babiegoose.com

ergonomics has been the word of the day for the last few years a my client...

saftey safety safety...

Considering that most of my work is in the office, the most we need to owrry about is carpal tunnel and paper cuts...

and the rare disgruntled worker...

so they just gave me this fully adjustable, five-wheel chair... you can adjust the height, the height and postiion of the arm rest, the lumbar support, the rocking tension, you can turn the rocking on and off, you can make it rock back and forth, or just back, or just forth...

it is with this rocking ability that I have focused a good portion of my afternoon to this point (on which, from this point, I will cease to focus - and I will tell you why.)

all of the adjustments for the chair are underneath the seat. Logical, since you do not want to be sitting on levers and knobs and such. The pictograms on the various adjustment devices were quite descriptive, yet, somehow misleading.

yes, the elevation up and down was simple - as this lever is quite standard on most other office chairs.

the arm rests gave me some trouble only because one of them is loose and I have not the tools necessary to remedy the imperfection of this hand-me-down chair.

the rocking, however, seemed to give me a greater pause than all of the other devices together.

it seems that the chair must be in a neutral position before the rocking can be toggled. to rock back, obviously the chair must be forward so that the locking mechanism will not be caught against the force of the seat. but to stop the rocking forward, the chair must be unlocked and back or in a neutral position for the rocking forward to be enabled or disabled.

well, it took quite a bit of rocking to figure this whole thing out.

and since the levers for this were to the left of me and under the seat, I had to rock back and forth looking over and down the left side of the chair, will trying to fiddle with the stupid switches.

when both rocking levers are in the locked position, the chair is quite sturdy and stable.

when only the rocking back lever is released, it can be quite comfortable - however bad for your ergonmic utility, but abrupt when rocking forward.

when only the rocking forward lever is unlocked, you can lean forward with ease, but sitting back is quite sudden, as the chair no longer leans back.

when both levers are free, the chair rocks like a boat in the water.

putting the levers back into position requires that you rock them into position before flipping any switch.

... ... ...

I now fully understand how the chair works.

... ... ...

I now have a fully developed headache with a good dose of nausea.

... ... ...

I have to do real work now.

Once a week is not enough to run hard.

You would think that since I run hard once a week, I would start to feel less demolished after two or three minutes.

But noooooooo.

We had a rough game last night (which we won. Wooo hoooo) against a less than congenial team. Everyone works together quite well - the chemistry is there. You cannot get chemistry like this, even in a lab.

So our couch/captain/forward/midfield decides since our usual starters were like three minutes late I got to play...

um, hello?

24 minutes halves, we are supposed to sub every two minutes, you know, so we can keep fresh.

yeah. right.

two minutes thirty seconds later.

heavy panting
I...
heavy panting
uh...
heavy panting
SUB!
heavy panting
coughing

I do not smoke anymore. I have not smoked regularly since my junior year of college, and I quit smoking altogher (i.e. socially) last year.

really. I did.

so that is not my problem.

kris still smokes and he can hold it down.

[SURGEON GENERAL.S WARNING: Tobacco Use Increases The Risk of Infertility, Stillbirth, Low Birth Weight,Lung Cancer And Heart Disease, Even In Nonsmokers]

my problem probably has to do with the lack of endurance. I remember reading somewhere that there are two levels of "endurance": some kind of high performance endurance, which I think is anaerobic - where the person can perform at a higher level for long periods or something by burning the sugar instead of fat.Then there is the low level where the endurance is for an extended period, but not quite so intense or something.

I forget.

you look it up.

bottom line.

I am not the young buck I once (or never) was...

two minutes in and I am wrecked.

a few (five) minutes later I'm good for another two minutes - more if I do not have to run hard.

but apparently I need to pick my hard runs, because I seem to run hard everywhere for no reason.

so you see, it is evident that I have to run more.

... ... ...

it will also probably help if I stop eating so much damn ice cream...

... ... ...

nah.

:-P

how often is it, that we, or should I say "I", forget something that we just did because we did it so quickly and out of habit?

when you are in the shower, do you forget if you have shampooed your hair?
when you park your car, do you forget whether you locked the doors or not?
when you leave the house, do you forget if you locked the door?

I just dropped off my tax returns at the post office. I even went to the desk to have them weigh the parcels (as the forms one must complete to participate in this intrusive taxing can add some bulk to an envelope) because the normal $0.37 would have been inadequate postage, but $0.74 would have been too much...

then I pay and I leave.

But I forget whether or not I took the items to be mailed with me.

It does not make sense that they would put the postage on the envelopes and then give them back to me, as the whole excerise would have ended with me leaving my packages with the post office in one form or another. But I do not remember the time between handing them my money and exiting the post office.

I did not, of course, realize this until I was standing in line at a Little Ceasar's getting my $5.55 Hot'n'ready pizza (yes - $5.55... I am in Midland right now, and everything here is messed up. Not to mention the nearest Best Buy is practically 40 minutes away)

So it has been bothering me all afternoon - all two and a half hours of it. It bothered me whilst I ate 3 of the 10 slices of pizza. It bothered me on the way back to the office and it still bothers me. The envelopes are neither in my car nor in my coat. I do not believe that I dropped them, and they would logically have to be in process, or the post office would be retarded as well.

So I am needlessly fretting. I feel so...

uncomfortable... but that could be this stupid chair in which I am sitting.

Oh well, I will have to settle for being less than bright today...

in every way...

it was a wonderful weekend...

relaxing, yet tiring...

fun, yet busy...

sunny, yet cold...

... ... ...

let us focus on that last one for a moment shall we?

in good old chicago, the windy city...

our wonderful friend has a loft which has a great big window through which the sun shines during the day, and the twinkle through the night...

well, one particular morning, the sun shone brightly, with all of its might...

but deep within the depths of nature's mischevious mind, this was merely the bait, for our minds were filled with excitment as we believed the sun was proclamation of a warmer day...

to our dismay...

it was a single-digit, negative, Celsius day... an in-the-teens Fahrenheit day...

it was an I-need-long-johns-because-I-will-die-of-hypothermia-and-some-hot-chocolate-would-be-nice-too day...

I swear, my spit was freezing whenever I spat...

... ... ...

so we bundled up and then went shopping...

and although I did not buy anything, Lorie found something - and she bought it, and she was happy...

and that is all that really matters, is it not?