March 6, 2010

The completion of the test has left me a little confused.  I hadn’t experienced any significant boredom since I quit my job, but the last few days I have been at a loss for what to do with my time.  I think that as long as I had studying to do, I was either doing something that had to be done, or finding an excuse for not doing it.  Now I have nothing that needs to be done.

There are things that need to be done, but I haven’t been able to set deadlines for them.  While I never really subscribed to the theory that we need deadlines in order to get anything done, I do find that they add to the motivation.  We have a puzzle to figure out.  It is the same puzzle I sorted through six years ago.  We need to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  We need to figure out what we are keeping.  We need to decide what we are going to do with the condo.  Without having a definitive plan, we can’t set deadlines for any of the steps.  At this point, we haven’t even figured out the order of the steps.  So we had a long conversation on the way to the ski resort about our plans and potential contingencies.  This should help us sort out the details.

The last few days haven’t been a total waste.  We had two great days of skiing.  Wednesday was threatening to be another day like Monday.  After a couple of runs in the heavy snow, I commented that it was going to be another short day.  I don’t know what happened.  We just kept going, racking up 21,600 vertical feet in heavy snow and abusive bumps, almost twice as much as Monday.  

We went to bed Wednesday night with a winter-weather advisory.  We awoke to a little bit of snow in Anchorage, but the advisory was cancelled.  We checked the snow report and some snow had fallen, but high winds and poor visibility were being reported.  We drove down with low expectations.  Blue skies, sunshine, very little wind and plenty of deep soft snow were a pleasant surprise.  The adrenaline of the first run made me completely forget my sore back and fatigued legs.  We made one less run than Wednesday.  We even skied Christmas Chute.  We finished the day with a run that Kris is still talking about.  We followed High Traverse all the way around the bowl almost to Max’s and found untracked deep snow on a steep slope at the end of the day.  We were both squealing with joy on every turn, although I thought one of Kris’ squeals might have been a scream and so I stopped to look back.  We skied to a little tree covered knoll that I had scoped out from the lift and snuck around the trees to another untracked slope to finish.  The snow got heavier as we dropped elevation, but we are on top of our heavy snow game at this point in the season.

Yesterday brought high winds and snow.  The resort did not even open.  We did our normal cross country ski loop.  We saw three moose.  The snow was a little sticky which probably made for a good workout. 

While my weight continues to vary, it is clear that my average readings on the scale have moved downward by almost five pounds.  I am noticing that my gut has changed for the better.  I think I have lost some fat from around the middle.  I also think the engagement of my core muscles in skiing has resulted in some toning.  This has further convinced me that the working lifestyle is relatively unhealthy.  I haven’t exercised once or dieted at all.  I do eat well because we cook with good ingredients, but the only real change is a reduction in restaurant eating.  I am active, but it is primarily in the form of play, not exercise.  I do it because I want to, not because I think I need to.  When I was working, I tried to be active because I thought I needed to.  It was always a chore to get motivated to go do something during the week.  I also believe that stress does have a negative impact.  I suspect the studies are right about stress hormones causing fat storage around our middles.  I don’t know how to apply this understanding when we return to work, but somehow we need to live better.  Kris has seen similar results with some of her lowest weight readings in years.

We are trying to learn French.  We both took French at some point in our lives so we have some vocabulary stored in our brains.  We are thinking that we should be able to work at it over the summer, eventually trying to communicate only in French to see if we can master a language before we even get in.  If we pass a test on a foreign language, we could get a slight preference in the hiring process.