silvergirl's Journal

worst challah making experience ever
1. I woke up very early and thought I'd start (it's a 7 hour process, so the earlier the better.) But then I remembered I had no eggs, and no stores open until 8.

2. Due to other engagements, I don't get started until 1pm.

3. I'm too tired to handle the grocery store, so I go the little convenience store and buy eggs.

4. I get home and find out I don't have enough yeast.

5. I suck it up, go to the real grocery store and get yeast.

6. I go to put the yeast away and find the yeast I already owned.

7. I begin the bread making process.

8. The transformer I need to run my mixer dies.

9. I go back to the street that has the grocery store to buy a fuse for the transformer. (Thanks to Janice for teaching me that transformers have fuses and when they break you don't need to replace the whole transformer.)

10. I come back, and realize that the plate that holds my bowl to the mixer itself has lived out its long and useful life, and now the bowl spins out of control if the mixture is too dense/sticky.

11. The bread dough falls into the dense/sticky category.

12. At 3pm I start kneading by hand.

Aaaargh! This bread better turn out tasty, is all I have to say.

daily dash
today I really didn't want to go running. My partner arrived, so I had no choice (yay Rebecca!), but I kept it to 30 minutes and didn't force the pace. I'm proud of myself for going, and running the whole way.

2.3 miles 12:58 min/mile

HR: 151/168

procrastination: some...under half an hour

days since last exercised: 1

I've been really good about exercise recently! Not that it is resulting in weight loss, but still, go me.

sneaker count: 27.5

I'm cranky. This is partly because I was sick most of the night (entirely my fault, screwed up my meds), and partly because I gave blood today and it took approximately a bajillion times longer than I thought it would and means I can't climb tonight, and partly because I'm cranky. I'm going out for sushi and miso soon with Roomie, so maybe that will help.

I have only one letter left on the chuppah, hooray! Then I get to start working on the central design, which I am extremely excited about. I think probably tomorrow this will commence. I'm super psyched.

I also got a tutoring gig! I'm helping someone with an online course in finite mathematics. My help is in person, the course is online. (People I told kept getting confused about this.) Finite mathematics appears to be a grab bag of subjects that are not calculus. I'm pretty confident about my ability to teach it. And because the course is in English, I don't have to learn new vocabulary. Score!

Now if only I could find a real job.

daily dash
3 miles 12:18 min/mile

this time I specifically tried to go at a faster pace, I succeeded, but it was extremely frustrating. I don't feel a difference in pace until the difference is significant, to the point that I can't keep up the faster pace for the length of the run. But the delay on my watch meant I was constantly responding to a pace from a little while back - at least I think that was what was happening. I think next time I'll try looking at average pace. Though the very next time I don't plan to worry about pace - this one was enough for a while.

HR: 151/162

My latest theory is that the heart rate is related to temperature. It gets higher in the heat. Don't know for sure though. I checked back through my records, and my average is about the same as it usually is, except for the summer, and the max during the summer is much higher. I guess it isn't that important.

Procrastination: none. my friend came and picked me up, and away we went!

days since I last exercised: 2

My shoulder has been bothering me ever since I did something weird to it when climbing, over a month ago at this point. It seems to greatly depend how I sleep on it how it feels the next day. I'm going to have to figure something out about that. It's no good, and I don't want to end up with a permanent injury.

as for sushi - now that I have a steady running partner, I'm not sure how relevant it is. I did have sushi recently though - yum!

sneaker count: 25 miles

a good book
After just updating

silvereader's book blog, I realized I have only blogged about 6 books since the beginning of this year. There were a few books I read and didn't blog about, but still - I used to be such a big reader, what happened? I think what happened is the computer. I spend too much time online, chatting and who knows what, and not enough time reading. I need to change this. She says, typing on the computer. I do know there was a time I read every night before bed and now I chat before bed. Maybe I should try to turn this around. So...I guess I'll go now and read a book.

daily dash
3 miles, 39 minutes 13min/mile

HR 150/165

procrastination: an hour, which is impressive when you realize I was going with someone else.

days since last exercise: 2 - one planned day off

3 miles, up from 2.5, yay! And my shins behaved themselves, though I seem to be going slower over time rather than faster, and my HR keeps getting lower. I'm not sure what my deal is. When I was spinning, I'd go as hard as I could, until I felt I physically had to slow down, and yet I didn't break 165. What is going on?

sneaker count: 22 miles

I'm sorry, I know all I've been posting about is exercise - not much is going on in my life. I'll try to come up with something more interesting soon.

spinning!
I just got back from my first ever spinning class. It was exactly how I thought it would be. At the beginning, the instructor asked a different girl if she'd ever done this before, and the girl said no. The instructor threw her out of the class because apparently you need one on one intro before you're allowed to play with others. I decided to keep quiet and hope I didn't kill anyone. How hard could it be? You pedal, you adjust resistance, you stand up, you sit down. In fact I was right, that's about the extent of it. She never noticed I had no idea what I was doing. The only thing is I can't manage the "jumps", wherein you stand up and sit down quickly. I begin to feel in danger of losing my ability to have children. But the great thing is, you can follow as much or as little of her instructions as you like, so I just opted out of that part. I didn't like her all that much - she yelled in a way that I did not find inspiring, and the music was too loud, but it was an excellent workout, so I am very happy.

I will have to see how often I go, and then decide whether to get a multi use card or whether to keep paying as I go, which is pricier. But not as pricey as getting a card and not using it. So we'll see. Regardless, two good workouts in two days, excellent!

daily dash
25 miles 12:25 min/mile

HR: 155/182 but I think my monitor might have spazzed for a second or two

procrastination: none, my friend came to pick me up. Yay Rebecca!

Days since last workout: 2

sneaker count: 19

my shin hurt a bit, which worries me. I did some toe raises (not many, as they made it hurt more) and am icing. Hopefully it won't make itself a problem.

daily dash
As the geeks say, today's run was made of fail. I went 20 minutes and just stopped. Even though I had a running buddy!

1.6 miles 12:48 mile/min (includes a bit of walking)

procrastination: 1 hour

heart rate: 152/164 (includes the walking)

days since last workout: 2

sneaker count: 16.5

climbing to the rescue
I went climbing, and I feel soooo much better. My shoulder behaved, which is a big relief. Oddly, my back hurts a lot - I'm not sure what that's about, but whatever, it isn't new.

Part of it is that I feel better, and part is my relief at feeling better. It's so hard to know at the start if the depression if it's a matter of a few hours or the beginning of an episode. I'm really worried with the unemployment at all - I feel like this is a high risk time. I think climbing is crucial to my staying well. Running would help too, but it's much harder for me to get myself to do it. There was no way I was going running today, but climbing I managed to get out and do.

I didn't get the red route today. I've noticed that happens when I take a week or more off - I can really feel it. I needed it, thanks to the shoulder, but I can still feel it. To me, that means I am training well, if I can feel the difference after a week off.

Next month, when I have money, I will look into taking a course to teach me more climbing technique. (Somehow, this month, I have NO money.) I figure I will ask the cute redhead who works there who I'm pretty sure likes me. He wasn't there today, sad, but I'm sure he'll be there next time. Gives me an excuse to talk to him also.

p.s. I accidentally went out wearing two different colored socks.

Ugh, I'm depressed. It was bound to happen with all the unemployment and lack of things to do. It looks like I may have a tutoring gig, which would help both in terms of things to do and monetarily. I thought I had a babysitting gig too, but it turns out I'm only one of a number of people she's talking to, and I'd imagine there are people out there with a lot more experience than me. (I have hardly any with infants and that was years and years ago.)

I looked at multinationals today. It's hard for me to figure out if various ones have a lab in Israel, or just an office. I have to call a bunch of places and I don't want to. I'm putting it off until tomorrow.

Meanwhile I'm officially not a student anymore. Yay?

pictures of pictures
I finally, after a year and a half of living here, put pictures up in my room. And here are pictures of them!!

( picture heavy )

daily dash
2.5 miles, 12:30/mile (it felt faster. odd.)

sneaker count: 15 miles

too tired to do the rest of it.

(I'm trying to go off coffee, hence the tired.)

conquered!
My climbing improved! I completed a route today that I couldn't have imagined completing a few weeks/months ago. It had an overhang, which originally I couldn't get over. Eventually, using all the holds available, not a particular route, I made it over the overhang, but couldn't reach the top. Then I could reach the top, but still using a rainbow of routes. And today, it was all red, all the way up. Hurray!

backing up my computer
Usually I am extremely lax about backing up my computer. (No lectures please.) But at the moment, my computer seems to be on its last legs, so I've been backing up regularly. But I don't really know how. My method is to copy the My Documents folder from my computer to my external hard drive. But I don't want a thousand copies of the same stuff, especially given the finite dimensions of my memory space. So when it asks if I want to overwrite, I say yes. This is fine if I am saving new stuff, but what if a file became corrupted, and now I'm merrily writing the corrupted file over the good one? What I actually want is for the computer not to copy anything where the files are identical, and make a new version if the file is different in some way. Is there a way to do this without spending hours doing it manually? Help please!

daily dash
sneaker count: 12.5 miles

2.5 miles, 30 minutes

11:56 min/mile (30 seconds faster than last time)

HR: 158/174 - more what I expect when I work out

procrastination: hard to say. I was originally planning on going to a hip hop class today, but my friend Janice pointed out I'm supposed to be at a bat mitzvah celebration at that time. So then I was going to go to a spinning class earlier. So I wasn't planning on running. But then Janice wanted me to come over, and I guess I said I would, though in my head I said I might. So Janice lives right near the synagogue, whereas I live right near the gym. So if I went over, I'd be walking the same route four times today, which is just annoying. So it made more sense to go running now and then go over there and stay until the party. And Janice was pretty annoyed with me that I hadn't shown up yet, so that propelled me out the door. So anyway, yeah, I don't know.

Days since last workout: 3. I went climbing on Thursday.

Runs until sushi: 2

randomness of the day
A woman I've never seen before knocked on the door to ask my opinion on whether she should spay her cat. She was wearing a large pink sunhat.

That is all I have to say on the subject.

daily dash
30 minutes - 2.4 miles (.2 miles more than the last time I ran 30 minutes)
12:25 min/mile - over 1 minute faster per mile than the previous run!

I tried to stop about 200 feet in, but convinced myself to keep going, and things definitely improved. It was a good decision.

HR: 149/164 - I'd still like it to be a bit higher. I tried adding in a few sprints, and that definitely helped, but also tired me out, so that I ran slower (and slower HR) the second half of the run. Still, I think it was worthwhile. I tried picking up the general pace, and that was not successful.

procrastination: 1 hour - I'm unemployed, there's not much else to do!

days since last exercise - 1! I climbed yesterday, and went to a gym class on Sunday (I wasn't impressed - I picked the wrong one - it was for tummy thighs and tushie, which it did work out, but it wasn't aerobic in any way - my HR stayed the same as when I was walking over there.) So that brings me to a total of 3 so far this week, with three more days still to go!

runs until sushi - 3

sneaker count: 189.5

though, really that isn't true - as I got new sneakers. So, I guess I have to start over. Not sure at what point I switched... so I'll start at 10 and go from there.

sneaker count: 10

Current Mood: happy

not a happy camper
I got on the bus to go climbing, and when I got there, (which includes quite a bit of a walk) the gym was closed because Beitar Yerushalayim (Jerusalem soccer team), which I hate anyway, was having a game, and the gym is in the basement of their stadium.

So then I got back, and stepped on a tack. Really hard. When I picked my foot up, the base of the tack was at the level of my skin. Just like a bulletin board. Only it was my foot.

And it seems Artemis is sick.

Good thing someone called me today, otherwise the whole day would have sucked.

first callback!
I got a call from Teva - a major pharmaceutical company in Israel. They want to talk to me about my resume. Unfortunately they called while I was on a bus, and then when I called back, the woman I needed to talk to was busy, but still, soon we will hook up, and meanwhile, someone called me! I realize there is a big jump from them calling to them offering a job, but it is still nice to know someone realizes I am alive and out there searching for work.

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