Rubbing in all the wrong places

2005-04-24 - 11:37 a.m.

For some reason recently I've been crazy exercise girl. I don't know what's gotten into me.

I actually didn't do anything at all in the exercise department on Wednesday or Thursday, but on Friday I went to Green Lake after work with the intention of running around it twice but ended up doing it three times just because I felt like it. So that's 9.6 miles and I managed to keep my pace to under 10-minute miles, which included stopping at my car after one lap to get a tissue to blow my nose, stopping because I had dirt in my eye so badly I couldn't crack my eyelids open and I was losing my balance, and stopping to retrieve a ball out of a busy street for a couple of little boys. So that was pretty good.

Then yesterday I finally took my bike out for a ride. I had the gear shifter fixed when my parents were here in March, but I hadn't used it since then. And I also bought a brand new bike rack that goes on the trunk of my car that I hadn't used yet either. I was fairly proud of myself, actually, that I managed to get the bike to the park without it falling off my car on the way there. So I biked from Matthews Beach in North Seattle on Lake Washington along the Burke-Gilman Trail to Marymoore Park, which is in Redmond, on the East Side. It ended up being a 36-mile ride, although it was mostly flat. And it was beautiful too because we've been having fabulous weather for the last few days. I was definitely tired by the time I got back to my car, and I'm still pretty saddle sore.

This morning I got up early to avoid traffic and went for a jog starting from my place. I've never jogged starting from here before. I ended up jogging up Madison to Lake Washington where I jogged along as close as I could to the lake until I reached the I-90 bridge. I've actually walked this route before, but that time I made a big triangle out of it. This time I just turned around and came back the exact same route making a giant '7' instead. I managed to jog the entire thing, albeit very, very slowly. This is especially noteworthy because there's a frickin' mountain between my place and the I-90 bridge. It's the kind of hill that you get tired just driving your car up--it's steep and it's long. And also round trip this route is about 13 miles. So yeah, I'm happy with myself for managing that.

Other than being crazy exercise girl, the other thing of note going on with me has been training on the tele service. By the end of the week I was able to handle 2/3 of the work load. Unfortunately, I had to skip lunch and stay late to manage it. And that last third is a big one. Although Friday there was a code in the unit that lasted nearly an hour and half (in which the patient didn't survive, which is always depressing), so if I hadn't been pulled away for that maybe I would've finished on time. I'm supposed to be able to handle the whole service myself by the end of this week.

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Ok, so it's now been about 8 hours since I started this entry. Tigger called me while I was typing the above and we talked until I had to go to meet Duke and some of his friends for lunch. One of his friends was having kind of a birthday get-together at a restaurant near the space needle and he invited me along. I felt a little out of place, but not too bad. Afterwards I walked over to Pier 66 and sat on the bench there in the sun and finished my book. And I was thinking that what I really need is a guy who thinks that 6am is the perfect time for breakfast and who would say to me often, "C'mon Euc, let's go read in the park!" Why is someone like that so hard to find? Preferably he would also be smart, nice, tall, non-ugly, and have a stable well-paying job. Oh, and under the age of forty and a good kisser would be nice, too. Wait, how'd I get on this subject?

Oh, one last thing, today, for the first time since I hung up my bird feeders several weeks ago, I actually saw birds eating out of one of them! I'm glad 'cause really I was beginning to feel slighted...