Go See Hot Fuzz

I'm not going to write a review...just providing you a you tube of the trailer. It's a great British film from the makers of Shaun of the Dead...which if you have seen that...I'll just include that as well. Not for the kiddies but definitely a good movie for those of you that love intelligent parodies that don't go for the cheap laughs.

Enjoy

Hott Fuzz



Shaun of the Dead

Start of the second week of nights...

Well everyone I'm alive and well and starting my second week of the night shift this evening. It's weird keeping the schedule of vampires so I'm that I have to have "routines" to keep me awake which is good but also doesn't allow for a lot of tinkering. At the moment I'm able to stay up all night without much help from coffee or caffeine and also still able to get a workout in as well. I'm eating pretty healthy (no fast food or crap open at that time of night) and also getting some stuff done personally that is helping me as well.

The sleep schedule is still getting sorted out but for the most part my sleeping hours are from about about 10:30 am until about 6:30 pm which seems to be about right. Give's me an hour before bed to get any banking or trivial stuff done and give me from about 7 pm until about 11 pm to hang out with friends, talk to the family, etc. Overall it's a pretty good shift but they all tell me the second week is when it begins to break down on you...so I'm preparing for that.

The shift itself is pretty relaxing. It's less phone calls and more emails. But you definitely work a lot more cases. Customers in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) tend to be resellers of our equipment rather than direct end users. Thus they have money to afford competent engineers that also speak english and know how to get things done quickly. I've definitely learned a lot about Americans versus the rest of the world lol. American IT people tend to freak out and need their hands held...the rest of the world just do what needs to be done and don't complain. I suspect more that Americans are overworked at their jobs and their managers have unrealistic expectations (okay I don't suspect...I KNOW) and their European and Asian counterparts tend to have more people to help out due to cheaper labor and thus can focus more singularly on their problems. Either way...it's a LOT less stressful working with the rest of the world versus folks in North America (that includes you lovely canadians too!!)

So hopefully I'll blog more on the shift or just find other things to distract me. Either way I think I'm actually going to get a LOT more positives out of this shift than negatives and that's the important thing.

Also in exercise/weight loss news:

Down 1 pound to 212 lbs and can now run 10 minutes straight without needed a break!!

More to reports when necessary!!

Night of the Living Dead Aka My First Night on the New Shift

Well it's 3:41 am local time and I'm still awake. I woke up this morning at 10 am so I at least got a fresh 8 hours of sleep before this evening. However, I didn't catch a nap or something before my shift so it's going to be a rough couple of days or weeks until I can get somewhat used to this time. I've spent most of it trying to chat with my fellow zombies but we've been a little busy with other stuff as well...which is fairly repetitive...which of course isn't keeping me awake. I may take my lunch in about 20 minutes and hopefully I can find a way to wake up. I didn't bring any workout clothes or I would have worked out on the treadmill. Dammit. This is going to suck.

No Carol...this isn't the post you were looking for either...

Had to take a week off from running. Knees and back are too sore and I think I'm going to rest until Saturday and trying running again. Also I'm changing shifts on Sunday in which I'll be moving from 11am to 8 pm and will now be working midnight to 9 am.

Pros:

- Not too much work that time of night
- I avoid rush hour traffic and get to the gym when no one is around
- Will catch up on my reading and DVDs

Cons:

- I have to work in the middle of the night
- I have to work in the middle of the night
- I have to work in the middle of the night

In other news my mother's latest biopsy came back clean. So I'm relieved on that front. I'm still losing weight and still feeling positive. Can't ask for much more than that.

He's going the distance...he's going for...SPEEEEED

Well after going 2 miles last run tonight I decided to see if I could at least up the amount of time running during 1 mile and also see what my time was. Well I did a five minute run 3 minute walk and 7 minute run and broke the 15 minute mile barrier:

14:55

It's still a tad slower than I was running this summer (14:42) but I was running more than I was walking and that's a good thing. My previous best these past few weeks was 15:56 on Sunday so shaving nearly a minute off my run/walk mile in less than 5 days is a pretty good sign of improvement both physically, mentally and emotionally. I really was worried that I would either give up, physically break down or get distracted in some other way like I had before and never finish what I started. Although the BFL program taught focus, this is a completely different animal for me as I don't run...never really have learned the way to do it correctly or without hurting myself early on and it's almost like learning to ride a bike!!

Also I'd like to share my 1.5 mile times for each week so far:

Week 1 29:45
Week 2 29:00
Week 3 22:23 (estimated via the mile time 0f 14:55)

At the beginning of my 5k quest I would have been happy breaking 60 minutes in a 5k...now I'm seeing the possibility of breaking 45 minutes and possibly 40 if I keep up this pace. Overall I'm just keeping my focus on keeping the feet moving and finding a pace. Also found a great song on my mp3 player which perfectly paces my runs. Tonight I felt like I could have run the whole mile but I wanted to keep myself healthy for my run Saturday and not push it. But the song definitely helped keep me on track, didn't get me winded, but definitely pushed my body and strengthened the muscles. Faster than walking but not QUITE entirely running at a full gait. I'm hoping over the next few weeks I'll find was to stop shuffle running and get my feet further off the ground when I'm running.

Otherwise nothing new to report in the world or work or dating. I'm working with my boss to get a project or some other busy work under my belt to see if I can break up some of the monotony of my daily job as well as get some "raise" barganing chips :) I'll report more as I get the feedback. Hope everyone is doing well.

Sweep the Leg...

So I'm debating entering a 5k on May 19th. I'm holding off for the moment because it's supposed to occur about the 8th or 9th week of my couch to 5k program which will have me running somewhere between 28-30 minutes without walking which I ASSUME means I'll be good to run the whole 5k. Do any of you agree that this is probably the case or is that too soon to be signing up for my first race?

Also today I found a wonderful little nugget of joy. If you've seen the Karate kid then you'll enjoy this clip. It's directed by the actor who played Johnny the bully from the first movie. He not only directs but has a starring role in this music video in which he is joined by the a few the actual actor that played his fellow bullies as they live in a trailer, 20 years later, watching the movie, over and over again at the "Sweep the Leg" moment. It actually has another cameo by Ralph Macchio as well. It's a fairly entertaining clip even though I'm not entirely happy with the music.

Copy and paste the link below to enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFlQNtL8F9s

Sweep the Leg...

So I'm debating entering a 5k on May 19th. I'm holding off for the moment because it's supposed to occur about the 8th or 9th week of my couch to 5k program which will have me running somewhere between 28-30 minutes without walking which I ASSUME means I'll be good to run the whole 5k. Do any of you agree that this is probably the case or is that too soon to be signing up for my first race?

Also today I found a wonderful little nugget of joy. If you've seen the Karate kid then you'll enjoy this clip. It's directed by the actor who played Johnny the bully from the first movie. He not only directs but has a starring role in this music video in which he is joined by the a few the actual actor that played his fellow bullies as they live in a trailer, 20 years later, watching the movie, over and over again at the "Sweep the Leg" moment. It actually has another cameo by Ralph Macchio as well. It's a fairly entertaining clip even though I'm not entirely happy with the music.

Click the link below to enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFlQNtL8F9s

Sweep the Leg...

So I'm debating entering a 5k on May 19th. I'm holding off for the moment because it's supposed to occur about the 8th or 9th week of my couch to 5k program which will have me running somewhere between 28-30 minutes without walking which I ASSUME means I'll be good to run the whole 5k. Do any of you agree that this is probably the case or is that too soon to be signing up for my first race?

Also today I found a wonderful little nugget of joy. If you've seen the Karate kid then you'll enjoy this clip. It's directed by the actor who played Johnny the bully from the first movie. He not only directs but has a starring role in this music video in which he is joined by the a few the actual actor that played his fellow bullies as they live in a trailer, 20 years later, watching the movie, over and over again at the "Sweep the Leg" moment. It actually has another cameo by Ralph Macchio as well. It's a fairly entertaining clip even though I'm not entirely happy with the music.

Click the link below to enjoy

Disaster...and Redemption...

Well I hit my first "Ahhhh shit!!" moment in my couch to 5k program. On Wednesday and Thursday I tried running on the treadmill and my calves tightened up. I mean we're talking steel poles tight. I couldn't run more than about 30 seconds before I felt like they were on fire. I've stretched like I should, eaten banannas, taken my vitamins, my glucosamine, etc and all of sudden I feel like everything is about to come to a streaking halt. So I read up on a few articles, did some alternate exercises and more importantly...rested.

So today I decided to kick the treadmill to the curb and get outside. I ran my old route from this summer and did incredible. As I told you before I was at the 90 seconds run/2 minute walk week of the program and today I decided I wanted to just push my limits a bit. So I did 3 minutes of running and 3 minutes of walking. The first half of that felt great, the last half of it I was dragging but I did it. That's right I just kept my feet moving, evened out my gait and kept the pace and conditioning going. I'm sure I looked like I was dying to everyone that could see me but I actually felt great. Also impoved my 1.5 mile time from 29 minutes down to 24 minutes and 10 seconds. Also calculated my best run/walk mile at 15:56 so I'm confident that once I'm running the whole time I can drop that by at least 1-2 minutes before I'm done. My goal in the next two weeks is to try and do a run/walk 5k and just see what my time is. My goal starting this was just to be able to get it under one hour. So I'm hoping that's still a possibility. I think so.

My weight has gone from about 225 lbs from my highest weight in March down to about 214 lbs as of today. I'm incredibly happy about that, but overall the improvements I'm seeing all over.