I had been making progress with my half marathon training. At least it felt like I was making progress. Kabluey is playing in an outdoor soccer tournament near PGE Park, so I have been going to her weekly games and running at the track. As of Sunday, I am up to five miles. I’m happy about this because it’s about two miles more than I typically run at any one time, and it also puts me in good shape to do the 8k course at the Shamrock Run in two weeks (which I am doing primarily because the t-shirt is cool).

On Monday, however, my sense of satisfaction took a couple of hits. During a routinely boring morning meeting I asked my co-worker, who is doing her first half marathon around the same time as me, how far she has been running. She told me that she is up to nine miles. Fine. She is an over-achiever. I, quite possibly, am not. I can accept this. But then she said that according the training schedule, I should be up to seven miles for my long run.

A couple things jumped out at me in that statement, starting with “training schedule”. I know that there are a ton of training schedules out there, but I consciously decided I didn’t need one since it seems to be pretty obvious that in order to finish the race I just need to keep running more and more each week. It’s not exactly rocket science. But if I did have a training schedule, evidently I would know about things like “long runs”. Notice the use of the plural form of “run”. This implies that I should be running more than one day a week. Hmmm. As of right now, I execute one lone run a week. This got me thinking that I need to retool my regimen. Maybe there is something to these training schedules after all.

Unfortunately, any new-found enthusiasm for an increase in weekly running was immediately squashed upon entering the house on Monday night. I opened the front door and instantly my eyes were drawn to the living room floor, where I found this:

My sister gave me that hat not long after I moved to Oregon. It’s a great hat- nice long bill to keep the sun off my skin-cancer-prone face, mesh back so my head doesn’t get too hot, and it’s made up of my favorite orange and gray color combination. I’ve left that hat lying around for years, and never once has Riley even noticed it (I know it was Riley that did this. He of course has a long history of destroying my personal belongings. Plus, had Sigh done it, she would have meticulously chewed the hat into identically sized symmetrical pieces, then placed them all in a neat pile on my side of the bed with a handwritten note next to them that said “Give me back my mom or there will be others”). I can only assume that the reason Riley went for the hat on this particular day is because he overheard me the night before going on at some length about how much I loved wearing that hat while I run, and he thought to himself, if my mom loves it so much, it must be delicious.

So to sum up my Monday, I learned that I need to run longer, and more often, and with a sub-standard hat. This may be more than I can bear, but I will do my best to soldier on.

Tags: bad dog, half marathon

I am in the middle of a somewhat hastily arranged home refinance. I don’t know what made me think about refinancing, but the idea popped into my head while at work one day so I went online and looked at exactly one mortgage option from exactly one bank. I filled out an application and according to my calculations, if it all goes through my monthly payments will be about $200 less a month. Of course, my calculations are hardly ever correct. And if I take after my mom, who went through a refinance last year, I will somehow end up paying more than I do now.

One of the items on the long and irritating list of tasks that have to be completed before this deal is wrapped up is to get the home appraised. Because I am always looking for an excuse to work from home, I arranged for the appraiser to come by my house this morning, despite her repeated attempts to schedule it for Sunday afternoon. I had really, really wanted to clean the house over the weekend. I thought it was important to get it all shiny and sparkly to try to make up for the tiny blemish on the bathroom shower wall:

But I didn’t clean. The thing about cleaning, is that it sucks. It sucks in general and sucks most of all on weekends. So, as the appointment time for the appraisal drew near and I looked around my messy house, my head filled with dread and shame. When the appraiser arrived, though, my feelings changed.

She knocked on the front door which (rightfully, if you ask me) caused Riley and Sigh to bark and approach the door. When I opened the door a crack, the appraiser immediately commanded me to lock the dogs in a room, and refused to come in until I did so. And I can understand why. I mean, have you ever seen anything more terrifying than this:

So for the duration of the appointment, I had to shuttle the dogs from room to room (the appraiser waited outside on the porch during each of the relocations) while she did her assessment. I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs, even though this lady claims that she is only skittish because she was attacked by a dog a few weeks ago. As the inconvenience of dealing with this woman grew, I found myself caring less and less about the disastrous state of my home. In fact, I was more than a little pleased when she turned to leave the house and I noticed that a rather large tumbleweed of dog fur had attached itself to the back of her black pant leg. Serves her right for making my dogs prisoners in their own home (but I hope she didn’t notice it until after she wrote and submitted my appraisal).

Tags: Home refinance, Riley, Sigh

As of the writing of this post, it is Friday night. The weekend has started. I should be in a good mood, but based on the series of irritating moments that made up this day, my rage seems to be lingering.

Aside from obvious anger-inducing events like waking up and going to work, a few more things made today generally frustrating. I will list a few (but I will also try to find at least some bright side to each. I really am trying to be more positive when things get me down. We’ll see how successful I am…)

1. Riley pooed twice on his walk this morning. I only had one plastic bag. I had to find a stick and make a “shit kabob” out of the second deposit, and then walk very slowly and carefully for several blocks to make sure the kabob stayed in tact until I found a trash can.

   The positive: at least the second time was in a well-lit area so I could easily collect it all. Riley doesn’t crap in a pile. He spins around in circles leaving behind anywhere from 8-14 randomly scattered, shockingly small pellets. Usually, he does this in the shadows of a giant oak tree making it virtually impossible for me to find it all. I cannot tell you how many times I have returned home and found that the plastic bag is filled not with poo, but with acorns and clumps of dirt.

2. A one-hour meeting with the fake managers in my department (of which I am one), where any attempt to constructively talk about our actual work derailed quickly into talks of being over-worked and under-paid. This is not a rare occurrence, but for some reason it was more depressing today. I know we are supposed to be thankful that we have jobs at all. And I am. But part of me wishes that a company that is very profitable wanted to reward their employees, at least in some small way. It’s the same why I wish people with lots of money wanted to give more to pay for needed services. I don’t expect these things to actually happen, but sometimes thinking about it gets me down.

   The positive: the meeting meant I was away from my desk/computer for a full hour. And we were in the nice conference room with the squishy leather couches and the fireplace. And I drank a LOT of coffee.

3. Immediately after coming out of the meeting that left me feeling undervalued and unappreciated, I got a message on my cell phone saying I didn’t get the job that I had been interviewing for.

   The positive: On the message, the CEO said the choice came down to a couple people, and to make the decision he basically “threw a dart”. While darts is a fun game to play while drunk in a bar, I’m not sure it is a sign of confident leadership. In the end, I may have dodged a bullet by not getting this job.

4. I was forced to violate one of my most important project management rules- never launch a website on a Friday. This is the worst possible time to launch a site. The day is already the most hectic one of the week, people are tired and if something goes wrong that means you are working over the weekend to fix it. Today, we launched not one, but FIVE sites. It was crazy and bad and everything that could go wrong did. And I will be working to sort out some of the issues Saturday and Sunday.

   The positive: At the height of the chaos, I did an amazing imitation of New Biz Guy’s fake, schmoozy laugh. (yep, I’m really reaching on that one).

5. I signed up for my half marathon today. I signed Kabluey up too, because evidently I hate her. June 12th is the big day. Now I have to start running.

   The positive: I signed up for my half marathon today.

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Tags: job search, project management, Riley