Late Tuesday

Got up this morning at 5, read my Kiplinger’s financial book and The Lost Constitution, drank coffee, and decided not to go into work until my late shift.  I got myself to the gym again, did some extra abs and intervals and came back to a delicious turkey/spinach/feta omelet and some more reading.  I found a recipe in the TNT book for roasted broccoli which I might try in the next couple of days.  Maybe roasting olive oil-coated vegetables will make me like them more.

Right now I’m overcome with another one of those “God, I don’t want to go into work” anxiety/depression waves that sweeps over me every few days.  I’ve noticed that these happen when I decide to go in late, probably because I have more time to think.  Granted, once I get there and realize that I pretty much like my job, it goes away.  Working later always sucks, though.  It’s funny how I never felt this way in grad school.  I always went into school around 9 or 10, then came home around 7:30 or 8 with that addition of research and papers to fill up the night.  I completely leave work at work right now, but this feels so much different.  This is the trade-off for having extra Me Time in the morning I guess, and I should be glad that I got the gym and reading out of the way before 9:30.  I really, really hope in 5 or 6 weeks when it starts getting nice that my mood changes.  I’m now driving through the beautiful Pine Hills development/golf courses on my commute which is going to be very nice once it warms up and the snow melts.  All the rich peoples’ houses give me something to aspire to.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones lately, particularly Exile on Main Street (hence the new blog title, if only I could get the letters to show up better at the top).  I love this album, it’s one of those classic albums that I heard so much about before listening to it that I loved it before I even heard it.  It makes me feel cool whenever I listen to it.  That’s pretty lame, but it’s how I feel.

 

 

Monday Workout

I hate working out now, it’s official.  I hate going to Planet Fitness during rush hour, I hate the meatheads, I hate the workouts I’m doing now, but I hate the prospect of following a plan.  I hate pretty much every aspect of it lately.  However, I have still managed to get myself there today and work out hard for 45 minutes before calling it quits.  Today I’ve had two protein shakes (breakfast, dinner) and some meatballs (late lunch) to eat, I resisted cake at work, and I’ve had about 5 cups of coffee.  Good enough to consider myself back on track.

I pray that when it gets warmer and sunnier I will regain my desire to get fitter and healthier.  Then I can look back at this time and be proud that I at least got myself to the gym, but for now I really hate this fill-in shit.

Good day of work, though it’s been slow the past few days.  I stuck to my plan of holding trays/getting earlier trays so I could do the best treatment I could, but there were only a few people to see during the day so I spent a lot of time doing paperwork and doing orientation videos on the computer.  That should change in a couple days as I have a number of evaluations coming up.  I’ll be back to my 5-6 hours of treatment per day.

The Greatest Song I’ve Ever Heard

Every once and a while, a pop song is written that just kicks you in the balls because it is so awesome. Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” is so good it makes me want to kill somebody. As much as I typically avoid Kiss 108 music (because, ya know, it hurts my street cred), this song cannot be denied. It oozes awesomeness.

This weekend Jaylynn and I finally went to the Park Plaza and Top of the Hub after having to reschedule it last month and it was just what we needed. Dinner was great with scallops, sirloin, Pinot Noir, espresso, and chocolate cake, the service was fantastic, and even though the view was sort of ruined by all the snow, it cleared out long enough for us to have a nice view of the city for a few seconds. I tried some of Jaylynn’s lobster soup and lamb which was really good, too. We had a really nice room at the Park Plaza and ordered room service for breakfast. I spent way more money than I thought on the dinner (yikes), cabs, parking, etc., but a night like that was sorely needed. It’s our first real splurge since we got jobs. Next weekend we have 6th-row Celtics tickets, then I’m not spending any money for a long time.

Friday was probably my best day of work yet in terms of the way I went about seeing patients. I finally worked up the guts to ask for trays to be held at breakfast and lunch so that I could more effectively see my patients for 30 minutes, rather than running around to all the different rooms. I did about 4 hours of therapy in a little over 5 hours (I had to leave early to beat the snow before driving to Boston) which is great productivity. I didn’t feel rushed at all and got all my paperwork done.  At orientation on Thursday I was given some ideas and suggestions on how to better schedule sessions and deal with nurses, so I had the motivation to do that on Friday. I expect this week to go very smoothly after Friday.

Clearly I haven’t been eating very well, but again, my calories aren’t out of control. I weighed 198 on Friday morning, which means I’m maintaining, but I’m sick of maintaining and I want to get back on The Road to One-Eighty Five. I think I’m out of the pre-contemplative stage and into the contemplative stage for choosing a new program and starting fresh. I’m also close to shutting down the TNT Diet for now, not because it’s ineffective but because I’m having trouble sticking with it. I’m going to try to get back on the routine this week and go for three gym sessions and adherence to TNT, but if I have too many slip-ups it might be time for the Abs Diet again.

It’s a nice mild day out so I’m grabbing my iPod and going for a walk.

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Now playing: Sara Bareilles – Love Song
via FoxyTunes

Wednesday Night

6:35 PM: Just got back from work, tired, pissed off about the possibility of snow on Friday afternoon (I swear, if this interferes with our weekend at Park Plaza, I’m going to kill someone). I haven’t been to the gym since Monday and I worked later than I was planning. I am going to an orientation in Andover tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM so I wanted to make sure all my paperwork was in order for when Chris covers for me tomorrow at Bourne. Actually a pretty good day, it just interfered with my workout plans. I just begrudgingly put on my gym clothes and grabbed my iPod, I’m headed to the gym and will hopefully be back in time for American Idol (never thought I’d say that). Hopefully my mood will improve by the time I get home.

8:34 PM: Home, in a slightly better mood, watching Idol, eating an omelet.  Slogged my way through a basic upper-body routine, 4 sets of 10 for chest, back, shoulders, and traps.  Nothing to write home about, I barely broke a sweat.  It felt like one of my old workouts from college and I can’t imagine how I made any gains that way.  But, as it has been lately, something is better than nothing and I didn’t want to go but made myself go through with it.  A moral victory.

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” -JFK

Monday morning, Presidents’ Day.  I just got back from the gym and I’m having breakfast, coffee, and reading before getting ready for work.  Last week threw me off big time in terms of the gym and diet, but I’m prepared to get back to where I was. I weighed 199 on Saturday, so no big changes in either direction.  Starting with Wednesday, my diet was not very good.  I had Applebee’s with Molly before the Will Ferrell show, Thursday I had some Eggo waffles with peanut butter, Friday was a small cheese pizza, Saturday was chicken parm at Carmela’s in Kingston, and Sunday was pancakes and coffee cake with mimosas at Crate & Barrel where we registered for more wedding gifts, along with lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.  But again, since it does all come down to calories despite all my low-carb stuff as of late, I probably wasn’t too far over my required amount.  Who knows, I don’t count them, but I didn’t eat too many meals.

One thing I need to nip in the bud right now is my increasing desire for those mocha drinks at Starbuck’s or Seattle’s Best at Borders.  I had one at Starbuck’s last weekend and really liked it, and I’ve since had two more when I’ve been to Borders.  First of all, I shouldn’t be spending any money on coffee (particularly since I was supposed to have given it up for Lent, though that has since turned back into “no Dunkin’ Donuts,” which I’ve stuck to), and second of all, coffee doesn’t have a lot of calories while these mocha drinks are loaded with them.  I have an incredibly addictive personality, so unless I make the conscious decision to not have any more of the mocha things, it’s going to become a problem…so, there it is. No More Mocha Things. No More Purchased Coffee During Lent.  My will be done.

Didn’t exactly bust my ass at the gym.  A couple lower-body supersets, a couple upper-body supersets, then took off after about 30 minutes.  Just not feeling it, but something is better than nothing.  I was going to go for a walk to make up for it but it’s raining and wicked windy.  I’m still not ready to get back on any of the NROL programs yet, but I’m in the pre-contemplative stage of wanting to go back to that right now, so another Fat Loss program shouldn’t be far behind.

Work was so disjointed last week, I never had a flow.  A ton of people were discharged from therapy because they were going home, getting really sick, or had just exhausted their time and chances for progress, so as of today I’m down to 4 people compared with 12 a couple weeks ago.  This is just one of those lulls that happens every once and a while (in fact it’s going to change today since I have a couple more evals to do), so I don’t have much to be worried about with regards to productivity.  My numbers have been below what I was doing but they’ll go right back up.  The problem with having so few people on the caseload is that I tend to get a couple of people seen early in the day and then wait for the afternoon to see the others since there’s no rush.  The makes the day crawl by, and it’s not fun.

I woke up later than I wanted to today (6:30 instead of 5:00) so I didn’t have time to read and do all those other morning things I like to do before an early day of work.  Therefore I went to the gym and I’ll do a 10:30-7:00 today and I probably won’t need to stay till then if I work hard enough.  I do really hate these late days, but if I can’t enjoy my early mornings by myself, I will alter my schedule so that I may.  I feel myself falling into laziness right now so I’m going to cut that crap today.

 

After finishing 1776 last week I’m keeping with my revolutionary fixation and reading the novel The Lost Constitution by William Martin.  As you may gather, it’s about an alternate copy of the constitution that was lost years ago which may hold secrets of what our founding fathers really meant with regards to our liberties and such.  It’s sort of a cross between The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure, which may end up being terrible.  My dad read it and wasn’t crazy about it, but other reviews were good and I need something to read so I might as well read this.

I’m also picking up the habit of having a book to read at home and having a book-on-the-side to read at Borders without buying.  I’ve chosen Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy.  I wanted to read a JFK biography but they are all too long and I want to stick to a 300-page length right now (like I said before, I get more satisfaction out of finishing books than I do actually reading them).  I’m reading what I can in the store, plugging the page number into my Blackberry and picking up where I left off the next time I go.  I think it’s a good plan.

Showering, getting ready, and reading.

Sick Day, Part II

My symptoms have been up and down the past 24 hours. I felt better as the day went on yesterday, then everything hit me again last night, and while I feel better than I did when I went to bed, I’m still not looking too good. I figure I should give it another day, at least so I don’t infect any residents. I feel really bad about calling in, since there are no other speech therapists at Bourne and nobody gets seen today unless my boss can find somebody to come in, but if I’m still sick than I’m still sick. I’ve always had a guilt complex associated with calling in sick for any reason.

Will Ferrell and company were excellent last night at BC on the “Funny or Die” Tour, even though on the drive home I was overcome by chills and aches. Demetri Martin was very funny (even if I didn’t like his stuttering jokes), Nick Swardson could have been better (he’s been trying to act a little too cool for me), and Zack Galifinakis was great. Will Ferrell came out and did little skits before each comic (including an interview with Ron Burgandy). Very funny and reminded me that I need to go to FunnyOrDie.com a lot more.

UPDATE: I’ve decided I can’t justify missing two days of work in a row unless I can’t get out of bed, and since I’m well enough to be up and around the house, I might as well go in a do a 10:30-7:00 day. Maybe it’s that guilt complex and maybe it’s because I’m feeling better than when I woke up, but I feel the need to go in.

Sick Day

Yesterday afternoon I started to feel sick, but it sort of went away by the evening and I thought nothing of it. However, I woke up today feeling terrible and I think it’s the flu. I’ve never really had the flu, but my head hurts, my throat is sore and swollen, and my muscles are incredibly sore, so I’m guessing that’s what it is. The muscle soreness is the worst part, my arms, legs, back, and neck are all killing me.  I worked out Monday night but not hard enough to justify this.

I called into work and I’m going to watch History Channel specials all day. I am supposed to be seeing Will Ferrell, Nick Swardson, Zach Galifinakis and a couple other comedians at Boston College tonight with my sister, and I’ll be damned if I miss that. I’ll have to pump myself full of orange juice and Tylenol until then.

Patrick Griffin v. England

“Amy Winehouse is one of the few talented musician left in the world after Kurt Cobhain passed away.

I was in a subway train when Camden market burned down this weekend, and I liked it when she spoke up for the people of London during the Grammy awards.

Oh, and she isn’t ugly, just beautiful in a way that wouldn’t occur to a shallow twat like the person who wrote the article. Shame on you.”

Yowza.  I guess some British people have started reading my blog and are fixated on my “End of the Year Awards” when I posted something about Amy Crackhouse.  Honestly I don’t even remember what I wrote, just some picture of her looking ugly.  I’ve had to delete like 5 comments from across the pond because I didn’t like the idea of random people saying stuff on this, but I’ve never been called a shallow twat before, in person or via blog.  Just thought I’d share this one because it was pretty insane (also note the spelling and grammatical mistakes).  I guess I can’t understand the beauty of having cocaine (or a booger, I can’t tell) in my nose like our cracky Grammy-winner friend has here.  Keep this broad out of the country.

Look, England, I just finished 1776 so I know how it ended.  I don’t want Amy Wino stepping foot on American soil! God Bless America! Don’t Tread on Me! USA! USA! USA!

Tiger

Just worked a 7:30-4:00 day and it was great.  It feels like 2:00 PM right now, the day absolutely flew by.  If you were just looking outside at 4:00 PM today and didn’t know it was 15 degrees, you would think it was a beautiful spring day.  Spring makes me think of golf which makes me think of playing a couple rounds of Tiger Woods.

I almost gave in and made plans to buy a Wii this spring for the purpose of playing Tiger, but I’m going to hold off on that until the wedding (if we had just registered at Best Buy like I wanted to, it wouldn’t be an issue).  I don’t want any major purchases hanging over my head until I save some more money and get a few other things paid off.  I can still play it on my trusty Game Cube for the time being.  Video games were something I tried to really cut back on when I started 2008, and because I’ve been so busy I haven’t so much as turned the thing on.  A round at St. Andrews would be perfect right now, though.  Maybe later tonight.

Gonna get a good workout in later tonight once this coffee kicks in and I work up the guts to head back out into this wind.  I had a pretty good weekend as far as eating was concerned.  Cheese pizza Friday night (as opposed to my usual sausage, pepperoni, or BBQ chicken), Uno’s Saturday night (where I had an individual Chicago Classic and split a Chocolate ‘Wow’ with Jaylynn), a cafe mocha at Starbucks yesterday, and some chicken and potatoes last night…okay, maybe that was a little much but I know my calories weren’t out of control.  Still feelin’ skinny and back on the wagon today.  I’m feeling increasingly confident in my ability to get back on track with my diet once the week starts and I’m feeling less and less guilty about having fun on the weekends.  That’s the way it should be.  Good signs, as long as that doesn’t translate to cheating during the week.

Haircut and gym time.
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Now playing: Queens Of The Stone Age – You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire
via FoxyTunes

One More Cup of Coffee Before I Go

I’ve been reading like crazy the past few days.  It’s a combination of my goal to read the book in 10 days (average of 29 pages per day, I’m a couple of days ahead of schedule), nothing on TV (though I hear the writer’s strike is over), and not searching anything out on TV (still avoiding any Patriots talk, though there are some great headlines on the Onion this week about the game).  I’m just about half-way through 1776, and it’s good, though I find myself thinking, “let’s get this book under my belt as fast as possible” as opposed to really enjoying it.  These historical accounts just aren’t exciting reads, though I knew that full well going in.  To be honest, I’ve never been into American history.  I like European history.  Kings and empires are a lot cooler to me.  There are interesting parts of 1776, though, particularly reading just how in shambles the Continental Army really was and how the British referred to them as “ragamuffins.”  It reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons when Lisa uses the word “recycling” and Mr. Burns has to go through his mental dictionary and passes the word “ragamuffin.”  Old time-y words never lose their humor on me.  If it was up to me I would use old time-y slang all the time.  It’s also interesting to read about how George Washington was not a particularly secure man when it came to leading the army.  There are a lot of parts where he is very unsure of himself.  Early on the British didn’t really think much of him at all.

A couple hectic-yet-efficient days at work (that’s the way it has to be from now on).  Getting to know some of my co-workers a little better, both rehab and nursing.  If I have a couple evals that I can save, I’m going to go in tomorrow morning for a couple hours and get some weekend bonus.  I need to be 85% productive on the weekends, so that means if I do 2 evaluations I can be there for a little over 2 hours.  One of my financial goals for this year involves a certain pre-tax income which would require a couple weekends a month to earn enough money.  I probably won’t get to it just because there isn’t as much of a need as I was anticipating, but some extra change I can put into savings every couple weekends will at least give me a little cushion.  I can put that directly into our apartment/honeymoon accounts that Jaylynn and I have.

I’ve been eating really well lately.  I feel wicked skinny.  Gym three times this week, maybe four if I go this afternoon/evening.  I’m still following the NROL principles without sticking to a specific workout (I also haven’t posted on the JP Fitness Forums at all in the past few weeks, I guess I’m just bored with that.  No point in writing “just fucked around today at the gym” for days on end.  Maybe I’ll get back to that when I start a program again at some point.  I think I’m going to do what I’m doing until I get to 185, then I’ll start to build some muscle back up). Right now I’m doing competing supersets with little rest, hitting every muscle group each workout, and intervals with some abs and light cardio on the days after the hard stuff.  Last night was my first carb snack of the week, but even that was a small bowl of oats and honey.  I haven’t weighed myself in a few days, I’ll save that for Saturday.  I’m guessing 197.