if it was that fact or if the place just held a sad energy, but it made me cry, so we didn’t linger too long.

 

A little further up the road, we found another one. It was another one of the tiny ones, which crack me up at how cute they are.

We drove all over the place and got lost in some sketchy back roads, but we found five caches today. In the last cemetery, we even saw some wildlife: a snake and a ginormous rabbit, as well as some lizards running around on the road. The creepiest wildlife we saw, however, was the giant fuzzy caterpillars all over the road.

Later on, we took another video of a cache are we found a few weeks ago. Warning: spoilers.

We finally decided to head into Manhattan to grab a late lunch at Cox Bros BBQ. I was craving a BBQ Brisket sandwich.  While there, we signed up for their customer card and got a free jar of hot sauce and some free mac and cheese. We also got a picture of two raccoons paddling a canoe, which is pretty adorable and only slightly disturbing.

 

After that, we went to Game Hounds to put up another Tengaicon flyer. While there, Jon bought me Dead Island: Riptide. I’ve been talking about renting it, but since we gave up our GameFly account, I would have had to rent it and commit some time to finishing it. This way, we can actually play it at our leisure, and since we bought it used, it was way less than paying full price for a brand new copy.

Our last stop was the gym. This was a double workout day because we set dual fitness goals: the first was to train for a 5K by finishing the Couch to 5K program, and the second was to make it to the gym at least three times a week in order to evaluate if we were going to keep our memberships or not. We ended up taking a couple rest days this week (fyi, our week is from Tuesday to Monday to compensate for the “rest” we took the Monday back from Gen Con), so in order to fit all our goals in, we doubled up today. It wasn’t so bad. We managed to fit in another 20 minutes of cardio, and I started watching The Missing on Netflix.

Once we got home, I played some DI:R, then uploaded pictures and organized things out of my Dropbox. I have yet to shower, so I think that’s next on the list. Then it’ll be either more video games or maybe some reading and an early night to bed. Plans for tomorrow include going to buy new shoes (walking and possibly another pair for hiking), laundry, and the gym to get our third day in for the week.  Since we’ll be in Topeka, we’ll probably hit up some geocaches there.

Maybe bed is needed, because I think I’ve planned another full day for tomorrow.

A.

 

Draggin’ Butt and Takin’ Names

For most of the day, I felt tired and kind of sad. It wasn’t really depression, it was more like a general “down” mood with a few tears caused by reading or hearing emotional things.  I was tired, but I think the sad mood was helping that along. I also thought that I might be getting sick, but I think it’s just allergies. At least I hope it is. Twitter informed me that at least two people I follow who attended Gen Con have con crud. I suppose mine could be late onset, but I hope not.

The day improved after lunch. I had meetings, but they all went well. I’m not a person who likes meetings just for the sake of having meetings, but I like it when things get accomplished.   We also got some scheduling stuff figured out, and that makes me happy because it’s more consistent now and allows for some extra evening time, at least for the time being. There have been some other changes at work that have made me happy. I came back to a couple pleasant surprises, so for now, I’m feeling pretty “okay” on the job front.

Trying to figure out what we were going to do for exercise was a pain in the butt, but we finally settled on the mall.  It was too hot to walk outside, and we’re trying to get three days in at the gym and then three days doing a Couch to 5K program each week. We finally figured we could do our first C25K day in air conditioning at the Town Center, and so we did.

I’m calling this first C25K Phase 1, because I’m not going anywhere near jogging or running. Instead, we alternated walking normal speed with a faster pace of walking.  In hindsight, it wasn’t so bad. Thirty minutes went by relatively quickly, and there weren’t many people at the mall, so we were able to walk around easily. But that’s in hindsight. While we were actually doing it, it felt hard! I know it’s just walking, but it’s definitely faster and more advanced than I’m used to. Intervals, man…I was sweating! At the same time, it was fun, and I’m kind of excited about finishing the program and seeing how much I improve over the next few months.

Phase 2 will be continuous improvement and possibly some running. We’ll see. My default reaction to any sort of running program is that I’m just too big to do it, but then I read stories about big people who run, and I figure it’s not impossible. I think after we finish this one, we’ll try to do the Zombies Run program, just to keep it exciting.

We stopped and grabbed a geocache on the way home. I finally finished putting away the laundry before dinner. After dinner, we retreated to the back room, turned on some air conditioning, and played a couple games of Trains. We’ll break out some of our other games soon, but I didn’t have the brain power tonight to learn something new.

The night is now winding down, so it’s off to shower and sleep in hopes of tomorrow being a little more energetic.

A.

 

 

Vacation Recovery Day

I’m always glad of the extra day of vacation I take after Gen Con. It’s a day to relax and recharge, but it’s also time to get stuff done and get my head in the right space to get back to the regular grind.  I slept in a few hours and felt like I had a road trip hangover when I finally got up. A shower cured most of the fuzziness, but I’ve been kind of dragging all day. I suppose that’s to be expected.

I received a confirmation letter today saying I was awarded one of the scholarships to the Being an Outdoors Woman program, which means I’ll be able to attend for less than I’d anticipated. I figured I wouldn’t get it, so I was pleasantly surprised. I’m really excited for that weekend, though I am a little nervous. I suppose that’s normal. I never went to summer camp as a kid, at least not until I was in junior high, and then those camps were more academic.

We started the day off with laundry. I wasn’t in the mood to try and multi-task, so I sat with Jon at the laundromat and played through the Learn to Play pack we got at Gen Con for Legend of the Five Rings. It definitely feels more involved than MtG. I think I liked it, but I’m going to have to practice more to figure out what’s going in, and I’ll probably have to enlist the help of one of the local players to help with further understanding the cards.

After discussing Chipotle in the car yesterday, we went there for lunch. I love their burritos, but they’re huge, and I tend to realize only after I’m done that I probably shouldn’t have eaten all that. We were going to go to the gym, but then Chipotle and tiredness happened, so we called today a rest day. We stopped at Dillon’s to pick up dinner and lunch for tomorrow. Since Chipotle had felt indulgent, we decided to juice for dinner, something I want to get back into to make sure I’m getting my fruits and veggies.

On the way home, we decided to hit up a geocache. It was one we couldn’t find before, and I figured that with some experience under our belt, we might be more apt to find it this time. We were successful, but we were a little irritated that we didn’t realize what it was the first time around. Even this time, we looked at it a few times before finally “finding” it.  The irritation was at ourselves, not at the person who placed it. If anything, I thought it was pretty clever.

I scheduled a couple more Gen Con posts to post tomorrow and Wednesday. If by some chance you’re reading this but didn’t read about Day 0, you can find it here.  I should have used the evening to put away laundry, but decided that playing Trains with Jon was infinitely more important.  I won both games, but I suppose I had the edge since I’d played it a lot this past weekend.

Some other cool stuff:

Jon got an email to set up a job interview with a firm in Missouri.

We’re going to try to do the Orc Stomp 5K at Gen Con next year, which means we’re going to start training right away. We’ll most likely walk it, but we’re going to do the Couch to 5K program to try to up our walking speed.

In other gym news, we’ve set a goal for ourselves. Since we’re going to be 5K training three days a week, we’re going to aim to make it to the gym three days a week. This is to both increase our exercise level and to decide if we’re going to keep our memberships after the end of September. If we make our three times a week goal, then we’ll keep them. If we slough off and find excuses not to go, then it’s really just a waste of money and we’ll cancel our memberships in favor of more walking.

There is a chance we’ll get to volunteer for AEG at a gaming con in KC in November. It’s the week before our trip to St. Louis, which means we have to work out a few more logistics of the trip. Nothing is set in stone yet, but it’s definitely something that might happen.

Gen Con sparked some gaming mojo in us, and it looks like we’re going to try to do a DnD 4th Edition game. I believe we’re also going to do some Pathfinder in a couple months. I’m easing back into it. Still not sure if I’m ready to run any games and I’m going to hold off on doing anything online (partially because my computer is having some major issues), but I’m kind of looking forward to gaming in a small group again.

I’m sleepy already, so I might punk out on putting away laundry and just pull some clothes for tomorrow.  An early night’s sleep should be helpful in getting my mind back to the work day mindset that starts bright and early tomorrow morning.

A.