Friday, February 18, 2011

back from the dead like i'm machiavelli

I'm going to try to go to bed early tonight - and before you laugh at me and say that I often say that and then end up staying up for another two hours, I will preemptively acknowledge your criticism and say that this time I shall prove you wrong (I think). I had an excellent day, though, and I'm eager for the weekend (even if the weekdays and weekends all blur together at this point). I made it into the gym in time for my ten a.m. training session with Alyssa, whom I adore more with each passing week. We did a full reassessment today -- while we had talked about goals and all that fun stuff last week, we had agreed to do the reassessment this week. The training programs they do are pretty effective, in my fairly unstudied opinion; she reassesses all her clients every six weeks to track weight, body fat, measurements, core strength, etc. We couldn't do measurements because all the tape measures had disappeared, but in the last six weeks I've lost five pounds, gained a pound of lean muscle, and doubled the amount of time that I can hold a plank (and that means holding myself straight like a plank on my toes and forearms, not holding a piece of wood). So much for feeling like it took me a long time to get back into things after coming back from Iowa -- or rather, if it did take me awhile, at least I didn't derail my progress too much.

After we reassessed, she trained me for the rest of the hour, I did a bit of cardio afterward, and I made it home a little before noon. I made myself a sandwich, caught up on twitter, and then proceeded to write for awhile. I had to take a break to run some errands, but I managed to write four pages this afternoon, which I'll take (particularly since I think they were decent pages, so I'm not worried about scrapping them). Around six, Tammy (aka Taaaammmehhh) texted -- she was in town for the day before going up to Tahoe with her boyfriend for the long weekend, and we had agreed to hang out. She originally asked me to meet her in Palo Alto for coffee before dinner, since she was hanging out in downtown PA with her sister -- but, since it was raining heavily and her sister had biked to downtown from Stanford campus, she asked me if I could take her sister home. I said yes, but the trip to get to downtown PA (which normally takes 10mins) was nearly doubled by an accident at Embarcadero and El Camino and another accident on University in the Caltrain underpass. It was raining quite heavily, and Californians can't drive in the rain, so there were accidents all over the place -- another reason why I'm thrilled not to be living in the city and commuting down here anymore.

So I retrieved them from PA, took her sister back to Stanford, and put my foot down over going back to downtown for dinner. Instead, we met her boyfriend at Left Bank in Menlo Park. I am uncertain whether I still like that place; my steak was tasty, but the service tonight was pretty terrible, and was not very good the last time I was there either. It was great to see Tammy, even if only for a couple of hours, and I'm going to have to make a trip to Boston sometime, since she's been out there two years and Claude's been out there forever and I still haven't visited.

After dinner, I came home, debated writing, and instead watched last night's episode of "Top Chef: All-Stars". I don't want to spoil it for any of you who watch it (but since this blog is mostly read by my parents, who only watch CBS and don't have cable anyway, perhaps it doesn't matter), but I will say that I found myself strangely sad to see someone go home tonight, given that I had hated that person all through their original season and this one -- but it was almost like a hero redeemed, tragically, too late to actually survive. And now that I'm seeing everything as a romance novel and finding stories in everything, it's clear that my hermitville is starting to go to my head. If that means it's easier to write, then I welcome the insanity. And on that note, goodnight!

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