The Many Mishaps of Sorrell over Cross-Country

I find the best videos from the posters on The Chronicle of the Horse forums. I had first seen this one a couple of weeks ago, but it continues to crack me up!




That naughty, naughty pony!

Tuesday Dressage Session

This is a dressage week. One might think that the non-jumping weeks would be the easier weeks, but not so, or at least in my opinion. I actually find the flat weeks to be more difficult. In dressage we’re usually working constantly on all those subtle nuances to get the correct carriage, the right stride length, the “perfect” cadence, the bending, the rounding, the list just goes on & on. So usually you’re really working every single step and every single moment of the session. At least if you’re working the way you should be anyway. Tonight Ann had me working very, very hard on getting Lulu round. Really hard. So hard that I think my arms and abs and back and even my hands and fingers are going to be sore tomorrow. A lot of it was very much almost a tug-of-war between Lulu & me. My holding her front end back, heavily restricting the movement, while constantly driving her forward and onto the bit, through her back and hind-quarters with my seat & legs. Every single step we had this push & pull going, with my pushing her on the bit, while holding the momentum in and also resisting her inclination to get heavy on the forehand. It was truly exhausting, but also deeply satisfying. It was about 15 degrees tonight and both of us were drenched in sweat when we were done. I think I sweated as much had I been out running in this temperature. And I was dressed with about the same amount of clothes and layers that I would have been had I been running too, turtleneck and light-weight half-zip fleece & breeches that are about the same fabric weight my running pants would be.

At one point during the session Ann mentioned something about Lulu always having a variety of riders (being a school horse) so that she can have some bad habits to overcome, or at the very least, stuff that some riders let her get away with. Anyway, she mentioned something about “some bad riders and some good riders” and I had to wonder if I was of the bad or the good variety. I guess I don’t want to think too hard about that.

So, it was very good lesson, very effective. I learned some stuff and maybe even remembered some stuff from my former riding life. And it also turned out to be a pretty good workout too, which is always a good bonus. I spent an extra half an hour at the barn walking Lulu in the ring to cool her out and dry her sweaty self. It was a pleasure really as I love to spend any kind of time with this horse, she’s such a sweetie and deserved all the carrots and apples and peppermints that I had in my pockets.

I'm Hungry!

I HATE being hungry! ARGH!!!

Stoopid #@%&*$! diet thingie. Sheesh.

Jenny Craig is Pissing Me OFF!

Back in November I started to get into a funk because the scale no longer seemed to be trending down, no matter how well I watched what I ate and how much I exercised. My weight loss had been stalled since sometime in September. It didn’t seem to matter if I was spinning or running or riding, eating approximately 1200 calories a day on Jenny Craig or whatever, somehow my body had decided that it really, really liked being at the weight it was at, thank you very much. After months & months of non-stop weigh-loss the effort was stagnated there, still so far away from any kind of reasonable goal. I think I just became exhausted, overwhelmed and demoralized at that point. Added to that was my annual birthday/holiday depression, a dip in morale because of the dismal economy (and all the dire predictions), company layoffs and a heavy end-of-the-year work-load and I just needed a bit of a break. I never stopped Jenny Craig, and I never stopped working out. I just relaxed it all a bit. Had a few non-JC meals here & there, wasn’t so restrictive with alcohol and didn’t work out as much.

I got back on the program starting on January 5th. Became more regimented about the food, more consistent with the exercise, went back to the trainer (I had taken two weeks off from the strength training) and completely eliminated alcohol. I hoped that maybe my body had just needed a break back in the Fall. But so far this year my efforts have been pretty much unrewarded. I initially lost a couple of pounds and then I gained back a couple of pounds and now have lost one pound again. According to my scale. According to the JC scale apparently last week I had gained a pound and now this week I held steady. It is so unbelievably frustrating! I know it’s only a couple of weeks into my new resolve and that I really have to try and be patient, but it just seems like more of the same of what I was experiencing back in the Fall and I’m beginning to feel somewhat upset and worried.

Now, I like my Jenny Craig counselor. But I take everything she says with a grain of salt. I certainly know more about exercise than she does and I would guess that I even know more about general nutrition than she does too. She knows the JC diet plan specifically and can answer questions about that, but otherwise, it’s all kind of a lot of bullshit. I know this, and my expectations are low in that regard. She is great for weigh-ins and encouragement, but when she starts wanting to brain storm into reasons why my weight-loss is stalled, I want to scream. It just IS. I don’t want to analyze it with her or I’ll go crazy (if I get to the point where I need to start analyzing things, I’ll go to my DR). Anyway, she means well, so I try to be patient, but then she’ll pull out the old stock questions because she really doesn't know what else to say:

• What is motivating you to lose weight?
• How are you rewarding yourself?

I mean, I know it’s all Jenny Craig rhetoric, but could they be more trite? Again, I try to be patient and respond without being too caustic, but it sure is an effort, especially when I’m completely pissed off and frustrated.

So, I don’t know what the answer is yet. I’m not completely panicking yet, but I’m getting a little closer to that. I might have to go back to eating JC for lunch too or something. Not sure how I’m going to handle that since I got very sick of JC lunches very quickly (I think I stopped eating them about two months into my program). I’m still fine with the breakfasts & dinners though, go figure. Maybe I’m going to have to find some early morning spinning classes or perhaps I need to workout twice a day or something. I just don’t want this non-progress to affect my attitude like it finally did back in November. That’s the attitude that would cause me to give up the effort completely. ARGH! Just … argh.

Happy, Happy
(as Julia would say)

My painter is at my house as we speak starting the job that will transform my dreadful, battleship gray bathroom into a lovely (well, at the very least tolerable) warm, buttery space. It will be nice to be able to walk into my bathroom and not immediately be pissed off and horrified by the ugliness. Oh, and I did remember to take "before" pictures (they're still in my camera though) so once everything is finished, I may do the before-and-after thing.

Another Note on Running

For most of last year I felt really, really self-conscious about running on the treadmills at the company gym. I think I probably would have felt self-conscious on any gym treadmill, but the fact that it is a gym at my company makes me feel slightly more exposed and so even more self-conscious. But for some reason I now no longer seem to care. At all. I'm not quite sure when this happened but apparently I'm totally over it, which is a very good thing.

The Plan: 3 Weeks In

I feel like I'm doing a little bit better, am a little more solid in my health/fitness/weight-loss plan now that I'm three weeks in. Frankly, the scale isn't budging all that much, but I'm not panicking about that yet. In the meantime, this past week I did manage to run three times, worked out with the trainer twice and stuck closely to my eating plan. Jenny Craig for breakfast & dinner, and have not gone crazy at lunch. I've also been pretty good about not nibbling in any way and have not had any alcohol at all since I started my 2009 plan. Most importantly, I feel more solid about everything. The workouts feel like more a part of my routine than something special that I am making myself do. I am also trying to push myself a little more with the running. What I mean is, I only allow myself walk breaks of one minute and for the most part make myself run a 10 minute-mile or faster -- running intervals are usually no shorter than 2 minutes (and are usually longer than that). This is one good thing about running on the treadmill, it's easier to be regimented. Still, I'm really only running 2-2.5 miles at a time, so I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to bump that up to at least 3 miles per session soon.

So, all-in-all I think I'm doing pretty well. More important to the actual activity is my attitude, I think. I am feeling very positive and very committed right now, and so I am pretty encouraged, at least at the moment (despite what the scale says).

Another Cluster

Ugh. So, I had a production install that I had to do on Thursday night. This is always a bit stressful as there are a lot of moving parts and steps in the process and there are a lot of people invested in this application. Thus it is a very visible project, which adds to my stress and worry when updating production. Anyway, I like to do the migration from the office because it’s a little bit easier from there and I worry about losing connections and whatever from home. It makes for a pretty long day (since the work has to happen after 5 PM) but my worry ends up being slightly less, so it’s worth the little bit of inconvenience.

Anyway, so I did all that I had to do after 5 PM as scheduled and it seemed to go relatively smoothly. Finally I was ready to start the services again by about 6 PM. I did so and then tried to get into the app online through the admin tool (to perform my very last step). Only the tool hung and I couldn’t get in. Repeated the process a couple of times with the same result. Tried to recycle the services but that didn’t work. Finally I did a hard kill and re-start and even THAT didn’t work. In a panic I noticed that one of my team members was online, so I pinged him and told him that I’m having some trouble. He said, oh no worries that he’s doing some work with the data warehouse with an engineer (Jim) on a partner team. Okay fine, but since he KNEW that I was going to be doing an installation during this time period, wouldn’t it have been nice if he had thought to contact me and say something like, “hey, I’m going to be working on some stuff, so don’t try to start services until I shoot you an email”. I mean, would that have been too much to ask?

So anyway, in the meantime the other guy (Jim) pings me and asks me how the migration went. I tell him that it was okay and that I’m just waiting on Team Member. Jim says that Team Member has been driving him crazy (they’ve been on IM and the phone for a while, I gather). Jim starts a chat with the three of us and then we’re just waiting, waiting, waiting. It’s going on 7 PM at this stage so finally I ask if anyone has an idea how long it’s going to take because I want to know whether I should run home (at this point I’m going on 11 hours in this cube). Team Member says that he doesn’t like to throw out time predictions as these things can be unpredictable (now THAT is helpful). And then he says, “If you have to go home, then GO”. Well, GEEZ, that’s easy for him to say, he's already sitting at home! (And has been all day).

So I run home, boot back up, log back in and ping both Team Member and Jim to let them know that I’m back online. Apparently nothing has happened yet so I’m pretty glad I made the decision to go home. About this time Jim starts telling me more about how Team Member is making him crazy, talking to him on speaker phone with all hell breaking loose and complete chaos going on in the background at his house so much so that Jim literally has to yell and neither can hear each other. He also says that Team Member was really weird, like, “loopy”. I ask him, “In what way? Do you mean like having cocktails or something?” and he says, yes seriously, it does seem like that, or something like that. So. Freaking. Weird.

Finally Team Member tells me that he’s done and that the services are running. I try the admin tool again and Jim the front-end, but neither of us can get in (still). I ping Team Member back, but by now he’s just completely MIA, must have just walked away without waiting to see that everything was okay. He was so cryptic and vague the whole time that this doesn’t surprise me – it makes me crazy when people don’t communicate clearly! Anyway, luckily once I do a hard kill and restart, everything seems to sort itself out, uh about three hours after I started this whole thing. What a nightmare. But at least I was able to close the loop and Jim ended up happy in the end.

Oh and the last part was that the customer told me that they wouldn’t be validating the install until after 10:30 PM that night. I had involved the off-shore team just in case but, worried, I monitored email until midnight and then woke up throughout the night to check, finally getting up around 5:30 AM to send an email out looking for status. Well. I never got the final validation from them until 3 PM or so on Friday! By then I was a wreck.

Was I ever happy to see the end to this work week. It must have been the longest short week ever.

Jumping Night: Wednesday

I wanted to write about this before too much time went by because I want to remember. I think it’s helpful for me to write about my riding lessons sometimes as it helps me to remember the details and helps me absorb some of what I've learned. Might not be too interesting for people to read about, but it does help me.

So I wrote about Tuesday night with Ann. Wednesday night was riding with Kelly. I had never met Kelly before, so I really didn’t know what to expect from her at all. Well, like Ann, I found her session very effective and insightful. Her style was to really zero in and individualize the lesson, spending blocks of time on each person in the class, particularly after each jump course. Her style was to talk you through somewhat while jumping, but then to do a very thorough debriefing once your course was finished. First she would ask what you thought about it, what you felt had worked and hadn’t worked. And then she would follow with what she felt worked and didn’t work. A jump course always seems to go by in such a blur that I found this deconstruction pretty helpful. She was also very complimentary of me and of Lulu and I together, so I was pretty encouraged after all that.

A comment on Lulu too … I felt like we came together very, very nicely on Wednesday. We managed to ride very steady, no mad rushing, a few big spots here and there, but nothing crazy. Even her pacing through the combination (two fences that were set up as an in-and-out – jump in, and then it’s two or three strides and you jump out) was almost perfect by the time we were done. Combinations have been tricky for us most times, so I was very happy with that. Kelly was also very complimentary about my position over all, felt that I was pretty much always correct, never got in Lulu’s way and even the couple of times Lulu jumped big (and early) that I never let it get me flustered or that my position suffered much because of it. She was very excited because I (apparently) managed a perfect automatic release a couple of times. So I ended the lesson on a pretty great note and very happy with Lulu and our continued progress. Of course all this individual attention for each student in class made for a long lesson, but I didn’t mind because I felt like I got a lot out of it.

One last note: there is an older teenager (Alex) who has been in some of my lessons from time to time since September. She was riding with me again on Wednesday. She is a very super bubbly and enthusiastic kid and it’s very hard not to catch onto her mood. Anyway, so after our lesson she told me that Lulu and I are her new very favorite “couple” (horse & rider combo). Too funny – cracked me up!

So, overall it was a great week of riding. I was supposed to ride (free ride) tonight, but I was just so damn tired after very little sleep for most of the week and then practically NO sleep last night that I felt so lousy and just couldn’t do it. One of these days I vow that I’m going to get myself down to the barn on a Friday night!

A Little Bit Excited

I had my painter by the other day to take a look at my two upstairs bathrooms so that he could do an estimate for me. I had been putting off doing anything about these rooms because I really want to renovate. But that would requite tile work and new cabinetry and counter-tops and fixtures and whatever. Which means a bunch of money. So I've been putting off the bathrooms until I had the money to do all that. Yet, this year I had said that I wasn't going to do any unnecessary home improvement projects. However, I think I just finally got really sick of looking at these horrible bathrooms, particularly my personal one, so I decided to compromise and at least paint. So, I gave the painter the green light and he's going to start on Monday! They'll look like completely different rooms after he gets done with them -- especially the master bath that is currently covered from ceiling to floor in battleship gray paint, with two walls in silver-gray wallpaper (you just gotta wonder what the people who did this were thinking). Anyway, If I remember, I'll take some before and after pictures. It's amazing how a small home facelift can also lift one's spirits a bit.

Nicker

Oh I forgot to add: Last night when I arrived at the barn and was walking down the aisle, Lulu actually nickered at me! She recognized me and was happy to see me. This had happened once before out in the pasture, but at the time I thought it might have been because she was alone out there, was a little lonely and missing her pasture buddies and was looking for some company. Anyway, it warmed my little heart -- it's the simple things in life.

Another Jumping Night

Last night was my first (riding) training session since Alison left for her hiatus. Ann is basically Alison’s 2nd in command and I’ve known her pretty much since the day I started at Apple Tree, however she had never trained me before. In the early Fall when I was still riding late Friday afternoons, I had a couple (Steve & Jennifer) in my lesson. Over the course of the months I’ve become pretty friendly with them. Since the schedule has been changed up for Winter, Steve has ended up in my Tuesday night lesson, but Jennifer rides on another day. Anyway, last night before our session I was asking Steve what Ann is like to ride with and he said, “She’s tough. She made Jennifer cry once.” ACCCCCCKKKKKKKK! Of course you have to understand that this is coming from the guy who once told me that he imagined my life is much like a “Mary Tyler Moore” episode, so there it is.

Anyway, the reality of the lesson was that I found Ann very insightful and very effective. I also have the added benefit with her that she knows Lulu really, REALLY well as she did a lot of the initial schooling and training on her when she was first acquired by the barn. So it was a jumping night. The last jumping night I had had, I had almost fallen off. Seriously, I was hanging by a thread, but managed to stay on by sheer will mostly. Luckily Lulu had stood still enough that I was able to hoist myself back into the saddle somehow, the alternative would have been falling on top of a jump, which probably would have hurt somewhat. Anyway so, even though that night I had continued on to jump a bunch, I was slightly nervous last night. Not scared really, just a little edgy. So, last night ended up going very well. Lulu has this thing of getting very speedy and strung-out while jumping, we’ve had many a jumping round that I have felt was slightly out of control. I mean, not flat-out, bit-in-the-teeth out of control, but much faster than necessary and fast enough where I have become a little bit more of a passenger than anyone ever should be on a horse around a jump course. So I’ve been working on keeping Lulu slow and balanced and quiet over fences. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes not so much, but it’s always in my mind while jumping her and is something very specific that I’m trying to improve.

So Ann was pretty committed last night to working on this with me. Constantly reminding me to balance Lulu, slow her down, quiet my body, lift her up and get her off her forehand (as she tends to get very heavy on the forehand, particularly in corners and on landing over fences). She was very active in keeping a conversation with me as I performed each jump course, and with immediate feedback directly after and I found it pretty helpful. By the end of the session I really felt that we were getting somewhere. And now tonight I have another lesson (with a different trainer) so I’ll get to try it all out again and see if some of the stuff Ann helped me with has stuck with me. If not, there will always be more lessons, it’s always going to be a work in progress, after all. Still, I feel pretty good about our experience overall, I feel like I am making progress. Sometimes pretty slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

"What a Cluster!!!"

ARGH! This is so frustrating. So, I have a really, really common name. It really has become the bane of my existence, I swear. So there was another person at my company who shared my exact, same name. So, from the very beginning, and I'm talking before I was even actually hired, this has been a huge pain in the ASS. In order to submit my application so that I could be hired, I had to open an online account with the company career center. Only the application wouldn't allow me to open the account because it said that I already worked there. Only I didn't, SHE did. ARGH! So I knew from the very beginning that this was going to be a problem. My email address had to be qualified with my middle initial, which meant that I was forever getting her emails, IMs, meeting invites, mail, BlackBerry invoices, phone calls, you name it (and she was forever receiving mine).

This was all enough of a big pain in the ass, but then she left the company in November. Well. Three days after that, my BlackBerry was turned off. After calling tech support the following week and sorting it out, turns out that they thought MY BlackBerry was HERS. So mine got shut off. Got that turned back on. And then over the months I've received emails and demands with spreadsheets asking for information about applications or databases I had never heard of, with my name designated as the application "expert". Each time I've been like, "WTF???" And of course most of these applications sounded just familiar enough that I wasn't 100% sure at first that it wasn't something of mine, which meant each time it was something that I had to spend time investigating a bit. But each and every time it was something for the former employee. Someone searching for info on something and looking for someone with my name (who also used to work for IT) and just assuming I must be the right person.

And now the latest kicker was this past Thursday. Suddenly my BlackBerry stopped loading email. Again. Dead all weekend, I tested the IM service and the phone this morning and everything was gone. W. T. F. So I called tech support again and they told me that I seemed to no longer have a BB account and that I was going to have to call the service provider. Called Sprint/Nextel and ended up on the phone with them for about an hour with the end result that they couldn't help me either. Although, they WERE able to tell me the "new" account name associated with my phone number (someone in Retirement and Investment Services, not even remotely related to my group). So, finally I found an internal "Mobile Support Group", called them and it turns out they WERE the right people to talk to. Even still, they had me on the phone for a half an hour or so while they unsnarled the problem. And of course they also had to go back to Sprint/Nextel to get the account sorted out. So basically, what they figured happened is that the old account got deleted, the other person's BB was even with a different service provider (Verizon), but then someone eye-balling the list of people who should have been cut off, saw my name and deleted it in a panic. Or something. SHEESH!!! As Julia would say, "WHAT A CLUSTER!!!" GAH! What next?

ACK ACK ACK

So, I was at my Jenny Craig appointment this afternoon and my phone started ringing. I went running for it, managed to get it in time and it was Rowena from the other barn I was riding at back in the Fall. Yikes! I told her that I would have to call her back and so I started to freak out about what I was going to say. In case you didn't read about it, or don't remember my posts, I had started with Rowena's barn when I first started riding again back in September. I rode with her for a couple of weeks and then decided to give another barn a try. For a while I rode at both places. Typically I would ride with Ro on Saturdays where, more often than not, we would do something fun like a trail ride and I rode with Alison on Fridays where we would do real dressage or jumping work. Then I decided to do the half lease on Lulu with the second barn, I started getting more serious about my riding goals and so I pretty much committed myself to Apple Tree (the second barn). In the meantime, I kind of fell off the face of the Earth for Ro. I never told her that I was riding at the other barn (I had told Alison about the first barn however) I just stopped coming by without saying anything, which was kind of crappy on my part really.

Anyway, so I really felt terrible about it, but chicken too. Ro and her husband Elliot were so wonderfully nice to me. I mean, Ro even let me ride a time or two without my having to pay her anything. She was very complementary about my supposed skills and felt that I was going to be very good for their barn. So I called her back once I was back on the road. She was so sweet, wanted to know how I was, if I was okay, did I still have my job (she had heard about the layoffs, I'm sure). She didn't ask if I was riding anywhere else or question me about why I had disappeared (which I was grateful for) but just went on to say that I should come by sometime, that I should come see the "girls" (her other adult riders who are a very friendly and social group). She also said that the next party they have, that I should think about coming. She is so freaking NICE!

I made the decision about where I was going to ride because I truly think that Apple Tree is going to make me a much better rider. They are immersed in the discipline of riding that I most want to follow and they have horses that are appropriate for my abilities and my goals. Ro's place was a blast. More casual, there is the opportunity for fun and for lots of trail riding, but I didn't feel in the end that I was going to be able to pursue my goals nearly as well there. I think if I wanted to have a horse and go out on a trail and just screw around on the weekends, it would be the perfect place. But I'm right now a little more ambitious than that, even if I never, ever end up competing. So I made my decision and I feel good about it, haven't regretted it for a second. Apple Tree has turned out to be everything I had hoped that it would be and then some, but I still do feel badly about blowing off Ro. I wish I had unlimited time and funds so that I could ride at both places, but that, of course, really isn't very realistic in real life (at least in my real life). Still, I am very glad that she reached out and called me. I feel a little better (although still guilty and a little shitty) about everything.

I Feel MUCH Better Now

I just had a really lazy weekend that I spent mostly lying around doing a whole lot of nothing (which is sometimes the nicest break you can give yourself) but I was feeling like quite a slug and mad at myself for ignoring some of my more important and immediate goals. So, I just ran on the treadmill for about thirty minutes. It was nothing very impressive, in fact, for some reason I found it harder on my treadmill than I've been finding similar runs on the treadmill at the gym at work. I wonder why that is? Anyway, at least I got something done, so I really do feel much better now. I always know that I'm going to feel this way after a workout, one would think I would be more motivated to actually feel it (and thus more motivated to work out), but it just doesn't seem to work out that way. Unfortunately.

3-Year Anniversary

This weekend represents the anniversary of my move up to New Hampshire. Three years ago I left my office at my former company, where I had worked for 16 years. I said goodbye to NYC and moved into a corporate apartment up here in New Hampshire. I started work at New Company on Tuesday, just three days after leaving NYC and Old Company. January is a rough time of year to transition to living here and my transition was made even tougher because I didn't have a car, or even a license at the time! I was also right away thrown into a high-pressure project for a difficult customer at New Company, where a lot of responsibility and weight of the work was immediately on my shoulders. The first half year here was pretty stressful and tough, but I came through it all okay and never, even for a second, regretted my decision.

I'd say that my first two years here were really transitional for me. In many ways I felt pretty settled in immediately, and in others, well, I think sub-consciously it was a little harder on me than I was willing to admit. It translated to my gaining a bunch of weight during the first two years, weight that I really couldn't afford to gain. But after those two transitional years, I really felt like things started to settle more comfortably for me. I finally came off that first, high-pressure project and my job has been allowed to move forward. I took control and lost the weight that I had gained, and then some and started putting down roots that make me truly feel like this is where I belong.

In many ways these past three years have flown by, but I also sort of feel like I've been here forever. I look back on my NYC years very fondly, and sometimes a little wistfully. I'll never, ever regret living there, that experience is so much a part of who I am now. But I can never see myself going back to live there either. I am so happy that I was able to have that experience and now I have been so, SO happy that I was given such an excellent opportunity to move on whole-heartedly to a place that I love.

Two Weeks In

I’ve been working my 2009 renewed plan for about two weeks now and am making some progress, I think. I’ve lost about 2.5 lbs, have not had any alcohol (since no social occasions have come up), have been working out with the trainer again, running, riding and sticking to Jenny Craig. I feel like things are generally going pretty well, but I think that I could be doing better with the working out/running. I am committed to two workouts with the trainer per week and so far I’ve stuck with that, but I feel like I should be doing more cardio-wise (preferably running) during the week. I’m much better than I was during the month of December though, so it is definitely an improvement. Riding has been going well in general, but with the extreme cold we’ve been experiencing lately, I’m having a lot of trouble motivating myself to go down to the barn for my free-ride times. It’s just not all that appealing when it’s this cold. Additionally, I want to look into maybe joining the “Y” or something, but wanted to wait until the first rush of the resolution people had fallen off the wagon and the gyms aren’t so crazy & busy.

Work has been a little busier than expected, but not the crazy-busy that I was experiencing for the latter part of 2008. So actually it’s been the perfect scenario for re-introducing working out into my routine. I’m busy enough that I have to plan for my workouts and add it to my schedule, but not so crazy busy that a workout is impossible. Actually, I find that I do a little better getting my workout in when my day is somewhat structured.

Anyway, in general I feel relatively pleased with how it’s going so far. I think I can improve a lot (and I’ll work on that), but I am moving forward and keeping very mindful of my goals everyday. Most importantly, I am feeling very positive and enthusiastic, which is a big turn-around from the way I was feeling in November and December.

Brother Stuff

Surprisingly, I had an email back from my brother last night. Totally unexpected. Anyway, it was very nice note where he thanked my for my offer, but stated that he was going to pass, at least for now. So, basically thanks, but no thanks. I think he's expecting one flooring job to come through (I guess it's not a done deal yet) that will carry him for a few weeks and has a hope that perhaps he'll be able to squeak by if he and his business partner can get the odd flooring job here & there every month. He doesn't sound too confident that it'll happen, but he hopes for it anyway. Ideally, I believe that he wants to remain in Charlotte, but is considering that he may end up having to relocate eventually, if things don't improve where he is. But he says that if he does leave, that he will probably be headed farther south. I knew that his coming up the New Hampshire was a big long-shot, so I can't say that I'm too surprised. Still, it might have been a good experience for both of us. Oh well, at least I offered and at least he responded -- just that alone is HUGE for him! We had a nice email exchange and it feels good to at least have communicated some. I hope he reaches out to me if he needs anything.

A Dressage Night

It's nights like these that I am thankful that I've signed on for two riding training sessions a week, because if I was scheduled for a "free" ride (no training, just a ride on my own) I'm sure that there is no way on Earth that I would have gone tonight. It was about ten degrees and dropping fast, no way I wanted to schlepp down to the cold barn, drag the poor horse out of her stall, go through everything to groom and tack up and then ride in an ice cold arena if I didn't have to. No way, no how. But I did have a training session scheduled (and paid for) so I did manage to drag myself down to the cold barn and deal with all the frigidness. And I was glad that I did (as I knew I would be). Of course the irony is that we each had to complete a dressage test -- I thought that I had dodged the dressage bullet by not attending the dressage clinic and critic ride hosted by the barn this past weekend. But no, Alison had other plans. Curses. Well, Lulu and I did okay, I think. Not fantastic, but not terrible. Most importantly, we got the left lead canter on the first try (something that we struggle with). Most of our transitions were pretty good, except that we did break one canter too early. We probably didn't bend into our corners or around the circles enough, I'm sure our circles were misshapen and wobbly and I know that our diagonals weren't very straight, but she was listening to me, listening to my aids and was mostly on the bit and pretty much as round as she gets. And I'm very, very happy about her trot to canter transitions (we've been working on that).

Anyway, I have to stop being such a baby about the stuff that I'm so afraid that I'm going to suck at. I mean, what am I so afraid of, that someone is going to laugh at me? Actually, I think what I'm most worried about is my own disappointment with myself. I can be so hard on myself, I have to learn to relax a little bit, go with the flow, live a little and not be so afraid to make mistakes.

Alison leaves for South Carolina on Friday. I'll see her in March when I go down for the Adult Camp. But otherwise I won't be riding with her until she comes back to New Hampshire sometime in April. In the meantime I'll be riding with a couple of the other trainers at the barn. I'm going to miss Alison, but now I have motivation to work really hard and improve (as well as improving my overall fitness and, hopefully, losing weight) so that she can be really impressed with my progress when she comes back.

Random Thought ...

I'm wondering if it was perhaps a mistake to be linked to my personal trainer through facebook. Oh well, it's too late now!

Home & Family

I'm trying to decide whether to put my house on the market. I mentioned in a previous post about a cottage I went to see in a neighboring town. I really, really loved the house and I especially love the location and so have been thinking very hard about whether it may be possible to buy it. Of course the biggest variable is whether I can sell MY house. It's such a crummy market (which of course is a big reason why buying the house is even a possibility) that I really have had no confidence in whether it's even worth trying. I had the realtor out anyway. She looked around and then did a market analysis, checked out the comps and came back last night to go over everything with me. So, apparently some places nearby have sold over the past four months or so for some pretty decent amounts. It surprised me a bit. Of course it's all a crap-shoot, but I honestly wasn't expecting the news to be that good. I just assumed that the expected sale price would be so low that I wouldn't even want to consider it. So now I have some hard decisions to make. Do I really want to go through all this and so soon again (I only just moved about two years ago). It's a lovely little cottage. I just love the town and the specific location, the house is charming and it would be so wonderful to have some extra property! Being down the road from wooded trails for running would be unbelievably fantastic and being so close to the riding barn would be a dream come true. But ... GAH! I am exhausted and overwhelmed just thinking about it all. Anyway, so the realtor left her research with me. Now it's time to think about it and decide what I want to do.

I was speaking to my father on the phone last night and he was telling me that my brother is experiencing some pretty hard times. My brother basically went off to college in South Carolina years ago, flunked out after a semester or two and never came back. At this stage he might as well have been born somewhere in the South, forget that we all grew up in New Jersey! Anyway, I don't talk to my brother at all really, mostly because he is pretty much the World's worst communicator. I can email him, send him birthday cards & checks, Christmas presents, whatever 'til I'm blue in the face and I'll never get any kind of a response from him. I don't dislike him. I don't hate him. In person we get along fine, he just doesn't do email or phone calls or whatever. I think he's also a bit like me, just sort of adrift from having a family. Really has made his friends more his family than his biological one.

Anyway, so he lives in Charlotte, NC where the economy is apparently particularly bad. Charlotte is one of those places that grew up very quickly, real estate sky-rocketed over the course of a few years, companies & banks have big corporate centers there that did a lot of growing and hiring over a short period of time. Anyway, I guess it's all crashing now. My brother had a floor refinishing business with a friend and the business has completely dried up. He's scrambling to get a job, but apparently McDonald's isn't even hiring (well, I guess he interviewed at McD's, but hasn't heard yet). Things are pretty bad. So I thought overnight about it and it occurred to me that maybe he would come up here, at least for a couple of weeks. I have some stuff (painting some rooms, fixing some stuff, hanging some stuff, whatever) that I need to have done around the house and I would rather pay him than some stranger, if he's willing. It also might give him the opportunity to check out New Hampshire, who knows? Maybe he wouldn't mind relocating here, if he could find a job. It's got to be better than what he's experiencing where he is anyway. Well, it's just a thought. I'm going to email him about it tomorrow. Of course, being the World's Worst Communicator, I'm sure he'll never respond, but it's worth a shot anyway.

Braving the Scale

Well, I did it, I braved the scale this morning (which was one of my immediate goals for 2009). I was frankly terrified because I hadn’t stepped on since, oh, about the beginning of November. I had been depressed then because the scale was not budging at all, even though I was sticking to the Jenny Craig eating plan and was exercising a lot. And then my birthday hit, not to mention big layoffs at my company (which happened ON my birthday) and then the usual holiday doldrums and festivities. The longer I went without getting on the scale, the more scared of it I became. Well, I had a Jenny Craig appointment scheduled for today and I knew that I couldn’t put off weighing in there any longer (already my counselor was lying for me), so I stepped on it this morning. I just didn’t want there to be any huge, unpleasant surprises at JC later in the day.

The results are … up 5 lbs (since the beginning of November).

I am actually pretty happy (not to mention, surprised) with that. All this kvetching about it and the dreading of the big weigh-in and it really isn’t all that bad. Now at least I feel like I can move forward from here.

I have such mixed feelings about the scale. On the one hand, it makes me crazy and depressed and it causes me to really hate myself to watch the numbers so vigilantly. On the other hand, if I stay away from it, it is so, so easy for me to put myself in denial, do the whole, “I’ll worry about it tomorrow, I’ll start tomorrow” thing. So, it’s a necessary evil for me, I think. It’s just too easy for me to fall apart otherwise. But it sure is a fine-line between obsessing with numbers and completely hating myself and keeping myself in reasonable check. Ugh.

(New) Things I Love

• Mario Badescu’s “Olive Eye Cream”. I’ve tried a bunch of their eye creams, both through samples I’ve gotten or ordered and products that I’ve purchased and this is the winner out of all the ones I’ve tried. My skin is quite sensitive and I seem to have this chronic allergic issue with the skin around my eyes. From time to time it gets very irritated, red, puffy, flakey and itchy. When that happens it is a real struggle to get the flare-up to calm down. I’ve had it take MONTHS. I find, however, if I do stick to wholesome products and am diligent about using them, that this helps quite a bit. I had a flare-up in December and nothing helped and soothed my irritated skin like the Olive Eye Cream did. I am now a big fan.
• LLBean Weather Finder. I finally broke down and bought one of these things. I don’t know why I resisted for so many years, it’s not as if they’re expensive or anything. Now I know exactly what the temperature is both outside and in at every moment. Additionally I know if the pressure is rising or falling and there is a little icon that indicates whether it’s clear or raining/snowing. Awesome.
• Eddie Bauer flannel pajama bottoms. Usually I'm a yoga pant kind of girl, but I decided to buy a pair of these pajama bottoms a few weeks ago because they were on sale. Well. Ever since they arrived, when I’m hanging around at home, you won’t catch me out of them!
• Mossimo sweaters from Target. These are thin, soft acrylic-blend sweaters that I found at Target. They’re pretty cheap (about $15) and very comfortable. Because they’re so cheap, I think nothing of wearing them for riding, they’re perfect for that. They’re also washable. So on a chilly night for riding, I can wear a long-sleeve t-shirt, a Mossimo sweater and a fleece zip-up vest and it’s PERFECT. And because the sweaters are pretty cheap and also washable, I don’t mind too much if they get dirty or a little wrecked at the barn. The Mossimo long-sleeve t-shirts are great in this regard too. They’re thin, so perfect for layering, they’re nice and long, so they come down over my butt and they’re cheap (like $4 or $5) so it’s easy to have a bunch of them and I don’t get too upset if one gets ruined.
• Trader Joe’s Salsa Verde. I bought a jar of this about a month ago and loved it so much, I had been rationing it out to try and make it last. It’s light, not too spicy (but perfect when combined with a spicier salsa) and has a nice tangy lime-y flavor. I finally made it back to TJ’s and stocked up on four more jars.

Massage is Good

Boy, do I love a good massage. Is there anything that seems like more of a decadent, pampering indulgence? I can’t think of one off-hand. It feels like such an indulgence to me that I almost feel guilty when I have one (and I’ve been scheduling one a month for the past few months or so). I am struggling with this feeling of worth, trying to allow myself to think and feel that I am worth stuff like massages. Intellectually I tell myself that it is a “wellness” issue. It helps to keep the blood flowing, works through the stiffness and the kinks and any scar tissue, etc. This becomes especially important as one gets older and things don’t bounce back and recover as quickly. It’s also very important as one tries to be physically active, or become more active. I can tell myself all this and I do believe it, but that emotional thing, truly feeling like I deserve this, well that is a big hurdle for me and one that I still have trouble getting over.

I had a wonderful massage this morning and it was especially satisfying because I had had two tough workouts with my trainer this week and had also done some interval running sessions on my own (not to mention having ridden three times, including one almost fall from my horse). So, there were many parts of my body that were quite sore & tight. My massage therapist commented that my neck was particularly bad -- as were my hamstrings, and (I think) quads. So I was very happy to have had the massage to loosen up all these areas, aid in recovery from the week’s activity and ready everything for more work for the coming week. I just wish that I didn’t feel so guilty about it, I really need to believe in my heart that I deserve this. I guess it comes down to that whole “self-love” thing, everything seems to come back to that.

Observations from a Day

• Walking from the garage to work in a blowy snow flurry, woman ahead of me is attempting to use an umbrella, even though the little bit of snow that is actually in the air is flying sideways.
• Coming into the building at work, another woman ahead of me in tippy-tappy heels stops at the card reader and just looks behind at me expectantly. After a beat, I swipe MY card and she goes waltzing in without having said one word to me. (I mutter under my breath, “You’re welcome”.)
• People who like to make you feel self-conscious about not arriving to work at 7 AM like they do must be stopped.
• After a disagreement yesterday with an engineer over what was REALLY wrong with a customer’s application, it turns out that I was RIGHT. (Gotta love that).
• Blow hard, self-congratulatory, meeting hijack guy makes me feel surly and defensive in every meeting I attend with him.
• Again there is a string of unoccupied treadmills at the gym, yet someone decides that the one right next to the one that I’m currently using is the perfect choice.
• 2 PM is a great time to go to the company gym, especially in January.
• Running 2 miles of intervals right before my personal training session makes the workout tougher, but I feel great about it afterwards anyway.
• It amazes me how many women stop in the Ladies Room on their way out the door for the day for extensive make-up touching up.
• Dogs are crazed lunatics when left for 10 hours and will drive you insane when you get home and want to try and relax. (Luckily that doesn’t happen too often).
• I'm starting to wish that I hadn't made the "no alcohol" rule, goal, resolution, whatever because a nice, big, cold glass of chardonnay sure would hit the spot right about now.
• Thankful for being able to work from home on Friday!

Scared to Dressage

I mentioned the other day about the adult camp my riding trainer hosts down in South Carolina in March. Today I bought the airline tickets, so I am now committed to going. I am both excited and a little nervous, but I think overall it should be a really good time and I should get a lot out of it, hopefully coming home a better rider. As I wrote the other day, I really want to also use the scheduled trip as a target date for some initial fitness goals. I think it's just close enough to keep me motivated and far enough away that I should be able to make some progress by then.

This weekend the barn is hosting a dressage clinic with some fancy, impressive dressage rider, trainer, whatever. The clinic is on Saturday and then it will be followed by a critique ride on Sunday. Alison was asking me today if I was going to do the clinic and I said, "no, I really don't feel ready for that". I still feel somewhat self-conscious and not yet up to intense dressage scrutiny. I know that I've made a lot of progress, I'm doing much better, but still, I feel ... not ready. Or probably it's more the self-conscious thing. I want to feel like I'm further along so that I can benefit more from the fine-tuning that I would hopefully get out of a clinic like that. Rather, right now I feel like I'm still a little bit all over the place and flailing to just get smooth-ish transitions and a decent frame and true bending and, uh, the left lead canter consistently. Alison insisted that I am more than ready for this clinic and that there will be less experienced riders attending. I guess you can call it my own insecurities, but I'm still going to pass. I don't know why I'm feeling so fragile about it, but I do. Weird.

Your Best Life

Okay, so I was watching Oprah yesterday. The show on Monday was the kick-off for her “Your Best Life” week that had been advertised for the last few weeks or so and also was meant to tie into the theme subject for the January issue of her “O” Magazine. So the show was mostly confession time for Oprah, about how she has fallen off of the weight-loss, fitness, eating right (whatever) wagon. She owned up to it and discussed how she got to where she is and what she is going to do about it. Her fitness & eating plan was interesting enough to me, but what was far more interesting and more cathartic, was the discussion of why she overeats and what this issue really says about her life. For someone who has fought a life-long battle with weight and with food, I can completely relate. Food really IS a drug of choice and people who chronically struggle with significant weight really ARE compensating for something in their lives that is out of whack. In its essence, it comes down to loving yourself, but what is that really? I’ve heard that phrase bandied about my whole life and I STILL to this day do not really know what that feels like, what it really is, or how one goes about actually accomplishing true self-love. I can say that I have self-respect. I think that I can appreciate some of my abilities and stronger points, as well as recognize my short-comings, but I think self-love is far deeper than these things, something that I don’t really have a true concept of, something that I suspect many other people perhaps struggle with as well.

Oprah talked yesterday about taking the time to take care of yourself and about finding the right balance in your life. I have known this and talked about this for years. I wholly agree that this is essential for having a fulfilled life. But, unlike Oprah, I generally have no trouble finding time for myself. Childfree by choice, I am not a workaholic and manage to fit in massages, pedicures, facials, hair appointments and plenty of reading and movie or TV time. I really have no problem pampering myself consistently. I usually work a respectable 40-45 hours a week, so that’s not the issue. Things like horseback riding, which is something that I love that I am doing for myself, is a good example of how I treat myself to things that inspire me and that feed my soul. No, I don’t think these are my issues. I think my issues come more from troubles with finding intimacy in life (and I’m not necessarily talking about romance here) and from varying degrees of self-loathing, both of which I feel are related.

Certainly growing up in an non-affectionate, undemonstrative family and being the introvert that I am, I tend to be very introspective and don’t know a lot about how to achieve intimacy on most levels. The fact that my sister has had such successful intimate relationships (in particular, with her husband and children, of course) amazes me. But the differences here, I think, is because she is more of an extroverted type. She always knew how to get what she needed from external sources, I never had that ability. Anyway, I don’t really know what the answer or the solution is. I can be aware of this general lack in my life, but I don’t really know how to “fix” it. I know that I am missing some necessary element to achieve balance and self-love, but I don’t really know how to change what is at this stage really a part of my character and personality. I guess I’m just defective then, I don’t know. I DO know, however, as I struggle with my issues of self-loathing, with the lack of real intimacy in my life, that my weight will continue to reflect that. I see it as a life-long struggle with no real or easy solution. I suppose some awareness is part of the formula for addressing these “broken” parts of my life. So maybe that’s all it will ever be, I will recognize what it is and continue to struggle with it on a daily basis. Kind of like an alcoholic (and I really don’t think there is much difference there).

One thing I DO know however, is that once I move beyond thinking about how I look or how much I actually weigh and think of my body more in terms of health and fitness and even from the point of view of athletic training, that I tend to do better, get less hung up on the self-loathing thing, feel better and ultimately tend to end up more successful and overall happier with my efforts and myself, as well as just happier in general.

So, I liked the show, it made me think about a lot of things. It’s going to keep me thinking about a lot of things. Like .. oh I don’t know, that maybe I need therapy or something.

Some statements that jumped out at me from the show:

• It’s about what you are REALLY hungry for.
• A doctor told Oprah that, with a thyroid condition, you have to learn to “embrace hunger”. (uh, no).
• Bob Geene (said): He has a theory that Oprah never really learned how to be happy, she just learned “survival tools”. (That rung a bell for me).
• Are you meeting all your needs? If you’re not, food becomes more attractive as a way of comforting yourself.
• Harmony with your life, loving yourself is a life-long journey.
• Your overweight self is not craving food, it’s craving love.

Three Confused Pugs (courtesy of Yahoo!)

Three Confused Pugs @ Yahoo! Video

More about Goals

So, I'm thinking that I am going to go to the "Adult Camp" that my riding barn hosts in Aiken, South Carolina at the end of March. The camp is a great opportunity to ride everyday, they'll go to various cross-country courses in the area for jumping sessions, there will be some intense instruction and the opportunity to really dig deeper into the eventing world overall. Additionally, it's also a great opportunity to get to know some of the other adults at the barn and generally have fun doing something active, something I love. Anyway, so I'm thinking that this trip might be a great target for the first phase of my 2009 fitness plan. It gives me a good two and a half months, so if I work hard, I could show up at camp weighing 10-15 lbs less and being much more fit. It sure would be great to be able to gallop around a cross-country course without having to gasp for breath the entire way. It kind of takes some of the fun out of it, and you also have to wonder how effective you really are as a rider, if you can't even make it around without feeling like you're going to pass out. So, I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to concentrate on that target date. It gives me something really concrete to work towards, something that will be of immediate benefit, beyond just looking better or fitting better into my riding pants. Yes, I think this is a good goal, I'm a little excited now.

2009: Goals

I’ve been thinking about goals for 2009. I don’t always clearly define these each year, nor do I always publish them, but I feel like 2008 was a pretty good year for me and so I would like to try and exploit that momentum somewhat, nail down some specific objectives and concentrate on actually making them happen.

It seems like every year I have this vague sort of idea: lose weight and try harder at work. Sometimes I have a little bit of success at this, sometimes I don’t, but it all feels so hit or miss by this method. I’m going to try to be more concrete and specific and so I want to come up with a plan for how these objectives can be hit.

Work

As I wrote in my 2008 Year Review, last year was a successful and pivotal year for me at work. It would be tempting to relax a little bit and enjoy that, but I really do think that I am somewhat at a critical turning point in my career. As my role and path becomes defined, I have to be an active participant in who I am going to be as a professional. I need to be more proactive, more organized, more committed and more enthusiastic. I need to be more involved in strategic work and more integral to the over-all direction of my group. Now how to accomplish all that, I haven’t really figured out yet, but I’m working on it.

Finances

I’m pretty good about saving some money every month, but for 2009 I want to be a little more aggressive about that. I’m still trying to figure out what the specific goal is going to be and I probably won’t publish the specific monthly or annual number, but just suffice to say, it’ll be more than it’s been.

Social

I admit it, I’m an introvert and can be a bit of a social hermit. I am never more comfortable and at peace than when I’m home with the dogs and a bunch of good books and maybe some movies on the TV. I enjoy socializing, but I also find it very draining and I can be a little socially awkward, so I really tend to dread the effort. Still, I usually end most parties or social encounters happy that I went, taking away good memories. So in 2009 I want to make more of an effort socially. Come out of my cocoon more often, accept more invitations, be willing to move out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Health, Fitness & Weight

Ugh. Here I need to get back on that wagon. I’ve had a bit of a vacation with my little birthday/holiday pity party. But now that is all over and it’s time to get back to work. I never stopped going to Jenny Craig, and that has probably been a huge element to my not completely falling apart in this area, but it’s time to get serious again. So, here are my plans (I may need to fine-tune as I move forward, but this is what I’m thinking for right now):

• Re-commit to Jenny Craig. Be more careful with lunch (I don’t eat JC for lunch). Continue to use JC meals for breakfast & dinner.
• Get back on the scale (both at home and at JC).
• Start eating fruit mid-morning at work again.
• Alcohol for social occasions only.
• Continue 2x/week personal training sessions.
• Pick up the running again – run a minimum of 3x a week through March.
• Plan to bump up mileage and/or the number of running sessions per week after March (hopefully the snow will start to be on the wane by then and I’ll be able to use some trails).
• Weather, snow & salt permitting, walk dogs on significant walk (or run) – minimum 2 miles, 2-3x per week.
• Look into a “Y” membership, or re-up with the Spinning studio.
• Ride 4x a week (includes 2 training sessions/lessons per week).

I think if I can do all that and be consistent and steady about it, my weight should more or less take care of itself, at least to a certain point. I may not be a size 4 and the perfect weight for my height, but I should be in a reasonable place, I think. If I decide that I want to go further, then some fine-tuning will most likely have to happen, but I’ll worry about that and decide when I get there. I’d say from where I’m sitting now, I would like to lose probably another 40 lbs. I think I would be happy and healthy there, I might not be over the moon with happiness with my size, but that’s where the fine-tuning would maybe come in.

Riding

I’m still trying to figure out my riding goals. This is very important to me, but as I am still in the mode of learning to ride again and don’t know where my skills and abilities are really going to put me down the road, it’s hard to have too specific goals because I don’t really know what I’m going to be capable of. Additionally, with riding, since it is a partnership with a horse, some of my goals at some point would have to be reliant on having a suitable horse for attaining them, so there is a whole other financial (not to mention time) component there that may or may not be doable.

With all that said, for this year, I would like to continue to work hard through the Winter and Spring, and feel that I could possibly compete in an entry level (Beginner Novice level) event/horse trial. Whether or not I actually DO compete at this stage is less important, but I would like to feel like I COULD, that I am ready to start. So, basically that comes down to schooling BN level. I think that’s pretty doable. I think right now I could handle the jumping portion without being at all afraid or too overwhelmed. I don’t think that I would feel comfortable competing today, just because I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself, but I feel like I could get around okay at least. So by late Spring I would like to feel much more competent and confident, that I could easily compete at that level and feel proud to do so. I think that’s reasonable.

By Fall, I think I would like to feel like I’m ready to school Novice (the next level up). Once I feel that I’m schooling that level, I think I’ll be pretty close to where I was ability-wise when I was riding twenty-two years ago. I think I was schooling Training a bit, but never competed above Novice in eventing (in those days it was called, “Pre-Training”). I think I was jumping 3’6” hunters and equitation, but I’m concentrating on eventing now. Once I get to a point where I’m schooling pretty consistently Novice, and am thinking of competition, it may be time to consider buying a horse. I don’t know what the economy, the state of my job or my financial situation will be then, so I don’t know if that will be possible, or if it will be possible to buy a horse suitable for competition. But at least I should have a better idea by then of what I’m going to be capable of and can work towards positioning myself for horse ownership.

Anyway, all that is a long time off at this stage. Right now I’m concentrating on riding 4x a week and having my two lessons during the week. Additionally, I want to be more fit for riding! This ties into the “Health, Fitness & Weight” section, but I should not be all out of breath after cantering around the ring a bunch of times, or after doing a 1-minute jump course. I need to improve my cardio as well as reduce my weight, in order to be a better rider.

So these are the goals that are the most important to me right now in my life and so will be what I’m concentrating on for the year. They should remain pretty fluid and adjustable as I move forward, so I want to always think I’m keeping my expectations realistic.

Dog Pictures from the Snow Storm of New Years Eve: 2008

Lola & Fitz are wearing their new Christmas coats in some of the pictures. Tig is supposed to be getting one too, but the size he needs is on back-order.

Cozy

Is there anything more comfortable or delicious than to be home, tucked inside on an unexpectedly snowy, snowy day? Dogs piled on top, fire going, movie channels galore and books all around and no where you have to go or be? Bliss.

2008: The Year in Review

I feel like 2008 was a bit of a pivotal year for me. It was the year that I finally got off my fat ass and did something about my lack of fitness. This was huge for me, my weight and disintegrating fitness levels was something that had been hanging over my head for years. By last Winter I felt like it was an overwhelming task and didn’t know what to do or even how to start. But then sometime in February or March I saw Valerie Bertinelli’s interview on Oprah, and then read her memoir. It inspired me to get started.

First I joined Jenny Craig. Yes, I admit it, I have been going to Jenny Craig. I haven’t really been open about that until now because, I don’t know, I really didn’t feel like it was anyone’s business. If I didn’t tell you about it, I didn’t really feel you needed to know the intimate details of my personal eating plan. I suppose I’m a little sensitive on this subject, but why is it when you have a “problem” people suddenly seem to think it’s THEIR place to get all in your business? If you’re struggling with weight, people want to know the details of your meals and your activity and want to pontificate to you about what to do (do I ask about yours?). If you are having money problems, people believe that it’s perfectly acceptable to get all in your face about your budget. No, I’m sorry, if I haven’t asked for your help or your opinion, I don’t care to share my personal stuff! I don’t ask about your finances, I don’t ask about what you eat or whatever. Now there are a very few friends for whom I make an exception, and I think you know who you are. I’m a private person and I’m just sensitive about people getting all up in my business when I haven’t asked for help. Anyway, rant over.

So, as I mentioned, I joined Jenny Craig back in March. I immediately started losing weight. It amazed me, I thought it was going to be tough, being in my mid-40s, hypo-thyroid, other hormonal issues, always had a tough metabolism, even as a child. I was never one of these skinny kids, I always struggled. So it surprised me that it seemed to work pretty much right away. After I had lost about 15-20 lbs, I started exercising. I started by just taking walks out on the trails around the campus at work. Soon that frustrated me, I wanted to do more. So I started bringing in running clothes and doing a walk/run thing on the trails, slowly increasing the amount that I was running. Amazing that I never seemed to develop any of the over-use injuries (or pre-injuries) that have ALWAYS cropped up from running previously. I think it’s because I ran almost exclusively on trails, so soft surfaces, and constantly varying foot strikes on the uneven surfaces. Anyway, I continued to lose weight and became happier as I progressed. After about a month or so of this process, I started using a trainer at the company gym two times a week.

All this provided me a consistent and steady weight loss through to the month of August. I had surgery in July to remove my gall bladder and I even managed to lose weight during that ordeal and recovery. Around the middle to end of August I added spinning classes to my exercise program and this is when the weight loss started slowing down. Really coming to a full stop by the beginning of September. So frustrating! I was exercising more than ever and not losing an ounce. Still, by then I had lost about 50 lbs.

It was then that I decided to look for a place to start horseback riding. Riding had been a passion for me growing up and something I had thought would always be a part of my life. Of course the reality was that I ended up working and living in NYC, so it was something that just wasn’t very doable for me with that lifestyle. When I moved to New Hampshire, I knew that riding was something that I would be pursuing again, and now that I had lost some significant weight, it was time. It was also my reward to myself for working hard on the weight thing and getting to the place where this was possible.

So I started riding at one barn and soon decided to give a second one a try as well. The first barn became my “fun” barn. Going out on trail rides, riding in a hunter pace with them, it was a total blast. The second barn is more of a serious “eventing” barn, so this became my structured barn. The one where I was REALLY going to learn, get my riding legs back, re-develop all the subtle nuances that allow one to ride dressage and be able to negotiate a cross-country jump course competently. For a while I rode at both places. I love both really, and was very torn. Then I made the decision to half-lease Lulu at the second barn, finally adding a second training class to my week there as well. My decision was made.

Since then, I’ve been working hard on improving my riding. I think I am making progress, but am still sometimes extremely frustrated with myself. I think this barn is the place to get me to where I want to be though, so I feel satisfied that I am taking the right steps and putting in the work to get me there. Most of all, riding in general fills me with joy like nothing else in my life. It’s also the one thing that I do, where I don’t think of any other thing while I’m doing it. I don’t think about work or money or my big butt (well, unless I happen to catch a glance of myself in the mirror at the indoor ring). I just think about what I’m doing. What’s going right, what’s not going right, all the subtle nuances of what I’m doing with seat and legs and hands to accomplish what I want, while also reviewing the horse and how we’re going, are there any potential obstacles or spooking opportunities ahead. My mind is so full of the immediate task while riding that there really is no room for extraneous thoughts or worries to work their way in.

2008 has also been a pivotal year for me at work. At the end of last year I transitioned off of a long-term project where I had been doing heads-down development work. This year has seen me move into more of a higher-level consultant role, some project management, some strategy, a lot of customer-facing advisory work – really my job has become pretty multi-faceted. It still all seems so new and is continuing to be defined, so I feel that it’s just the beginning of a new professional era for me. At the beginning of the year I was worried about the directions I would be moving in, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Now at the end of the year, I feel like I have made some definite positive strides towards redefining my professional life and am starting to make the next natural step of progression.

Overall it’s been a pretty busy and eventful year for me. For the most part, all of the changes have been positive, so as hard as 2008 has been in general, I think it was a good one for me. I hope that I can continue this positive bent through 2009 and end next year as positively as I feel that I am ending this one.

Catching-Up (yet again)

General

I know, I know, I know, it’s been forever since I’ve written. I really have a terrible time with myself during the holidays. I seem to go into a real slump and almost actually kind of fall apart from my birthday through the end of the year. I think it’s getting a little worse every year too. So, in addition to depression and an uninspired attitude, I seem to lack motivation for things like writing blog posts and working out and other stuff that I should do, or need to be doing.

This year with the state of the economy, the company layoffs and changes in the air, a general “unsettledness” feeling of my world has all contributed to my funk. Add to that, little to non-existent immediate family in my life, loneliness (and really, I am generally NOT a lonely type person at all, it just only seems to rear its head from my birthday through the holidays), a little bit of work burn out and I’ve been a bit of a mess. I know it’s a transient feeling though, and since I had a bunch of vacation time left to use, I now have a nice break from work to enjoy, thus I know that this is a temporary feeling for the most part. I’ll get through it okay and will be more positive once January hits. In the meantime, this time off is helping to give me a bit of a breather.

Holidays

Nothing much is new. Christmas came & went and it was pleasant enough. I spent Christmas Eve at one of my cousins who lives close to me. We had a smaller group than at Thanksgiving and I felt it was more fun that way, in my opinion anyway. It was very relaxed and casual and fun. I brought all three dogs with me for the first time and all behaved wonderfully and got along very well with the other dogs there. So I think I’ll be doing that again. Christmas day I just spent alone at home and that was okay. It was more like a lazy Sunday at home watching movies and reading than any kind of holiday, but it was nice not to have be running off anywhere, or worrying about work.

Since I didn’t get much in the way of presents from family, I decided to buy some gifts for myself. I’ve done this for the past few years and it really has helped me get through the holidays a bit. Anyway, this is what I got myself:

• A necklace.
• A sweater.
• A lamp (for the living room to replace a lamp that was bent).
• A new goose down comforter.

I don’t feel like I went overboard too badly. Of course, there are a ton of sales going on, so I have to be careful to keep my itchy fingers off the keyboard and away from the online stores that are the most tempting to me, lest I lose control and go into a spending frenzy. It wouldn’t be the first time after all.

Real Estate

I have this ongoing interest in real estate. I just can’t seem to stop myself from looking online at a couple of the towns near where I live that I love. Anyway, I recently saw a pretty affordable cottage in one of my favorite towns. It’s the town where one of my cousins live (where I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas this year) and also where the riding stables are – it’s actually pretty much around the corner from the Winter barn. It is on this nice quiet road and there is conservation land with wooded trails up the lane from the house (perfect for running and/or walking the dogs). Anyway, this is one of the tougher towns in the area to get into. Traditionally unaffordable, I don’t usually see much, if anything, in my potential price range, and especially never something that I actually like in that range. Well, I had been going back to this listing again and again and then drove past the house a couple of times. Finally, I contacted the realtor and set up an appointment to see it. I was very upfront about my situation, didn’t want to waste her time, but she was willing and I felt that the amount of time I was spending looking at this listing online, I had better finally just see the place. So I went on a sunny day and just loved it (as I knew I would). It’s a little cape, but very open and airy and it was flooded with sun throughout. Big, 3/4 acre back yard, screened porch, lovely big family room with French doors. It’s not perfect, of course. It could use some kitchen and bathroom updating and there is no garage or deck (there is a patio though), and a lack of a garage is a huge bummer in New Hampshire! But I loved it still, it was very charming and most of all, I could see myself living there.

So, I spoke to the realtor very seriously about my options. She is familiar with the homes in my neighborhood and knows well what I would be dealing with in trying to sell. She said, surprisingly, that my type of place tends to sell quickly. I have my doubts, but whatever. I also find it hard to believe that I would be able to sell it for enough to be able to buy the other house. Still, it may be worth a chance to see if something happens. The realtor suggested that I put my house on the market with a contingency that I would need to find suitable housing. Then, if all the planets align and the timing is right and I can sell it fast enough and for the right price, then perhaps it would work out. If not, there is nothing really lost, although there is the inconvenience factor to deal with.

Anyway, I don’t know. It’s completely unrealistic and probably even a little bit crazy to even be thinking of this. However, this may be the only time I’ll ever be able to afford to buy into this town too, so maybe it’s worth a shot. I can’t stop thinking about the house and it’s making me a little nuts. Well, if it’s meant to be, maybe something will happen, if not then, oh well.

Well, for what it's worth, here is a picture of the house and the backyard:





Rant

So, while Christmas shopping (online), I placed an order for a present for my father (and his wife) with Sturbridge Yankee Workshop. The site took my order, took my payment and sent me an online receipt. After ordering, I realized that the tea lights shown on the item page were separate and had to also be ordered. So, no big deal, I called up the customer service number, gave them the order number that had been generated a couple of minutes before and added the additional item. No problem. Until a few days later when I received a paper receipt in the mail with an (oh, by the way) notation that the main item is back-ordered! Most online stores will let you know before you actually place your order that something is on back-order so you have the option of maybe choosing to not order it. This is especially helpful in the week before Christmas when one might be ordering something as a GIFT. But to let you know days later by MAIL when it’s too late to now order something else, after even speaking to someone on the phone right after placing the order who perhaps could have mentioned the back-order issue, WTF kind of way is that to run a store? I’m still freaking pissed off and I feel like there is really nothing that I can do about it. What a shitty way to run a business.

Another Rant: why do I always, always, always end up behind the problem customer on line at the grocery store? I pick the one line where the person in front of me doesn’t have an overflowing shopping cart, only to have that person paying separately for each item and then with all kinds of complicated coupons and credits that no one in the store can figure out how to apply? Why, why, why???? SHEESH.

Horses & Riding

I’ve been riding in two lessons/training sessions a week and can ride two additional “free” rides a week. I feel like I’m slowly making some improvements, but I still get really frustrated with myself. Sometimes when Lulu and I do a jump course I feel like it’s a wild, wild west round – slightly out of control. It seems a little worse in the indoor ring too because, being smaller, the jumps seem to come up much quicker, so there is less time to organize and balance and slow-down between fences. So I’m working on gaining balance and control and maintaining a steady pace, even attempting for a slow pace. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but I’m working on it. I participated in a jumping clinic a few weeks ago with an upper level eventing rider and I felt that to be somewhat helpful too. Not that she said anything much different from what Alison has been saying, but I find that sometimes getting the additional perspective can help drill concepts into my head. Anyway, I had the opportunity to talk to her a little bit after the clinic and I asked her specifically about my position over fences. It had been somewhat bad (or at least, not ideal) when I first started back to jumping, but she said that actually this was pretty good. So I think I’ve made some progress there. Still, I have plenty of work to do, I’m never going to be able to move onto bigger jumps or more complicated courses until I have better control. I love Lulu’s enthusiasm, but I have to learn how to harness it better.

On the flat I feel like I’ve made a little more progress. Lulu does not have the ideal conformation for riding round, on the bit and in a frame and she can be a little stiff to bending and to engaging her back, so it is not an automatic thing with her. Still, with work she DOES do it, it just doesn’t happen easily or automatically. This has been a real learning experience for me and is really helping me re-develop some of the more subtle riding skills that I had forgotten. It’s not perfect yet, typically, with work, I’ll get a few great strides of a great, round, on the bit frame and then we’ll be off again, or she’s tossing her head or resisting in some way. Still, I feel like it is getting better, the good strides are becoming more frequent and of longer duration, so I feel that I am beginning to get it somewhat. I’m actually kind of glad that Lulu is not easy in this regard. An easy horse and I’d more likely be sitting pretty and not contributing as much to making it happen and thus not actively learning and really getting it as much as I feel I am with this work.

Yesterday I had a make-up lesson with another of the instructors in Alison’s barn. I had ridden with Danielle only once before, right after I started leasing Lulu (it might even have been that first week). Anyway, after our training session yesterday morning, Danielle complimented me and said that she can see that I’ve made A LOT of progress since that first time with her. So I felt very good about that, and felt like she was sincere. She also put me through such a tough flat lesson too. I worked incredibly hard the entire hour, we didn’t walk even once, it was complete work from start to finish. Even though it was about 30-32 degrees, both Lulu and I were completely drenched in sweat when it was over. But I felt like by the end of the hour she was giving me a much more consistent “on-the-bit” rounded frame than when we started the hour. It was deeply satisfying (even if not as exciting as jumping).

If I can continue with the riding work as I have been doing, I feel like I could possibly be somewhere by late Spring. Maybe not ready for any real competition, but at least more competent and a little happier with my skills on a horse.

So, that's it in a nutshell. Nothing too exciting in my life to write about, but there you have it.

Bareback Puissaince

This is incredible. Take close note, these riders are jumping ... bareback. Amazing.

Another "WTF???" Moment

So, I had to plan an 8 AM meeting today so this guy in India can learn how to do this migration that I do, so that he can someday be a back-up for the team. We've been having trouble scheduling it because the requests usually end up having to happen in the afternoon or evenings and that time frame doesn't really work schedule-wise for people in India. Anyway, so I finally had a request for one that could be done first thing in the morning. Great, so I quickly sent a meeting invite to India Guy and to another team member who also wanted to learn the process.

Team Member replied to the invite requesting that I move it to another morning. Uh, no, this is a request from the customer, the migration has to happen as scheduled, they need the stuff in place by 9 AM. (Does anyone READ anymore? I put all that into the meeting invite). And then I had a tentative acceptance to the invite from India Boy first thing in the morning.

So 8 AM comes and I dial into the meeting and start the screen share. I notice that both India Boy and Team Member are both logged into the screen share, but no one is on the phone part of the meeting yet. I give it a couple of minutes and then IM India Boy. I ask him if he's having trouble dialing in, and he writes back, "I'm dialed in already". Oh, so I figure something went wrong so I say, let me hang up and dial back in then. In the meantime I've already started this migration because it takes a full hour to do. Anyway, so I dial back in and there is still no one on the meeting. I IM India Boy again and he says, "oh, I'm only available for the screen share part of your meeting, I'm dialed into another phone meeting." Turns out Team Member is doing the same thing! Okay, is it me or ... WTF??? How on God's Green EARTH did he think he was going to understand a 100 step process by just watching some random screen share with no subsequent verbal explanation, while also participating in a completely unrelated meeting. W. T. F. People make me crazy.