I’d love to achieve it. And I had big plans to start today. Then I woke up, and realized that my knee was killing me.
That’s right. I hurt my knee in my sleep.
I’m officially old.
Category: Health and Fitness
-
Urban Retreats Day Spa
I like to get a massage once a month. I’d say it’s my one indulgence, but let’s face it–I have a lot of indulgences.
Massages are among them. I really do feel better when I get them regularly. However, I am too cheap to pay for a fancy spa with marble and a steam shower. (I went to one with some friends for our shared birthday celebration earlier this year, and it was fantastic. I’m not knocking those. I’m just cheap.)
Our apartment was right around the corner from a day spa that met my needs; it was clean, the massage therapists did a good job, and it was very affordable. Then we moved.
For starters, moving involves stress and muscle strain. On top of that, it is disruptive to the schedule. So I’ve needed a massage more than I usually do, and I haven’t had one in a while. Then I spent an afternoon spraypainting our fence, and gave myself something that felt like carpal tunnel (holding down the button on a spray can is not that easy, it turns out).
A quick internet search turned up Urban Retreats. It’s not right around the corner, but it isn’t that far, either. The waiting area is a little shabby, but the rooms are minimalist in a nice way. My massage therapist was thorough both in our conversation before the massage, and in her focus on the areas most in need during the session. She also suggested a hot stone massage, which is probably a good idea, but costs enough that I’ll have to think about it. (On the other hand, it’s a longer session.)
At the end, I felt much better. In fact, I think it was a better massage than I got at the corner place in our old neighborhood. So I’m definitely going back to Urban Retreats. Soon, I hope!
-
Blog Action Day 2008
It’s Blog Action Day 2008, and the topic is poverty. Obviously that’s huge, and I don’t have any solutions to the big problem.
But I do have a small solution that each of us can try. Go to Nothing But Nets and donate $10. That will pay for the creation and delivery of an insecticide-treated mosquito net. Just $10, and you may have saved someone’s life by providing them with protection from malaria–protection they couldn’t afford for themselves.
-
Deep Thoughts
Tonight I was telling Mr. Sandwich how I feel like I’m caught in an endless cycle of nonstop activity. Get up, go to work where there is too much work, prepare for meetings (or actually go to them) for my alumni club, meet with the realtor, eat dinner, and go to bed so that I can sleep and start all over again. None of this is restful. Not even the sleep.
So I think I should try meditation. I have some music from Gaiam on my MP3 player, and in the past I’ve found that even a few minutes of sitting quietly can help me relax and let go of the rest of the day.
Now I just need to set aside time for meditation. And make sure that there are working batteries in the MP3 player. And find the MP3 player.
On second thought, maybe I’ll just go to bed so that I can get up and go to work.
-
Tour de France
It’s summer, and that means we’re watching the Tour de France. I have no idea who is riding this year; I haven’t really been following it, and I don’t recognize any of the names that I’m hearing from the commentators. Regardless, I enjoy watching it. I’m sure I won’t catch all 21 days of racing, but J will probably see the majority.
The doping scandals of the past few years have been really disheartening. I recognize that the stakes in professional sports (across the board, not just in cycling) really do encourage cheating. Yet I want to see athletes perform at their peak. It’s always disappointing when their peak turns out to be chemically assisted. For some reason, I was particularly dismayed when it became clear that Marion Jones had been doping.
The commercials are fascinating, though. We just watched a vapid woman decry “dating lines for older people who want to get married.” Apparently she knows the phone number for the service you want if you’re just looking for “easy fun.” Clearly, Versus gets all of the quality advertising.
-
Mission Accomplished
Achieved: two meatless days. This one was pretty much like the other, except that I didn’t realize until I was on my way back from hula that I hadn’t eaten any meat.
Oh, and instead of ice cream I ate a bunch of organic fake Oreos. They aren’t Oreos, but they aren’t bad.
-
Meatless? Aimless?
So today was the first of my two meatless days for the week. Here’s what I ate:
- instant oatmeal
- boiled egg
- cheese
- macaroni with alfredo sauce (from Whole Foods, in a box)
- pecans
- raisins
- yogurt
- Cheerios with milk (the dinner of champions)
- a whole lot of ice cream
Does it necessarily count as vegetarian, though? Or is it just a random collection of foods which does not happen to include meat? I’m not even sure if it’s healthy.
-
In-n-Out
I came home with a headache and didn’t feel like cooking, so we went to In-n-Out. There’s a lot of discussion about what In-n-Out does well, and generally I agree. However, there is one thing that–mystifyingly–they do badly.
The fries.
They’re so strange. Mushy and bland, and undercooked. You can order them well-done, but then they’re overcooked.
Plenty of people like them, so it’s entirely possible that it’s just me. And mind you, my dislike for them does not keep me from eating some of J’s when he orders them. But in general, I’ll stick to their burgers. Our sandwiches of choice? J likes the double-double with lettuce only, and I like the cheeseburger with grilled onions.
Since neither a nap nor the burger seemed to fix my headache, I’ve now resorted to Tylenol. In the meantime, we’re watching The Conversation. That will move one of the Netflix movies from the shelf. And it only took two months!
-
Well, That Was Exhausting
Yesterday afternoon, J and I drove down to Redondo Beach. The day before a race, we like to do a practice swim and practice bike ride, to get more familiar with the course. I suppose we could do a practice run, too, but that way lies madness.
So we got to the beach and I decided very quickly that if the surf didn’t go down by morning, I was going to skip the race. It wasn’t stormy, but the water was pretty choppy. I really didn’t think I could cover 1/2 mile under those conditions.
And I was probably right. The water was much calmer this morning–the waves were breaking fairly close to the beach, with rolling surges beyond that. It turned out, though that the rolling surges were much more rolling than I thought. In spite of the short distances, this was the toughest of the triathlons I’ve done, and that’s all due to the swim. The ocean was cold, murky, and dynamic (and it tasted bad–I don’t know what’s in the water in Redondo Beach, but it can’t be good).
When I finally emerged from the water, it was with the slowest time I’ve gotten (30 minutes in the water, and my official time will be longer than that)–and a charley horse. My calf muscle loosened up over the bike portion, but then I developed a stitch in my side. Everything evened out a bit during the run (which I walked all of, except for the finish chute), but on the whole I’m amazed that the right half of me was able to finish the race.
Of course it helped that I had a lot of support. My dad and stepmom and J’s parents came out in the wee hours of the morning to cheer us on, and after he finished his race, J walked the run with me. Interestingly, the run may have been my favorite portion. The company, of course, was excellent, but the course was fun too. It wound through the Redondo Beach pier and by the neighboring lagoon, which has been turned into a saltwater pool with slides.
After the race, we all adjourned to the Redondo Beach Cafe for brunch. The service was really slow, but everyone seemed happy with their various entrees. I was quite happy with the Kitchen Sink Omelet, which had cheese, avocado, ham, and onions; other dishes at our table included French toast, multigrain pancakes, a tuna melt, a chicken-salad croissant sandwich, and a French dip. The whole wheat orange pancakes and the crepes sounded good, but what I wanted most of all was protein.
In the end, I finished dead last with a time of 1:52:35–but I finished.
Not bad for someone who, after waking up this morning, was so tired that she couldn’t focus her eyes.
-
Contentment
The meatball sub was delicious.
I may be a bit too content, however. My goal for the evening was to pick out clothes to wear to my luncheon tomorrow, pack swim and bike gear for our test runs tomorrow, an outfit to wear to dinner with my dad and stepmom, all of the race gear for Sunday, and another change of clothes for after that.
But what am I doing instead? Blogging.