Diagnose Me

Symptoms:

Sore throat
Dry cough
Body ache
Headache
Lethargy/weakness
No appetite
Nausea

No fever
No vomiting
No stuffy nose/head congestion

I feel like death. Haven't eaten since Thursday night.

Sonnet XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Annual Thanksgiving Rant

I hate Thanksgiving food! There, I said it.

One of my health and fitness rules is to not eat anything I don't like. How many times have you chowed down a piece of junk food that doesn't taste good, doesn't make you feel good after, but is sweet or savory or fatty or whatever it is you're craving? Personally, more times than I can count. And for what!

So now I eat chocolate, but it's good stuff. Not a random Snicker's bar. I drink beer, but good beer. And not too much of it.

I eat what I like and not too much of it.

But my rule is difficult to follow during the holidays when we have work potlucks, family get togethers, and other occasions where there's pressure to eat food that I don't really like.

Turkey, stuffing, cornbread, casseroles, pies - not my thing. I don't enjoy the look, the smell, or the taste of any variation of the above. But it's hard to avoid this type of food during the Thanksgiving season without hurting feelings.

So, I've learned to take a few polite bites and leave it at that, but I certainly don't pretend to love the food and I'm absolutely not one to gorge myself silly on Thanksgiving Day.

This is one of the perks of being an adult, I guess. No one forces me to just "take three bites" - nothing goes down my gullet unless I want it to!

Staying In

It's been a hard week for me. Work has been hard on multiple levels and there are some things going on in my personal life that are probably taking more of a toll than I realize. For the past four or five days I've been fighting a run-down sort of feeling. You know the feeling you get when you're in the middle of an all-nighter... your eyes are dry and fuzzy, you have a low-level and chronic headache, you can't really focus even though there's a lot to do...

That's how I feel. So even though I have a really hard time taking it easy I'm going to skip church tonight and try to chill out. Make tea, read work on the crossword, watch a little TV... good old fashioned night in.

I dreamt about tapeworms last night

I dreamt that a girlfriend of mine had a tapeworm. She showed it to me. It was long and translucent and had a huge head. It crawled in through her belly button when she was sleeping and she said that if she is sitting or laying in one position for a long time she can actually see the outline of it against her skin.

Vomit!

Now, I take Freud's theory that dreams are wish-fulfilling. So what the heck.

Yes, I am a dork

My new couponing hobby has taken on a life of it's own! Now that I sort of have the hang of this I am determined not to pay full price for anything I buy.

Well... this is not entirely true. I buy a lot of things that never go on sale and for which coupons don't exist, such as the olive bar, fresh produce, spring greens, etc.

But everything else is fair game. With a little planning and organization so far I am doing well! The key to really saving money is to stack manufacturer's coupons on top of in-store sales.

For example, this was my recent trip to CVS:

1 box Kleenex
1 bottle L'oreal Vive Pro conditioner
2 tubes Colgate Total toothpaste
-------------
$3.37

Not bad! How did I do this? Well, the Kleenex was on in-store sale, one box for $0.99. The conditioner was on in-store sale for $2.99 (down from $3.99) and I had a $1 off coupon so I paid $1.99

The toothpaste was on sale for $2.89/tube - down from the regular price of $5.79 AND the in-store sale was buy one get one free. On top of that, I had a coupon for $1 off. So I got two tubes of toothpaste for $2.89 - $1 = $1.89 = $0.95 per tube.

I also had $1.50 CVS Extra Care Bucks. Total saved: $9.89

Voila!

I did NOT get the thing I needed most because I couldn't find it, but oh well. I made out pretty well regardless!

Saturday Morning Routine

Up early, I love feeling the day stretch ahead of me and not starting things in a rush.

Washington Post magazine, read slowly over tea and/or coffee.

Light chores and cleaning before heading out for a run.

When I come home my apartment is tidy and I can shower and make more tea to sip on while I start the Post Mag crossword.

Around noon if I feel like getting out and doing something, I do.

New (geeky) hobby

Okay. This is a majorly geeky confession, but I'm brave. My new hobby is using coupons! You guys would not believe what sort of subculture there is out there of coupon-users. They have tons of websites, forums, blogs. It's nuts. People spend hours and hours every day chasing down deals, driving to different stores, stockpiling 50 tubes of toothpaste that they managed to get for $0.12 each, etc.

I am not that into it. BUT I do feel that I could be doing a better job saving money on groceries. So I've been reading the forums and clipping coupons. I even have them all entered into an excel spreadsheet so I can make sure that I don't miss the chance to use them before they expire!

Now the key, for me, to saving money instead of wasting it is to only take advantage of deals on things I will actually use. If you browse the forums you will see that people get amazing deals on things like Glade candles, hamburger helper, Kraft macaroni and cheese, etc.

I do not use these things, so buying them, even at super cheap or FREE is not actually doing me any good.

Today, as it happens, I brought three coupons to the store but didn't use them because even WITH the coupons I would not save enough money to justify buying the item. If, however, the items had been on store sale (via the club card) I would have used my coupons to get an additional discount off the club card price - THEN it would have been worth it because I would have been spending about$2.50 for an item that is ordinarily $7.49.

I did, however, only pay full price on five of the items in my cart, so that is pretty good. Yes, this is another outlet for my obsessive organization and tracking... and I'm sure my faithful readers will be hearing much more about it in the future.

Pressure!

Why do I put so much pressure on myself? To do things that should be fun?

Case in point - I have a glorious night to myself tonight, one of the few I'll have in the foreseeable future. It's only 3:30pm so the afternoon is young. I don't really feel like doing much besides vegging in front of the television, working on a crossword, reading, maybe going for a walk later if the weather clears up.

But I have three films from Netflix. And while I don't really feel like watching a movie, I keep thinking that I SHOULD because they're HERE and I can't WASTE them! Why? What is the point?

I'm just so accustomed to making everything in my life high-test and high-pressure. Everything has to be on a schedule, nothing wasted, no idle moment, everything organized and efficient. It's a pointless waste of energy. I'm naturally organized and efficient and effortlessly un-lazy, so why do I still push myself in these silly ways?

Sigh... okay... off I go to do a little bit of nothing and revisit the movie-watching option after dinner.

Elena Sleeping Hard

Time to get bendy again!

I have had a hell of a time restarting my yoga practice since moving to Capitol Hill. My old studio, Ashtanga Yoga Center, is simply too inconvenient. I know that I would be able to maintain a faithful studio practice with AYC - traveling one hour each way for a 90 minute class just won't happen.

The one yoga studio in my neighborhood gives me a weird vibe. They advertise their abs class as "celebrating the belly" - yuck! Touchy feely yogi I am not - nevermind that I don't even really believe in such a thing as an abs class. So... I've been stuck without yoga for several months now, unable to get a good home practice going and becoming stiffer and stiffer every day.

Enough is enough! I decided to go back to basics - the yoga DVDs I used before I started a studio practice. I favor Yoga Zone and loved the six-CD set I had, but after beginning a studio practice I slowly gave the DVDs away to my yoga-curious friends. I've re-ordered it through Amazon and can't wait to slowly start opening my body again.

People Suck

This morning on my way to work: I had just gotten on the train. I have about five stops to go from my transfer point to the stop I use to get to the office. I sit down and start paging through the Express paper.

Suddenly I hear a woman say "Stop!" and smack skin of some kind. Then I hear a baby crying. It sounded like a pretty young child, the cry was still tinny if that makes sense? I try not to turn around but the child cries for two stops so finally I turn and see a woman/girl sitting a few rows behind me and facing the other direction. She's wearing a backpack and I can't see the kid but I can still hear him/her crying. The woman/girl looks like she's struggling with the kid to take something away and she keeps saying, "Stop! I'm not doing that. I ain't playing. Stop! Stop!" and her voice is getting more and more high pitched. She smacks the kid again and he/she starts crying again.

I'm feeling sick by this point and my stop is coming up so I stand and move over toward the doors. I look back and see the child peering over the seat at me, so I smiled but then I started to cry.

What a way to start the morning. Now I am crying at work. Sigh...

Light and Dark

Now that we are back in Eastern Standard Time the sun is up by the time I get off the metro to go to work! I love it. Yes, it's still dark when I leave the house, but having daylight upon resurfacing is priceless for my morning mood.

It is, however, getting dark much earlier in the evenings. This has the curious (or maybe not so curious!) effect of making me feel like I want to go to bed at 7:30pm. Now, to be fair, by 7:30pm I have been home from work for five and a half hours and it's been dark for two hours. I think most people are winding down after five and a half hours, it's just that for normal people that means 11pm!

In fact, I've gone to bed before Congress several times in the past couple weeks!

The upside of the evening darkness is that the atmosphere lends itself to study and contemplation. I have a long reading list that I'll be working through over the cold months, I'm learning French via Rosetta Stone and want to spend at least 30 minutes every day studying my lessons, and I have a brand-new book of crosswords to work on as well. My rule for crosswords is to work on one puzzle for at least three days before moving on to the next.

Between those things, my winter workout schedule (adding length to my runs and continuing alternate-day strength workouts), long walks in my awesome new neighborhood, and continuing to see a certain someone when I can, I feel good about the upcoming season.

Winter is a time of settling in. I'm ready.

Ma Francais

As much as there is to complain about my workplace, I have to admit they've been doing some cool things for employees lately. Recently they have arranged for employees to have free and unlimited access to Rosetta Stone language software! How cool is that? The software is pretty expensive and not a cost I could justify, but since it's free I will gladly partake!

I'm all signed up and about to start brushing up on and improving my French. I took French all through high school and college and am planning a trip to Montreal in the spring... so... better get crackin'!

Morning Walk

This is what I saw on my walk to work this morning, cutting directly in front of the Capitol under a full moon. That's the Washington Monument in the background.