transit pounds
I took a different-from-usual approach to King County Transit this morning, and they fucked me anyway.
I set my Sleep Cycle app's alarm to go off every morning between 5:15 and 5:45. The intent is that it will wake me up during that span of time when it senses me beginning to stir, the theory being that I will be best rested when that happens, rather than possibly jerking me out of a deep sleep. Typically it wakes me up on the earlier end of that range, and more often than not I just wake up on my own without the alarm even going off -- I'd say closer to 5:20 on most typical mornings.
For some reason, the past few days, I've been sleeping soundly until nearly the end of that half-hour time span. The trouble with that is, I take an hour to get ready, and when I don't get out of bed until 5:45, I typically don't get into the shower until 6:00, and then I often barely miss the #11 bus headed west at the stop outside my building. Mind you, this is when I still take the tack of busing halfway and walking halfway. If I miss the #11, I just walk downtown and catch a bus up 3rd Avenue at Pine. If I do get on the #11, I get off on 3rd and walk the rest of the way. I don't know why this seems to be, but typically I get to work a bit earlier if I can get on the #11 for the first half. Maybe because buses going up 3rd Avenue are downtown and thus move a bit more slowly than the #11 can move west down Pine.
This week, I decided, when I sleep in a bit like that, I'll just bag the idea of walking half the distance. I really prefer to get the walking in for the morning, but whatever. I was so used to commuting to work this way that I lost sight of the fact that I actually have two options for buses that take me straight to within a few blocks of work: the #8, which I can board four blocks from home to the north and then go straight down John and Denny to 1st Ave N & John, getting off four blocks from work; or the #2, which I can board two and a half blocks from home to the south and then go west on Union and Seneca to turn north on 3rd Avenue up to 1st Ave N & John. The #8 takes about 20 minutes, preceded by a 7-minute walk to the bus stop; the #2 takes about 22-25 minutes (depending on traffic), preceded by a 4-minute walk to the bus stop. I literally did not realize this until figuring it out just now, but that means, if the two buses were leaving at the exact same time, the typical difference between the two is as little as only a minute: 27 minutes on the #8 vs. 26 (or maybe 29) on the #2. The #2, much to my surprise, is potentially a minute faster. I should start paying more attention to when the next #2 is coming when I look at my One Bus Away app in the morning. Because that's just the thing: which bus I head for is really just dependent on which one's next bus is coming soonest.
So anyway! Getting a bit of a late start this morning, I decided to take either a #2 or a #8 that got me down to Lower Queen Anne in one straight shot, instead of busing halfway on a bus down Pine and walking the rest of the way (or the other way around). I went with the latter option yesterday and wound up arriving at work at 7:38 -- my intent is always to get here by 7:30.
I saw that the #8 was running two minutes late, and I thus had six minutes to get to 15th & John to catch it. I'd easily get to work by 7:30 then, if I hustled to catch it. And that's what I did.
And then, guess what? The #8 was rerouted! I don't know what was going on on John just west of Broadway, but we turned south on Broadway, had to go four blocks to Pine, five blocks west to Bellevue Ave, and three blocks north again to Denny Way -- 12 blocks out of the way before getting back to the route it was supposed to be on. I don't know how many extra minutes that took, but I guestimated at least seven. And guess what time it was when I finally got to my desk this morning? 7:37!
Jesus Christ. I should have just bused halfway and walked halfway like normal. It would have literally gotten here at the same time.
I'm a bit proponent of public transit, but stuff like this really bugs me, when your point A and point B are nowhere near a straight shot between any transit systems. You either have to transfer in the middle -- for a distance of barely more than two miles! -- or you have to walk several blocks to and from the bus stops. It's so stupid that going door to door can take 37 minutes when relying on transit to travel 2.4 miles, and when I can ride my bike, that literally takes me, like, 20 minutes. (It takes me longer, more like 25 minutes, coming back home on a bike, because it's mostly uphill that direction.) And if I walk quickly enough, it can take me all of 45 minutes -- only eight minutes longer than taking buses! It's fundamentally ridiculous.
But, you know, whatever. At least being on the bus gives me time to read a book.
And as long as I'm writing extensively about stuff no one else could possibly have much interest in reading about, I weighed in this morning at 145.1 lbs. After three days of practically inhaling Halloween candy, mostly "fun sized" chocolates, I was pretty surprised -- I even had two cocktails at home last night, and this was still half a pound lighter than yesterday. Then again, I had a fairly light dinner last night, and also only ate two meals on Wednesday. I guess these things make a difference.
There's another reason I bring this up, though. The digital Weight Watchers scale we have in our bathroom is annoying in that it tends to get stuck on the same weight reading as long as there's not a significant change in the weight of the thing being weighed. As in, unless I weigh something else of notably different weight to reset it, this stupid scale would just keep reading 145.1 lbs every morning for the next four or five days. So, what I do to reset it, is I weigh myself carrying this 30 lb box of laundry detergent from Costco, then weigh myself without it. I've taken to weighing with the laundry first, just to make sure the scale resets.
So: when I weighed myself with the box of laundry powder, it read 174.0 lbs. I weighed myself again without it, and I was 145.1 lbs. And that was when it hit me: I peaked at 174 lbs back around 2006. And having just held that box of laundry powder, I was like, Holy shit. That's how much more weight I used to be carrying around inside my body. It was kind of an amazing thing to think about. Thirty pounds is a lot of weight. Imagine what it's like for actually obese people! I really can't imagine it, actually.
As an aside, I've been doing three sets of either 34 or 33 push-ups (to total 100) every other day, along with 30-second side planks and 45-second standard plank, also every other day. I think I've been doing this for about five years now. Not long after I started, and before Shobhit knew I was doing it, he actually noticed harder muscles in my chest and asked what I'd been doing. The thing about these exercises: there's an almost immediate effect on how difficult it is to do them, depending on how much junk I'm eating. When I'm not stuffing my face with shit, and sticking to small portions for meals and not snacking between meals, these exercises are all quite easy to do. When I'm in the middle of grazing too much for several days, the exercises are always noticeably more difficult to get done.
So how about my Thursday evening, you ask? Well, it was just as dull as everything else I've written about so far in this entry! Well, not so dull to me, actually. Probably dull to read about. Not that I actually care a great deal.
I walked home from work, umbrella in hand because rain had been in the forecast, but not using it and reading my book along the way because it wound up being dry and partly sunny. I picked up a library book, and it did get barely slightly misty on my way home from there.
I made myself an over-easy egg bagel sandwich with spinach for dinner. I finished last Friday's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher; last Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; watched an episode of Lady Dynamite. This combined with a brief Skype session with Shobhit, who had returned to Delhi from his two-day visit with his sister, and that took me to around 9:00. I decided to go to bed early and did so by 9:26. I woke up in the middle of the night and was unable to sleep for maybe an hour, which I knew was a possibility and was thus partly why I went to bed early. So, even with the lost hour, I still got a good seven hours of sleep last night. I got out of bed at 5:42 -- nearly half an hour later than usual.
So, there you have it. You're all caught up. It looks like I will indeed be spending some time with Gabriel this weekend, probably Sunday. He's actually moving, into a place that's furnished, for something like eight months. It's a long and complicated story, which I suppose is to be expected. In any case, he asked for help packing stuff into storage, and severely breaking from character, I decided to do it. I seriously never want to help anyone move -- and that's why I always hire movers when I move, as I won't ask anyone otherwise -- but, I figure, if this is how I can spend some time with him this weekend, then so be it. I figure that has the potential to suck up the entire day, which is fine.
I'm hoping to finish season 2 of Stranger Things with Ivan tomorrow, maybe break it up by going to lunch. We've watched three episodes and thus have six left. Shobhit will be back next weekend and I don't really want to try coordinating watching with Ivan at that time when Shobhit hasn't been watching from the beginning. Also I just want to get it watched. I don't know if this idea will pan out yet or not. I proposed it to Ivan this morning via Facebook Messenger but he hasn't gotten back to me.
Tonight, though, will be a bit different: Danielle, her other friend Danielle, and Other Danielle's friend Andrea are all coming over to watch the DVD recording of Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour, in the Braeburn Condos theatre. This is the concert Danielle was unable to accompany me to in October 2015 because her dad passed away; Other Danielle and Andrea are the women I went with. I haven't seen either of them since. I think it should be interesting and fun.
[posted 12:18 pm]