RealFeel

AM sweat
gah! check out that accuweather RealFeel! i knew it felt hot out there. thank you, blazing southern sun + humidity!

i started my run at 9:30 today. from a performance standpoint, it really would be better to start my runs off much earlier in the morning. however, i have been trying to sleep as late as i can on my call nights, because who knows what’s to come? because i have learned that my pace really is legitimately affected by these temperatures, i am just running my interval workouts by feel and taking split times with a grain of salt (much like my high-volume sweat in the heat). i think i am starting to acclimatize a little bit — while i’m not getting much faster, it is feeling less terrible. baby steps!

apartment therapy, continued
when i posted about apartment therapy, a few of you commented with good — albeit conflicting — advice.

atilla remarked, “i don’t think either of you have the time for “apartment therapy” functional light and comfortable probably suffices.”

now, atilla went through residency himself — albeit a much more hardcore one than mine, and with the enormous added responsibility of babies at home. that said, he is probably right that we don’t have tons of time to dedicate to our surroundings. i’d rather spend vacations seeing friends/family than doing an apartment makeover, and i think josh would say the same even though he has big dreams for our abode. however, i seem to have time to

☑ blog daily, and keep up with my favorites in the blog world
☑ cook frequently, martha-style
☑ work out most days and train for things
☑ read most days for work
☑ watch every desperate housewives episode

so, one might argue that i’m not exactly killing myself over here. residency has its hard times (next month, for example, is going to be rough) but often it’s not so bad. i could perhaps afford a little more time spent on home improvement. but maybe not, since i’m not really willing to give up any of the above. and josh is a lot busier than i am.

cindy, also with several years of resident life under her belt, commented: “i didn’t worry too much about decorating in residency. you’re too busy trying to catch up on sleep, eat regularly and occasionally see your significant other. it really is a transitional time. when you’re in miami (i didn’t know you were headed there!), you can decorate/feng shui like a mofo.”

decorating/feng shui-ing like a mofo sounds awesome and it is definitely part of the plan for when we move down (farther) south. that’s 4 years away, though! i wonder if fellowship would be a good happy medium time for sprucing things up. we’ll have slightly more $ and potentially more time . . . and i don’t really think that another year with our current furniture is really going to do any harm.

aimee wrote, “I got totally addicted to the apartment therapy website last winter… to the point that I actually moved to a different apartment because I was unsatisfied by my previous one. I have that damn book. It tells you to do things like buy flowers every week and keep the toilet seat down. Meanwhile I still sleep on a mattress on the floor because my box spring would not fit up the stairway here. Save your money for a trip to Maine!!”

oh don’t worry, darling, i’ll be coming to maine in the not-too-distant future — see, your wedding is already on my ‘coming up’ sidebar! i can’t wait. i am glad that you too saw through some of the promises in the book. are fresh flowers REALLY going to make my life that much better, or would those dollars be better spent on something less likely to die in one week, such as this dress? then again, i suppose thinking that a piece of flowery fabric is going to improve my life is just as silly as putting my hope into the flowers themselves. maybe if the goal is truly to improve quality of life, the money ought to go to something truly known to be mood-altering, such as booze or prozac.

that dress sure is pretty, though.

finally, the wise anonymous said, “What if you picked one or two rooms (e.g. bedroom, living room) and worked on upgrading those. These would be manageable, likely to make a big impact and think of all the endless blog opportunities they could provide with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures as well as the work in progress ones. You don’t have to do high end, just modify with moderate priced items. The process can even help you navigate your likes and dislikes for when you are in your ultimate home.”

a sensible compromise: i like it! although the truth is that given that we live in a one-bedroom apartment, picking two rooms is pretty much the whole deal anyway. perhaps one room at a time would be best, or um . . . one corner of a room at a time. and of course, i love the new blogging frontier of before/after home shots! don’t think it hadn’t already crossed my mind 🙂

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6.8.09

workout: 45 minutes cycling. i woke up at 6 pm after a 3.5 hour nap and was going to bag it, but then i got a call from josh who was still 45+ minutes away, and decided to fill the time with some cross-training. as always, i felt better energy and mood-wise after 16.5 ‘miles’ on the stationary bike.

doin’ time: see yesterday’s entry for pictures of our BBQ feast! it was mario, not martha, and josh was the chef. we now have piles of leftovers and i am planning for a week rather low on cooking.

reading: an article on depression and suicide from this month’s peds in review. not the cheeriest material, but important nonetheless.

flossing: check. and in case anyone was wondering, my nailbiting days seem to have come to an end. it’s about time.