Blue Skies Sunday

The weather was awesome today, and I managed to get up early enough to get out and enjoy it. There were a few minutes before we left the house that I thought it might be easier just to sit at home and read, but I pushed myself to get outside and I’m glad I did. Jon and I had a pretty awesome day, complete with some walking to help ease the soreness from yesterday.

After grabbing a quick breakfast at Subway, we took advantage of the dry roads and warm temp to go geocaching. In our back roads travels, we came across an area we hadn’t been before.

We found six caches before heading into town to do laundry and grab lunch at Olive Garden with a gift card we had. We debated doing some more geocaching before gaming, but instead, we ended up going to the zoo to walk around for a little bit.

 

We only had a partial group for gaming, but we still managed to get to the second chapter of our adventure…after almost getting eaten by the Kraken. We cut the game short by an hour because the wind picked up. By the time we got home, the warm and sunny day had been overtaken by wind and snow. Oh well…at least we got to enjoy several hours of sun.

I was going to watch American Horror Story tonight, but I’m tired and need to shower and get ready for tomorrow. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so I’m going to take a melatonin, but I have to do it early or else I’ll be groggy tomorrow. I’m hoping that the weather isn’t horrible tonight and that I don’t have to deal with ice in the morning.

Bring it on, Monday!

A.

 

Overestimation and a Cut in Entertainment

I completely overestimated my endurance on Sunday.

As previously talked about, Saturday was really active as far as walking went.  I’ve been slowly building endurance, but I’m definitely not up to marathon walking. This is something I conveniently forgot when I decided that Sunday would be another “walk in the zoo” day.  I suppose it might not have been bad if we’d gotten out of the house earlier to do this. As it was, we stayed in the comfy house until after noon, enjoying the air conditioning and The Best Couch I’ve Ever Sat On. If those two reasons weren’t good enough, I had to finish “Sharknado” and then there were other movies to watch. Completely legit!

We then decided to have lunch before going to the zoo.  Delicious Mexican food. You know what makes walking less fun? A belly full of lunch. By the time we got to the zoo, it was midday, so while the heat wasn’t “that bad” at first, we were only shortly past the gates before we realized we may have made a mistake.

What frustrated me was that the day before, I’d walked around a whole zoo with just one rest break, and then 24 hours later I was so exhausted I couldn’t seem to remove my butt from a bench. It felt like a backslide to me. After conferring with my partner in crime and evaluating the situation, I realized that this wasn’t necessarily the case.

1. We did a TON of walking the day before, more than I’ve done yet, and so it was a given that I was going to be tired without a rest day.

2. None of the breaks had to do with back pain or knee pain or even foot pain. It was pain that was making me sit like it was 3ish months ago. This time, tt was just exhaustion and heat, plain and simple.

3. The heat, man. It seriously saps my energy.

We decided that near-future zoo walks will take place in the morning, before a huge meal is consumed, and not after a day where we’ve already logged several miles.  I say “near-future” because I don’t think that will be the case forever. I’m steadily increasing my walking endurance and my energy levels, and I think that in a few more months I will be able to walk long distances on consecutive days. But I don’t have super powers. I’m coming off of two years of limited mobility…this isn’t going to resolve itself in just a few weeks.

The day wasn’t a total waste. Some walking is better than no activity, even if it several breaks did happen. We got yelled at by a prairie dog and judged by a peacock. Jon made friends with a young Colobus monkey. As miserable as we were, we still had some fun.

Monday returned with a vengeance but its vengeance started on Sunday when we returned to the apartment to find that the post office sent Jon’s eBay items back to us instead of to their recipients.  In typical Amanda-anxiety fashion, I instantly assumed that they’d tell us it was our fault, that they’d charge us again for shipping and handling, that they’d stand over us in a black robe and judge us for doing something wrong (even though we did everything right). Turns out, all was well. They claimed it was their mistake and re-sent the packages today at no extra charge. Thanks, USPS!

Sadly, today we cancelled our GameFly membership. It’s nothing personal. We’ve enjoyed GameFly a lot, but we’re trying to cut some costs to get through the next semester, and this seemed one of the most obvious. Jon does a lot of PC gaming and we have some games at home that I can finish. For now, while we have a working XBox 360, we can take finished games and trade them in for new-to-us used games when the time comes.

I was feeling good about our very grown-up choice…until I went to actually cancel, and GameFly turned on the digital puppy dog eyes:

Are you sure you want to quit?

You won’t get all your perks!

Want to reconsider for a free month?

You have three days left for this month…don’t you want to use them?

You’re really going to cancel? Why? (to this I picked moving and traveling, because that’s partially true. I felt bad saying “Too expensive” because we don’t actually believe it’s too expensive in general, we just need to conserve money right now). 

We have a lot of shipping centers…please stay with us!

You’re going to leave? Well, okay. Make sure to *sniff* return your games in 7 days. 

Really?

Okay, then…

Good-bye…

…but click this link if you ever want to reactivate!

So I feel like I didn’t break up permanently with GameFly, but by the end of that ordeal, I kind of wanted to cry.

Adulthood is painful, my friends. Very painful.

A.