"Dreaming in circles takes me away to undiscovered places..."
At the Ren Fest last weekend, one of my friends from the wood booth was saying that she thought of me as one of those people who has a place for everything and everything in its place. I protested this. I am so not one of those people. At home, anyway. At work I’m a little more rigid but I think that’s one of the reasons why lab work suits me. We have to do things a certain way or the some agency (government/FDA and/or lab accreditation agency) is going to come down on you. And really, I’ve always been a rule-follower. Mostly.
It’s always interesting to hear the things people think about you (well, the nicer stuff anyway). She said the reason she thought that was because of the particular way I sell our pipes. But mostly I sell them in a particular way because I memorized a spiel to tell customers and I don’t deviate from it often. It’s easier to make sure you include all your points if you have a little script in your head to work from. And since I was around when they were introduced in the shop, I was able to come up with one.
That was just in my head as I worked on cleaning up my cubicle. When I’m head down in workbook creation, my cubicle is strewn with papers: tables I use to keep track of where each workbook is in the process, papers with the data I need to refer back to for the workbook, SOPs (standard operating procedures), and test plans. All kinds of stuff. There is a great deal of information I can keep in my head, but having stuff to refer to makes it a lot easier to keep track of. Especially once you get more than one project going. As the workbooks were winding down, I started working on the submissions for the changes we’ve verified. And then the new high priority project came on and my poor desk was buried in papers.
It looks a lot better now. And I turned my one-sided paper into note pads. Yay! That actually started as an accident. I was doing an experiment using some magnets on our reagents (they have paramagnetic particles) and I needed something to put the reagent packs on to keep them flat on the magnets, so I thought “ooh! I have all this paper, I’ll use that” but the packet I made was a little too thick and then I discovered something else just the right size, so I didn’t need it, so I turned my packet into a little book. It’s nice to have scratch paper at my desk. They are very generous with the pads of paper and notebooks, don’t get me wrong, but I like my scratch paper.
Woo! Babble-typing!
Hm. What else is new the land of me?
Now that my house thing is not happening, I signed a 9 month lease on my apartment. So nice to not have to pay the month-to-month fee anymore. My rent did go up a little from my last lease but not much. This one ends in the middle of summer. I’m hoping I really will get hired and be able to start looking again in the spring. I like my apartment complex but I’ve got to admit to being a little tired of living in such close quarters with other people; shared walls and laundry rooms, so annoying. It was one of the things that kept me going on the house hunt when it started to become a chore. Thankfully, my neighbors do not take it upon themselves to remind me of how annoying they are all that often.
Oh! Another thing I started doing is jogging. I’d heard about this program called ‘Zombies, Run!’ and it was getting good reviews and sounded like fun. It’s an app that guides you through a couch to 5k running program but has a plot to it. Actually there’s two apps, one is for people who are already running and the other trains you for running; I’ve got both but I started with the 5k program since I have not been a runner since before puberty. That’s why I looked into it. I used to love running back before my chest exploded and I thought it might be fun to try to get back into it. If I don’t stick with it, I might use it as motivation to get back into rowing, which I figured I’d start cross-training with eventually anyway.
The plot is that you’re in a town during the zombie apocalypse and they are training you up to be one of the runners for the town. The intro episode is about you getting to the town after your helicopter comes down in the forest. And then you’re training inside the town. But, even though I’m only on week 2 right now, I’ve already been outside the town a couple of times. During week 1, they have you go out to pick up a weapon that was found in the forest. During last night’s workout (week 2, day 2), you’re out for your training walk/run with the radio operator (him and the medic are your trainers, mostly) and then he runs off into the woods to pick up something he saw and I have to chase him! So they tried to trick me into running for longer than the training plan says. I tried but I couldn’t quite last long enough. But I definitely think I’m getting better!
Week 1 is 10 minutes walking, (1 min walking, 15 seconds running)x10, and 10 minutes free run/walk. Week 2 is 10 minutes walking, (90 seconds walking, 30 seconds running, 5 heel lifts)x5, and 10 minutes free run/walk. Week 3 already looks hard. It’s 5 min walking, 5 min running, (1 minute walk, 1 minute run, 10 knee lifts)x5, 8 min free run/walk, 2 min stretching, 8 min free run/walk.
I may have to repeat week 3 until I can actually run for five minutes. I don’t know about that part. For these first two weeks, I’ve been using the 10 min free run/walk time as my active recovery period. Walk fast for the first part (and I’ve been trying to run between the 3 and 5 minute mark; I haven’t been able to run for the whole 2 minutes but I’m getting closer) and then I start to slow down for the last couple of minutes and let my heart rate go back down. We always did active recovery like that in my exercise program all those years ago. Hm. I can try running for the whole first 8 minute free run/walk period at the end too. That’s…. going to be a lot of running.
Since the schedule I ended up with this week has me running on Saturday (run 3 x per week with at least 1 day between runs), I’ll try to finally get into the workout room at my apartment complex and try out doing this on a treadmill. I don’t think I’ve ever used one for running. I could use the elliptical and I might try it out but when I’ve walked on those I found them hard on my hips. But I really do have to figure out how I’m going to keep up with this once winter is really here. It’s definitely on the way.
Which reminds me… I was looking up some stuff about hip stretches since mine have been twinging a bit (started before the running, might be better but definitely has not gotten worse) and saw some exercises specifically for the muscles in the area that usually bothers me (the hip rotator muscles) so I’ve been trying to do those. We shall see if those help!
Oooh, time to get ready to go home (I’ve been working on this during breaks at work).
It’s always interesting to hear the things people think about you (well, the nicer stuff anyway). She said the reason she thought that was because of the particular way I sell our pipes. But mostly I sell them in a particular way because I memorized a spiel to tell customers and I don’t deviate from it often. It’s easier to make sure you include all your points if you have a little script in your head to work from. And since I was around when they were introduced in the shop, I was able to come up with one.
That was just in my head as I worked on cleaning up my cubicle. When I’m head down in workbook creation, my cubicle is strewn with papers: tables I use to keep track of where each workbook is in the process, papers with the data I need to refer back to for the workbook, SOPs (standard operating procedures), and test plans. All kinds of stuff. There is a great deal of information I can keep in my head, but having stuff to refer to makes it a lot easier to keep track of. Especially once you get more than one project going. As the workbooks were winding down, I started working on the submissions for the changes we’ve verified. And then the new high priority project came on and my poor desk was buried in papers.
It looks a lot better now. And I turned my one-sided paper into note pads. Yay! That actually started as an accident. I was doing an experiment using some magnets on our reagents (they have paramagnetic particles) and I needed something to put the reagent packs on to keep them flat on the magnets, so I thought “ooh! I have all this paper, I’ll use that” but the packet I made was a little too thick and then I discovered something else just the right size, so I didn’t need it, so I turned my packet into a little book. It’s nice to have scratch paper at my desk. They are very generous with the pads of paper and notebooks, don’t get me wrong, but I like my scratch paper.
Woo! Babble-typing!
Hm. What else is new the land of me?
Now that my house thing is not happening, I signed a 9 month lease on my apartment. So nice to not have to pay the month-to-month fee anymore. My rent did go up a little from my last lease but not much. This one ends in the middle of summer. I’m hoping I really will get hired and be able to start looking again in the spring. I like my apartment complex but I’ve got to admit to being a little tired of living in such close quarters with other people; shared walls and laundry rooms, so annoying. It was one of the things that kept me going on the house hunt when it started to become a chore. Thankfully, my neighbors do not take it upon themselves to remind me of how annoying they are all that often.
Oh! Another thing I started doing is jogging. I’d heard about this program called ‘Zombies, Run!’ and it was getting good reviews and sounded like fun. It’s an app that guides you through a couch to 5k running program but has a plot to it. Actually there’s two apps, one is for people who are already running and the other trains you for running; I’ve got both but I started with the 5k program since I have not been a runner since before puberty. That’s why I looked into it. I used to love running back before my chest exploded and I thought it might be fun to try to get back into it. If I don’t stick with it, I might use it as motivation to get back into rowing, which I figured I’d start cross-training with eventually anyway.
The plot is that you’re in a town during the zombie apocalypse and they are training you up to be one of the runners for the town. The intro episode is about you getting to the town after your helicopter comes down in the forest. And then you’re training inside the town. But, even though I’m only on week 2 right now, I’ve already been outside the town a couple of times. During week 1, they have you go out to pick up a weapon that was found in the forest. During last night’s workout (week 2, day 2), you’re out for your training walk/run with the radio operator (him and the medic are your trainers, mostly) and then he runs off into the woods to pick up something he saw and I have to chase him! So they tried to trick me into running for longer than the training plan says. I tried but I couldn’t quite last long enough. But I definitely think I’m getting better!
Week 1 is 10 minutes walking, (1 min walking, 15 seconds running)x10, and 10 minutes free run/walk. Week 2 is 10 minutes walking, (90 seconds walking, 30 seconds running, 5 heel lifts)x5, and 10 minutes free run/walk. Week 3 already looks hard. It’s 5 min walking, 5 min running, (1 minute walk, 1 minute run, 10 knee lifts)x5, 8 min free run/walk, 2 min stretching, 8 min free run/walk.
I may have to repeat week 3 until I can actually run for five minutes. I don’t know about that part. For these first two weeks, I’ve been using the 10 min free run/walk time as my active recovery period. Walk fast for the first part (and I’ve been trying to run between the 3 and 5 minute mark; I haven’t been able to run for the whole 2 minutes but I’m getting closer) and then I start to slow down for the last couple of minutes and let my heart rate go back down. We always did active recovery like that in my exercise program all those years ago. Hm. I can try running for the whole first 8 minute free run/walk period at the end too. That’s…. going to be a lot of running.
Since the schedule I ended up with this week has me running on Saturday (run 3 x per week with at least 1 day between runs), I’ll try to finally get into the workout room at my apartment complex and try out doing this on a treadmill. I don’t think I’ve ever used one for running. I could use the elliptical and I might try it out but when I’ve walked on those I found them hard on my hips. But I really do have to figure out how I’m going to keep up with this once winter is really here. It’s definitely on the way.
Which reminds me… I was looking up some stuff about hip stretches since mine have been twinging a bit (started before the running, might be better but definitely has not gotten worse) and saw some exercises specifically for the muscles in the area that usually bothers me (the hip rotator muscles) so I’ve been trying to do those. We shall see if those help!
Oooh, time to get ready to go home (I’ve been working on this during breaks at work).