Saturday, July 13, 2013

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?


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Weird Question Meme, part II

If this were Wordless Wednesday ...

Setting aside the fact that I never did The Weird Question Meme part I, here is a lovely meme that I stole from Momspective. Hey, don't hate on me for following mom blogs. Most of the blogs out there are mom blogs and some of them are really, really funny.

What is your ring size?

I have no clue, but my wedding ring was slightly too large when I got married and these days it's so tight that I hardly ever wear it. Yes, I know, why not just get it resized, you say. Well, mostly because I'm too lazy.

How often do you wear jewelry?

Considering that my wedding ring is the only jewelry I ever wore, aside from a wristwatch, and I hardly wear my ring anymore, and never wear my wristwatch, I'd have to say 'never'. Also, I hate wearing jewelry in general. If you gave me a $10,000 Rolex watch I'd still almost never wear it. I just don't like wearing jewelry.


When was the last time you consumed alcohol?  

I cannot remember, and that tells you absolutely nothing, really, because my neighbor is a DJ on a beer brewers radio program and regularly hands me strange cans and bottles of various unusual alcoholic beverages to try. One time I was in the middle of mowing my lawn when he suddenly appeared with a bottle and handed it to me. I drank it, of course, but it made finishing the mowing really awkward because my mower doesn't have cup holders.  Anyway, all I've really learned from all this alcoholic experimentation is that I do not like pale ales from India. Blech.

Any big plans for the summer?

I plan to put up with a ridiculous amount of abuse from pricks who don't know what the hell they're looking for, apparently. And that is my summer plan in a nutshell. So excited.

Oh Lord, I've just forgotten. What did I come in here for again?

What is your favorite comfort food?

This is where, in my former life, I would have answered 'Jessica Biel.' But this is a new life and I shall not resort to that. Although, to be fair, I would love to ... no, no, we aren't going down that road. My favorite comfort food is probably a cup of ice cream. Or maybe a pizza. Or even a bowl of cereal, depending on my mood. If I feel truly horrible, a good old-fashioned bowl of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup is the only thing I crave. But that's for when I'm sick.


Do you prefer broccoli or asparagus?

I don't believe I've ever intentionally eaten asparagus in my entire life. So I suppose that just leaves broccoli.

What color are your bedroom walls?

I have no idea. Some sort of palish yellow, I believe. I didn't paint that room. I do recall being asked to choose the color at some point and I probably had something to do with the final choice, but I have  no memory of it.


With whom do you live?

A woman and 2 cats. And various insects that the stupid cats bring in riding on their thick fur. Mostly ticks. Oh, and apparently I've been providing a lovely feast to rodents in the attic in the form of rat poison that I left in a big tray months ago. There are three trays up there, all empty. I put each one down after discovering the previous one totally empty. This means that either the poison doesn't work and the rodents love the hell out of it, or else I have poisoned an entire village of rodents and hopefully they are leaving the attic at the first sign of illness and dying somewhere outside in the woods. I'd hate to think they're in our walls. Something about the thought of that makes me think of the movie "Poltergeist." Imagine how different that movie would have been if the house were built on a graveyard of old dead mice instead of humans. Yeah, kind of changes things a bit. Instead of little Drew Barrymore watching the TV screen and saying "they're here" it'd be my cats sitting patiently, staring at the digital snow and meowing that mice ghosts are coming. I'm not sure if mice ghosts scare me or not.


Which Star Wars movie is your favorite?

Whichever one features Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini, or Natalie Portman in a sprayed on white bodysuit, but not the one with Jar Jar Binks. He was really, really annoying. Can I break this into the 2 different eras of Star Wars movies and say that as a kid it was the one with Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini and as a grown man it was the one with Natalie Portman wearing an oddly revealing white bodysuit and that both my child-self and my adult-self hate Jar Jar Binks roughly equally? Me so hate him.

I see pervy people!

How about Harry Potter?

I watched all of them and I don't really have a favorite. I thought they were all pretty well done. And I say that as someone who has read all the books. What I find most interesting, though, is the raging fascination that emerged with Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermoine, and the vast numbers of men searching the internet for photos of her panties or an accidentally released boob or just anything even remotely sexy involving her. It's fortunate that she did turn out to be moderately attractive in adulthood because I think there might have been rioting if she hadn't. Of course, no sooner did Emma Watson turn 18 than Pippa Middleton's bottom emerged during her older sister's wedding and suddenly all eyes turned from  Emma's panties to Pippa's buttocks and all bets were off. I'll bet this wreaked havoc on the databases at Google when it occurred. And then some paparazzi perv snapped nude photos of Kate Middleton changing clothes and ... what were we originally talking about, anyway?

What was the last movie you saw in theaters?

Superman. Or, er, uh, Man of Steel. Which is the same thing. It was OK. The fight scenes were a bit chaotic and hard to follow. I mean, when everyone is super strong and super fast and each punch sends someone flying through several buildings there comes a point where you just go, "yeah, OK, so you are hitting each other really, really hard. I get it."

Did you get the popcorn or candy?

No, I don't do that anymore. If you get the popcorn, then you need something to drink with it. And if you get something to drink with it, especially in this age of 2 1/2 hour movies, you're going to be getting up and going to pee in the middle of the movie. It's funny that theaters make most of their money from sales of popcorn and Coke because the emergence of the extra long movies kind of interferes with that.


What is the most romantic text in your inbox?

"That suuuuuuuuucks!"

Have you ever played miniature golf on a date?

Yes, and I don't recommend it unless you are not particularly competitive and are prepared to take absolutely none of it seriously at all. We cheated like hell and still I was bad at it.

What’s a phrase you overuse?

"Did your car not come with any blinkers or is your cell phone somehow preventing you from using them, you idiot?"

Do you always use good grammar?

Well, I don't intentionally talk stupid, but sometimes I find it necessary to adopt the speaking habits of the people around me, such as if I'm trying not to get robbed downtown at 2 am or if I'm at the farmer's co-op and don't want to get run off for sounding too much like a yankee.


Do you have an accent or a speech impediment?

I have a perfect Dutch accent. I'm not Dutch and I've never been to Holland, but I'm a big fan of blonde-haired, blue-eyed women with high cheek bones and perfect teeth so I long ago learned to speak as if I were from their homeland. Perhaps one day if I ever meet a Dutch woman she'll be impressed. In the meantime, I live in the Southern United States and people just think it's weird.

What did you eat today?

Protein shake, a ham sandwich, some beef and a piece of cornbread.

What do you do at work?

Currently I mostly put up with a-holes.

Do you know the rules to any sports?

I've played enough of them for years and years that I should  hope I do. I was even a line judge for a soccer league for a season. Sometimes I thought the coaches didn't know the rules, but I certainly knew them well enough.

Sometimes watching from the stands is OK

Do you prefer to watch or play sports?

It depends on which sport. I played basketball for years, so watching meant I was on the bench, which was a bad thing. I never learned to enjoy watching basketball. Soccer was the same way. I almost  never watch soccer or basketball. I like to watch football and hockey, though.

What is your favorite kind of hat to wear?

My favorite kind of hat to wear is my big, floppy beach hat because if I'm wearing it that means I'm at the beach. It's a dorky looking hat, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I look dorky in it, but I don't care as long as I'm at the beach.

Do you pray?

Sometimes. Not as much as I used to. I don't know what to say anymore.

To whom do you pray?

There's this guy named Jehovah. I generally only ever pray to him.

What is the closest mountain to your house?

There is nothing even remotely resembling a mountain anywhere near my house.

What size engine is in your vehicle?

Which vehicle? Since you didn't specify I'll just list them all from smallest to largest - 2.4 liter, 3.8 liter, 5.7 liter, 5.8 liter, 6.4 liter, and finally my baby, with a 7.0 liter high compression, forged steel crank, mega cam, oval port, tire roasting machine.

What do you need to do tomorrow?

Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again