AngloAm’s Weblog

It’s been a very very rough week.

Wednesday I worked until 8:45 pm, Thursday until 7:30. Friday I left work at noon. Now I hadn’t been to the gym all week and I was very scared of going, but I forced myself to and did a gruelling 50 minutes, with many pauses and stops and nearly passing out. But I did it.

Neal came today and I was apprehensive again. (Exhaustion and worry have been a theme this week.) I’d told him via phone that I was a bit tired of spending 45 minutes or more on ‘nutrition’ and ‘intake’ – while I understand why, I think that it’s a bit excessive, and I also think that judicious hints here and there were being made to get me to spend more with him. I put it nicely but I was still nervous.

In the event, however, he was gracious about it and things went well. However, I need to put my work in as well, and I have this ‘home routine’ he scribbled down, and I have to try to interpret it. Can you help?

1. L A C (No idea. I think I’ll just try to do crunches, if C can spot me maybe with 10lbs or so)

2. BK WL Hold. (No idea. I think the idea is that I like on my back, bring my bent knees (BK?) to my waist level (WL) and hold them there, to ‘work’ my abs.

3. Batoging. (I think this is supposed to be lying on my back and hauling my…posterior off the ground.)

4. SE TAILS CT 135 deg HOLD/reps (No idea, I think this is a seated shoulder raise to 135 degrees, or a scapular retraction; I think I’ll add 10lbs of goodness.)

It’s also not been a stellar week for intake. First off, without the internet it was impossible to enter it into the weight watchers site (and God forbid I use pen and paper, I hear you say); the net was very slow at work and I was so bloody busy. (Mustn’t think about work or I’ll get all tense.)

There were a lot of candy bars and salty snacks, and that was bad. And peanuts and almonds and things. And that was bad too.

Brand New Day

However today was a brand new day and things seem to be going better, or at least not as bad. C and I went for a long drive over to the Eastern Shore even though it was cloudy and gloomy; I just had to get out of the house and away from the area in which I normally circulate. We drove first to Easton, then Preston where a coworker of C’s lives, then to Cambridge and back to visit our friends K, D, and J. We didn’t really get out of the car much; it was just nice to drive down the country roads and see the little towns. Easton I do like; there are some really nice houses and with the old brick buildings and twee little shops it looks so much like a prosperous Home Counties little town. Cambridge is a bit less special, and Preston is barely visible.

I frankly don’t know how this coworker manages to drive nearly two hours to work every day, and two hours back home. I couldn’t do it-I once commuted about 75 miles every day and it was horrible. I found it so hard to get out of the house in the morning, knowing I had this huge long drive ahead of me, and exactly the same huge long drive to get home. And I could almost see my car getting older by the mile and I was putting gas in it nearly every day. (This was during a very bad time in my life so perhaps that is coloring my recollections.)

Even though my supervisor and second-level supervisor are not ideal, I keep thinking about my previous commute straight through the District of Columbia and how over breakfast I’d have to keep an eye on the traffic reports to see if I could leave at my usual time, if I’d have to jump out early, or even if (once or twice) it wasn’t just better to call in and use some of my leave to cover avoiding a huge tie-up. And I think I can put up with the less-than-ideal-ness, the not-offering-alternate-work schedule-ness, the not-offering-telecommuting-ness, for a bit longer. Not that I’m not applying elsewhere, just that I’m more selective about how far and through what kind of traffic I want to drive every day. Somehow the Southeast-Southwest Freeway lost its charm years ago.

Dinner with our friends has not lost its charm but I felt a bit awkward dropping in on them, and while we were out at Big Batt’s, a local Kent Island restaurant, there was some very distressing news arrived for them. I hope they will be okay and they know that if they need anything from C or me, all they have to do is ask.

Da Flix at Home

Saw a very nice movie from Netflix Friday, it’s a gay romantic comedy and for once it really was romantic, except for perhaps one rather dreadful scene. It’s called “Adam and Steve” and I recommend it for a date night or some such evening. It made me all smiley at the end. I think part of what I liked about it was that the two leads are actually gay, and their chemistry was really evident. (Is this how straight people see straight romantic comedies? How lovely for them.) It is not perfect, and I’ve seen better romances, and better gay flicks, but I did enjoy it.

I also started (finally) watching the two episodes of Chuck that I missed all those weeks ago. The first one (“Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover”) looks good in that the story’s good and there’s a big part for Adam Baldwin, the hot National Security Agency agent and Chuck-handler. Click on this pic to see his big grin get even bigger…I really have to finish watching them now that the writers’ strike seems to be over.

All This and More Eye Candy Too?

Yup, here’s some more of our continuing fascination with dirty Mike Rowe. I have to say these screen shots don’t do him justice, and I really enjoyed the latest episode where he had to climb to the top of a giant suspension bridge and change lightbulbs along the way. I especially enjoyed that it was him doing it and not me. These screen shots are apparently of him in an episode where he was a mushroom farmer’s assistant. At least he’s not staying dirty…and there’s a really cute one of him washing off after shearing alpacas. As usual, click on him to take a closer look.

And here is a hillarious video of Mike Rowe having been punked as it were by a hotel owner…well worth a watch…

Speaking of streams of wetness, here’s a parting shot of the delights of Mr. Raphael Laus, this month’s favourite Brazilian bombshell….

(Like Kajagoogoo say, he’s too shy, [far] too shy)