Category Archives: measurements

dorky calculations and categorizations.

mileage

now that the weather is warmer and my mileage is going up, I’ve put a static page in the sidebar with my insight mileage graph:

this morning my lifetime mileage was at 54.5 and my trip (current tank of gas) was at 60.1. I know if I drove slower I would get way better mileage, but, well, I’m just not very good at that sort of thing!

running

I don’t really like to run. Honestly, I love running fast and hard, like, in a pick-up game of ultimate frisbee. unfortunately that’s the kind of activity that caused me to break my knee so after that I HADN’T run for longer than 20 yard distances for roughly 2 1/2 years.

Enter last night: I’m super excited that I ran for 20 minutes non-stop. And at a pretty good clip, too, I covered roughly 2.2 miles.

And I never thought I’d start a sentence with the following, but here goes: Something I really appreciate about the treadmills at the gym (GAWD!) is that they let you put in your running time, and then on top of that “make” you do a 5 minute gradual cooldown. Which helped me turn less magenta and more bright pink before my yoga class, something I’m sure the instructor appreciated.

more gym stuff

elliptical trainer on 3/28

2.6 miles/20 minutes = 7.69 miles/hour

jogging on 3/29

was able to jog on the treadmill for 20 minutes, give or take. After not jogging for 2+ years (and not being any good at it before anyway), it’s amazingly easy to pick up again. I am really very happy with the resiliency of my body. it is one tough cookie!

walk: 1 min. run: 9 min. walk: 1.5 min. run: 4.5 min. walk: 2 min. run: 2 min. walk: 5 min. to cool down.

elliptical…

last night: 25 minutes = 3.24 miles (7.72!)
this morning: 20 minutes = 2.6 miles (7.69!)

usually (these times included) I set the hardness level to about 7.

faster and faster

I don’t know if I’ve ever really mentioned this, but when I’m working out, I like to go FAST. I want stamina too, but when I was trying to be a good runner it was all about the running as fast as I could for 30 minutes. And then I broke my knee. sigh. but now that I’m all working out again, I’m getting more excited about going really really FAST on the elliptical trainer.

so, sat. I did 3.84 mi/30 minutes on the elliptical (7.8 minute mile, I really can’t believe it!),
this morning I did 2.24 mi/20 minutes on the elliptical (8.9 minute mile).

sweet.

it’s the little things…

I had to drive to Camden today for a pre-bid meeting. at first, my response to the PM was “um… Camden is by PHILADELPHIA.” But it’s such a beautiful day today, warm totally windy, and sunny, and it WAS nice to be out of the office all morning. But this is the real cake:

Total Miles to Camden round-trip: 170.5 miles
Reimbursable mileage amount: $75.87
Trip mileage in swank hybrid: 61.8 mpg
Total cost of gas used at $2.09/gallon: $5.77
Total “because I drive a hybrid” bonus amount for my pocket: $70.10.

Totally sweet. If I went on a trip like this every month I would recoup the cost of my warranty (because really, the mileage is not just for gas, but the wear and tear on your car) in just over a year. Excellent!

The movies in my head. And what it was like to be Little Me.

I kind of stumbled into one of those movie sets in your head yesterday. I was taking the subway downtown to meet a friend for dinner, and it was late, I was running about 20 minutes late. I walked into the subway station at Grand Central and it was so cold outside that my face felt crisp and leathery, and once I got inside it was still cold enough to see my breath. I zipped in through the turnstile and then the lighting seemed to subtly change, and there was a man playing a mournful, beautiful, slow latin guitar. I heard him, but didn’t consciously recognize that he was playing until I looked down the stairs and saw the train I had hoped to catch zoom down the tracks and out of the station. There was a tear in my eye from the icy winds, and it started to run down my cold cheek as my train left and the guitar-of-missed-connections played softly in the background.

And then I walked down the stairs to the platform, and started walking along the tracks edge. There’s a game New Yorkers play where they walk really close to the edge of a crowded platform because they’re in a Big Hurry. I played that game as I walked to the back of the subway platform. And as I walked, I passed a different band of musicians. The platform musicians were playing Afro-Caribbean style music, heavy with rhythm and energy. So I walked faster, and as I walked a new train came into the station, one that was very close to the one I had just missed. So life goes on, no? and with heavily rhythmic music to boot!

Once I got on the train I thought whimsically how perfectly the last minute of my life had been choreographed. See, sometimes, in a city as vibrant as New York, you really do feel as though you’re living in a movie.

So, it’s still very cold outside.

Not so cold that I didn’t want to get ice cream for dinner last night, though. I love ice cream. I didn’t, because I have been trying so hard to watch what I eat. You know that 205? Well, I’m down to 200. Not bad for a week and a half, but I’m also thinking it had a lot to do with water retention. Ahem. And also, just to explain to anyone who’s not familiar with me, well, very skinny for me is 175. Because I’m very very tall, and my family puts on muscles like they would a t-shirt in the morning. (Ok, not sure what that means.) So, I’m not horribly obese even though I did a back calculation of my BMI and it says I should weigh between 143 and 179. That crazy BMI, it doesn’t mean anything! What kind of a range is that? A 36 pound range!

This weekend I’m planning on working on so many applications my head may spin. It’s going to be great. I don’t know if I’ll get them done, but I’m planning on using my handspring and my stowaway keyboard to work so hard on them. I sent out my recommendation information earlier in the week, and I do feel bad that now my reviewers only have about a week and a half to get everything done. I’m applying to 4 schools, but one of the schools is a joint program, so there’re two recommendations to do. Luckily, all but one of them are form applications with the same sort of brief essay question, so I do think the information will be one of the done-once, copied-many-times situations.

Been thinking a lot about privacy and what I’m doing with this web page. Mostly, I’ve decided to not think about it for a while. I wonder if I don’t have the ego to write publicly, because I don’t know how to react if people mention the site to me – I mean, I like it, sure, but … well, it’s like when I was little, and people would say I did something well. I craved that validation but I didn’t know how to accept it gracefully. Mostly because I didn’t really feel like I had done anything special, and also, because I was kind of insecure about myself, and any extra attention sort of overwhelmed me. So while I’m getting better at smiling graciously and saying thank you in the face of a compliment, I am also secretly wondering what they REALLY think.

Aah, my youngster insecurities. Still kicking, after all those years!

Happy weekend, y’all –

Corporate Cultures. Martin Luther King Jr. !

Happy Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

I am at work. Apparently, besides us here, there are about 30 people working in Manhattan today. The train was empty! The streets are empty! The drugstore is empty! Despite the cheesy subcontractor advertising calendars of choice, which mark today with a brown and a white hand shaking in apparent racial harmony, we don’t get today off. Sigh. I wish I did! We used to get lots of holidays off, including days that others didn’t get, like Presidents Day and Columbus day and Good Friday. Now, we get nothing. We go from New Years in January to Memorial Day in May to the 4th of July to Labor Day in September to that whole Thanksgiving/Christmas thing. Sigh. The good old days? Gone. And I love Martin Luther King Jr. Day! But none for me!

I was in a meeting last week and these are the notes I took:

  • can Mom be a freelance “landscape architecht” for the upstate office?
  • Gold mine remediation = mercury?
  • Body language during mtgs.

The last one is the most interesting. The way people sit in meetings is so fascinating to me – most of the guys in meetings, at least, internal ones, sit in their chairs with their feet planted on the ground, leaning way back, belly sticking out and crotch wide open. It’s kind of a gross, undignified position, in my opinion. I’ve noticed that most women don’t sit like that, mostly because it’s kind of inappropriate to flash your crotchal area around.

The prioritizer is a very interesting tool here, kids. You put in what you’re trying to prioritize, you answer questions (which of these pairs is better?) and it tells you what you think!

This weekend I went to Philadelphia for a friends party, and also, we went to the Mutter Museum. It was really neat. I looked for Grover Cleveland’s tumor, but couldn’t find it. Chief Justice Marshall’s bladder stones were on exhibit, though! His weren’t too large, but there were some really honkin’ big bladder stones. Like, as large as a tennis ball. Yar! The most interesting exhibit was on Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, where the muscles and other tissue are slowly calcified to bone. You could see where the muscles, especially in the upper arms, had been turned to bone on the skeleton. It was pretty neat, and also, pretty horrible.

So for like the first time in my entire life I’m counting calories. I hate it, but I also hate the fact that I am overweight. 205, baby! OK, so, I figure I should own the weight, and work for a change, and to do that, I’m posting it on the freakin’ internet. I’m nuts.

I’m supposed to go to a crafty night tonight, from 6 to 10, and now I don’t know how early I can leave work. It’s already 5:30, but I have a meeting in the NJO tomorrow, and so therefore I have to get all of this stuff done, and flipin’ CDs burnt, and El Bosso hasn’t checked it all, and I need to leave, like, in 45 min. at the very very most. Grrr.

Well, wish me luck!