Saturday, October 28, 2006

Lather, rinse, repeat

I feel like I am doing the same thing, over and over again....

I went to a WW meeting this morning. I need the accountability. I even signed up for the montly pass, so now I will feel more guilty if I do not go - instead of just saying to myself that I am a lifetime member, so all I have to do is pay the weekly fee when I feel like going. The fun thing is that it comes with e-tools, so I get to plug in everything into the computer, and if I cannot do that, I can put things into my palm and do it that way. See, it's a shiny new toy! But, it did motivate me to go out for a long walk, so I could enter it into the exercise section. I walked something over to a friend's house that I keep forgetting to get over to her, and enjoyed the sunny weather - because the nice weather will be gone sooner than I like!

Lots of things going on in my world - I finally got off my ass and made an appontment to take my certification exam. My elegibility expires on Nov 3rd, and guess when I am taking my test? So this week will be dedicated to cramming. Along with other assorted work stuff.

My mom and dad were here yesterday. I went and picked up my mom at the hairdresser's while my dad was getting his hair bleached. And yes, that is what he was doing... perhaps a little background? Well, my dad is Santa. And I truly mean that. He does seasonal work as Santa Claus in the mall in St. Cloud, MN. He has the full natural beard and the long hair. The thing is, he still has some of the dark color in his hair, he is not completely white yet, so he needs a little help from the hairdresser... and it takes a long time, like at least 4 hours, so my mom did not want to sit there the whole time. So, I picked her up at about 1:30, and then I took her to my freind's pottery shop, where I needed to do some air monitoring for my friend. (Another story - perhaps later I will explain.) After that, we came home and my mom went "shopping" in my closet. She and my father are going on a cruise, and she wanted to borrow some things. So, she borrowed three shawls, one dress, a pair of pants, and three pairs of shoes.

I tried on some of my fancy dresses at the same time, just for the hell of it. Yeah. Not so good news, but you know, if you gain 30 lbs, things just don't fit the same...

Anyway, I am plugging along.... still alive.... trying to keep my head above water with all the stuff happening at work... seems like everyone wants to pull me in different direction, and have me do things that really are not my job, but since I seem to do such a good job at these things, etc., etc.

Off to prep some food for next week. Hopefuly I will have time to update next week!
~a

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Yargh.

This time of year is crazy.

Too many meetings, too many things to do outside of work, Halloween around the corner, parties to attend...

I stepped on the scale on Tuesday morning. And it said something that I SWORE that it would never say again. I don't know why I seem to keep sabotaging myself. I know I can make excuses, but who is is hurting? Um, that would be me. I know I need to lose some of this weight. I told that to my husband the other day while staring into the LARGE mirror in our bathroom just after getting out of the shower. I don't like how I look. I used to look much better. He asked me what needed to happen - I told him he had to stop feeding me things like chocolate silk pie from Baker's square.

It's been a better week from a food/exercise standpoint. I went to the Y on Wednesday after my meetings were over for the day, and did 60 minutes on the bike, and 25 minutes on the treadmill. And, I have been writing down my food, and making healthy choices. Of course Wednesday was book club, and I overindulged on food, but I did not have any wine. Thursday, at our Jaycee general membeship meeting, as they had the police there doing an alcohol awareness program (4 volunteers drinking lots of beer, sobriety tests, good times!) I stuck to soda water.

Yesterday, I just wanted to go shoe shopping, and to get myself something pretty... and I could have gone with my friend after shopping to get quesedillas and beer, but like a good girl, I decided I should go home. I did make a stop at Target on the way home, but successfully avoided the pitfall of Halloween candy. I thought about getting some cheese dip to eat with tortilla chips - it was 8:30pm and I still had 11 points left - but I told myself to quit making excuses, and went home and ate a banana with some natural peanut butter. Yummy.

Today, a friend and I are planning on going for a run, then out to lunch. A mix of good, and scary for me at this moment.

On another note - I found out something at work this week that makes me completely angry. One of our vendors has been selling a product to our employees (boots) that he was telling them that they complied with our policy. I took a look at them (on someone's feet) and told them that they did not comply, not even close. I guess there are a lot of people with these boots now. We have a list of items that are approved, and that is what they are supposed to sell. If they have something new that they want to add to the list, they need to check with me to make sure it is okay. I have not been able to get any response from this vendor for billing issues I have been having for the last year and a half, and this is just the last straw. They will be pulling a list of the employees who have purchased these boots, and they will be replacing them with something that does comply with our policy, or they will be refunding the company the money that was paid for them. Stupid Bastards. I also talked to our purchasing folks, and I will be removing them as a vendor. When that will happen, I don't know, but it's not going to be soon enough.

On that note, I need to get packed and going, for a day out and about!

~a

Monday, October 16, 2006

update on the life of Anneke

I'm here. Really.

The last couple of weeks were nuts. I was in Calgary, then I returned on the 6th, to go home and re-pack for a weekend in Kansas City, left on another airplane on the 6th...

Had fun in Kansas City. We ended up going to the Renaissance Festival there. It is much bigger than the one here. It was kind of odd going there not dressed up in my garb, but I didn't want to drag it all with me, then have us decide that we were going to go in street clothes, so I made the decision to just not bring the stuff. It was a weekend of poor food choices: with the beer at festival, then the dinner of tacos, accompanied by chips, guac, and con queso, bloody marys, beer, and wine...

I didn't run that weekend either.

Then last week. I was so cranky on Monday, I bitched for about 10 straight minutes to my husband. He was not sure what to do. It's just that I was trying to make sure the things were done for the meetings I was facilitating, and it was not done. And it is really not my job to make sure that these things were done, but the admin person who was here before has taken a different position, and the new person in the job is not sure about what needs to be done. So amongst the myriad of conference calls, catching up from a week out of the office, and getting together the infomation I needed for facilitating the meetings, I got calls from people about their hotel reservations not being correct, I needed to adjust the time the bus was picking us up for the event, and I needed to get someone to pay the remaining $600 for the tickets to the hockey game we were going to attend the following evening. Then I had to go pick up the said tickets, since I did not want to leave that to chance... and honestly, if I had not stepped in, things would have been complete crap, and I would have gotten blamed for things not running smoothly, as I was the "representative" on site.

I'm sure the banquet manager was pretty fed up with me and all of the changes/problems we seemed to have. At the meetings on Tuesday, I needed to fix the direct billing of hotel rooms, increase the number of people we had for meals, and adjust meal times, not once, but twice. I kept apologizing. She kept telling me that it was fine, but I would have been fed up with me.

At least it's over. And people keep telling me that it was a well-organized event. Just a tad bit stressfull for me.

And I ate all of the food I could manage to find at the meetings - delicious pastries for breakfast (not one, but two) salad with real dressing, potato chips and cookies at lunch. Tootsie rolls and hard candies they had set up on the tables for the meetings, then dinner at the hockey arena. More chips and dip. More cookies, but at least, no beer.

And the following day was pretty much a food fest too. (that being Wednesday). I don't even remember everything I had. Eric and I also went out for a drink that evening, so I had a margarita and some tortilla chips and salsa.

Thursday, I made fried fish for dinner. That's what Eric wanted, so that's what we had.

Friday, I took the day off of work. I had the best of intentions on getting up and exercising, but it didn't happen. I went to have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, but the milk was completely sour, so I had two eggs and toast with laughing cow spread on the toast. Lunch was microwave popcorn, snack was a TJ chickn pizza (about half) and dinner was at DQ, on the way to camping in Southern Minnesota.

Yes, we went camping this weekend. I realize it was cold (um, lows in the high 20's) but the days were nice, and there was a great campfire. And, we had a cabin with a heater (some folks still tented it, but not us). Again, lots of food and alcohol. But I did have the redemption of going for a short run, and a hike on Saturday, and for a run on Sunday morning.

It still did not make the hop on the scale this morning any nicer...

But, I'm not traveling at all this week, and the meetings are not as large and stressful. I am just glad when this part of the year is over (planning for 2007, corporate safety goals, Safety Committe goal setting, planning, etc). It's my busy insane season.

On that note, I need to compile some more stats.

~a

Thursday, October 05, 2006

greetings from Calgary

Yep, I'm traveling, again.

I know that Calgary is an interesing city, but when you are here for meetings, you just don't see much of it... Like yesterday, I got into work at 7:30 am, we had meetings until 4:30, chatted with my boss for about 45 minutes, went to the hotel and changed out of my skirt and heels (jeans and running shoes, big sigh of relief) then went and met co-workers for a drink. I got back into the hotel at 9:00 pm.

The day was gone.

I ate poorly, since they had all of the food out, and I just didn't care what I was eating at the time, since I'm a time zone off, and they scheduled us for lunch at 1:20pm. That's like two hours after I normally eat lunch.... and we only had 30 minues to eat, and get back to our meetings, so it was a case of grab and gobble.

Last night, dinner was a veggie burger and fries. And two beers. I was proud of myself - in the original bar, I started out with a diet soda, and only had one beer.

And yay for me, I got up this morning, and put in 50 minutes on the treadmill. I know it is time to start exercising and losing weight, because my arms keep falling asleep when I am in bed, and it pisses me off. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it, dammit.

So last week, my food plans got totally derailed. Literally. I was doing good, had journaled for four days (on paper) and was staying within my points, had only used like 4-5 flex for those days, and Thursday night, I got about 1/2 hour of sleep before I got a phone call to get out to a derailment. So up and out, and some roasted edamine to munch on in the car on the way there to keep me occupied and engaged, along with a diet coke.... up until 3, grab about two hours of sleep (in my truck...) and back out do observe and deal with things. And they had bunches of non-healthy food. I had Kashi granola bars in my truck, but noooooo, I needed to eat a cookie. Then another. And lunch was then brought in - I wouldn't eat the hamburgers, but the candy and the chips were good options, right????

On another work note - hopefully this re-organization we have been going through for the last year or so will give me a better guideline of my job and expectations. I sat next to the head of our department at the first bar last night, and we acutually had a pretty good talk. About what has been going on with me and all of the crap that gets dumped on me, and why since that is not what I am supposed to be doing that I don't get the stuff that I am supposed to be doing done, then I get a "partially met" on my annual review. It makes me angry that people don't talk to me about their expectations, then when I don't meet them, they say bad things about me. And I am willing to pitch in, but it really is not my job to plan meals for meetings, or to pay invoices for different departments, even if it is for safety gear. I do a lot of stuff that none of the other folks with the same title as me do, but all my "customers" seem to see is that I am not doing what other safety advisors seem to be doing.

Okay. So today and tomorrow we are in meetings, discussing what our jobs are supposed to be, and what we will be doing. Think positive. I need to choose my state of mind. This will be a good thing!

On that note, I need to hop in the shower, and get ready for another day.

~a