Some Saturday Stuff

My workouts are in a state of chaos lately. After the last race I ran, the Cotton Row, my calf injury stopped me from running for awhile, so I was biking. But for some reason I seem to have a problem with my heel now. I think a ligament in my foot is inflamed, but I'm not sure. Whatever the case, biking has been my thing. And the bobcats make the idea of jogging through my neighborhood somewhat less appealing anyway. But this thing with my heel concerns me. I've already got a nagging calf problem. This makes what, 3 years in a row this calf thing has impacted me? If I add a nagging heel problem to it then my running days may be done.

One of the most popular things I've ever posted here was when I talked about the lunatic at my office stealing my coffee cup. When it first began the CIO's assistant immediately said "It's those people who sit around you, that group." And she specifically pointed a finger at 2 women in particular. I don't know why I do this, but I said "no, its not them. They're both nice to me."  I shouldn't have, but that was my reaction. All this time later I realize that I wasn't their first victim and the assistant had reason to point the finger at them without even hesitating. My shielding of them only egged them on.

I researched the worst one of them on the internet and found her various social media profiles. They were unintentionally hilarious in a pretentious, narcissistic way. Her name is Melanie. Her profile photo features her pretending to laugh as she holds a glass of wine. But it doesn't look quite right somehow. It looks like she's trying too hard to convince you. Anyway, she's the source of all the trouble. I hadn't even worked at this company for very long before I had overhead enough of Melanie's endless drama and personal phone calls to realize that she is a huge drama queen who just loves to stir up trouble and then sit in the middle of it and insult everyone caught up in her whirlwind of chaos. It makes her feel important. And that is really all she cares about. Half the time she was on the phone with family members screaming at them for being inferior idiots. Usually it was her mother she was abusing, complaining that her mother called her for help too often and usually for stupid things (Facebook.) But she loved it. She loved having them dependent upon her for certain things so she could yell and abuse them whenever they needed her. And she loved Facebook so much that she talked openly about how much time she was spending at work updating her Facebook profile or worrying over what some random guy 'meant' with his latest status update (whether it was about her.)

Like all narcissists, she would frequently get bored and abuse people to entertain herself. Stealing my coffee cup was her way of making a boring day fun for her. Never mind the trouble it caused for me. Never mind the trouble it caused her entire team after I asked HR to put a stop to it and they dragged her coworkers in and talked to them. She didn't care. She just liked to stir things up and abuse anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact with her.  Luckily for me, I don't have to come into contact with her anymore. I left that company and went somewhere else.

Aside from that, my life is pretty uninteresting right now. I'm studying a lot for my work. I have also been trying to focus on a project for my own personal benefit, but can't seem to stay motivated. The fact that my laptop died and seems to have lost all my work didn't help any, though. I don't want to start over. If I was struggling with motivation before, losing all my previous work has made the struggle a lot harder. Outside it is July and that means hot and humid. There is hot and then there is July in The South hot. It hasn't gotten above the mid-90s yet, but we're on our way there. I can run in heat up to about 95 degrees and not suffer so badly that I have to stop. But after 95 I don't feel like the run is doing me much good. The heat takes too much of a toll and I don't accomplish much. Maybe I'll find a new gym near my new workplace and get back on the dreaded treadmill until summer is past the worst part? Oh speaking of gyms ....

I haven't lifted weights in months. I stopped weightlifting and focused exclusively on running and biking prior to running the Cotton Row race. Since then I still haven't gotten back into weights again. I really should hurry up and find a good place to lift because it isn't good for me to go for so many months without doing any weightlifting at all. But then again, in my current situation it might not be such a bad thing because .....

I have a nagging back injury that won't seem to go away. I'm not even sure what I did to set this off, but it keeps coming back and it hurts like crazy. Sometimes it makes my neck hurt, but only on one side. Other times it is my upper back that is killing me. But again, only on one side. It's a truly strange back injury. It only hurts on one side. This is something I don't really know what to do with.

Do any of you have ideas about this? Any of you ever experienced a back injury that only seemed to hurt you on one side of your body? What did you do for it?