Corporate Hippy

life hippy

I haven’t posted a “Holiday Challenge” update in awhile, actually, I haven’t posted anything at all in awhile.  I haven’t been hiding, but I have been busy.  In fact, I’ve been relatively active on the twitter and the facebook and even the flickr – just not on the wordpress blog.   Hopefully, magic lifestream code will help consolidate these online ramblings at a future date when I have a more comfortable working environment at home (re: I need a new desk chair, very very badly and hate to spend a lot of time at my desk right now because my chair is so bad).  But alas, I digress.

I’ve fallen behind on the rowing meters somewhat lately since we’ve started our winter spinning ritual at Mike’s place, which doesn’t leave time for rowing on those days.  With only today and tomorrow left in the challenge, my plan was to row this morning, tonight, tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening to make up the ~27k that I had remaining when I last checked my log.

My goal was to get up by 6:15 this morning and hit the machine by 6:30.  Nick was going to help by kicking the bed at 6:15 to make sure I got up, since he’s usually out of bed by 6:00.  Figures that today was the day that we both slept in until 6:45 when I finally noticed the time and jumped out of bed.

So, I stumbled down to the rower and got started.  While I was rowing, I started to do some math to figure out how much I needed to row for each of the 4 rows I had left to do in order to make my goal.  The more I rowed, the more I thought that I had only completed ~163k meters, and that I actually had ~37 k left to row, not the ~27k that I’d had in my mind.  I’ve been known to be bad at math and figured I’d just miscalculated when I looked at my log last.  I suddenly wanted to cry.  I didn’t have enough time to row for an hour, and I was so tired that 30 minutes was seeming torturous as well.  But I figured I’d do what I could in the time that I had and managed to squeek out just over 9k in a little more than 45 minutes.

And then I went to my computer to input my distance, and discovered that I was freaking out over nothing.  Before this morning’s row, I had completed just over 173k meters.  Therefore, adding my 9k, I’m left with a nice, reasonable 18k to meet my goal.  50 minutes tonight + 50 minutes tomorrow, and I’ve exceeded my goal.  THIS is totally doable.  THIS feels really really good.

This has been a really awesome experience for me and I hope to contiue rowing after this challenge.  I hope to find something to motivate me to the type of dedication I had for this challenge, and I’m thinking that motivation will come from how good I look and feel right now.  I don’t know if I lost much more than 5lbs over the past month, but I’ve toned up a lot, I feel strong and sexy and I didn’t change a single thing about how I eat (I still am very concious of the choices I make, and some aren’t always good, but I never eat anything without considering what I’m eating).

I’ve proven that I can fit a full hour (or more) of exercise into every single day.  I’ve proven that I can exercise 6 days straight without feeling burnt out.  I’ve proven that excercising for 45min-1hr every day will allow me to loose weight without seriously limiting my food intake.  Its a slower loss for a lot of reasons, but I prefer to do it this way.  I know that over time, the more I fit exercise into my daily routine, the better my food choices will be – but for me, I think it’ll be easier to increase the exercise than it will be to significantly change my diet.

On that note, wish me luck on my final 18k!

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Battle of the mumbling geeks

geek hippy

Its been a few years since Nick and I have had a real land line phone in our house.  For the past few years, we’ve been using Vonage, but its even been awhile since we’ve had any phones hooked up for that – a power supply mistake burned out our original ATA (converts voice to bits).  We bought a replacement ATA, but never installed it.  In fact, I’m not sure we even have it any longer .. hmmm ..

We’ve been doing fine with cell phones, and I’ve got our Vonage number being forwarded to my cell phone, so we’re still getting calls if we need to.  The problem is, though, there’s no way to call out from the house without using a cell phone.  We’ve been able to get by with an extra cell phone for when Jarek is over, but that phone is becoming expensive and about to be turned off.  Also, I’ve been approved to work from home this week while attending an online training course.  Well .. its not exactly an online training course, its a conference call with a web meeting session.  Basically – I need to be on the phone for 4-8 hours a day, the next 4 days.  This would KILL my cell phone minutes.

The quickest, easiest and most elegant solution to my problem seems to be Skype.  I’ve used it plenty for video chat with Jessica in Germany and Nick when I travel.  When I looked into the cost of using Skype as a solution to dial other land lines and/or cell phones, I was floored at how cheap the subscription was.  I was able to buy 3 months worth of unlimited US/Canada calling for $7.95 .. kind of a no brainer, I think.

It happened immediately.  As soon as I entered my card info, and hit submit, my service was ready to use.  Talking to Nick just now (a test call from my new found geek goodness), I think we’re going to look into getting a Skype phone for the house and then have that for Jarek to use when we’re not here.  It doesn’t allow for emergency servies to be called, but I think we’ll be ok with that.

I’ll be happy to get rid of my Vonage account too.  We’re paying way too much for what is now essentially a phone number redirect to my cell phone.  With Skype, I can buy a phone number (which is discounted with subscription), and have voicemail options – for 3 freaking bucks a month (cheaper if you buy a year’s subscription all at once).  Yeah .. time for a change

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I’ve been tagged ..

I’ve read 6 random things about Namrita, Danielle and Andrea .. And now, apparently its my turn to enlighten my own couple of readers with 6 random things that very few people know about me.  Here goes:

1.  I was very shy as a kid, and even into college.  I still struggle with being shy and introverted even though most people who know me now, think I’m quite the opposite.

2.  Another childhood story – I was also quite the tomboy.  My neighborhood friends were boys, and I spent a lot of time doing boy things: riding bikes, climbing trees, playing in the mud.   I was the only girl on my t-ball team (and my dad was the coach).

3.  I started competitive swimming at the age of 9 and continued through my junior year in high school, but quit during my senior year.  When I was young, I used to dream of swimming in the Olympics and Janet Evans was my biggest hero in her day.

4.  While I have a really good, really corporate IT job (network security), my bachelors degree is in Health Education (non-teaching), and my minor is Physical Education with emphasis in coaching.

5.  I went to catholic school from kindergarten through 7th grade.  Uniforms and everything.

6.  I lived in Brooklyn, NY from 1984 – 1988 (age 9-13) and spent a lot of time running around the city by myself or with friends – very little parental supervision.  It was great freedom that would never be allowed by any parents today.  Times have certainly changed.  It was an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

And now I must tag some others – I’m going to target the boys and see who’s still watching my blog

Steve (aka I’m moving to Washington, wait, no! I’m not)

Robert (aka Hermitman)

Alex (aka the Dolpinator)

Nick (aka the hubby)

life hippy