this week

This post is not entirely coherent, but I've decided not to fix all the errors like I normally would - getting it all out was cathartic so I'm just going to leave it at that.


I nearly had a fit just now - freaking spammers. I check my spam box regularly to make sure real email doesn't get lost/deleted if mistakenly sent there. I really need to just delete stuff I don't recognize instead of opening. Occasionally I have found legitimate email in there but most of the time it's spam. Tonight I saw an email supposedly from mcafee. So I click on it and it says that they've just billed my $78 for my renewal. I started to panic - thinking that I don't have that money right now and I hope it doesn't come out of an a/c I closed. Then I got a little mad thinking that they would just automatically renew without my direct say-so. I never authorized them to renew automatically so I was pissed that they'd try. So then I frantically call their phone help line - closed for the day until 6am tomorrow. Now I'm really panicky. Then I think that Maybe I should log into my account and check to see when my actual renewal date is. So luckily I don't click any of the links in the email (at least I'm smart enough no to do that). I go to my account and find that my renewal is not due until 2nd week in March. So now I'm certain it was sent for some nefarious purpose. I look at the email again (much calmer now) and notice that they have a date, my full name and an amt paid but no card numbers. They always have the last 4 digits of your card number. Huge sigh of relief.
Life lesson here: do not open spam! do not open suspect email! do not believe suspect email is real!

This week has been long but I've managed to get through most of it. The exercise is the only thing keeping me sane. The more I exercise the better I feel. Boy did I need the extra endorphin boost this week.

Mon - yearly evaluation...in a word...demoralizing. I don't want to talk about it. I only spoke to one friend about some of the details and I just want to forget about it now. It just left me feeling depressed and I realized that I will never get promoted. I thought my last boss was the best one I've had so far but he let/allowed our group leader to add some things that were mostly true but there were extenuating circumstances that he omitted. The result is that I can't deny what's written but to has a great year of work on just that without explaining anything...I just look incompetent...after 4 1/2 yrs of being there. My only consolation if that they haven't fired/issued warning/put me on probation. So maybe the upper managers will look at all the other evaluations I've had and realize that there must be some sort of discrepancy b/c surely such things would have been noted before if they were absolutely true. So with all those thoughts in my head, I had to go to the gym. I felt it would be the only thing that would help me take my mind off it. And it did help. I did weights then 45min cardio. This was a little too much at once I think b/c I hurt by the time I was done. But it at least it was body soreness and not heart-soreness.

Tues - boxing. That girl who really irritated me last week, still a weirdo but I'm less annoyed by her this week. Progress?

Wed - no gym, had Chinese takeout for dinner, my first of the year.

Tonight - weights then boxing. I feel really energized now.

My new project is going well. I'm getting my 1st product shipped out and I have 3 more that will go out soon. I have to take more of an initiative with this project/my new supervisor. It's new for me b/c I used to supervisor wanting to more or less dictate my day. This way I have to make more decisions on my own...not a bad thing. I felt really isolated when i first moved to my current lab but now I'm feeling more at home.

I've decided to make a commitment to exercising 4-5 days a week. I don't have a weight goal in mind per se. I would of course like to get rid of my love handles/backfat. I also want to reduce my BMI by 4 or 5 points. How likely is this? I'm not sure. I was talking to one of the ladies in boxing class and I told her "I work out so that I can eat what I want". This is basically true. I do try to stop eating before I realize I'm full. I eat when I'm hungry which works out to be ~5 times a day. This works when I do it. I usu forget to eat something around 4pm b/c I'm usu in the middle of stuff in the lab. tonight it was 5pm before I realized that I hadn't eaten. Not good since tonight was gym night. So I stopped and had bag of pretzels - the only low fat/low calorie food in our vending machine. I don't like to eat too close to my workout b/c I end feeling really ill once I start moving around. It was too bad but I did feel a little sick during my weights routine. I was fine by 7pm/boxing class so that was the main thing.

Tonight during my weight routine I saw my friend P. Well he's not really my friend exactly, he's a guy at the gym who works out usu on the same days I do. He and I often have a quick chat, sometimes I go over to the machine he's on and chat or he comes over to mine. He's a cute guy. I think he's gay though i'm not certain. Well as of tonight I'm not certain. He spoke to me more than usu and even let me listen to the tunes he was working out to. We also had kind of a flirty converstion.
Anyhoo, my friend G from boxing asked - so...who's the guy?
Me - what guy? oh that guy, he's just a guy I talk to here
G - hmmm, just a guy, I saw you two tonight and he seemed like more than just a guy
me - really? hmmm. maybe I should ask him out for drinks sometime?
G - definitely, he's very cute, you're both young, why shouldn't you?

Yeah well, I don't know. I could suggest it and if he is gay, then maybe I have a new friend and if he's not...who knows, maybe more. I've actually thought about asking him to hang out before b/c he seems like a really cool and interesting guy. And he's funny. I gleaned all this from our 5min conversations during our workouts. We don't always chat, mostly we just wave and smile. He's got these in his ears and quite frankly, they scare me a little. My ears aren't even pierced ordinarily so I cannot really understand why anyone would want such huge holes in their ears. I try not to look at them. To each his own I guess.