June 2006 Archives

...using the treadmill for a little while.

I never thought I'd be bummed about being told not to exercise.

Back in April 2005, I tore/ripped/twisted did something to my left calf muscle. Shortly after that was healed, my left Achilles started to be really stiff in the morning. As I walked around though it started to feel better. A month or two later, my right one started in. I was really stiff in the mornings and after sitting for long periods of time.

I've been putting up with this for over a year. I just figured I was getting old and out of shape and after walking around it felt better. Well with my increased use of the treadmill, the left one has started to become more and more painful. It would tighten up while on the treadmill and it was getting more painful.

I decided to go to the doctor's about it, but even as I was sitting there, I was thinking how ridiculous this was for me to be complaining about a little pain. The real reason I went was because I'm terrified of experiencing the kind of pain I experience when I injured my calf again.

The good news is I'm not going to tear or break anything. The bad news is both of my achilles tendons are very tight and inflamed. The other bad news is I have to stick to low impact exercise the next few weeks -- swimming (still have to figure out how to get pool passes), yoga, and strength training I can do. But I need to stay off the treadmill. Maybe I'll try biking. But al of that requires being outside and this morning, you were out for two minutes and covered in sweat. Yuck!

One weekend, 6 agility runs, 1 ribbon.

Saturday morning started with Cisco's open jumpers run at the PVGRC's Agility Trial in Westminster, MD. Cisco was pokey going through the weave polls but ran clean at .05 seconds over course time. They round it down, so we ended up with a clean run and second place ribbon.

Next came Berkley's novice preferred jumpers run. My little speed demon ran beautifully knocking down two bars towards the end of the run. People said they could see him tiring. Not bad for a bulky dog. He ran the course in 10 seconds under course time and was the fastest in his class.

Saturday afternoon's first run was Cisco's open standard run. There's not a whole lot to write about it. Three obstacles and he lost focus. The judge whistled us off before he had left the ring. I could have gotten him back. Really.

The last runs of the day were the novice runs. It had also started raining (and thundering and lightening) and a lot of competitors were pulling their dogs because of fear issues. Good thing the trial was inside. Berkley again had a great run only knocking one bar off the double and missing the entrance to a tunnel (but that was totally my fault).

Chris parents came on Saturday. They ended up staying the whole day -- something Chris has never done. They seemed to enjoy themselves. I hope they did. It was really nice of them to come and watch.

Sunday only Cisco was going since Berkley is usually tired by the second day. Sunday morning started out with Cisco and I in a battle of whether or not he was going to go potty before we left. I think I lost. Because of this, we were about 20 minutes late leaving. We got their just in time to walk the course of couple of time and play 5 minutes of fetch to try and get some energy out before his open jumpers run. I don't know if it was too much energy or that he really had to go to the bathroom, but he was unfocused, he went around a few jumps before he went over them. It was a slow run (so slow we were over max course time), but we crossed the finish line. And after Saturday afternoon's performace that was something.

It was a LONG wait between our 8:40 jumpers run and when we got to walk the standard course around 2:30. Our only goal going into standard was to cross the finish line -- a big improvement over the day before. Well other than going to visit the scribe and timer and me screwing up the approach to the tire it was a good run. We crossed the finish line! ne of my instructors was there and saw the run. She said it was a good run.

We may not having gotten a lot of ribbons this weekend, but overall it was a good weekend and I'm happy with our performance.

It's finally up. The new chandelier is in the entry way.

We rented a ladder. Initially we rented a 16 footer, but when we saw it, it was a little bit, um.... big, so we switched it out for a 14 footer. As it was the 14 footer was hard to set up in the entry way.

I hope we don't have to do that again. Chris was up on the big ladder which of course made me nervous and I was up on our 6 foot ladder handing things up to him and taking things back from him.

We finished and raced back to the rental place to return the ladder before it closed. We missed them by a few minutes. So first thing Monday morning, we have a ladder to return.

Not a lot of updates recently. My excuse is that I haven't had anything to take pictures of lately and I prefer picture posts to written posts. This might have something to do that my writing skills come no where close to those of the fabulous MzMannerz or DC Sport Chick.

We did a bit of landscaping last weekend. I guess I could take pictures of that. We still need to mulch this weekend, so maybe I'll take pictures after that.

Chris is planning on renting a ladder and handing the new chandilier in our entry way. It's only been sitting on the floor for 4 or 5 months.

Lots of my free time has been taken up by the 12 week challenge. Especially this week. Berkley hasn't been sleeping well so in turn I haven't been sleeping well and I haven't been getting up in time to exercise in the morning, so I've been having to do it after work.

The exercising after work is going to have to change here soon 'cause I have quite a few possible side things about to happen. That's exciting, but I'm going to be short on time in the all come through.

What a couple of weeks we've had....

I've blogged about my computer issues. Did I tell you about the washing machine? Well, it's broke, they were supposed to come last Wednesday, but I had mistyped the number and They didn't come so Chris rescheduled them to come this Monday. Oh and lets not forget about the day the wires were down across 15, we had no power for 6 hours and it took Chris 1.5 hours to get home.

Now starting on Friday, I come downstairs, walk through the kitchen and walk through a puddle. The puddle is coming from the freezer. I open it and everything has a thick layer of ice on it. I get home from work on Friday, and I have a sick husband and no internet. Sick husband fixes internet for 2 hours until the next storm comes through. Poor sick husband.

Saturday, husband spends the day recovering, while I sit there wondering if I'm getting sick. I think it was the lack of sleep the night before 'cause I do eventually start feeling better, but I didn't make it out to mom's to do some laundry before I had stuff to do. I clean out the freezer and dry everything off before putting it back or throwing it out. Most things survived, the ice cream products did not.

Sunday started out ok (oh have I mentioned, we STILL don't have internet at this point?). After my Sunday plans got canceled, Chris fixed my bike and then we decided that it was time to hang pictures (hey we've only been here a year). Before that we decide we need to hose off the mat under Berkley's house. In the process of turning on the hose, Chris managed to do something to his ankle. So no pictures get hung, he's now out of commission.

So today was the day that the washing machine was supposed to get fixed and our tree was to be installed. I was supposed to work from home, but guess what? No internet. I call mom and dad to come over to be here for the tree and the washing machine and to possibly take my husband to the doctor while I go to work. I get to work. Husband calls, they can only see him early and mom and dad aren't there yet. I go home to get husband and mom and dad come watch the house and wait for people to show up.

Get back from the doctor (yay nothing is broken), and we call the washing machine repair people. Oh we're not scheduled until NEXT Monday?1?!?! What???? I don't even know how my husband managed to get Monday's messed up or what happened. We're not going to be here next Monday and there is now way we have enough clothes until then. My parents leave taking all our dirty clothes with them (gotta love my parents, but I feel so bad for having them do that). The tree people came, yay we have a new tree! And just now we finally have internet again.

And that's not the end of it

Last night I managed to burn my wrist cooking dinner AND I hurt my knee. So today Chris and I are both hobbling around.

Since I'm in a constant state of unhappiness when it comes to this job, I decided to update my resume on monster.com. Well, I never finished updating it -- I managed to put an end date on my last job and add this job, but never entered a descritpion.

Even with my incomplete resume, I've been getting an average of 6-8 inquiries a week, nothing had peaked my interest enough to do anything about it.

I can group the e-mails I receive into three categories:

1. The I need to fill this position kind. I like these, they tell you the job description, they for the most part relate to your skill set (but FYI I'm a developer with some SQL experience, just 'cause you see SQL on my resume, doesn't mean I'm anywhere near qualified as a Sr. SQL Developer or DBA). Sometimes they even sound interesting -- if I wanted to move. Please check to see my answer to the are you willing to locate question before sending me job descriptions for jobs in Richmond, New York, or BFE.
2. The I got a bunch of positions to fill and some keyword on your resume just happened to match something in one of the descriptions. These e-mails are usually accompanied by an attached word document with 10 or so positions for various positions I'm not qualified for or have no interest in or places I would not want to live. I no longer open the word document unless the e-mail message is something other than generic.
3. The please call me about a postion kind. This is the most surprising of the bunch. Does that really work? The e-mail I got this morning said "Please call me regarding a .net position in dc" That's it. Do you know how many different types of .net positions there are? I'd only be interested in maybe 20% of them and of that 20% probably 60% of them are either too junior or too senior. Maybe it's just me, but I like to know a little bit more about the position before I take the time and the effort to call and find out more. This is the second please call me about a position e-mail I've gotten this week with nothing other than a requst for me to call a complete stranger. Delete.

I dunno, maybe these techniques work, but to me it seems like it would be in everyone's best interest to send more specific details and send things to people who are looking in your market.

MzMannerz continues to amaze and enterain me with the writings in her blog. This one had me trying hard not to laugh out loud at work. If you haven't checked out the should be famous MzMannerz (link in side bar), you should.