This morning I got up and my first thought was “I’m going to try out that stair stepper thing today!”

Our apartment complex has a teensy workout room with a treadmill, a stationary bike, a weight lifting thingie (it’s one of those kinds with all sorts of different weight lifting stuff all bolted together to save space) and one of those stair steppers.  I will not lie.  I have been fascinated with the stair stepper thing ever since I first watched Legally Blonde and it showed Elle reading her textbooks while working out on it.  In my brain this single piece of exercise equipment is what will save my health and my ass from becoming so large and flabby that I need an extra cart to carry it around whenever I go anywhere.

The stair stepper thingie was broken when we moved in and stayed that way until sometime during the last few months when it either got fixed or the owners bought a new one.  I discovered its magical-now-workingness last week when I went in to use the treadmill and thought I would try it out after I ran for a while but after ten minutes on the treadmill I realized that dying sounded much more appealing than doing any further movement (remember, am weenie).

Today though, today I had a plan.  I was going to go into the workout room and use that stair stepping thing! I was going to bounce up and down on those fake stair pusher pedals! I would look like my own slighly pudgy version of Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde and Charisma Carpenter in that episode of Veronica Mars and every other super in shape chick you’ve ever seen at the gym who was climbing those invisible stairs to nowhere while making it look easy as pie!  My heart rate would go up! I would be healthy! Except… Um…..

I need to preface this by reminding you that it took me a few tries to figure out how to properly work the treadmill and how to adjust my speed so that I wouldn’t either fly off the thing or have to put all of my weight into every step to get it to move.

Because I? Couldn’t quite figure out how to get the thing to work the way I wanted it to.  I mean, I understood the basic cocncept:  Climb on contraption. Push down with one foot and then the next.  Simulate act of climbing up many many flights of stairs at, preferably, a quick pace.  The movies! They make it look so easy! My experience on the stair stepper thing went something more like this:  puuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh down.  Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush down with other foot.  Puuuuusssshhhhhhhhhh  puuuuuussssshhhhhhhhhhhh  slowly but surely as if I was trying to haul Santa’s giant-ass sack of presents up thirty flights of stairs that had steps that were two and a half feet high.  Eventually I realized that I did not have to push the steps all the way down (causing me to do a weird lungey/ladder climbey move only more awkward), but still, I could not get any sort of rhythm or equal height of steps going.  And I kind of felt really stupid and was glad that I was in there by myself.

So.  There was no bobbing, no pony tail swinging, no looking all agile and fit and trim and in shape.  But I did experience a muscle burn fairly intense so I’m pretty sure I managed to work something even if I did not look at all good while doing it.

So I have to say that this weekend has been pretty….meh.  I am looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow.  My new “roommate” is incredibly annoying and has actually tried to tell me that I shouldn’t tell him to be quiet during a movie (or while we are watching television) because his marriage is breaking up and that I should have more compassion for his situation.  Does it make me a total bitch that my initial reaction to this was anger and a barely containable urge to bash him about the face with the giant wok I bought at Ikea the other day?  Obviously I contained the urge as I’m not in jail right now but dudes.  Who has a job and an apartment for this guy so he can get the eff off my couch?

Honestly, though, I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running tomorrow and (hopefully) burying myself in work stuff.  I think I’ll even restart Couch to 5K (for the….lots of timeth).

The theme for this week, were I someone who gave her weeks themes, would be productivity.  I wrote about keeping my butt in the chair earlier and, had a bunch of crappy interruptions not come up (hello new “roommate” goodbye quite home) I think I would have had a week so awesome it could be called hawesome (if I am not egregiously misusing the word).    But then, just now I got to thinking about it and really I’ve had a pretty good week, productivity wise.  The part that keeps me down low is that most of my productivity has not been in the realm of building my business, which was my goal.  But, really–when I list it all out… this week has been pretty full:

Monday: super awesome day business and personal wise–started Couch to 5K (and have again failed at Couch to 5K so I’ll be starting it again next Monday), answered e-mail, got a bunch of work done, organized my desk and work area and felt super happy with myself by the time 5ish came around and I felt okay about relaxing on the couch.

Tuesday: this day I am chalking up to a wash.  I did make it to the library to pick up some books I had on hold, but for the most part I spent my day waiting for Bryan to show up.  He didn’t actually end up showing up like he was supposed to and, instead, sent me a text message very late on that he was spending the night with one of his other friends.  The text message came late enough that I couldn’t think much about doing any business related work and was pretty angry about the fact that I read most of the day (who can concentrate when they are waiting for someone who could arrive at any second?) instead of worked.

Wedesnday: Slept in and woke up to a big ol’ box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts from Will (this made my whole morning).  Bryan showed up not too long after I woke up and in the afternoon the three of us headed out into the big ol’ world and accomplished quite a bit!  Will’s car’s pollution-check/smog check thing is now up to date, and hit IKEA and Target.  I even made real food for dinner.  Did some online networking for the business.

Thursday: Took Bryan downtown to get his library card and picked up even more books that had come in for me (the return trip with all of these books is going to be a workout all by itself).  We had lunch at the new Hot Lips pizza by PGE park and then when Bryan set off to sell some plasma (don’t ask) I went to Fred Meyer to pick up some stuff for the house that we needed and then made a ginormous Spaghetti dinner which was super yummy.  I watched Grey’s Anatomy in the bedroom so I wouldn’t have to endure Bryan’s endless commenting (he’s a talker during movies and television shows and it is way irritating).   I finished crocheting a hat and worked on my next crochet project (which I don’t want to talk about yet in case I don’t actually finish it on time).  I also got some e-mailing done and worked on my freelance site for the business side of stuff.

Today:  Did four loads of laundry and cleaned up the house as best I could.  Did the dishes.  Worked on my crochet project and did some business forum posting (I kind of love that doing that is part of my job).

Next week will be better.  By next week all of the “getting used to having another person in the house” stuff will have mostly been worked through and hopefully we can settle into a routine.  Of course next week is when Bryan is supposed to bring up the rest of his stuff (oy) so who knows what will happen.  I might get some stuff done over the weekend too, but I’m trying to keep my weekends work free as much as possible.

So really–I accomplished quite a bit this week! Most of it was home-life and not business-life, but I think I can be okay with that.  It gives me something to work on for next week.

P.S.  Does anybody know of a WordPress plugin that will let me do footnotes?  I am way too parenthesisy.

Today we:

• Got Will’s car smog checked (or whatever they call it up here, to make sure his car is environmentally friendly enough to not be given a ticket)
• Ate lunch at Sonic
• Went to IKEA
• Went to Target

We left at about 1ish and were home by 5:30.  We absolutely freakin’ rock.  And we had Gloomy Gus Bryan with us.  Bryan? Has fallen into lust with IKEA.  I’m hoping this gives him incentive to get a job and his own place.

Today was not nearly as productive as yesterday.  I went to the library this morning and since then, um.  Well, I made some lunch……and then I finished the scarf I’ve been working on for Will’s sister (it’s the least I could do since she bought us a PS3).  Bryan (I guess I can call him by his name since he might be living here and all and as such will be providing material for the blog) isn’t here yet.  He left for the drive this morning and then sent a text that he was going to go hang out with some other friends before coming over here.  Does he say when he thinks he’ll get here? No.  I figure that if he isn’t here by the time Will and I are ready for bed (which could end up being 9:30 after last night’s lack of sleep) I’ll just send him a text message of my own saying something along the lines of “I hope you can stay there tonight because we are locking the doors and going to sleep.”  (Obviously I have stopped caring about whether or not I am mean).

Yesterday was so awesome.  Today has been blah.  One of our upstairs neighbors decided to start moving out after midnight last night by doing what I can only assume was throwing heavy boxes down the stairs.  Then, once they had quieted down I just could not get comfortable.  You know those nights where it is too hot even under a sheet but it is too cold without any covers at all? Yeah.  Finally I got up to go to the bathroom at 6:30 this morning and was awake.  Totally awake.  And then when I was coming home from the library I almost fell asleep on the train.  So I went to take a minute to just sort of veg out and, well, it’s 4:30 now.  Yep.

Tomorrow I will get work done before Will and I (and possibly Bryan) go to IKEA to do some fun shopping.  My Mom gave us each IKEA gift cards (so that we wouldn’t feel pressured to agree on what we wanted to spend the money on) and we plan on going to buy things that we want.  I am hoping to find cheap fabric drawers and possibly some shelving to replace the DVD bookcase in the living room (which cost $7 and is made of bulletin board material).  Will wants pillows for the new futon.  We will probably have some money left over.  Yay! Shopping!

Yeah so….today was not nearly as productive as yesterday but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

It’s my philosophy for forcing myself to stay on task.  Keep butt in chair.

Okay so today I did not actually sit in my chair ALL day, but I did spend quite a bit of it at my new “desk” in my new “office” (formerly kitchen table in what was formerly our dining area).  I returned e-mails, I did some marketing stuff, I wrote some other stuff and I am almost caught up on all of those lovely bookkeeping tasks that come with starting a new year.  I even cleaned out the set of drawers that I use for office supplies and filing. I rule!

In addition to the sitting down stuff I also wrestled our poor Christmas tree (I say poor because he wasn’t very appreciated this year) out to the Christmas Tree Pile that forms in one of the abandoned parking spaces each year.  I carried out a ginormous bookcase box to the recycling center and I even re-started Couch to 5K!  Okay, so I couldn’t get through a full Couch to 5K session.  Am weenie.

I feel more than ready to wrap up my first day back “at work” by posting on my blog before heading off to start dinner and then crochet the night away while watching stuff on television.  Believe it or not I have actually gotten Will to sort of watch West Wing with me.  I KNOW. It’s a MIRACLE (am feeling very caps locky today, I don’t know why).  See what I did was wait until Will had brought his laptop out to the living room to “hang out” with me and then asked if it would be okay if I watched West Wing while he played his game.  I was somewhere in the middle of season three when this happened.  I’m now part way into season four and I actually got him to put down his laptop and watch the entire two hour season four premiere with me….because I kind of whined about “it’s one of my favorites and I want to share it with you!”

Regular TV viewing picks back up this week and next week (though how I’ll wait the three weeks until the fifth season of Lost begins I do not know), but in between you can be sure that I will be finishing up West Wing. Again.  It’s become kind of a bi-annual tradition.

So yeah–the friend who will be invading gets here TOMORROW (again with the caps lock)!  There have been many heavy sighs gusting through our apartment as Will and I have both tried to explain that he will not have the entire computer room to himself, that no we don’t have the space for him to bring up all of the things he wants to bring up and that no we don’t have the space to rearrange everything again and that frankly that is mostly because we just don’t want to.  So we won’t.  We’re trying to be good friends.  Will keeps saying “I’m treating him how I would want someone to treat me if I found myself being kicked out of my home and needing a place to go.”  And that’s admirable. We both kind of have the feeling that once said friend gets here and realizes that when he isn’t visiting and we aren’t trying to keep him entertained that we are actually very very boring and no fun at all to live with….but we’ll see.  Maybe it will end up being better than I think it will.  Let’s hope!

In non-related to anything news: I installed a contact form for people who want to get in touch but who might not want to leave a comment for everybody else to read.  I realized the other day that I didn’t have any way for people to do that and the WordPress 2.7 release has made adding things like contact forms super easy.  I am kind of in love with WordPress 2.7.

Seriously–this is what getting up and being active and productive does to me.  It makes me Ms. Upbeat Exclamation Marky Person.

Finally, my friend Wendy had a story published!  Go here to read it!

I know that almost everyone who reads this blog has already gone back to work for at least a few days, but for me work doesn’t start up again until tomorrow morning.  A couple of months ago, when we weren’t sure how many of my future in-laws would be invading our home or how long they would be staying, I made arrangements with my clients to be “offline” from December 15-Jan 5.  That’s three weeks of vacation.  I worked like crazy (I ended up working over a few of my first vacation days but that’s okay) to finish up my projects.  I cleaned my house from top to bottom, inside and out.  I was ready for the in-law invasion.   And then it effing snowed.  Instead of coming to us and spending weeks of time in our home, we ended up going to them for a couple of days.  This has left me with quite a bit of free time to veg and watch Will play video games on the PS3.  It seems surreal that everything goes back to “normal” tomorrow.

Except it doesn’t.  Not really.

Some readers will remember some friends of ours who were having marital troubles.  They’ve spent about six months trying to find a way to stay together but it looks like that isn’t going to happen.  When everything first started going haywire, Will and I offered up space in our home as a “worst case scenario.”  For a while it looked like we were free and clear but now it turns out that he could be here as early as Wednesday.  There are not enough swear words in the English language to describe how irritated I am.  This is the same friend who forgets that Will and I exist until he needs a favor.

Am I a bad person?  I want to help our friend.  I hate that his marriage isn’t working and that he is miserable.  I want him to be happy.  I also don’t want somebody who is not me or Will to move in here indefinitely.  I don’t want to have to put up with even more video game noise.  He won’t have a job, which means that he can’t help with rent, bills or food costs.  He is already whining a little about how he wants to bring up his desktop computer, his twenty inch television, his queen sized bed and his futon frame and mattress–after I told him that he’d only have about a third of a 10×10 room in which to store his stuff.    Does it make me a bitch that I find this annoying and have to fight the urge to point out that we don’t have to take him in at all?  Never mind that now I’ll be trying to plan a wedding in the presence of someone whose marriage has just ended.

We first learned about his needing to come up after all early on Friday morning.  I waited until now to post about it because I had to work through the massive nutty that my brain staged after we got the text message (AT FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING).  I know that it probably won’t be as annoying as my brain first feared.  I knew that I needed to work through my staggering over-reaction (there might have been tears and ‘I thought we were done worrying about other people’ whimpering).   But still.  I’m 30.  I thought I was done having roommates (besides my fiance obviously) until I bore them from my own loins.

In other news….or original topic news….  I’m looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow.  It feels a lot like the night before the first day of school.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without working in my entire adult life.  I kind of like the feeling of a fresh-ish start.  I feel kind of like I should go buy a new binder and a few packets of loose leaf paper!