Adventures of a Tofu Slut

Having "run" all of twice recently, I am now determined to do it a few more times. Other people seem to be able to eventually run more than 4 minutes in a row without feeling like their lungs are attempting to secede from their body (by way of revolution, not referendum), so surely I can too, one day. Perhaps the third time of trying a learn-to-run program is the charm.

Thus were the thoughts in my head when I decided to get up at 5:45 this morning and run before work. Just this once, I thought. It's hothothothothot here, so there's no way I'm running after work, but next week it'll be fine, I don't have to make this a habit.

Did you know it's still dark at 5:45 in the morning? Somehow I wasn't expecting that. My brain was still thinking it was July with the super early sunrises. In fact, it was still dark when I left the house.

Also surprising when I left the house was just how HOT it already was. In the dark. I thought it was going to be slightly early morning chilly and refreshing! HAHAHAHAHA. Plus it was garbage day (although, the smell while I was running was nothing compared to the smell as I left the house for work, just after the garbage was picked up and the truck was leaving, and there was this miasma in the air that was this close to deadly). So not exactly a lovely experience.

On the plus side, I got to see the sunrise. It was very purple and watercolour-like, as it attempted to break through the early morning haze of heat.

I feel -- weirdly -- like I have a hangover, even though I didn't drink anything last night. Fuzzy mouth, fuzzy head, queasy stomach, moving in slow motion, it's all there. Thankfully it's all also going away as the day goes on, but still, unfair!

I also have to buy groceries tonight, because I am out of food again, but I have no idea what I want to do for lunches and dinners this week. Food is hard.

Also hard? Rock climbing. OUCH. I went with tinkerer and gingerale_kitty and a friend of theirs last night, and it was totally fun, but I have weak out-of-shape arms, and inflexible legs that don't want to bend, and hence climbing up a wall with tiny toeholds is difficult. And today I am a little sore, in some very odd places. I think I got a little enthusiastic when tightening my harness. :)

An hour and a half of intense, non-stop ab work is a VERY LONG TIME.

Ouch. Fuck.

I'm going to be having belly roll nightmares all night, I can tell.

Weekend! Joy! Bliss!

There are times when I bemoan and whine about my single status, but beautiful weekends in spring are not among them. I love being able to wander about and do whatever I like on a whim.

( Run for your life )

( Walk...for your life? )

( Sit as if your life depended on it )

And then, excitement of excitement, I didn't have to walk to work this morning, because the transit strike was cancelled after all. Craziness. I suppose there's a chance it might reappear if they don't ratify on Thursday, but that's then and this is now.

Also, there is joy is listersland, because the Chicklit t-shirts have arrived! They are wonderful! In protest of not being able to just walk down the street and pick them up (Glarkware being in Toronto is such a tease), we are forming a Toronto ordering cabal to save on shipping. And then I will be proudly sickly looking in my fabulous lavender shirt. Whee!

*"Ran", meaning alternated very short amounts of running and walking, because I am lame and have lost any ability to run that I once had. Not that I had much, but I seem to remember being able to run for more than a minute at a time. Lame!

**If totally unwarrented. I mean, I can get lost trying to leave a subway station.

***Meanwhile, people around me were still wearing winter coats, scarves and gloves. I know I was being slightly overenthusiastic about the onset of warm, but it was hot out there! Freaks.

****I thought my last neighbourhood was heavy on the discount stores; this neighbourhood definitely wins, though. Or not, because they're all extremely random and somewhat scary-looking. Dollar Joint, I miss you!

Yesterday I made my triumphant return to the gym. As in, this time I actually did more than go on the reclining bike for 40 minutes and pretend the weights didn't exist. The triumphant return was almost denied by the fact that I couldn't find my lock - which I then discovered in my shoe, while putting said shoe on. Ow.

I was shocked (shocked!) when I looked at my scorecard and realized that the last time I lifted weights was November 29. After that I was too embarrassed to look at anyone - I felt like I had a great big 'S' for slacker tattooed on my forehead. And I spent a lot of time wandering around, searching for 5 lb weights, in my own little world, courtesy of the wee MP3 player I got for Christmas. It's great - it's like I'm living in my very own musical montage.

Today, however...well, let's just say that all is normal when I'm sitting at the computer, but every time I stand up it's an epic battle between gravity and my sore, aching muscles. WHO WILL WIN?

Man, one day away from LJ and my brain gets stuffed full with things I want to say.

1. I wasn't around at all yesterday! Did you miss me terribly? I'm pretty sure that I noticed it far more than anyone else did. :D

I stayed away from LJ, IM and personal emails while at work yesterday, to see how much of a difference that made in my ability to get work done. Answer: not as much as I might have thought. I just found plenty of other things to distract myself with, although I was able to focus a little better without the multiple conversations in my brain. And then this morning I started working on a project and...forgot to check my flist. Crazy.

2. Happy birthday to idella, who is sweet and wonderful and deserves all sorts of exciting things this year.

Oh! And happy birthday pauliatchy, too. January babies everywhere.

3. I still don't know for sure about the apartment. I had a form that my landlord needed to fill out, but he never returned my calls, so I just slid it under his door. I hope he got it. I guess if it's not back under my door tonight I'll have to call him again. Sigh.

I just want to know for sure I have the apartment, so I can try to finagle getting to move in on the Saturday before, so I can find a moving company. I don't like leaving things so up in the air.

Which reminds me, has anyone (mostly Toronto people, but maybe all of Canada) had good or bad experiences with particular moving companies? I've never had to hire one before, so I don't really know who to go with.

4. I realized that the reason I can't get myself back to the gym is that I'm afraid of running into my trainer and having to defend my absence. I am a big baby.

5. ( LOST in the cut )

6. insidian made the brilliant icon. Isn't she clever?

7. I am going ice skating tomorrow. I predict massive bruising.

8. So, what's going on with you lot?

Happy birthday angiv!

~

Things I learned from Monday Report:

1. For Better or For Worse is ending sometime in the next five years.
2. Olympic gold medalist Kyle Shewfelt is very adorable.

~

I'm a little sad that I won't be able to watch the second half of the terrible disaster movie that I accidentally sort-of watched on Sunday, but Wednesdays are too full of TV as it is. However, my disappointment is nothing compared to my excitement that The Amazing Race starts again tonight! Yay! Another season of pretending that I could totally climb that ladder faster than anyone else.

~

It was really crowded at the gym last night; far more than usual. I had to wait for every machine, even when I shuffled my program and did some substitutions. I don't like it when it's that busy, partly because I'm a selfish whiner, but also because with that many people around I feel like I'm in a cult or something. And what is it about personal trainers that inspires people to tell them such private stuff? The woman on the bike beside me was definitely taking the 'personal' part too far.

~

If Tomato Nation disappeared, I would be very sad.

~

Running total of days in which I have managed to not spill yogurt on myself: Zero.

Hello.

I want chocolate right now plsthnx.

I had my second running class last night. It's been decided that it's too dark to run along the boardwalk now, which meant we ran along Queen St. I think the class should be renamed "Learn To Run And Dodge Pedestrians, or, How Not To Smack Someone Silly When They Mock You At A Traffic Light". Also a dog attempted to attach itself to my leg as we ran by, and I nearly knocked vestra over in my flailing to get away. I may have squealed, too.

After class we went home and had a little CBC lovefest, which vestra has already talked about, but I'm going to talk about, too, because it's my journal, and I can do that if I want. So there. Monday Report started up again last night, and let me just reiterate that I love Rick Mercer and want him to be beamed into my living room every night. I missed hearing someone make fun of Stephen Harper! Plus Pierre Burton (who is so very, very old - when did that happen?) showed us all the proper way to roll a joint. Hee.

Before that we had randomly turned on The Greatest Canadian, and quickly got sucked in to the piece on Tommy Douglas, father of Medicare, leader of the NDP for many years, and grandfather of Keifer Sutherland. I would like to marry him and have his socialist babies, if it weren't for the small fact that he's dead. There may be nine other choices, but how can any of them possibly be a greater Canadian than Tommy? I've already voted for him seven times, after registering with every email address I have. Democracy in action.

Let's see, what else? Oh, right, we watched a National piece on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, who have a freaky isolationist enclosed community in BC called Bountiful (and a few in the States), where they practice polygamy, and the girls are married off at 15 to men twice or three times their age, and people are moved around and remarried and separated from their children at the whim of the church leader. It's definitely crossed the line from religion into cult, and I think it could have a very scary ending.

Also, I watched last week's ANTM, which was not on CBC. I love it so very much, although it was pretty obvious who was getting sent home, because she got about twice as much screen time as anyone else.

Ok, my abs hurt.

At least I think it's my abs, although I'm starting to question that. I thought it was my abs Friday after a tough gym workout, and there was a little residual soreness. I thought it was my abs Saturday morning, when I tried to go to yoga class, and could barely even climb out of bed. I still thought it was my abs even yesterday, when I would forget about it for long stretches of time, and then go to stand up and experience the pain.

Today, I'm not quite sure. Normal gym soreness should really *not* last this long, and the pain is really centred a lot higher than usual - somewhere right under the breastbone, right around the ribs. I feel bruised, but there are no markings. It hurts to stand, to breathe, and definitely to move. I can't decide between trying to work it out, which is normally what I would do and which would mean going to dance class tonight, or assuming there's something more going on here, and waiting until it goes away, which could be ages, based on how long it's been so far.

*frets*

Oh, hello, I love long weekends. There should be more! In fact, every weekend should be a three-day weekend. Because, you know, I actually did everything I had to do and everything I wanted to do, and was a big social bunny on top of that. In fact, sarcasma and shoefiend are probably sick of me, since I saw them Saturday, Sunday and Monday. :)

( Quick weekend update )

And then on Monday night great hordes of people came over (aka starfishchick, circe_tigana, sarcasma, sanity_clause, shoefiend, and vestra and vestra's friend S. (who does not have an LJ yet, although I think we may have badgered her into it), back from Cobourg for the night), and we sat in the ridiculous heat and tried on all the fabulous samples we ordered from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Between the 45 samples we ordered, and the 15 freebies they sent, we were definitely running out of tester body parts by the end of the evening. When you've been reduced to yogic contortions in order to smell the back of your left ankle, you know you're done. However, we all smell fabulous now, and I think everyone ended up with a wish list of other things to try. Also, a book, as I made everyone borrow things from my bookshelves.

I'll post a complete review of my BPAL scents, but for now, let me just say that Puck, in the immortal words of Circe, "smells like dog shit hiding in the grass of the park after a rain". If anyone wants to experience this for themselves, we have an imp to offer up. :)