It was kind of a strange weekend, even for me.
I felt a little bit like a winner on Friday when I called my physical therapist’s office and they determined that the service that my insurance denied payment for was incorrectly entered by them. The PT’s office assured me that they’d correct it today. I’ll be checking up on this during the week to ensure this doesn’t turn into another “Lab v. Insurance” fiasco.
Today’s Daily Challenge
Promote healthy eyes by eating one lutein-rich food, like spinach, corn, carrots, kiwi, or grapes.
These fruits and veggies don’t just look pretty on your plate. They also contain a pigment called lutein, which accumulates in the eyes and helps to prevent cataracts (a clouding over the lens of the eye) and macular degeneration (damage to the macula, the center of the retina). By getting your fill of lutein, you can help protect the long-term health of your eyes.
You know I can handle these eating challenges.
I’m Not A Winner
On Friday afternoon I left work and headed for Terminal West for the second time last week. I made the trip much easier than I had the night before and found parking in a lot from which I could walk to the venue. Things were looking good.
My plan was to try the restaurant, Stationside, which is a companion to Terminal West. I was not alone in this idea as I had to queue up in order to place a food order early after its 8pm opening time (and I was hungry). I was a little nervous at the limited selection of the menu, but I chose to try the Philly Cheesesteak which was good and rather large so I was not entirely disappointed. Unfortunately this was the best part of my evening.
The band on Friday night was Steep Canyon Rangers, a bluegrass band out of Brevard, North Carolina that I like. Unfortunately the band is also appreciated by a lot couples, many of which could not stop talking for nearly the entire show. I kid you not! There was one couple that each and every time I glanced in their direction they were talking, at least until the next to last song when they were making out. Don’t think that I didn’t wander the room looking from a respite from chatter; I could never find one.
With dinner I ordered a Fat Tire which got me two entries into the giveaway of a Fat Tire cruiser bike that night. For some reason I felt that my chances of winning were really good. I kept waiting for the drawing, thinking that it would occur while the band took a break, then thinking it would occur after the concert. I was wrong on all accounts. I never saw the drawing occur so I assume that I was not the winner.
ITP Flickr Pic
I have let the well run dry again. It’s not that I’ve lost my desire to shoot, it’s that I have so many other commitments (and I have given up on concert photography) and I am not seeing anything that I feel is worth my time to photograph.
I’m A Winner
I never expected to be a winner on Saturday because nearly every turn I took during the day produced failure. I picked up a coworker and drove us up to Southern Poly for Atlanta Code Camp. I was hoping the day would be nerdy and beneficial for both of us. During the day she and I attended four one-hour sessions, each of which let us down either because the presenter was unprepared/bad or the subject matter wound up being completely inappropriate for our skill set — “C’mon, you are all C# developers. Right?” said one presenter, to which I shook my head in disagreement.
At one point the only highlight of the day was the turkey sandwich I was given for lunch.
The conclusion of the day consisted of a gathering of those of us who made it through the entire day, and prizes were given away. To my surprise my name was called near the end and I walked away with a USB-powered second screen that I hope will be handy when I try to develop user interfaces. Unfortunately my coworker was not as fortunate.
There was a after-party at Dave & Buster’s that we were going to attend, but on the walk back to my car my coworker said she was tired and asked if I could take her home. Geez, we weren’t even on a date and I was getting the blowoff! :/ It was only 6:00pm by the time I got her home, so I considered calling ITP-Reader Barb to see about roller derby or heading to Dave & Buster’s solo, but in the end I decided to eat dinner and return ITP for a quiet night home alone.
Slowdown Sunday
My first thought for Sunday was to make my first real bike ride since March. I talked myself out of that pretty early.
But my foot still hurts. (More on this tomorrow.) In fact, I’m under the impression that I might have to live with this pain for some time because it refuses to abate. If it persists like this through Labor Day I might seek the opinion of a second podiatrist. My throat is still bothersome as well, but at least I think I am seeing small signs of improvement.
I spent all of Sunday at home doing mundane chores — cleaning, cooking, lawn mowing, paperwork processing, along with some pleasure activities — video watching (episodes of “The Office”), book reading, coding. Given the perfection of the weather I probably should have spent more time outside.
Want to hear something odd? I did not drink any beer Saturday or Sunday. What has happened to me?
Today’s Personal Project
I really need to do laundry tonight.
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – okay, though I really miss the days of getting out of bed and exercising
Current Music – silence at the moment but that’s about to change
Website Of The Day – Yesterday I read half of a quick-read (which says a lot coming from me) about simplifying one’s life. The author also keeps a blog called The Other Side of Complexity.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – I meant to check this morning. Perhaps I’ll wait until September 1.
Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 0 (0 cardio)
Days Of Bed-Making – 0
Vegetarian Meals – ?
Carnivorous Meals – ?
Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0
August Goals
– still TBD
2013 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Dissolve Sharpened Stone
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate
2013 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
– Take two real vacations, perhaps one abroad
– Take a more proactive approach to meeting women (read “stop being such a pussy”)
Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2013
- Pages 1.7 for iPad (Timestompers Guide) — by Sean Wells
- 60 Mountain Lion Tips — by David Sparks and Brett Terpstra
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business — by Charles Duhigg
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy — by Douglas Adams
- Amazing Things Will Happen: A Real-World Guide on Achieving Success and Happiness — by CC Chapman
- So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love — by Cal Newport
- Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life — by Steve Martin
- Who Am I: A Memoir — by Pete Townshend
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
Roller derby was fun to watch, Rachel’s (aka Bitch Fork) team got their butts kicked points wise, but trying to figure out the points & the penalties was well beyond my comprehesion. All the ITP folks headed back ITP, so we were just home Saturday night sitting on the deck, you should have called, we had plenty of food & drinks to share.
I actually rode my bike TWICE this weekend – Saturday we met up with Drew & Michelle for a 30 mile SCT ride. Sunday we decided to head over to Roswell from the house, ended up with 35 miles. 25 miles then a long hour stop at Allan’s moms house, then the 10 more miles home. Those last 10 were tough after that long break. We found there are food trucks down by the river on the weekends now, I wish I would have brought some money, the Genki truck was lookign very tasty when we rode past.
Tonight if I can get myself to drive to midtown, I may joing Stacy & Aron for some trivia at Mellow Mushroom……
Trivia, eh? Let me know if you decide to go, I *might* be able to put off laundry for one more day…
Well – Stacy posted a story about Mellow Mushroom pizza yesterday on FB, and the picture of the pizza looked quite tasty. I really need to paint a wall in our mud room, & hopefully that shouldn’t take too long (& going to Trivia might get me motivated to get it done), & pizza sounded good……
Also- I’m going to our favorite place Peach Auto today for lunch, gotta get an oil change on the CRV, Allan’s been blowing off the maintenenance on my old car.
Come on down! Or, er, Paulie for you – come on OVER! Up? Up and over, I reckon, unless you’re coming from work. The more the merrier; it starts at 8pm. And Barb? I just had a piece of that pizza leftover as my breakfast. Ohmygoodness. Still delish.
I’m putting off laundry myself. Mainly because it’s T-4 days ’til vacation and I want to start it off with as much clean laundry as possible. I’ll wait until the last day to do it. 🙂 Of course, the fact that it’s T-4 days ’til vacation means I don’t have much motivation to do anything in the first place!
Okay, seriously considering trivia now. Depending on when I leave work I may do laundry first, but I can almost taste the pizza in my mouth now.
Back at the salt mines. Good racing, a good crew of officials of which some I had worked with before but not on the track. Sad there aren’t more riders for a nationals- I guess with no prize money, there isn’t much incentive?
Came home to a broken down lawn mower and tractor!! The mower may be beyond my skills as I am unable to even push it out of the yard. I’ll try this evening to see if the linkage is jammed in some way. I spoke to the tractor folks this morning and they me to bring it in to them so they are able to test the oil pressure. This will be the first “road trip” for the tractor, so may be interesting…
My achiles is doing much better- haven’t had any drugs in 48 hours and almost no pain. I was hoping I would not have to hop around all weekend.
Paulie, was this a venue where people were having dinner during the show or were they just being rude? Maybe that venue is the new Chastain?
-FP
They were just being rude. While you can eat at the very few tables inside Terminal West, most of the food consumption is done in the room for Stationside.
Glad to hear your foot has improved. If you bet me $100 that my injury would still be here (and just as painful) at the end of August as it was at the end of April you would be $100 richer today.
The weekend started out rough but got much better. Last minute plans to go to Augustine’s for drinks threw me into a tizzy…I was tired, knew I couldn’t drink and it wasn’t with my most favorite folks. I should have stayed home, but didn’t want to start a fight. I left after an hour. It worked out, just as I got in the car, my cousin from Orlando rang, he was driving through to Indy and wanted to stop by to stretch his legs.
Patrick and I hung out for a couple of hours, just catching up. Probably the longest I’ve ever spoke to him. He’s a good kid!
Saturday was Summer Shade, I met up with the lovely Jenka and other GP friends. I drank wayyyy to much beer, but it was a perfect day for it. Solid drinking from 3-8ish made for a rough day yesterday. (FWIW, I knew I would be drinking so I didn’t take my meds that don’t allow me to drink)
I woke up early (who am I kidding, I was tossing and turning all night) for the Alliance Ride in Alpharetta. Not the best ride I’ve ever done, thankfully it was only 50miles (it seemed like a whole lot more). They had us riding on some pretty busy roads, the aid stations where at mile 8 and 31???, and they were pretty lightly stocked but, hey, it’s for a good cause. I got to say hi to Scott Rigsby at the start of the ride.
Just exhausted the rest of the day…mowed the front yard, did some shopping and had dinner, I couldn’t manage anything more.
Hope to be resubmitting the renovation paperwork today…last week was just a mess. Hope it works this time.
It was DELIGHTFUL to hang out at the Summer Shade Festival with ITP-Reader Martha! And what perfect weather for festivalin’. I made the rookie mistake of forgetting to eat all day long so I left pretty much right after you did, Martha. Does it mean I’m old if I’m home by 9:30 on a Saturday night?
I was home by 7:30pm so you are young than I am, Jenka. 😉
I ate a corn dog…I would have been better off not eating. Anyway, it’s your own fault, Fin did offer you some yummy fried potatoes. And what makes us old isn’t just being home by 9:30 on a Saturday it is also complaining all day about how the music is ‘just too loud’ (instead of just getting up and moving away from it).
True, I should’ve taken Finn up on his offer! Those potatoes looked so gross. And yeah, we kinda did complain the whole day about how loud the music was.
Old farts! 🙂
I’m suffering because what appeared to be a small bowl from Chiptole with chips has filled me to the max. This seriously alters the amount of pizza I will allow myself to eat tonight. 🙁
I stayed up until after 1am on Friday night, that almost killed me! hahaha
The music was pretty loud at the Marietta Square, but we were a little further away, so it didn’t bother our conversations.
I did go to bed early as well on Saturday night.
I’m so ready for pizza, I just hope I can get that painting done, since I refused to do it last night…… I promised to do it tonight.
Holy crap, 3:30 already!
Server issues on a Monday are not great for the stress level.
Paulie, deciding to not ride on Sunday was a mistake. The weather could not have been better for a ride. I did 20 miles at Blankets Creek and it was awesome!
Barb nice seeing you on Saturday, sorry we could not visit with everybody but you all were in the kid free zone. Do you have any inside scoop on how the injured player is? The crash didn’t look too bad, I guess she landed wrong.
Tonight is a ramble in Alpharetta, basically a hash with no flour.
PAINT, BARB, PAINT!
PAINT, BARB, PAINT!
Bob, if I were closer to healthy I’d agree 100% with your assessment that I made a mistake not riding yesterday. However, given the nature of my foot pain I am very nervous about going out for a ride these days. Granted, I rode with no pain in Raleigh, but that was flat(ish) at a very comfortable pace.
Bob – I was thinking I needed to FB Rachel to see if she heard about that girl. I think she face planted, and so they were worried about a neck/head injury – but when we talked to Rachel after, she didn’t think she was hurt as bad as they made it look. I”ll let you know when I hear something.