Ugh. Sometimes I can be dense.
Day’s just started for me and I’m already dangerously close to my daily quota of “stupid.”
Monthly Archive: November 2007
Quota of stupid
Trapped in an elevator
I feel like a hero!
OK, so not really, but I feel like I did something pretty cool. I parked over at Fairview Mall today on the 5th floor of the parking deck. As I neared the elevator, I could hear it dinging madly. Now, these elevators have a tendency to malfunction. In fact, they malfunctioned on me just a few days ago. I would press one of the floor buttons inside, and the car wouldn’t go anywhere. It just stayed put for a few moments before opening the door again. After having that happen a few times I just gave up and took the stairs. So, when I heard the dinging this morning, I was ready to just start heading for the stairs again. Before going though, I noticed that one set of doors was oddly ajar. I went to take a look at the crack and saw a young asian woman (probably in her 20s) trying to pry the door open unsuccessfully. “Can you help me?” I stuck my hand in and pried the doors open. There was a lot of resistance, but eventually the door gave way freeing her from the car. She thanked me and we had a good laugh at how silly the situation was.
It’s not every day you can free someone trapped in an elevator.
Running log: 2007/11/28
Today was my first day back running. It’s sort of just my luck that it’s a day that we were scheduled to do hills–six of them at that. It has been almost two weeks since my last outing so I was afraid that I was going to be a little bit stiff or rusty. A few people actually suggested to me that I only run 4 or 5. I agreed, because I wasn’t planning on forcing myself. I didn’t want to risk injury. I ran in my shorts, which drew a lot of comments from my group. I wasn’t terribly cold; my legs generally don’t get cold easily unlike my fingers. I knew that, so during my lunch break I wandered around Spadina looking for some cheap gloves. Sure, I was a little bit chilly at first, but I warmed up easily.
Hey, that reminds me…I just want to quote something from an email from the manager of the Running Room store in Markham. She was talking about cold-weather running:
Men, please consider wind briefs. Protect yourself from a discomfort worse than nipple chafing.
That is one awesome sentence on a multiple levels.
I had someone to run with for the first 4 loops, which made me feel less self-conscious. Yes, I know that everyone else had already taken the class before, but you know how it is psychologically when you’re running alone, right? In any case, I really appreciated her running slower to allow me to keep up. It wasn’t until I exclaimed that we were going to be lapped during the 5th loop that she said that she was going to try to go ahead. Heh. Well, why not? If I was capable, I might be tempted to run away from myself as well. By the end of the 5th, I was tapped out. No one was around me. It took me a moment or two to decide what to do, but I decided to push it for one more run up the hill. Sure, it felt really hard, but I made it. My hips were sore though. Nothing though that I can’t recover from.
OK, I’m falling asleep…posting this right now.
Arizona aftermath
Well, after all of that Thanksgiving food and the not-so-stellar eating habits over the past few days, I knew that I’d already gained weight. It was expected, but the question was really a matter of “how much?” From this morning’s tally, I’ve put on somewhere between 5-7 lbs. Oof! Well, the damage is done. What can you do, right? I just need to work a little bit harder over the next few weeks. I don’t think I’m going to reach my interim goal by year-end, but that’s OK. Why? I’ve got some great habits now, with a lot more knowledge on what I should be doing to achieve what I want.
Make sense? Hope so.
The flight back yesterday was sort of fun. At least, I thought it was fun. What wasn’t fun was the fact that we had to leave the house in AZ at 4:30am in order to make a 7am flight. You never know what security things you have to go through, right? So we left early to be sure that we wouldn’t get caught up in some weird technicalities. We landed back here at about 3:15pm local time and were back in the car by 4:30. Unfortunately for us, the timing put us right in the midst of rush hour on a rainy day. All that meant that we only got home by a little past 7. That’s craziness.
God, I’m so glad to be back at home. I missed my bed. I missed my laptop. I missed my TV. I missed my father and his occasional goofiness. I sort of missed going on Sunday long runs. On principle, I won’t say that I missed work, but I will say that I sort of missed being productive in one sense or another.
I did head to work today but I sort of think it may have been a mistake of sorts. All day I was riding on lower energy levels. I think I was still tired from the voyage yesterday (and rightfully so). As I spoke to coworkers, my mind was sluggish and I felt sort of drugged. Luckily my manager allowed me to spend a good chunk of the day just catching up on emails and such. I need to get up to speed quickly though because we have another release coming up in the next few days.
I feel like there’s just so much to do. It’s not like there’s so little time to do it, but rather, since everything has been delayed, I feel like there’s just a bit more urgency to clear the queue, know what I mean? Well, I won’t stress about it too much–I shouldn’t. However, I just know that I need to put in the effort.
Tumbleweed tip
Just as a public service, I wanted to write about this.
If you’re ever on an Interstate and you encounter a huge ball of tumbleweed rolling right toward you, just keep on driving. Do not attempt to swerve to avoid having it hit your vehicle! Doing that is simply dangerous since you suddenly increase the chance of losing control of the car while making a move. As well, swerving can confuse other drivers or cause them to react in turn in an unexpected manner. Instead, it is best to simply hit the tumbleweed head on; it doesn’t stand a chance against your heavy vehicle!
—
I saw my first big tumbleweed on I-17. This huge ball of debris just came rolling out of nowhere and the truck rammed right into it blowing it to smithereens. I thought it was absolutely awesome and was laughing out loud for a good minute.
Go search for “tumbleweed turmoil” on YouTube. Fun stuff.
A bit of sightseeing
What do you do when you’ve got limited time to get to several tourist spots that are several hours away and are only good for viewing when it’s still daylight? You rush like mad! The family wanted to head over to the Grand Canyon as well as Sedona to see the red rock cliffs. Thing is, the Grand Canyon is 5 hours away from where we’re staying. We only had one day to fit it all in, so…it was one crazy day. We went there with the family of one of my aunt’s friends. So, eleven of us went out there on a long road trip.
We left at 8 and arrived as expected at 1pm. The Grand Canyon is simply mind boggling. The sheer size of it makes you feel so insignificant. I dunno. This was one of the places that I’d only ever heard or read about. In my mind, it was only a piece of the world that was off in some distant land. I didn’t even imagine that I’d see something like that with my own eyes. So, actually being there sort of places me in a different frame of reference, know what I mean? Seeing something like this is just outside of my realm of existence.
Anyway, when we arrived, we parked at the first lookout point. When we stepped out of the van, we were all shocked at just how cold it was. I mean, it’s so (relatively) hot in Phoenix. Up at the Grand Canyon we needed jackets. It makes sense being that it’s around 7000 ft above sea level at the south rim. Some of us wanted to see that glass floor thing, but that’s at the north rim. If we wanted to go there, that would’ve have needed another 2-3 hours of travel time which is time we don’t have. It would actually require going right around the whole canyon.
The cold weather actually did us in. Some of us couldn’t take the cold bitter wind. So, after a lot of pictures, instead of hiking some more and exploring the area we just headed back to the van. I don’t think we were there for more than half an hour. It sort of seems like a waste, but really I’m just thankful to have seen and taken in all that natural beauty. It was so overwhelming.
All things considered, we needed to get moving anyway. They wanted to get to Sedona, which is about 1.5-2 hours back toward Phoenix, and that’s really only great when there’s light. When we got to Sedona it was already close to 4pm. The sun was already on its way out, but the late afternoon conditions really made the redness of the moutains look all the more amazing. Man, I swear it looks like those mountains were painted. They’re unbelievably awe-inspiring. Seriously. I can’t even properly describe it. I took a lot of pictures with my aunts’ cameras but I won’t have access to them for a while. I took some pics with my cell phone, so many I’ll post them here in a few days if they’re any good.
We stopped by a church that’s carved out of the rock. It’s called the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Man, that place is deeply moving. The combination of the location, the sunset, and the general aura of the place really hit home. By the time we left the church, the sun had just about set, and that really concluded our sightseeing. The group of us headed to a restaurant and had a great dinner before heading home.
The trek home took another three hours. The highway out of Sedona was ridiculously dark, hilly, and curvy. My uncle was driving and handled everything quite well. I was seriously a little bit concerned. I mean, one false move, one lazy moose, one unexpected curve would have put us in grave danger. What superseded the concern though was just being in such an exciting place where the unexpected could happen. By the time we got to the Interstate there was a bit more lighting, at which point I just decided to nap for an hour or two.
So, I now have all my sightseeing out of the way. I’m heading back home in a few hours. I enjoyed my stay here. There’s just so much natural beauty all around me here in AZ. However, it can’t replace home. I think it’s about time now to be back.
Soon. Very soon.
An early departure
Last night it was agreed by everyone that we needed to get out of here by 8am (if not earlier). It’s a 4-5 hour trek up to the canyon from where we are. Holy crap, that’s going to be a long ride. One of my aunts in particular was really stressing the early departure repeatedly. Anyway, I set my alarm for 6am figuring that it provides enough buffer time. As I slept, I started hearing footsteps and rushing water through the pipes. I checked the time on my cell and it said that it was only 5 in the morning. Seems that people are already up and about. They’re pretty darn excited.
I still need to shower and pick out something to wear, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m spending some time though regretting that my mom and I forgot the camera and video camera. This would have been a fantastic thing to record and bring back to dad. My aunts said that they’d get a lot of pictures for us…but it’s not the same, you know?
Alright. Enough procrastinating. On with the show!
Blood and clothing
Today we spent a few hours shopping. There are supposed to be a ton of good deals to be had out there on this day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately for me, I was sort of tied down to where my aunts wanted to shop so I didn’t really get to sniff out anything unbelievable. Even so, I got a lot.
Oh man. Something pretty bad happened to me in the fitting room. This involves blood, so skip over to the next paragraph if you can’t take that sort of thing. So…after trying stuff on, I could feel something starting to drip from my nose. I got a freakin’ nose bleed. This dry weather has been really rough on me–especially in conjunction with my meds. I was trying to balance getting my pants back on and tying my shoe laces with not getting blood all over the place. My hands were getting covered in red. It was pretty gross. I couldn’t touch any of the clothes in that I brought in. So, without any options, I ended up wiping my hands all over the t-shirt I was wearing under my collared shirt. The blood kept coming, so I kept using my white shirt as a way to wipe my hands. That was pretty rotten. Eventually it stopped, and I tried to hide my hands as I got out. I left my clothes with one of my aunts then hustled to the restrooms. I don’t think anyone noticed, but I certainly felt embarassed. I had to go around for a few hours hiding a bloodied shirt which made me look like I’d participated in some sort of gruesome crime scene.
Anyway, I did end up buying some good stuff. Today I purchased three good pairs of pants, a shirt, track pants, and some boxers. It all came out to about US$130 which isn’t bad at all. After swiping my Visa, the cashier asked if I wanted it charged in US or Canadian dollars. I guessed the CAN$ was at around US$1.02, but thought that there would be a small charge for conversion, making US the better deal in this situation. In any case, even if I’m wrong, it’s a tight race anyway so the difference won’t be that much.
Seems I’ve purchased a lot of clothes here. The other day, I got two shirts, a suede jacket, socks, and shoes for just over $100. I’ve been complaining that it’s about time I phase some stuff out of the closet, so shopping like this is valuable to me.
Tonight, one of my aunt’s friends/neighbours invited us all over for dinner. She’s got good friends. Urggh. More eating though. Tomorrow, we’re going to head to Sedona/Grand Canyon. Busy busy busy!
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