Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Revelations

While I expect to find cigars and piles of old used ashtrays in my silent-slash-old boss' empty office dedicated to the now dead Jordanian King Hussein, I did not expect to find this: rifle shot.

Secondly, I have discovered that Beds are my Enemy #1. Why, you say?
Because I love them. As a child my favorite activity was sleeping. True story. Not reading, or playing with friends, but sleeping (well - I was the poster for childhood depression, but still). Currently I have the worlds most amazing bed (well, it's right now in my old house but coming back to bethesda soon!). When in beds, I sleep. I have learned to sleep deeper since living with the Takoma Park noise, and no longer have any of the raging sleep issues that plagued me in my youth.

So, what's the problem with this, since apparently one of our nation's top health issues is not getting enough sleep? The problem, dear friends, is I hate to stop doing it. Which means that waking up early, when I am in my happiest and most productive state, becomes thoroughly difficult. Which means I work out less. And get less done. And am generally crankier.

This I have discovered since sleeping on the couch. Which is great sleep, don't get me wrong. But I have no desire to stay on the couch in the morning and continue sleeping. This is the same with sleeping in a tent, or in a hammock, or on a boat. Anywhere but in a proper bed. When upon waking up anywhere else, my eyes open, I spring up, and am annoying alert and chipper and productive. When sleeping on a proper mattress, I linger, I loaf about, I am reluctant to get moving. and I remain that way for the rest of the day.

So - what do I do about this? Never sleep in a bed ever again? Or at Least not during training seasons? THIS IS MAJOR PROBLEMS FOR ME PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

Also, I promise that as soon as I find my computer chords from my move I will upload more photos to this bad boy web log so that this can be more interesting than my inane rants.

Awesome

Was pretty much what this weekend was.. just a giant bucket of awesomeness.

Saturday: Beer AND Bourbon AND Barbecue - and SUN and LOTS OF WASPY twenty-somethings (seriously, except for the fact that the boyfriend and I are a slightly too grungy to appear WASPY, we fit in perfectly. Which may be one of the first times that has happened in my life). I found my favorite Bourbon: Pappy Van Winkle (which, unfortunately is insanely expensive because its a 23 year aged bourbon) or, alternatively, Buffalo Trace (which is Pappy Van Winkle's much younger sibling).

Sunday: Lemons. Cars. Lots of old cars made with only $500 racing for many many hours. 24 hours in fact. And more sun. MUCH more sun.

This upcoming weekend: MORE SUN!!!!!!!! Also, the beach. And a surprise surf lesson for me that I am actually getting both more excited for, and more frightened about.

Also awesome:
Remember those dinosaur sweatshirts floating around the internet a while ago? I found them here: http://www.mouthman.com/SearchResults.asp. I'm getting TWO OF THEM. No Joke.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Weekend

FYI- awesome weekend planned.

Beer, Bourbon & Barbecue all Saturday (I mean seriously - is this heaven designed JUST FOR me and the boyfriend? THIS THING EXISTS! ALL DAY! BEER! AND BOURBON! AND COOKED PIG OMG!!!!!) (but I mean, talk about a diet wrecker. whatevs. I'll be skinny in hell).

24 Hours of Lemons on Sunday (crappy-awesome, awesomely-crappy cars going not-so-fast with MORE BEER AND BARBECUE in WEST VIRGINIA) (also, super awesome).

Also awesome: hot tubs, dad's day and NOT having to get a gift for the boyfriend!

Dilema

So, I realize hearing counts of calories and splits of numbers is not interesting, but I am having a very interesting time with it. I will not bore you with it today, however. Although unfortunately my musings are mostly diet-related.

In fact, I have very interesting news. Firstly, the strangeness of the universe - when you commit your mind and self to a path, everything seems to pop up around it. Such as, how once I decided to really do this calorie-count thing, everyone around me starts thinking about it too, and having really interesting conversations.

Secondly, the situation in such that we have come to convince ourselves that we "deserve" bad foods - at the end of the day, after a hard workout, etc. We come home and we say "I have had a terrible day, I DESERVE this drink. or I DESERVE this ice cream", etc. However, if you think really hard, actually, not so hard, that what we are trying to do is reward ourselves. But what our bodies really want as a reward is nutrients, and the vitamins that we depleted by doing whatever hard thing it was that made us deserve the reward. So honestly, we are punishing our bodies by eating this bad food and teaching ourselves that it is a lot harder to be strong than it really is. And what we should be doing is rewarding ourselves with berries, or salads, or shish-kabobs, instead of chips. Or not rewarding ourselves with food at all, but a walk in a park or a conversation with a friend! How Novel! And lovely!

Thirdly, My dilema. I will begin with explaining how wonderful I have been on the training and eating part of my life. Seriously - sleeping on the couch has a way of making it a lot easier to get up in the morning. Great workouts, good runs (if treadmill runs can be so), and wonderful low-calorie food. However, the moon made me tired last night. I had believed that I was staying in town tonight, and therefore slept in and ate a huge breakfast (I am currently tweaking the protein levels) with the thought that I had my meals lined out and I would run after work and it would be awesome! Not so fast there little planner - instead, I forgot about a dinner date in Naptown. So now half my calories are used up, I am super pressed for time, and I still have a restaurant dinner with friends to get to quickly. See what I'm in for? This, my friends, is diet-planning on the quick, for REAL people. Calorie splits for martinis and salads are furiously calculated, a plan is hatched. How interesting! I will be either hungry or boring tonight, or probably both. But I will get it all in like I should! I am learning discipline! HUGE break for me!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Fort Reno

IS THE BESTEST EVER!

Mondays and Thursday nights, after work, find me there. Starting the 28th. I'll bring picnics!!! http://fortreno.com/
--- been going since I was around 14... haven't the past few years and LIFE SUCKED. Now, life will be better.

Make your life better too!

Three smoothies

I made a smoothie today, it is brown. It is very very tasty. It has avacado and spinach and tea and the rasberries make it brown. I am eating it with lentils.

I learned that even if you spend some $ on decent conditioner for your hair, the fact that you use Doc Bronner's as shampoo will cancel out the goodness.

I made another smoothie today, it was pink. It had banana and peaches and flax and chia seeds and yogurt and tea. It was tasty too. I ate it with a bad egg that made me sick later.

Today Robek's is selling 12 oz smoothie's for a Dollar in downtown DC. This will be my third smoothie today.

My plans for the weekend are relatively and for once pretty open - I am terribly terribly excited. I am counting down the hours until I am back up in annapolis. That will be a great moment. Boyfriend and puppy and a working sailboat = very joyful Annelies.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

A Chat with Rose

So I’m going to start this out by explaining that I sleep very very well on the couch. It is a magical couch. A magical couch that gives very good sleep - like a fairy.

In other words, apparently this weekend trip to Connecticut – oh yeah, btw, last weekend we went to Connecticut – exhausted me. Makes sense, 20 hours in a car in a period of 60 hours would wear out most people. Today is the first day I can bend my neck again, and yesterday afternoon I thought I would punch someone because I was so hungry/in reality just so tired.

So, I woke up tired today. Also my arches are hurting because I am walking in terrible shoes so much (you needed to know that) and it was lightly drizzling. So I decided to take the bus into the metro instead of walking there. The point, my friends, is that as soon as I walk up to the stop that is directly in front of my building, a kindly asian woman steps up next to me and proceeds to chatter for the next thirty minutes. It was wonderful.

Apparently this woman is the Thaiwanese diplomat for the ministry of education and therefore she was very interested in where I went to school. She spoke of her sons, one who is just graduating from high school and the other who has graduated from an Ohio university and must go back to Thaiwan for their mandatory army service. For a minute I was worried she was going to try to set me up with him.

She talked about how fabulous she thought the Bay Bridge was, how the GPS took her to the wrong spot in Annapolis and therefore she turned around and went home without seeing the Naval Academy, and how she still has not gone up to Baltimore. We bonded over how our fathers refused to teach us their native languages, and how her son learned English so well because he too is a chatterbox, just like her.

Rose, the diplomat, also talked about her previous service in Australia and how the kangaroos were so big they damage your car when you run into them – like deer. She was also, apparently, stationed in Saudi Arabia. Her husband is currently stationed in Canada.

This is yet another reason why I love living here. Because I can wake up tired and end up having a thirty minute conversation with a friendly, strong and smart Thaiwanese Diplomat. Thanks DC. You rock!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

what a distraction the body is

It is becoming ever more obvious to me what a distraction the body is. We spend all of our time paying court to it – feeding it, grooming it, listening to its desires. What a shame that in a peaceful, quiet walk on a beautiful day I must be bombarded with messages from the flesh! “Oh, it’s a little too hot in the sun. And now your pants are riding up to create a rather uncomfortable situation. Did you eat a little too much at dinner the other day?” is all I hear! And when we are looking back on pictures from past experiences, we spend so much time worrying about whether the body appeared to be beautiful!

Perhaps I just now understand this element of yoga that purports this theme, that it is through constant study that we can learn to “turn off” our awareness of our body’s signals. Through diligence and conscious actions we can figure out how to go for a walk and not hear those body thoughts, but instead, simply notice the trees or the birds singing or the comfort of a held hand. This, my friends, is my fitness goal – to turn off my body.