Tuesday, August 26, 2014

One Sleep!!!!!!!

I'm officially starting to freak out a little.

Tomorrow I leave for Los Angeles and the Dumbo Double Dare. It keeps bringing me back to a year ago when I was still reeling from my Dad's passing and standing at the start line thinking "What the heck am I doing here". My training hit the skids as a grieved and felt unprepared.

But I finished.

Come back to now and my training has been non existent my last run was a while ago. This is not the first time I've been less then prepared. I am a bit annoyed with myself.

I know I'll get caught up in the moment and turn on the focused on the goal mindset.

The races get more frequent starting now so when I get home my focus has to be training for the challenge I've given myself.

I am looking forward to this trip and being reunited with my RunDisney friends and getting caught up in all the excitement.

It's mind of matter and remembering I'm a heck of a lot stronger then I think I am.

Hugs.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

4 Days

It's 4 days till I leave for the Dumbo Double Dare.

I'm so not prepared. My last run was quite awhile ago and it's reminding me a lot of the last time I did this run shortly after my Dad died.

I had signed up for it again as a chance to redeem myself. Then I lost my job but found a new one quickly.
The new one is nuts, I went from a very organized company to pure chaos. The hours are long and this week was truly bizarre. My gym is open till 9pm and starting in September till 10:30pm so no reason for excuse of activity pretty much limited to walk to and from the train station every day. The good part I am averaging 10,000 steps.

I know I'll finish even if I have to walk and I don't care if I'm last person across the finish line. I will complete all 3 runs.

People are tense at work as things are slowing down but I wasn't expecting to be pretty much attacked in a meeting on Friday.

I've been given an a huge task with a tight deadline, so I pulled the team together as I know together we'll get it down. After I explained the details and asked for feedback I noticed my co-worker wasn't saying much. So I asked him how he felt about it and whammo. The stuff he said threw me:

He was mad that he wasn't included.
I told him that morning that I went to a meeting that I was a late add to (30 min before it started) expecting to talk about one little thing and got handed this behemoth task.

He was mad decisions were made without him
I didn't make any decisions just got the tasks and he knows that's how our boss works

He said we'd fail at the task and never get it done.

This is what really really hurt

He said I'd get all the credit. In the meeting where I was given these tasks I was quite clear to the room and said I'm no hero this would be done by a team of people. In my meeting I told them if we could get this done I would take them out to celebrate and I believed as a team we could complete the task what I didn't tell them is write an email to our boss about the amazing work the whole team and singling out each person for their contribution. That's how I roll.

Now I know he's been stressed and dare I say paranoid but holy hannah I've never been spoken to like that in a room full of people. I was mad, but thankfully the room realized it was stress talking so that calmed me down.

He walked out of the meeting but we tracked him down and a few us talked to him and we left friends again. However the more I think about it I wonder when the next outburst will happen. He was fortunate that no leads or managers were in the room and we all made a pact to keep it that way. What still bugs me is while he realized he was out of line and blew it way out of proportion and I told him that I was hurt by what he said I never got an apology. Well consider me a wee wiser than yesterday.

Right now I don't think I'll last at this company for a year, this environment is just nuts. I'm not quitter though I will make sure that project is done and that people get credit for the work they do. Ideally I'd like to stick it out for at least a year and I think the gym will help me do that to run out the frustration of the craziness.

After work I picked up a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Yeah not the wisest decision. I had originally planned to go to my Dad's house but after the emotionally draining Friday I realized I wasn't up to it whatsoever.

So I went to weigh in. Shockingly I stayed the same and took that as a sign. I had to pop into work to get something done and I was standing at the train platform it popped into my head that I've felt like a hamster on wheel just going round and round. Not sure if the insanity of yesterday helped but today I realized I see the door to the cage. My focus is me from now on as in focus on being a healthy me, work hard, do my job, go home, no drama, just focus on the task.

The only one taking care of me is me and to never forget all my blessings.

So I'll hopefully blog more and get this train moving.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Long week

These week was long and while I had originally planned to set out to the property this weekend I opted for a relaxing weekend in order to recharge. When I left for work on Monday I saw the "super moon" and one thing I know is when there is a full moon things get interesting.



It started with a bit of a panic about trying to register for the Pixie Dust Challenge on my ipad. I had to be at work that day, normally I'd be parked in front of my computer at home.

In my office I don't have the greatest reception in fact usually only 1 bar. I scoped out the lobby and found a spot with 4 bars. There were a few false starts but I did get registered for the 5K, the challenge, got all the pins and the jacket.

Now when I registered for the Rebel Challenge it sold out in 36 minutes.

This is as of just now on RunDisney.com

Now this is the first time Tinker Bell weekend is in May and more specifically over Mother's Day. Now as I don't have kids or a mother anymore this didn't bother me. Yet to be 5 days later and the challenge, half and 5K are not sold out. Especially as the Pixie Dust is the inaugural challenge well that's just crazy. It actually reminds of time when RunDisney events didn't have such a rabid following.

Then I was off to Edmonton for two days and due to where our office is located I was renting a car for the first time in Edmonton.

On the way to the hotel I took the wrong exit twice. On that day I had 6 hours of sleep, worked a full day and didn't pick up the car till 8pm. They say driving tired is as bad as driving drunk. Well thankfully I got to the hotel in one piece. The trip back to the airport two days was easy peasy.

But boy did I wish I had my Escape instead of the Hyundai Accent, if I need to go again I may actually drive down. Edmonton is a 36 min flight from Calgary.

 Left to a beautiful sunset

I love landing home at night as the lights of the city are awesome, what a surprise to be landing to fireworks.


I went to my regular weigh in today, while I despise the 12:30pm time I love the people in my meeting. On the way I passed this.

It's a block from my house and I thought it was super cool. I looked into it and it's called Little Free Libraries.  I'm currently reading my first Richard Castle book but once I'm done I'm dropping in there and grabbing a different one.

I posted the picture on facebook and one of my friends told me about Book Crossing. So I'm late to the party but find this so incredibly cool. I ordered labels today as whenever I fly I get a paperback and usually only read them once.

I'm also 11 days away from leaving for Los Angeles and the Dumbo Double Dare. My training has been terrible which reminds me of the last time I did this race right after my Dad passed away. I did it then and I'll do it again.

At WI I was down .7 and considering I've worked 13 hrs a day for the past two weeks, tracked nothing and never hit the gym once I thought that was kind of awesome. The other interesting thing was that meeting was much fuller then since we moved. Hmm...fall is coming I suspect as we usually see an uptick in attendance when school starts and of course after new year's.

However I got home and updated my tracking spreadsheet, updated the graph and made it to track the year.

Tomorrow I need to grocery shop then I'm heading out for a run. I need to keep moving until I leave just to work out the kinks.

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Visualization



Well Hello,
I can't believe it's been two weeks since I blogged. My work life just exploded and I've been working an average of 11 hrs per day, yesterday closer to 13hrs.

I'm involved in whack of projects that while interesting involve being highly patient as I wait for other to give me info I need. In other words it's very hurry up and wait.

Last night I was in the office till 7:30pm and for the last two hours the building decided to test the fire alarms....good times. I was in the zone and had my iphone playing my classical playlist.

Today I finally took the Escape to somewhere other than Walmart. Now I would describe myself as a country driver so venturing into another quadrant in search of a different Weight Watchers meeting took me out of my comfort driver. Keep in my mind I bought my first car at 41 years of age.

I went to the meeting in the NW, they have a 7 am meeting that intrigues but today I was going to the 9:30 am in hopes of meeting up with a friend. I plugged the address into mySync and it took me to the right area and wrong shopping centre. Well I did find it and only missed 5 min of the meeting.

They talked about visualization which sparked a thought in me. I have done that before but certainly haven't lately

The leader was young and the group on the older side. I do find my regular meeting as a wider range of ages but the 12:30 time just sucks.

My crazy work schedule also resulted in 0 trips to the gym, 0 runs and no tracking. Did I mention that I'm roughly 18 days away from Dumbo Double Dare. Now the last time I did this was after my Dad passed away and my training sucked for that. I did it and have no doubt I can do this.

Next week is bananas as well as I'm home for 2 days then off to a different city for 3 days. What I've already determined is that there are gyms close to the hotel so my plan is get a few day passes. The hotel has a treadmill which in my experience means good luck getting on it unless you want to work out in the middle of the night. Plus I'm betting they have strict open and closed hours.

After all that my life should calm down to get to Disneyland and then continue or more restart my training for Tower of Terror as that's 3 months away, followed by Wine & Dine on month after, then Avengers one weekend after, then Star Wars 2 months after and then Princess 1 months later. On the 12th I will attempt to register for Tinkerbell which is in May this year.

I have to work that day so this will be the first time I attempt to register via iPad. Hey if it's meant to be it will be. Of course RunDisney finally announced a challenge for Tinkerbell called the Pixie Dust Challenge consisting of the 10K and Half.

Then after all that I'll set my sights on the Dopey in 2016.

In the meantime it's trying to drink more water, eat better and focus on quality rest while my work life is insane.

The other thing I did today was go see Guardians of the Galaxy which I loved. Met my friend L for brunch and we wandered around a bit then I saw the journal above in Chapters and had to own it. It's called Vader's little Princess Journal. I will find a use for this get a hold of the a few pages inside it.



How adorable is that. Thinking it might be the training journal. I think it will help my visualization - focus on The Force :)

Alright that's all I got just wanted you to know I'm still here.