Another new toy!

For the first time in 17 years of working, I had President’s Day off!
Eric and I had a wonderful weekend, full of Olympic watching, South Park watching, friend hanging outing, Parent’s Anniversary Dinner having, and one very long “quick” trip to REI for some sale shopping. And as mentioned before… no SIM playing.

I wanted to go to REI to buy 1 thing. A Heart Rate Monitor. My brother has been trying to get me to buy an HRM for a while, telling me how it’s the only way to truly measure your body’s effort and capacity, blah blah blah.
If you read back a few months ago, I decided to torture my physical and emotional self by going for a gymnastics workout. This was a reality check for me. I am not 12 anymore. I am 31, and have a completely different body then I did when I was young, and athletic. I may like to think that I’m still athletic, but when I'm winded from climbing the 1 flight of stairs I have to go up at work, home and at BART, hello… that’s not athletic! I’m out of shape. I have been for years. I bitch about the pounds and the inches and about how the new jeans that I finally gave in and bought a size larger, are already too tight. But do I do anything about it? No.

I still eat crap:
breakfast – tea with cream and Splenda(that’s something right?) and a bag of Cheetos
lunch – salad (with bread and cheese of course!)
snack – Coke and Cheetos (I try to limit this to one day a week, well at least the Coke part)
dinner – anything I can make really quickly or we’ll go out

I belong to a gym, but I haven’t been since last year.

A few weeks ago I bought a pair of running shoes (my last excuse to not run). I’m going to start running!

About a month ago, we started our Sunday mornings with a brisk walk around the park by our house, and then I’d try to run around the park as far as I could go, and then walked around again as a cool down. I built up to running around the park 1 and a half times. Then the next couple of times we went out I’d say that I wanted to just talk, or I had a cramp, or some other excuse, and we’d just walk…briskly mind you.

Then I got the HRM. According to my calculated optimum heart beat rate range for loosing weight & building cardiovascular fitness, I don’t have to do much of anything. Cause you see… I’m that out of shape! I walk up the stairs at home and the darn alarm is going off that I’ve already topped out of my range. If you didn’t know, the more fit you are, the more you can do without increasing your heart rate. So the fact that I am winded at 20-some steps, tells y’all that I’m no teenager anymore.

So last Monday, I ran, walked, danced around the house for 32 minutes while keeping my heart rate in my “fitness zone”. That little piece of irritatingly uncomfortable plastic is a total motivator! It even yells at you if you haven’t exercised in 3 days.

Of course I didn’t pick it up again until this last Sunday (because 30 minutes of dancing around the house and walking up and down the stairs, can make a person amazingly sore!). I found that if I speed walked (yes with the swinging arms and the wiggly ass), I could keep my heart going at my optimum rate for weight lose and cardio fitness. So we walked about 4 miles, which took a little over an hour. Woo Hoo!

Let’s see if I keep this up. Cheer me on! I finally have something to write about.

Simulated Redo Button

This last weekend was a glorious long weekend - Hooray for dead presidents! And even though I had prior consent to go off and play in my world of SIMs, I never got around to it. They continue to miss me. But it's ok, because the last time I played, a whole bunch of stuff happened that I didn't want to happen, so I simply didn't save the game and will get to try again.

They have no idea that my really smart and highly paid 20-something woman died, her mother died, and her stay at home boyfriend was obducted by aliens, impregnated and gave birth to a beautiful green baby girl. The 8ish year old girl they had adopted joined the family, so the boyfriend was having to raise 2 kids, care for the dead girlfriend's ailing father, who was hitting on the nanny, and go back to work, while trying to educate himself to get promoted (which you need to have friends to do, and of course he has no time for that). REDO! That kind of challenge is just not fun anymore!

I may not have found the Redo button for my real life, but I've figured out how to simulate one in the SIM world.

What to write about?

Everyday I try to think of something to write about. Sometimes I think of these wonderful stories to tell and then never take the time to write them down. Other times I want to write some random thoughts, just to record a bit about what is going on in my life today, but then again don’t take the time to write them down and they leave my brain, never to be heard from again. I feel bad that I don’t post more often. My 4 adoring readers check in almost everyday (per my site tracking, I CAN SEE YOU!), and they are so wonderful to never complain.

The trouble is, I will not write about work, so there goes about 80% of my material. We all tend to write about what is happening in our lives (fictional and otherwise). Our thoughts. Our dreams. Our goals of the moment. Lately I’ve found that I am overly obsessed with the work part of my life and hence can’t write about what is going on in my head.

Maybe I’ll write about my therapy sessions (yes I go to therapy, so stuff it!). Sometimes I want to write about my relationship but something in me doesn’t think that is wise. Maybe I’m wrong, since only 4 of your read this and y’all know all about everything anyway. I had the thought of taking pictures of the things I see everyday, but that idea got boring fast because I do the same things everyday, and the scenery doesn’t change, nor is it exciting. How many of you really want to see more pictures of my cats, Eric, my drive to & from work, and the oh so boring view from my cube. As one person told me, it’s time to get a new view!

My SIMs miss me

My poor poor sims, are stuck in suspention. I haven't visited them for a very long time. Luckily I have Monday off, and am planning to spend some quality time with them. No worries, I already cleared it with Eric.

Mmmm See's Chocolate

This morning Eric jumped out of bed with my alarm and ran to met me in the hall. He had his hands behind his back with a big grin on his face. The first thought that popped into my head was the same one that you all thought. This thought quickly flew out of my head because I had explicitly told him never to propose on Valentine ’s Day.

He handed me a 1/2 pound box of See’s chocolate, hand picked by him. He knows my love of See’s chocolate runs very deep, and although I am not a big fan of Valentine’s Day (corporate, retail, Hallmark Holiday, Blah Blah Blah,) I am a HUGE fan of See’s chocolate. Note I said SEE’s chocolate. Not your everyday chocolate bar.

I quickly opened the box to see the selection of tasty treats he especially picked out for me. This is something he has been trying to perfect since we started dating. He got almost all of them right. Although the See’s Lady put in Dark Chocolate Bourdeuxs instead of Milk, BAD SEE’s LADY! The one tasty treat which wasn’t in my favorites list was a row of Milk Chocolate Chocolate Buttercreams. I adore regular Milk Chocolate Buttercreams with the Vanilla center.

This is the most endearing part of this valentines goal of his. Every year he tries to very hard to please me with this token of his love, and every year, he ends up with one buttercream that I don’t really enjoy. He even asked for the right kind, but when the lady asked him “Did you want the ones with the Chocolate or Vanilla center”, he panicked and switched up his response and said the chocolate ones.

Now don’t anyone of you even start to think that I’m complaining. This man went to the store and stood in a long line to get me my favorite sweets. I love him so, and will enjoy and savor every single one of those chocolates because they are little bits of his love.

I love you, LOVEY!

Another beautiful day

Although it took me an hour to get to this point in my commute. It's views like this that make the drive not too bad. Of course I try to ignore the obvious layer of smog, but just look at all that blue!

Thank goodness I work inside an office and don't have to be subjected to all of that uncirculated fresh ocean air!

Oh the weather outside is frightful

View from my cube. I do believe that is sunshine out there.

Look at it! All that glorious blue out there.

WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING IN HERE?

Bad Place

Sorry all. I'm not really in a posting mood right now. I might be a bit absent for a little while. No worries, I just can't do it all right now. Check back for new pictures though. I think that may be a better media for expression right now.

Happy! Happy!

Offsite

Hello. You have reached the voicemail for Cherry. I am out of the office today, attending an our annual department planning meeting. We will be having lots of tasty food and getting to listen to a variety of interesting people speak about all the fun we have in store for us in the upcoming year, followed by a team outing dinner to Teatro ZinZanni. I will be well fed, but very tired tomorrow.

I'm sorry I have missed you, but please do leave me a message and enjoy the 100+ new (and old) pictures which have been added to my Flickr account.

Thank you and have a great day!

Diet?

I could drink the liter of water sitting here at my desk, but the can of Coca-Cola and Cheetos sounds much more tasty.

Trade Ya an Aria for Your Stuff!

A very cool article about my father was in the Contra Costa Times last week. I finally found it online. Unfortunately, the pictures included in the printed article were not included online. I've written to the author, Janice De Jesus, to see if I can get a copy of the photos and permission to reprint the article as it will only be on the Contra Costa Times site for a short period of time.

I am sad that the article does not mention that my parents actually met because of his desire to sing and to improve his voice. When my father came to the US when he was 14 years old, was when he was first introduced to western music (as he puts it). He fell in love with the opera. He would often sing while working, or walking to and from work & school, and would be told that he had a beautiful voice. Some people told him he should seek out professional training and this lead him to my mother. He was told of this woman who was the Minister of Music at a near by Presbyterian Church. He went to her and asked her to train him and she took him on as a private student. Eventually things moved beyond their lessons, and he proposed. Her answer, "Yes, but I can't be your teacher anymore".

I grew up in a house full of music. From my mom's piano, voice and organ lessons at one end of the house, and my father singing or whistling in the kitchen, to my brother practicing his trumpet & french horn and playing the radio & records. I hope my kids will be able to grow up in as musical of a household as I did. Perhaps we'll take off the headphones and share a little more music.