Sugar shock

Merry Christmas everyone!

I’ve had a super long weekend – we got off at 1 p.m. on Thursday – and am quite ready to get back into the swing of things.

But it’s been nice, if overly social for my tastes. I spent Christmas Eve at one colleague’s house, then Christmas Day at another event with about 20 people. Boxing Day was with yet another group at someone else’s apartment, then today I went to the All Things Made in China place with someone else.

It’s now 5:30 p.m. and I’m just so ready to chillax.

And not eat sugar. My gosh, I have OD’d on all things sugar the past week or so. My desk, which is at the main door of a long office, has been the gathering place for all the stuff that people have brought in to share. If you stand and talk to me, you inhale so much sugar you might as well eat some of it.

I’ve been in the gym as usual but the sugar wins. It’s just been everywhere.

The weather is finally changing here, and the gym has been crazy. I’ve been freezing and sweating from cold and heat in the same 2-hour visit. I don’t understand how they do the heating and air in this building, honestly. The management here asked if they could turn off my air because apparently I share a unit (or something) with someone who’s ready to crank up the heat. Meanwhile, I am roasting under my cozy comforter. I wound up opening a window in one room but having the heat on in another. It’s bizarre.

Coming down to the wire of 2015. I’ve decided to go ahead and suck it up and go to Hong Kong next weekend to see Star Wars. I’m only going for the day, so it’s a rather expensive movie but I want to see it. It’d be more expensive if I stayed overnight, but it’d be a lot cheaper if I could wait until Jan. 16. I’m going to HK then, too, to see a shoulder specialist. But I figured if I waited until then to see it, then I should just see it her, and I didn’t want to do that. It seems my only option for movies here is 3D, and not only is that expensive, I don’t like the experience so much.

So I’m off to Hong Kong on the 8 a.m. train on Jan. 2 and returning again on the 8 a.m. train the same day. I hope it works out. I might not go alone; I mentioned it to a couple people at work and someone may tag along. I’m OK either way, though.

The shoulder appointment is something I wish I could speed up time to get to. I’m really in pain, and my desire to suck it up and put it off until Florida blew my shot at a medevac. And because I deemed the doctor I had been seeing a crook, I start over again in Hong Kong midway through January. Fortunately, I have the MRI from January and I hope that will stand; I just want to get whatever over and done with. It’s starting to affect my day-to-day in a much more major way. Screaming in sudden pain has kind of become a norm, and not a really fun one, you know?

But I am still trying told hold out until Tallahassee to deal with the hip. That’s chronic, not the result of an injury, and it’s just more nagging than anything else. So we shall see. Lord knows I have enough other specialists I want to see in Tally. Home leave – what fun!

So now I am trying to find hotels and such in Hong Kong for the doctor weekend. I’m headed down on Friday because my appointment is Saturday morning, so I’m staying in a hostel that first night but will switch to a hotel and split a room the following two evenings. (It’s MLK Day.) The plan is to go to Disney on Sunday and come back Monday afternoon. I bought a total of four train tickets today, so the plan better come through for me!

Jam-packed weekend

Winding down on a Sunday night, and boy, did I get a ton of stuff done.

Honestly, as much as I like Christmas, the holidays themselves suck. Not to be a Scrooge, but I just get tired of one party after another, and having to make stuff for all of them.

Tonight, I turned down one. Felt bad about it, but I’ve just been slammed. I had a  ton to do this weekend and, if I survived to the night, knew I’d just want to veg out. And that’s what happened.

My big highlights, beyond Christmas prep, I mean, were a birthday party for a 6-year-old and two movies. As busy as I was, these were things I had penciled in.

The brunch Saturday morning was not. I didn’t find out about that until Friday night, at a going-away party. But it was a person I like, so I woke up and hit the gym before 6 a.m. in order to squeeze everything in. Even before breakfast, I’d made the first of the Christmas sweets – a vat of Rice Krispy treats for stocking stuffers.

The nonstop Saturday wound down with a movie with a friend. We went to see Mockingjay, which I recently learned was showing here. While researching that, I found out that Point Break was also showing here and I’d made time to do that on Sunday.

But Mockingjay was a cool one to see not because it was in 3D (which it shouldn’t have been, but it was my only option) but because seeing that here meant that I’d seen every movie in the franchise in a different country. I started in Indonesia with the first one, then Catching Fire was how I spent the day before my deployment (that an Chick-Fil-A). I saw the first installment of Mockingjay in Hong Kong, so this was No. 4.

Today I went to see Point Break. I’d seen the previous before, possibly in Hong Kong during that Mockingjay showing. I remember watching it and them highlighting the extreme sports and the “bag guy” gang and me sitting there thinking, how is this not Point Break? I’d heard nothing of a reboot, and really, the highlights showed things like snowboarding, base jumping and motorcross – not surfing. But I swear they called one guy Bodhi and the other Utah and I was really, really confused. How could it not be point break? But eventually, they flashed the name on and it was like, oh, they DID reboot it.

And it wasn’t too bad. It didn’t have heart and I didn’t buy the whole reason the little bag guy gang was committing the crimes, but it was enjoyable. It didn’t seem to rip off the Swayze/Reeves version at all – that’s the classic. It did not interfere with the presence of that one at all. And since it was in 3D and featured extreme sports all in exotic locations all over the world, the scenery was fantastic.

The rest of Sunday has been spent baking. I’m on the hook for not only Rice Krispy treats and a side dish (which I did Saturday before the movie), but cookies for two parties this weekend, plus Marine stockings.

We have some party on Saturday at the Big Boss’ house and for some reason, even though 120 people and their spouses have been invited, it’s the junior employees who have been asked to make cookies. Sigh. I don’t know if we’re supposed to be flattered or what, but I’m just not.

I made mint chip (from mint chips someone gave me) and sugar cookies, plus brownies. I’m just covered in baking goop and cannot wait to take a shower and just crash.

I did finally pull out some Christmas decorations. I thought about it earlier this month but was out of town last weekend. At that point, I figured I’d bypass it totally but decided today that I should toss out some jingle bells or something. So now I have a few modest decorations – two Nativity scenes, a couple little wooden trees and a snowmanny-like thing outside the door. I have another little wooden tree and a snowman heading into work tomorrow to accompany the reject brownies. No one can turn down reject brownies.

In other news, I got my official time from the race – 1:16! I was pretty happy with it. I mean, I know it’s slow but ya know what? So am I. I was not built for speed, but stamina I got.

Aaron Tippen gets partial credit

Back from my first (and, let’s face it, last) 10k! I don’t know what my time was because I didn’t know you were supposed to look up at the clock, but for me, it was decent. I’d hoped to finish before they scraped you up off the road and really hoped to finish in 80 minutes. I realize for real runners that’s a joke, but when you’ve never done it before and are not a runner, it’s not bad.

The way it turned out, I think I beat it, but I’m not sure. A little while after I’d finished – I’d talked to some people I knew, gotten water and took the little clip thing off my shoe and traded it for me “finisher” medal – another friend came up to me, all smiles, and said she’d finished in under 1:20.

Internet photo, not mine

Sunrise at Angkor Wat is phenomenal. I didn’t take any photos, but it looked something like this, but a heck of a lot more crowded. Haven’t seen the numbers this year, but last year’s race had about 2500 people, so it was a tad more crowded, too.

And it was rough, but honestly not as bad as I thought it would be. As it was, I probably ran half and walked (really fast) half. I’m more of a stamina person – after the 5k mark, I felt a lot better. But it really got to the point where I was like, you know, I can do this, but do I really want to? Even having been there before, I was wowed by the scenery and decided to enjoy it and not kill myself.

And I did good. I kicked up the headphones and tried to enjoy it. I’d picked some upbeat songs to try to keep pace, and had a good time. I tried to hit t rhythm of walking for a few minutes, then finishing out that song and the next at a jog/run, but that ended around 6k, when I went into some Barenaked Ladies live versions – those went on forever.

Around 9k, Aaron Tipped kicked in. If “Working Man’s PhD” doesn’t get you moving faster, something is wrong with you! So I give him partial credit for my finish!

 

Honestly, in my little crew of about 10, I think I was the third to finish. And those were the two real runners in the 10k. (We had a crew doing the 21k, too.)

And it’s not like we took it really seriously. A friend finished after the sweep-up time (although they didn’t actually do this; the clock just kept running.) armed with pictures and videos of monkeys she’d seen along the way. She said she took a 10-minute detour and shot photos. I mean, the area is just beautiful – it’s a UNESCO site.

In my training – if you could call it that – I finished it up at a level of walking at 6.something kilometers and hour for two minutes, then finishing out the K at a pace of anywhere between 9.5 and 10.5 kpm, and at an incline of 6-8. So stamina I had, but speed I will never, ever have.

The rest of the trip was not great. The night before the flight, I got little sleep, and the night before the race, I got none. As in not a minute.

On Saturday after we arrived, we wandered around town, and Siem Reap is hot and dry. I’d drunk water and tea, but by the end of the evening I had a migraine coming on. That usually isn’t a huge deal because normally they go away when I get some sleep, and we were headed back to our little guest room for the night at 8:30 p.m.

(As an aside, the hotel we stayed at was a hotel school for underprivileged Cambodians. It was a really nice place to stay at, and it only cost $26.)

I could not sleep. One bit. I tossed and turned, the migraine growing. It was awful. I’d check the time and think, “Oh, OK, it’s midnight, but I can still get 4:30 of sleep.” And it just went on and on. I  thought I was doomed.

But the next morning, when I got to the race, it went away. Thank you, Jesus, for that one!

The rest of the day was also good. After cleaning up, my little group went to get massages, ate lunch at a Mexican place (though I had Cambodian) and then took a near-perfect flight home.

What a great weekend!