Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Wednesday Aug 31, Allergy Training Day

Today, I decided that no matter what temperature it is tomorrow night, I'm either A) dragging out the sleeping bag or (since Jamie is comfy with the chill and isn't likely to go with that plan) B) wearing my onesie penguin pajamas. Both last night and the one before I was cold! Vellux blankets are cozy and soft, but they suck at insulating- I constantly feel like wind is blowing through it. My froggy quilt is not full bed-size, and it kept falling off. And of course, I thought it would be a good idea to go to bed with mostly dry hair. Wrong! Damp hair is ice hair.

I was going to wear my new skirt today. It's a simple jean-like beige skirt with orange stitching, Jamie found it at Goodwill. I thought it would look super cute with my orange 3/4 sleeve butterfly shirt. But I guess I should start checking the weather, because it was too cold. It will be nice later today of course, but oh well. Jeans, sweater and windbreaker it is!

I had to get up early today to go to training for allergic reaction training. There was also a wellness fair, with various gyms, massage places, and doctor office people there. I found out that I'm at an ok body mass index- so not overweight, really, but I suck at fitness. They had me do sit and reach, crunches, push-ups, and 3 minutes of step-up-step-down to find working heart rate. That particular one was "very poor". I told the guy at sit and reach that if a cougar is about to eat me I was NOT going to be touching my toes in that particular moment. He laughed. Anyway, I wasted time doing that and looking around, because while I knew the health fair was from 8-12, the allergy class wasn't until 9. I could have slept longer! Oh well.

Simple power point and some cool expired-pen practice stabbing with an open-book quiz and I will now receive a card in the mail good for 3 years which gives me a prescription for one adult and one junior pre-measured epinephrine pens that I can have refilled four times. In case a student gets stung by a bee on the bus and has an all-out gonna-die reaction, I can stab him/her. All joking aside, this is a pretty cool thing to have handy, and its nice that this state does that. I found out each pen is somewhere around $85.
So I am now CPR certified and can use an Epipen. Yay!

Tomorrow I will also be getting up early and pedaling back over there to see Mr Bossman. The six or so routes which were available have been taken, but there are 3 unassigned now. I'm not sure what politics is preventing me from just being able to bid on those, but I can't right now. However, I will be driving one, and so tomorrow will be like the dry-runs in Jacksonville. Go through the route so on the first day of school I don't get lost. Sounds easy enough.
School starts next Tuesday!

I spent yesterday cleaning the road grime, bug guts and last of the Florida salt off my bike. Then I cleaned Tig's too. Her mountain bike had a years worth of dust collected. Hers now looks slightly newer than mine. Florida hates bikes and Oregon loves them I suppose. But, some steel wool should get off the little specks of surface rust and mine will be good as new.
The reason I spent some time giving them some love is that Tig said she'd like to go for a ride, and she thought it would be a great idea to go the route I needed to take this morning so I knew where I was going. Then they left for a little birthday get-together that I forgot about. I wasn't sure if we'd still go, but if they got back, I intended to have everything ready to go. I was really excited to do this, for some reason. Also, it was a great excuse to put my new present in action, so I got the trailer all assembled. Tires aired up, everything clean, I did laundry. Tig got home and zoom! off we went. Marty loved the trailer. She would make little nonsense mumbles over the bumpier sections to hear her voice vibrate. Towards the end she got a little cranky, but she found the toys we had in there with her. She had been awoken from her car-nap just before we left, so grumpiness was much less than expected. Tig said we needed to get the boys on bikes too.
It was lots of fun, though I had to stop just before the neat bridge to get some water. Even with the gum my mouth was so dry. She brought home really yummy clove gum. I think it's my new favorite. Of course, it isn't new- it's rather old-fashioned, she told me. Go figure. Jamie got home as we were stopped and we could see the stadium lights of the school I was aiming for, so we turned around and went back home. But it was a great ride.

This morning was chilly, but my little yellow sweater and windbreaker were fine for it once I got going, and I took the opportunity to wear my neat striped knee socks. Pink and dark pink! I tried, but I couldn't convince the girl on the bus last year to trade me her matching stripey gloves for my rainbow striped black ones. :P Gloves are something I might need sooner rather than later. It wasn't THAT cold out but the wind on my hands had them pretty numb in a hurry. Other than that and a runny nose, it was a lovely ride this morning. It always seems easier headed home, plus it was slightly warmer. I got to say good morning to a lot of nice-looking people on the way back.

I've decided I might not actually need lights on the bike- it gets light around here pretty early. At least until daylight savings changes again. Also: I want streamers from my handlebars. I might make my own with bead strands. Wouldn't that be neat? I wonder if they would flutter right? Or whack my wrist and hurt. I'll have to try that later.

And the best news: I emailed Schwinn and explained how my rear tire wasn't holding air pressure. Since the move, maybe because the temperature difference from night to day, I don't know, my rear tire is losing and needs re-inflation every few days, instead of once a week or longer. I couldn't find any bubbles from a leak when I dunked the tube in the kid pool, but I thought I must need a new one anyway, so I went online. I couldn't find a tube for sale that matched the numbers on my tube. I thought to order one from Schwinn, maybe. So I contacted customer service, but I had the idea to explain also how the bike was shipped with the wheel untrue and we straightened it and I'd been riding it since February. The lady emailed me back and...

they're going to send me a new rear wheel!!

So if you saw my comment on Facebook, that's why. No questions asked, have a new part. No receipt, nothing. Just name address, phone number and the model of bike please. I'm thrilled. I'll have a extra emergency tube in case I run over something sharp. She said the slight warp in the wheel itself could be what is causing the tube to not hold air. I'm not sure how that works, but I'll take it!

P90X sort of fell apart at the one month mark. Rest week occurred in conjunction with Val and Marty's birthdays, and we just sort of never started back up again. I was bummed, because for once I wanted to finish this, but at the same time this is somewhere around the 4th one-month stint, and I've seen no real changes in myself. I'm hoping that biking everywhere will do like I've heard it has for many people and be the exercise I need to slim down enough to really like my figure. Just a smoother stomach and legs please. I'm told cardio will do that, and I figure at least an hour a day (4 trips of about 15 minutes each, just for work) will help.
The impala finally decided that after all the work of hauling a camaro and two-dog family cross-country, it wasn't just asking politely for those new brakes anymore. It blew apart a brake rotor, if I heard Jamie tell me right. The camaro is now in service (which I of course am enjoying, I love that car).

Jamie has a job through LaborReady doing networking cable on the National Guard base. He's getting paid a lot more than he's used to, and its at least for another month. It's possible they might hire him permanently. Jamie is just worried that somebody is going to say one day "wait a minute, we're paying someone this much for that?" and send him home. Putting all that wire up seems to me to be a pretty easy job, from Jamie's descriptions, but then again you don't exactly want minimum-wage dunces screwing it up either. I'm happy for him and my own job starts soon too.

I wish we had little pot pies, here. I'm hungry and I want some hot soup or ideally a steaming pot pie. Mmm. I must go forage.

Hugs to everyone! <3

2 comments:

  1. Its not even Sept and your needing gloves and sweaters? I can't wait to see what your writing in January. lol The cardio excersize doesn't work when you do 15 mintutes at a time.. it has to be non stop b/c it takes the 15 minutes to warm up and use the stored sugars to start to burn the fat so if you keep stopping at 15 minutes you'll just be craving sugar more.

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  2. Hmm. Well it has to do something good for me to have to pedal all over town instead of only turning a key. I maintain my optimism.

    My little kid gloves worked perfect this morning. I figured being a thin knit the wind would go through them easy. My hands were not chilled today though, so they must work fine. I'm more worried that I wasn't able to find my leather gloves...

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