Limned in Gold

Y'know, I'm just tired sometimes. Never mind, that's not what I actually came to say.

Exercise has been happening - we went for a hike on Sunday in the Mt Dandenong National Park. We went up the 1000 steps on the Kokoda Trail, round One Tree Hill and down Bellview Terrace. I figure it was probably a 8 km walk, with a nasty steep climb to start.

Monday was pilates and Tuesday was ballet. Today, I shall see if we make it to swimming.

The other thing that I've been working on is punctualness. I'm incredibly lucky that my office isn't the kind of place that monitors what time you turn up (within say, 30 minutes). As long as the actual work gets done, they're happy. I've been worried for some time about how much my mood affects my ability to leave the house, particularly since I do start work at 10 am, leaving me time to get thoroughly engrossed in gardening/dishes/whatever, and tempting me to call in a sickie. This is not good, neither for me nor for my work. So I'm making a concerted effort to get to work on time, and even to allow extra travel time for the vagaries of public transport.

Last week, I was early three days and on time two. This week I've been late twice, on time once and early once.

Uh... well... *looks guilty*

I did get to pilates on Monday and ballet on Tuesday. The week then descended into workshop and other madness at work, which meant that I mostly wanted to sleep in any spare time that I could find. And then sleep some more. And then play Settlers of Catan obsessively online. And then sleep. We shall do better this week.

I do feel though, that the gardening counts as some sort of exercise. It's all that weight lifting - ten litre buckets of water from the shower to the garden, from the water collection buckets to the tank, from the tank to the plants. Then there's all that digging and potting and walking back and forth and so on. It's certainly physical activity.

I potted my new baby spinach seedlings, oregano and chives. Apparently chives are a companion plant to roses, repelling aphids. It's too cold for aphids right now, but we'll see next spring. I just want chives in my omelettes. (Ironically, I've also just found out that basil, tomato and parsley do well together. Beginners' luck that I planted that combination. Or possibly the lack of space which crammed all the plants in together.) I've also planted the miserable rocket seedlings from over the summer near the spinach. I knew that I shouldn't have sown them then - they're definitely a cool season plant - but I wasn't sure if the seeds were still good. I'm sown a whole pile of Great Lakes lettuce, Chinese broccoli and more rocket in the little seedling greenhouse. I think the lovely apricot/pink rose cuttings have struck, together with the rosemary and a nice native groundcover with vivid purple spring flowers, but the pink ones are looking a bit unlikely. Oh well, I shall try again.

The other things occupying our time have been job applications and house hunting. They're both time consuming, tedious, and slightly depressing. *sigh* Although I had a useful discussion with our CEO at work on Wednesday about the transferability of lawyer-type skills.

And there was pilates (level 1), ballet, a lunchtime walk, and swimming (24 laps!)this week. So far. We have plans to swim tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday, in between the Living for the Future sustainability expo, my friend Jacinta's birthday picnic, and Eric's birthday on Sunday.

Work is good. I love being useful. I like it that I have to go to work tomorrow to make sure that something gets done.

There was pilates on Monday. For no apparent reason, the mat class turned itself into a reformer class. For those of you who don't know about reformer, it can be summed up by saying that there's a complicated piece of metal and wood and leather that tortures you. It felt much like going to the gym, with the added possibility of falling off the sliding platform. We hurt yesterday. And today.

We went swimming last night anyway, in an effort to loosen up some of the stiff muscles. It seemed to work (the usual* 10 breaststroke/ 10 backstroke), but the effect wore off by morning. Pity.

Fresh from the Dalemark quartet, I have fallen into the deep pillowy goodness of the Chrestomanci chronicles. Life is good.



* Usual?!?! Three months ago I was sure I was going to drown and now swimming half a km seems normal...

Getting in my posts before the strike tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure it'll work, but I'm mostly supporting people on my friendslist.

We also made it to pilates last week, where we got to play with roller tubes and rubber bands for the first time. That was fun. We are tossing up whether or not to take advantage of the Breathe birthday sale in March - 12 classes for the price of 10. Unfortunately, this applies to their new raised prices, but it's still a pretty good deal. On the other hand, there is that whole cash flow thing.

The weekend was exercise-free, due to circumstances that I'm sure you don't want to hear about. So was Tuesday, due to the hideous Melbourne weather on Monday night, where it reached, oh, a record low of 28.9 degrees (celcius). No, we don't have air conditioning. So I bailed on ballet and went home early and collapsed straight into bed. Fortunately, the cool change had arrived by that point.

Wednesday was a day trip up to Canberra for work - leave the house at 6 am, get home at 8.30 pm - including two hour-long flights. I find flying exhausting, and I'm beginning to subscribe to the theory that it's due to the lower air pressure and thus oxygen deprivation. So naturally I decided to go for a swim when I got home. I did my 20 laps, but it all just felt _harder_ for some reason. Plus there was the hitting my head thing. Breathing is important, yes, but so is watching for the end of the pool...

Well! I started my new job on Monday and spent a day and a half reading business plans. Tuesday morning was a write off because of the fire drill. I do think that it's silly having a fire drill at 10 am in the morning. Half of us don't start work until 10 am and the elevators get locked down 15 minutes beforehand, which means that we skip the drill, skip work, and sit around all morning at the assembly points. Have one at say, 2.30 pm, and your odds of getting higher participation rates are much better. Ballet on Tuesday night, of course.

Wednesday was a busy day of meetings in Canberra, where I finally gained some idea about what I'm going to be doing for the next three months. One of the things is a fairly routine RFQ process, another is some facilitation work and minor process improvement, and the third is a giant amorphous process improvement project-monster. Luckily the first two are more urgent, so I can work on those while the latter simmers in my back-brain. We missed swimming due to my early flight. (Day flights to Sydney or Canberra mean leaving the house no later than 6 am and getting back around 9 pm.)

Thursday was lots of chatting with people. I suppose I should call it liaison work or research or something, but really, it was made up of chatting with people. Focussed chatting, but still. And then it was the weekend! For us anyway, since we'd both taken a day of leave on Friday (in lieu of the two and a half weeks that we'd been intending to take between Labour Day and the end of Easter). So I basically had a three and a half day week!

Eric and I went to the Thousand Steps walk in the Mount Dandenong National Park on Friday. It wasn't too bad, actually. I should point out that there are less than a thousand steps in the climb. We were a bit sore in the hips the next day though. On Saturday morning, I went over to the parents' place to do lots of water changes. With 80 litres of water being removed and 80 litres substituted, you can imagine that my arms got a bit of a workout. I also managed some house cleaning, although we've been very good with keeping things clean since the big floor excavation in our room.

On Sunday, we did our 20 laps at the swimming pool. This time, I managed to change between breaststroke and backstroke at every lap, making 10 of each. I think this exercise thing must be sinking in, because we weren't drop dead tired at the end. Sunday was also garden pruning and giant laundry day. I set up our new compost box (polystyrene fruit box from the greengrocer's rubbish bin). We have potato plants. I'm not sure if this will work, but then again, I wasn't sure the tomato plant would work and I think we've already harvested about 50 tomatoes in the last month.

And then we went over to play Settlers of Catan with my mum on Sunday night. I think that the best that can be said is that I have an addictive personality. I dreamt about the game that night. I woke up and invited a friend over so that we could play today. (Yay! Public holiday!) I downloaded the trial computer version (no good, go to the free online versions at ASO Brain Games instead). After he left, I played online half the evening. Yeah. When they said that INTJ's overindulge in sensory activities from time to time, they weren't kidding.

I hope you've all had a good weekend.

Well! I feel virtuous.

We went swimming on Wednesday night (instead of Wednesday morning) because we hadn't managed to get much sleep in the heat. But I maintained my rate of improvement! So that's 20 laps (6 laps of backstroke, 14 of breaststroke). Half a kilometre!

I also made it all the way through ballet class on Tuesday. Eating first is definitely a good idea.

And then we went to pilates on Thursday night! (Don't send me any jokes. Especially not hilarious reviews like this one about the darkly angelic, alien vampiric UFO debunking half-divine military fighter pilot. It hurts too much to laugh. Especially when you can't breathe.)

Swimming didn't happen on Wednesday due to this persistent sore throat/cold. But we went to pilates together yesterday at Breathe. Lovely place, great atmosphere and fitout, clean bathrooms, good instructor. Very happy. We'll be going back.