Battling the Elements

This week, I experienced the dynamic effects of weather in the New Mexico forest, and lived to tell the tale.

It started out like any other week.  Monday we drove down to the Gila; my boss, a student employee, and me; met up with the rest of the crew from Silver City, and headed off to our respective mapping areas.  The afternoon was short and uneventful, and we returned to the hotel to rest and prepare for tomorrow.

Tuesday we drove down a dirt road in search of the site I had previously mapped out.  The crew was my boss, Nessa and myself.  Some minor navigational errors occurred but eventually we found the site and began working.  By lunchtime, one site was done and a second almost complete when it began to look like rain.  We finished up quickly and sat down under the trees to eat lunch.  That’s when the thunder and lightning came.  I put on my rain jacket and prepared for the storm.  But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

It hailed on us.  And when I say it hailed, I mean it HAILED.  In New Mexico.  In July.  It started out small, just a few little circular pellets of ice.  Then a few more.  And I thought, this isn’t so bad, and remembered the times when we were kids and, from the safety of the garage, watched the hail fall like little pieces of raining fertilizer bouncing off the pavement.   After that, it started to get nasty.  And it hurt, as rapidly falling pea to marble-sized ice crystals being pelted into your back are bound to do.  It was also really REALLY cold, and I was soaked.  I thought it would never stop, but when it finally did, I looked up from under the dripping brim of my hat and saw the land covered in ice.  It looked like it had snowed (which I might have preferred, actually).  I headed back to the truck tired and freezing but still managed to get one more site in before the day was over.  I honestly thought it couldn’t get any worse than that.

The next day began fresh and full of promise.  The weather looked clear and I felt optimistic.  But then things started to go wrong.  I won’t go into all the details because I think some decisions were made that I did not exactly approve of, but I often neglect to speak my mind for fear of being wrong in front of other people.  This usually ends up causing some problems.  Long story short, we went the wrong way a couple times and by the time we got to where we wanted to be, I was exhausted.  As in heat exhaustion.  I felt nauseous and lightheaded, collapsed under a tree, and did not dare to even stand up for quite some time.  I must have been dehydrated, though I honestly thought I had been drinking water pretty much constantly, so I finished one water bottle, drank another, added some of Nessa’s to mine, and drank that too.

I felt better after that but still had a headache that didn’t go away for the rest of the afternoon.  We stopped work an hour early and I proceeded to pass out in my room for half an hour.

Hiking in the woods can be very physically demanding and potentially dangerous, and I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being well prepared for whatever may happen.  I may have a degree but I still have a lot to learn.

Holiday Weekend of a Single* Working Girl

*and by single I mean not married.  I essentially function as a single person, who happens to have a boyfriend.

This was a four day weekend for me.  I got back from my first week of field work and had enough hours to take Friday off, so I did.  But it wasn’t exactly all fun and games.

The reason I took Friday off in the first place was because of a doctor’s appointment.  In addition to getting a shot, a pap test, and having a lovely conversation with my male doctor about sex and birth control (extra fun), I also figured out how much I weigh.  I don’t own a scale so I haven’t actually weighed myself since Christmastime at my parents’ house.  So it’s been a while.  And let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.  Kinda depressing, actually.  I hiked around a lot and did quite a bit of hard labor in the field last week, and plan to continue doing so for the rest of the summer.  Hopefully this will help.  Unfortunately, I do not think my pedometer is giving me an accurate measure of how much I am walking.  At the end of a day in the field, it was only calculating about 3000 steps per day.  This does not seem right, since I get about 1000 just waking up and walking around my apartment in the morning before I take a shower.  Odd.   Also, my office is being dumb and not letting me count the steps I took in Lincoln because I wasn’t there to report them.  Boo. I guess I will not be winning the competition at work, but I still may have a chance to win the competition against myself.  We shall see.

In addition the doctor’s appointment, I also had to switch the title for my car from my dad to me and get it registered in New Mexico.  NM has this awesome thing called MVD Express, so this would have been super easy if it weren’t for one minor detail: the emissions test.  Is this a common thing?  I never even heard of it until I moved to Vegas, and I didn’t register my car there so I never had to do it.  Here in New Mexico, I live in the only county where the emissions test is required to get a registration.

Anyway, I went to get the test and my car FAILED.  Why?  Because of the gas cap.  I had no idea that even counted as part of it.  I knew my gas cap was loose and I had gotten a new one but had never actually put it on, so I put it on and went to take the test again.  Still failed.  But the guy at the Jiffy Lube was super nice and helpful (much nicer than at the previous one near the MVD) and told me I could still get the car title, just not register it, and get the problems checked out at Autozone for free.  So I got the title and then headed over to check out the problems.  The guy over there told me that as long as my check engine light was on, I would always fail the test, even though I already fixed the problem.  They don’t tell you this so you have to keep coming back to take the test and pay more money (duh).  He showed me how to erase the problem codes and said to drive it around for a day to see if the light came back on.  It didn’t.  Hooray!

That was Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday I went clothes shopping (I needed some new field pants and had to buy –gasp– a size 12.  Oh the shame!), took a long walk, dropped off my recycling, picked up some stuff I needed at the store for packing my vacuum to send back (if you haven’t heard, electrolux is doing a recall on certain models of their vacuums due to exploding batteries or something like that, and mine is one of them.  lucky me!), and finally managed to squeeze in a little time with Matt.  We had seen each other for about an hour the previous evening before he had to go to work.  I tried to make dinner but was in a hurry, so it was a total mess.  Plus I was annoyed with him for being cranky and watching the basketball game on tv instead of listening to me when I was talking to him.  I was so upset I just started crying then and there and couldn’t stop.  This made him feel bad, so he took me to dinner on Sunday, and he got me ice cream too, even though we both know I don’t need it.

Today I was hoping to just relax and maybe take a look at my maps for this week, but that didn’t happen.  I needed clean clothes so I went down to the laundry room, poured in the soap and dirty clothes and realized I didn’t have enough money on my card (we went to the card system a little while ago, no more quarters).  So I went over to the lobby where there USED TO BE a machine to put money on the laundry cards, but it is NO LONGER THERE.  Where did it go?  I don’t know.  But I couldn’t do anything about it because the office was closed for the holiday.  What was I going to do?  I had a bunch of soapy unwashed clothes in the laundry room just sitting there and no way to get them clean.  I did the only thing I could think to do.  I called my mom for advice.  My sister answered the phone.  She relayed the message to the family (and friends who were also with them celebrating the holiday).  After laughing at me, they finally came to the consensus that this was not an emergency and I should therefore not call the apartment emergency number, and the only thing to do was to go to a laundromat.  I wasn’t really sure which, if any, would be open so I started calling around.  No one picked up, except for one place.  The conversation went as follows.

Lady on phone: Bueno?

Me: (Oh great, they speak Spanish. maybe they’re bilingual…) Are you open today?

Lady: No ingles

Me: (nope) Um ok, esta abierto hoy?

Lady: Si

Me: (yay I got it right) gracias

To make an even longer story short, I ended up not being able to find the place, and I did not really want to look around for it, because it was in the barrio, as the Mexicans say.  Fortunately, the laundromat near my house ended up being open, so I went to that one instead.  After that I got groceries, came home, folded laundry, made dinner, saw Matt for about an hour, and that was the end of the day.  So while many others were celebrating Memorial Day weekend with their friends and family, I was doing all that.

It would be nice to have another weekend to recover from this one.  I’m completely exhausted.

HASAY: Because I haven’t done it in a while

Since announcing my intent to work out more and be more healthy, I have come to the sad realization that many of my clothes do not really fit me anymore.  And, unlike some of the other blogs that I read, I do not have a baby as an excuse.  (Trust me, it’s not.  If it was, Matt, myself, and my mom (and possibly my boss) would all have a simultaneous panic attack)  It’s all fat. Plain and simple.

So I’m really trying to take this fitness thing more seriously, and my work has graciously decided to help out, with this handy dandy pedometer.

They handed one out to everyone in our office who wanted it.  And began an eight-week-long competition between the employees to see who can get the most steps.  The winner gets some sort of prize (I’m not sure what) and everyone who participates gets a shiny new eco-friendly metal water bottle (which is awesome because I dropped mine in the parking lot and it broke).  There is also a challenge competition between the different staffs.  And I want to WIN!  Usually, I’m not much of a winner.  It’s true.  I just don’t really win much of anything.  But I’m really going to try this time.  So far I have done okay.  But I really need to step it up in the upcoming weeks if I even want to have a chance.

Yesterday and today I walked to the grocery store (yes, I went two days in a row), despite the fact that it was pretty hot out (I’m still in a bit of a shock going from cold Nebraska to hot Albuquerque within the span of several hours) and despite the fact that someone in a car thought it would be hilarious to throw a tissue box out the window.  AT MY FACE.  Who does that?

Anyway, so I walked to Albertson’s (where they’re still doing that Monopoly thing probably because no one has won yet, or at least I haven’t – again with the not winning) and forced myself to only buy healthy foods.  No chips, no cookies, no chocolate or otherwise overprocessed goods.  Only fruits and veggies and healthy whole wheat bread and skim milk and nonfat yogurt.  And no cheese.  I’m only getting Laughing Cow cheese from now on – it’s healthy, you can get it at Albertson’s and Sam’s Club (and the other cheese I got at Sam’s, because it really shouldn’t go to waste…) And I’m going to start making smoothies.  With my new blender, and with my own healthy ingredients.  (I will probably still add sugar, but it’s organic, so it’s okay, right?)

So that’s what’s going on with that.  And now I am off to figure out what I want for dinner.

My Boss Told Me I Need to Work Out More

First off, today this site had more visits than it has ever had in its entire life!  This is exciting.  So, as not to disappoint my adoring fans (hahaha), I am writing a post today!  Aren’t you lucky?

During the past several weeks, I have been perusing the blogosphere in search of some new reading material, and recently stumbled upon a little blog called HASAY, which is all about diet and exercise and such things like that.  This is a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time, and my half-ass method of doing something about it is really not working out all that great.  Now, I realize that I am rather late to the party on this one, but oddly enough, looking at the dates, it appears that this group started right around the time I was going home from another long week in the field and this whole needing to work more on my fitness skills mess started, so perhaps I have been participating in spirit all along?  Or perhaps I am full of crap.  Either way, let’s begin, shall we?

So as I was saying, I was coming home from the Gila, expecting another awkward four hours of sitting quietly listening to banjo music, when my boss started talking to me about stuff.  Mostly about field work and other job-related things (neither of us are much for small talk) when the conversation turned to what we do when not in the field.  As I have learned, what we do when not in the field is a lot of sitting around.  This is not terribly conducive to the very large punch-in-the-face (or kick-in-the-junk, whichever you prefer) that is field season.  So my boss suggested that I start working out in the winter to stay in shape.

In the beginning, I had ideals.  Let me tell you about my ideals.  I was going to join a gym (which I did, even though I have a little mini-gym at my apartment, and even though my boyfriend told me it was a waste of money, etc etc.) and I was going to go there 3-5 times a week, and use the weight machines and the elliptical machine, and I was going to take classes.  All the classes I thought would be useful to me.  Weight lifting, aerobic kickboxing, zumba, yoga, step aerobics, the works.  I was going to do it all.  That was in October.

Now, six months later and about one month to go until next field season, I’ve since cut all classes except yoga and (very rarely) zumba from my fitness agenda.  And I hardly ever go just to use the weights or any of the other machines.  And it’s showing.  Mostly in my middle area.

Let’s go back in time for a moment.  Back to the summer of 2007, when I weighed 124 lbs (awesome) and even my mom noticed how good I looked.  How did that happen?  And what has changed since then?  Well, a couple things.  The first is my friend TT.  Near the beginning of that year (2007), she decided to go on the Weight Watchers diet.  I was not really in need of any sort of structured diet program at the time but I sort of semi-dieted with her anyway.  We ate fat free yogurt or low fat bagels with low fat cheese (Laughing Cow, you can get it at Albertson’s, it’s actually really good) for breakfast and Healthy Choice or Smart Ones frozen dinners for lunch.  I don’t remember what I was eating for dinner around that time, but in the evenings I was exercising, which leads me to the second thing.

My roommates.  To be honest, I wasn’t really a huge fan of either of them.  It’s a long complicated story that I don’t want to get into right now but suffice it to say I wanted to spend as little time around them as possible.  Since sitting in my room all evening isn’t much fun, I started taking walks.  Long walks.  Maybe an hour or more.  Plus I walked pretty much everywhere I needed to go.  The grocery store, the library, wherever.  And sometimes at school when I got bored, I’d walk around there too.  I was a walking fiend.

But without TT, my roommates, and time to kill by wandering around aimlessly, I find myself sitting on my butt a lot more.  And like I said, it shows.  And I’m not going to be happy about it when I’m climbing up steep slopes and digging holes through clay and rocks.

I need to do something about it.  And I need to start now.  Yesterday I began writing down my goals for this year (of which there are many) and one of them is to exercise every day.  Second day in, I’m doing pretty good.  Yesterday I was planning to go to both zumba and yoga but ended up just going to yoga (half-win) and today I went for an hour walk (total win!).

There’s still a lot more to do.  I need to lift weights.  This is very important for my job, and as much as I hate and despise even the thought of picking up a large amount of weight and then putting it down again repeatedly, it is something that must happen.

There is also the issue of diet.  I don’t think I eat that badly.  And most people who know me tell me I don’t really need to diet, just exercise more.  So that will be my main thing.  But I’ll also try to pay more attention to what I eat throughout the day, and what I am doing to work off the excess calories that I do eat.

Ok.  Let’s see how this works out.