Payback

So yesterday I ran to the gym to a 45minute total body conditioning class.  It was over by 7.15pm and as I left I decided I was too tired to walk the 5miles home as I'd considered and would instead take the subway home.  I ran down to the L train platform and was fortunate enough to get straight onto a train that departed a few seconds after I boarded.  Nice!!  At Union Square where I transfer to go uptown I spied a 6 train from the concourse and rushed down the stairs thinking I would never make it, and triumphantly boarded and even got a seat next to a nice quiet man who was reading his book and keeping his elbows to himself.    Swwweeeeeeeeeeeeettttt!!!!

 

When I got off the train at 77th St and walked uptown towards my apartment it was a lovely evening and there was an abundance of attractive and well muscled blokes out jogging and wearing somewhat revealing outfits - you know those wife beater tanks with the really big armholes that show off their arms and lat muscles?  Hey I may have formed an unfavorable opinion of men of late what with some of their recent antics - more on this in a later post - but I'm not dead.  

 

Truth be told though, my day felt a little *too* good to be true and I was on alert for the other shoe to drop, however it was all fine.  I made it to my apartment without getting mashed by an errant cab or delivery guy cycling in the wrong direction nor did I fall through any precariously secured basement doors and when I got home I was even greeted by not one, but two checks for monies owed, one for $75 repaying me for the antibiotics I'd paid for out of my own pocket; the other was repayment of surf locker dues from one of my board locker buddies.  "Wow, I thought, between Arnold resigning (more on this in an upcoming post too) and having unheard of luck with the subway, getting to ogle some cute men and getting back money I'm owed sooner than I expected I am having a really good day."

 

Little did I know that payback was just a few hours away.  I got an absolute soaking on the way to meet Amanda for breakfast this morning to talk about the possibility of her coming to work at the agency as replacement for Arnold.  Admittedly NY1 had forecast heavy showers, but it wasn't so bad when I left at 7.30am this morning.  Sure it was raining, but it wasn't bouncing off the road or anything.  Nothing that an umbrella couldn't cope with.  Ha, I was so naive.  I was meeting Amanda at the Pain Quotidien on 7th Avenue between 17th & 18th Streets and decided that instead of taking 4, 5 to Union Square and then taking the L train one stop to 6th Avenue, I would get off the train at Union Square and walk to exit the north side of the subway station which would bring me out on E 17th St.  From there I would just walk the few avenue blocks over to 7th Avenue.  

 

Sounds like a reasonable plan right?  

 

That is except when I got to the north side exit the rain started coming down in Biblical proportions prompting the guy handing out the free Metro paper by the steps to the street to blurt out "Oh holy God" as thunder clapped overhead and water crashed down the stairs.

 

"Oh it's fine," I thought, "it's probably one of those heavy New York showers that's over in a minute, I'll be okay."  Ha!!  When I finally arrived at Pain Quotidien I looked not unlike this...

 

 

 

...my hair was soaking, my jeans were sodden, my supposedly waterproof coat had soaked through so the back of my cardigan was drenched and my coat literally dripped water.  After we'd been sat for an hour I got up to leave and there was literally a puddle beneath me and when I got to the office I had to remove and wring out my socks. Thank God I commute to work in my sneakers and keep my heels in the office and was able to put on a dry pair.  I dried out after a couple of hours, but when I first arrived my plan was to pick up my laptop and cab it home and work in pajamas for the day huddled against a radiator.  I was very conscious about my hair being a straggly mess and after letting it drip dry for 15 minutes I finger combed it and anxiously asked Amanda how it looked.  The response I got was most unexpected.

 

"It's quite sexy," she said as I stared at her stunned.  Drowned rat I expected, but sexy???  Never.  "It looks like you've just got out of the shower" she said.

 

"I'll take it...and you're hired!!" ha ha!!

 

Of course now after it had dried it didn't look so good, but the comment did cheer me up in the moment.  

When I left to go home my supposedly waterproof outdoor sneakers were still wet.  I sucked it up, but it was like wearing a couple of soggy sponges on my feet.  Ugh!!

 

Zero Dark Thirty

I saw the Zero Dark Thirty movie this weekend.  Amazing!!  I was telling my mother that I'd seen it when we had our weekly chat today.

"Do you know the film I mean?" I asked her, "It's the one about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden."

"Oh yes" she said "do they find him?"

That's my mother.  Finger firmly on the pulse of current events ;-)

Big mistake!!

I made a huge mistake this morning, do you know what I did?  I stepped on my scales is what.  Ugh!!  "Maybe it won't be as bad as I think it's going to be," I optimistically mused before I did the deed.  I'd been eating very healthily for a week and I'm back to exercising 6 days a week after 2 weeks off so I was stupidly hopeful it would have made a dent in my Christmas poundage.  Sadly the number on the scale was far worse than I expected!!  I'm not going to give any specific details, but let's just say it's 3lbs heavier than the weight I was when I visited Deesha the week after Thanksgiving - which was already 4lbs heavier than I wanted to be - and I am a whopping 15lbs heavier than I was when I last dared to wear a bikini, circa 2004, or the year that I accidentally lost 5lbs.  

Yes, accidentally!!  

The very idea seems completely out of the realm of possibility now, but at the time I was taking Pilates classes - although only 3 a week which is fewer than I take now - and going to salsa classes twice a week and while I was exercising a good amount I don't think exercise was the key, I think it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was out of an evening and didn't really have time to eat a more robust dinner, so for a year my dinner 2-3 times a week consisted of a cereal bar and the occasional slice of toast when I got home from class.  I didn't even own a scale and judged my weight by how my clothes fit.  At the time I was quite obsessed with Theory trousers and used to hit their sample sales at every available opportunity, I still have a few pairs of size 0 trousers that I can't bear to part with, but when I hold them up they look ridiculously small, like I've accidentally stumbled across a child's wardrobe.

I really can't imagine myself 15lbs lighter than I am now, as while I'm not exactly thrilled with my current weight I'm still comfortably a US size 2 - albeit a vanity size 2, equivalent to a UK size 8, although I'm also only 5ft 1, so fluctuations in my weight, even by a single dress size, are more apparent than I feel they would be on someone of a naturally larger frame - so the thought of losing 15lbs seems excessive.  7lbs maybe, but not 15, it feels unrealistically thin to me now, still my weight is bothering me at the moment and it would be nice to feel comfortable wearing a bikini again come summer, so I'm trying to do something about it.  I read in an Real Simple magazine at the dentist last week that the average American puts on 8lbs over Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I'm in good company.  I was commiserating with a work colleague this morning who claims she is 19lbs heavier now than she was this time last year.  We were both wondering whether it was old age catching up with us, which is an upsetting prospect as that would mean there's probably very little I can do about it.  I wouldn't mind if I was generally larger all over, but still in shape, but I'm not, it's all gone to my belly and my ham hock arms.  I looked down this morning when I was in the shower and I had to tilt my head to the side to see my toes.  Anyway I'm trying not to stress about it too much and just let eating more salads, vegetables, cutting down on alcohol and exercising regularly take it's course and hopefully in a month my jeans will feel less like they are trying to cut me in half.  Fingers crossed.

I think...

...that the fitness instructor who taught the 8am total body conditioning class this morning spent her holidays thinking up new ways to torture us!!  

Good God, I am sore.  Her class has always been one of the tougher ones I've taken - she does so many damn reps, at least 48 of anything - but today she excelled herself by re-ordering the routine - those 144 one legged squats she typically has us do off the step, 72 per leg, at the start of the class weren't quite so easy when moved to the end of the session - and throwing in a few new surprises, like the weighted side lunge with a core twist to work not only our inner thighs, but also our abs.  I'm acquainted with a few of the class regulars and this morning we frequently turned to each other to silently express our discomfort.  The end of class stretches never felt so good, although it didn't help that I'd also committed myself to taking a 10.30am Pilates class.  Yeowwwwwwwww!!!!

Love love love...

...Tom Odell...And he's playing at Pianos on the LES on Thursday January 24th for the bargain ticket price of $8.  Whoo hoo, I am sooooo going.

http://youtu.be/B4-OxOmsqR0

Friday night in NYC

Friday!!  Hurrah!!!  To say I'm pleased to see the back of this week is an understatement.  I've been lacking motivation these first few days back at the office in 2013 - happy new year by the way - it's just soooooo very hard to be there instead of laying on my parents sofa nibbling chocolates from Bon Bon while watching classic BBC drama series on TV.  At least everyone else I work with seems to feel the same way and it's not just me.  Unfortunately I do have to go into the office on Sunday to catch up on a few things, since I really haven't got as far as I'd hoped with an analysis I'm working on that's due on Tuesday.  It's partly due to my own struggle to get back into the swing of things, but a bigger reason is that I've lost some of the time I was expecting to have to focus on the analysis as I needed to work with my fellow team lead to come up a contingency plan for the department's upcoming workload after a member of her team resigned on Wednesday.  The resignation wasn't exactly unexpected, but transitioning the work across the existing team is a burden we could all do without since the team is already understaffed.  My colleague was already looking for someone to join her team but had been struggling to recruit the right person because our head of department continually vetoed perfectly good candidates who he claimed didn't have the right personality.  "I want someone who has a spark," he explained after expressing his reservations about a candidate that three of the four of us thought was perfect for the role.  Now we're in a hole and at risk of missing deadlines he's pretty much ready to offer a job to the next two candidates that walk through the door. In the meantime my colleague is having to borrow resources from my team, which means everyone is taking on additional work plus the two of us are interviewing as many candidates as we can which is taking time away from working on my client deliverables, hence the primary reason I need to go in on Sunday.  I was hoping to go in early this morning to get a head start, but I realized late yesterday that I had a 9am appointment for a teeth cleaning which put the mockers on the notion of getting to the office by 7am.

My resolution not to drink - at least mid week, let's be reasonable now - also took a hit last night as Deesha, my good friend who moved to Kansas City this summer, was in town last night and wanted to get a few people together, most of whom I haven't seen since I lost my previous job early last year.  Now much as I enjoy the company of the people who were going to be out I really wasn't in the mood for socializing last night since I'm still sort of on UK time, so I get tired pretty early at the moment, I'm exhausted from the work week and after the festive indulgences - we're big on the wine in my family - I really just needed a break, but after a lot of umming and ahhhing I coerced myself into going out and it was a fun evening, but of course I did not stick to soda water with a hint of lime, oh no, I excelled myself, I had 4 glasses of wine!!!  FOUR!!!!  Weirdly I don't feel horrible today at all, so clearly I built up a tolerance over Christmas.  "Ah whatever," I thought at the time, "it's just a one off, I'll just avoid alcohol this weekend instead", an easy enough proposition I assumed as the friend I was most likely to have made plans had to go out of town to attend the funeral of an elderly aunt, however when I got home Kim - who I surf with - had emailed to say there was a surf meetup happy hour on Friday and was I interested.  Ugh, I really wasn't, coming home after work and collapse in a heap on my sofa and eat healthy nutritious food while catching up on the shows on my DVR held massive appeal, however I like Kim a lot and since ours is a fairly recent friendship I was also keen to maintain the momentum we have going so against my better judgement I decided to accept her invitation, but I cannot tell you how happy I was when I got into work after my dental appointment and she'd emailed me to say that the surf meetup happy hour was cancelled!!  Yessssssssssss!!!

I'm going to totally sound like a grandma for saying this, but I'm so looking forward to going to bed at 9pm tonight and getting a good night's sleep before I'm up at 7am tomorrow for an early weights class.  Party on eh!!

Hurricane Sandy: Rockaway Beach Aftermath

I'm living a charmed life on the UES at the moment, I have heat, power, running water, grocery stores, bars, restaurants and gyms are open.  The only inconvenience is having to work from home - as the office is downtown and expected to be without power until Friday or Saturday - and not having access to the servers at the office.  It's like the hurricane never happened in my neighborhood.  I've offered up the use of my facilities to those I know who have been less fortunate, but the people I know who lived downtown were all able to stay with friends and family uptown and are all doing fine and the people who would love to take me up on my offer are all pretty much trapped in their neighborhoods.

To be honest work is the last thing on my mind right now, I'd rather be out there doing something to help, and yesterday I'd hoped to volunteer to help deliver meals on wheels on foot to some of the elderly people in my neighborhood as their usual volunteers were unable to get through, but my clients' patience with delayed deliverables is starting to wane and I've started to get a few "I know things aren't great on the East Coast right now, but when can we expect to receive...?" so the pressure is on work-wise. 

Seriously!!

I was interested to read a post by a woman who lives in Seattle but works remotely for an NYC based company on Jezebel about how weird it feels not to be affected by Hurricane Sandy when everyone she works with is struggling.  Girlfriend, you should see how weird it is to live *IN NYC* and not be affected by the Hurricane while just 3 miles south people won't have electricity until Friday or Saturday and are without cell phone service and out in Rockaway, Staten Island, Red Hook among other neighborhoods it's like a war zone. 

I've thrown money at the problem in the absence of being able to provide hands on help for the time being.  You can make your own donation through a number of organizations including the Red Cross and directly to an initiative to support the community in Rockaway via wepay "Relief For Rockaway".  You can also post a message on Tide's Facebook wall asking them to send laundry trucks and volunteers to help Rockaway and Breezy Point.

Thankfully after them being days without power I'm starting to hear from some of my surfer acquaintances who live in the Rockaways, who have been able to charge their cell phones via portable generators.  It's a huge relief to know that people are okay.

NY Surfing Buddies posted this photo on Facebook of what I think is Rockaway Boardwalk and a message that the NYC Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation will be aggregating info and updates to the NY Surfing community in case we can help in any small way.

Aquatic Apes and The Scuttlefish have a lot more photos of the devastation to Rockaway Beach and Breezy Point like this one of the remnants of the Beach 91st St skate park.

Oooofff more photos of the devastation in Rockaway here.  I really feel that the damage in Rockaway, Staten Island and other areas is being under-reported right now.  As these areas become more accessible I'm anticipating seeing the full impact of Sandy.  I really don't agree with the fact that they are planning to go ahead with the marathon on Sunday as this will divert vital resources that are needed elsewhere right now.

Photo from mercurialn's flickr via Gothamist.com

A friend just made it back to his place in Rockaway and posted these photos on Facebook.  People are pissed off at the lack of media coverage when the damage is this extensive and who can blame them.