Nothing starts out your Monday morning like some Skid Row, right? It was really a rhetorical question.
Four day week! At least in our house. Which means, of course, that these four days will take the equivalent of about 6 days. Hopefully having four days off in a row combined with the joy of an income tax refund (that just gets used for paying bills…how boring) will overcome the daily drudgery. Fingers crossed. Four days then I can get that monkey. Off.My.Back.
By the way, Skid Row, saw them in concert back in the day. They opened for Aerosmith. I went with my mom. She found perverse uses for the binoculars. End of story.
Oh, Monday. I wish you didn’t have to be so rough. I know you wouldn’t be if I could do better on weekends, but it’s so tough when all I wanna do is lay around and eat bon bons or white cheddar Cheetos, take your pick. I promise (myself) that when we hit 90 days in that countdown, the workouts get real (or more real than they already are) because it’s bikinis and vacation and I’m vain. Wait, let’s make that I’m VAIN. I’m ok with it cuz, hell, I look pretty damn good for 40.
Now, if I could just feel as good….hips, you will be my bitches. Hamstrings, you will comply and loosen up enough, along with your hip co-conspirators,to allow me to get into this front split before the end of the year. I wonder if training oversplits would help me get the regular ones. Someone told me that once. I don’t recall this person’s name, but said person was uber-flexible.
I feel like I should write a lot more here, but at the same time, I’m at a loss for words. Hit it, Baby D. So, yeah, that reference was for all 3 people out there who understand it. I’ve got to go kick Monday in the arse. Have a great day and know that you can do it. Put your back into it.
No, I’m not in Vegas and it isn’t looking like I’ll get there in 2014. We certainly want to go back,though. It’s been 4 or 5 years since we’ve gone. This time, we’ll do it in the summer though so we can check out the pools. No swimming in January, that’s for sure (at least not for me).
Others on my list of places to go include, from near to far more or less, Garden of the Gods, Crested Butte, Park City, pretty much anywhere in Cali since I’ve never been there, Banff, New Orleans, the northeast adventure (PA/NY/DC), and pretty much all of Mexico. I’ll leave my outside of North America list for another day. Have passport, will travel!
Yes, I’m on that vacation kick because, well, I like vacation and work is slowly driving me insane and I STILL haven’t even started doing the new position yet, at least not full time. When I get to doing this full time, they may very well put the pedal to the metal and bump that mother up to 100, making my drive to insane a heck of a lot shorter. I’m hoping that isn’t the case, but a very wise man once told me “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up faster”. Translation: yes, it’s gonna suck. You said you’d go all in for a year so have at it. Just keep dancing.
Dancing. Exercise. Zumba. I love that class. And now I have something additional to work on because I can’t just go in there and move around and sweat and be satisfied. I want to actually LOOK LIKE I’m doing it right. Tough one since I’m not Hispanic nor do I have more than one ounce of rhythm. Such a shame. I did get a hint to help me along my way from my instructor (whose hips NEVA lie) who is also a Samba dancer. He said, and I’m making this up paraphrasing, get out of your gringa ways and move your hips in the way that is completely unnatural to you! Yeah, yeah. I get it. In my head. Now what my body wants to do is a totally different story. Just keep dancing, just keep dancing.
From dancing to other fun physical stuff: handstands. They’re something that I’ve wanted to be able to do for quite some time. Why? No reason. Just thought it would be cool to be able to bust one out whenever I feel like it. Maybe on the mountain with my snowboard on, who knows? I suppose I’ve just never really put the effort into working on them (and this week I haven’t been putting in effort to working out very hard), BUT, Aerial Amy (over there in the blogroll in case you don’t want to search for this post again) mentioned how she’s going to do the 28-day handstand challenge. We have different obstacles to overcome, but she’s starting on Feb 1 and so I think I’ll join her. Perhaps Nina would like to join too. 🙂 Still a couple days to figure it out. Yes, I am going to add one more thing to the daily repertoire. Workout, stretch, handstands, write, breakfast, work, lunch, work, Zumba/pole/aerial, dinner, write, sleep. Totally do-able (insert eyerolling emoticon here). If I were feeling really outrageous, I’d add the 750 words a day challenge for February as well, but I think I’ll stick to just getting some (at least 100) words down a day.
Yesterday I realized that I hadn’t broken my goals down by month. Today seems like a good time to do that since there are only a few days left here in January. So let’s see. What should we do in February?
28-day handstand challenge
28 days of working out. Preferably P90X3, but snowboarding can substitute if I ride hard
12 split-specific days of stretching, 20 minimum total stretching days
28 days of blogging
28 days of writing lab assignments
Set up private and find my place in PDP with the L’Ru ladies
I’d go on, but I’m sure that’s ENOUGH! Just goals. I’m going to aim for them but I’m not going to beat myself up over missing any of them. Maybe blogging, but not the others because these are lofty goals. I swear a goal should be to clean the house top to bottom, but boy is that not fun. It isn’t even that it’s so dirty, just dusty mainly, but that’s gonna have to wait until a warm day where I can open windows and not be a dust-sneezing monster. I’m not entirely sure why this house has so much dust, but it does. It’s literally dusty within an hour after cleaning. Air ducts need cleaned much? Probably. Are we going to pay for that in a rental? No. And neither will the owners so we just have a dusty house.
You know how I enjoy my morning chats with you four, but the time has come for me to get a move on. Happy Hump Day!
If I could go back in time to when I was, oh, let’s say under 16, I would tell that me to stretch. And to be serious about it because in 10 years, you’re really going to want more flexibility when you start learning the flying trapeze. If I could go back to when I was about 26, I’d again tell myself to stretch and stick with it because 26 isn’t too late to start and it would be really helpful with this flying trapeze stuff, and in about 10 years, you’re really going to want more flexibility when you take up pole dancing. And if I could go back to when I was about 36, I’d give myself the same damn lecture about how 36 isn’t too late and you can still be flexible if you just commit to working on it! Now, at 40, I’m looking back and kicking myself because if at any of those times, I had just stuck with it, I would be so much better off now! But alas, my name is not Stewart Gilligan Griffin and I do not have a time machine. As such, I am left with stretching to the best of my ability and attempting to foam roll the scar tissue that’s built up around my hips. I need to get it Graston-ed out, but I’m not interested in another trip to the crazy hip doctor that just wants to cut me open. Oh well. More foam roller!
Sidebar: I’m standing in the kitchen looking at the sunrise through the blinds. It’s so crazy red out there! I’d take a picture but it just wouldn’t do this sunrise justice.
Now that I’m a boss, of sorts, I will make this promise: I will never be ambiguous about calling meetings. I know that I’ve hated when a manager scheduled a meeting with no inkling as to why. It’s a natural human reaction to be concerned that you’ve done something wrong. I promise to not leave people hanging, and if you did do something wrong, I’m going to let you know up front that is going to be the topic of conversation. No hiding shit for me.
Work is pretty much a madhouse, which means I am falling behind with my PHP learning. I see now that I am going to have to designate more time at home to learning. Blah! I do still need to remember, however, that we are only halfway through January and there are 11 more months in the year still. I want to finish PHP and SharePoint by December 31. Reasonable goals. And so, I’m off to achieve! How are you doing with your January/2014 goals?