Netflix Day 8

A week plus a day and we’re still on board with Netflix.  Last night I was feeling a bit apathetic about the whole thing since it really is work to find title that you want to watch.  Usually when I sit down to watch TV (you already know I’m not really a TV fan) I really don’t want to watch it; I just want to sit there and zone out for a few minutes and if I’m lucky catch a quick nap.  This is where I like the ‘guide’ that DirecTV offers…. No thinking to it, just scroll through and select from what’s available. 

So in very un-Jen fashion, this morning I logged on to Netflix.com to see if I could find any selections to add to our queue.  Until now I let John take care of that, I can’t be bothered with trivial stuff like that…. Not that I’m better than that, I just don’t have the attention span for it and I don’t really care.  I was expecting to find more of what I’ve been seeing when selecting what to watch from our Wii.  Not At All… On the website is not only what John has set up but suggestions based on what we have in our queue.  I was amazed!  Oh the documentaries, National Geographic, History Channel, PBS!!  I’ve found the Holy Grail of TV watching for me!  I could sit all day and look for more to add to our queue.  But I have this posting to write and more things to do than I will be able to accomplish today so….  I selected about 8 films to watch (maybe on my phone?) and I logged off not before stumbling upon all three Back to the Future movies!!  I’ve been waiting for those at the library forever! I would have to say my apathetic attitude may have been a bit premature; I’m now excited to sit down and watch TV.  (I must note that I typed *not* excited and had to go back and change it to *now* excited, a Freudian mistake perhaps?) Either way I now have a lot to watch and still very little time to watch it…. Oh I wonder if Sex & the City is on there??  J

Now, I’ve received a few messages from some of you regarding watching news/sports/live TV so I’d love to talk about that for a moment. There are so many ways to stay up to date with what’s going on that I don’t even miss watching the news.  I follow one of our local news channels on FB so I’m up to date on what’s going on in our area.  It’s never good news so I rarely click on the link to read the story and their site isn’t mobile friendly for my iPhone; it takes too long to load.  (There goes my attention span thing again).  However, on the home screen of the Wii, there is a ‘news’ icon, a ‘weather’ icon, and an internet icon.  The news is a general news channel much like what is streaming on AOL- national and global headlines that you can click on to get the full story.  The weather you can customize to your general area.  So if you live in a major city you’ll have no worries getting your local forecast.  Just for fun I wanted to see if our old town in NC would be available to view and alas it is not… Jacksonville, NC, was the closest city to where we lived so I set that as our default city on it just to irritate John.  Hehe! As for sports, sigh….  I do miss sports on TV.  I’ve heard people say that they use Netflix as their excuse to go to a sports bar to watch the game and that would be a great excuse except 95% of the time John is at work so I have Thing 1 & Thing 2 (my affectionate term for my kiddos).  Bringing a 9 yr old and a 7 yr old to BW3 isn’t really my idea of a good time.  That is an issue I’m still working through….  Sunday’s US Women’s Cup is already on my radar… MUST FIND A PLACE TO WATCH!! 

Well, I believe that I’ve covered all I wanted to cover today.  My daughter is currently engrossed in episodes of Popeye (1936!).  Great quality cartoons, the complete opposite of the crap they produce today… plus I’ll reiterate NO COMMERCIALS!!  I need to get her moving and my son out of bed if I’m going to tackle my to-do list for the day.  Keep sending me your thoughts/questions! I love hearing from you!!  Have a great day!!

Jen 

OBX- Forming Day 3

Forming Day 3...... The week has been good so far with gearing my body up for when the Training Days will begin. I did accomplish my goal of 2.25 miles Monday on the treadmill, yea! I used an incline of 1.0 and an average speed of 5.9 for the entire run. If there is a way of figuring out what my HMP (Half Marathon Pace, that's a runners term. I'm so happy to use a runners term!) is in terms of treadmill speed that would be an excellent tool for training. Do you know of one? If so, please pass it along!

Yesterday I did laps with my husband at the outdoor pool at our gym, Lifetime Fitness. (www.lifetimefitness.com) It felt amazing to be in the water again, but I'll be honest it's never flattering to put on a Speedo. Whoever makes those cannot be a swimmer or they would invent a magical material that wouldn't make you feel like you were trying to squeeze yourself into a sausage roll. But then again I suppose that new magical material would not be beneficial to my times now would it? I just want something that doesn't take a jumping act to get into. Anyway, so I donned my Speedo and swimming cap and off I went. Man I love swimming, every time I swim I ask myself why I don't do this more often? For me there is such freedom in swimming, maybe more so than running because when you're in the water it's JUST you. No partner, no music, no traffic honking at you to get off the road. :) I love it. I went out for my high school swim team as a freshman mostly because I wanted an activity for the winter because funny enough, basketball was too much running for me! haha I really ended up loving it and swam events that I didn't think I would, namely the 500 Freestyle. It came about as a fluke of sorts.... our team was losing and the 500 Free event was coming up. Our coach Mr. Larick, asked if anyone wanted to swim it just to give us as many points as possible. I told him that if he bought my dinner at Frisch's after the meet that I would swim it. He said 'sure' and so I did. Now as I'm getting in the water he says, 'you know it's 20 laps down and back right?' Oh Jesus, what did I volunteer for??!?! It wasn't as bad as I thought and in fact it became a regular event for me from then on. Even now when I'm swimming I can hear in my mind not only Mr. Larick but my teammate cheering for me as I swim, "pull! pull! kick! kick!" Memories!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I lapped my husband more than 6 times.... I actually stopped keeping track after 6 because he put flippers on. Cheater!!!! After 45 minutes of laps I timed myself for the last one and eh..... not terrible but not amazing either. 55 seconds. I'll time myself when I first go out next time to see what I've got. :)

Something I would like to touch on for a moment, appreciating someone else's athletic style. While in the pool yesterday I noticed that every time I took a break at the end of the lane, a woman sitting nearby was looking at me. I started to wonder 1) did I owe her money, or 2) did she think I was cute? hahaha! It was only after she put on a swim cap and started her own laps did I realize she was watching my form. That is the point I want to make; as an athlete there is great satisfaction in watching another athlete perform. Whether you're looking for a few tips on how you can be better or just have an admiration for the sport, watching someone else perform can be fascinating. Maybe in a way we are watching ourselves perform by admiring another person. So instead of getting testy that she was watching me, I was flattered. She after all had beautiful style in the water. :)

Today on Forming Day 3 I believe I will take the day off. Lots to do with the kids but tomorrow will be a real 'hit it' kind of day at the gym. I have some new music on my IPod I want to workout to, that surely will inspire me to push it 5 more reps, .25 more miles, etc. Love those kinds of days!

BTW, I've already backed down my coffee intake from 6 to 4 cups a day. :) Have a great one and feel free to comment or ask a question!!

Netflix Day 6

It's been almost a week and I've just about (pardon the pun) burned through the entire first season of Weeds. Mama like... :) Netflix has been fantastic for commercial free television watching. I'm not sure how long the episodes of Weeds were when they were on the air, but here I can watch one in 28 minutes. I think the bad girl in me is fascinated by the main character doing something so 'bad' in the middle of suburbia and not only under the noses of, but in many cases with the assistance of some well known people of the community. Great writing and great acting by the cast. I'm just starting to see a few underlying traits to the characters so it should be very interesting to see how they evolve.

There are two topics I like to discuss in this posting; ordering Netflix DVDs, and the ability to watch Netflix on your smartphone. Both completely genius concepts.

First, ordering Netflix DVDs.... I mentioned in a previous posting that some of the movies we cannot watch instantly and that has been a bit of a let-down. Fortunately, my husband came to the rescue and ordered a movie for the kids that they were really looking forward to watching on DirecTV. He ordered in on Sunday I believe and we received in yesterday. FAST! When they movie came in, my 9 yr old son said, "Cool, we're doing that now too?!" Again I'll reiterate that the word is out among kids that Netflix is the way to watch TV. He knew that having the movie was only temporary and that once we returned it we could have another one. Amazing. So we watched one of the Star Wars flicks last night, they loved it. I loved not having to fast forward through any commercials. I was very surprised at the quality of the DVD. I assumed that like most movies that you can borrow (from the library, friends, or even Redbox) that they would be scratched and cut out 2/3 of the way through the movie. Not the case at all. No issues for the duration of the entire movie. Score one for Netflix. :)

Second, watching Netflix on my phone?? When my husband told me we could do that I about fell over. "Are you serious? Awesome!" Download the app to your phone, log on to your account and not only are the shows you've previously watched there but you can search, add to your queue, and pause your viewing only to pick back up in the exact same place later either on your phone OR at home. That blew my mind. I have to tell you, I fight the urge to watch Weeds every time I get in the car. Speaking of watching Netflix in the car.... we have yet to tell our kids that we now have this ability. I'll never get my phone back if I have to constantly hear "can I watch TV?" every time we're going out. As it is we listen to stories on tape in my car and that keeps the noise level down to an acceptable volume, TV would ruin that balance I have worked hard at not only creating but maintaining. (Yes I said tapes, I currently drive a 99 Camry that has a tape player in it. Go ahead and laugh if you want to but I have Pandora streaming through my phone into the tape player and out my car speakers without having to find a usable FM channel :) Anyway, Netflix has been great. I was out waiting for my husband the other day and since I had some time to kill I watched a few more episodes of Weeds. I can see this feature being an additional instigator of my inability to focus for very long. Before this, if I had 2 minutes I would hop on FB to see what was going on. Now if I have 10 minutes or more, I'm watching TV. What the hell??? I'm going to have to keep my eye on that. I can see how having Netflix on the phones will be helpful next time we drive to NC for vacation. Each kid gets their own (our phones) and all will be right with the world....

So far so good with Netflix. Considering cutting back on the TV watching in the bedroom so it isn't such a drastic change once we get rid of DirecTV altogether. I said considering..... :)

Have a great day everyone!

OBX Half- Forming Day 1

I've always done well when I set goals for myself. I can't just say, "I'm going to go for a run" because then at mile 1.5 I'll start getting tired and want to quit all the while justifying it by silently telling myself "you did run". Yes I ran, but I didnt challenge myself to go beyond what I already know I can achieve. I have to tell myself before I even take my first stride, "I want to run xx miles". Or if I dont define how many chips I'm going to eat by actually using a plate/bowl there is a good chance I'm going to make a complete pig of myself if I eat straight out of the bag. I have to have goals if I want to be successful.

So last night as I was getting ready for bed I was thinking ' how can I make the goal of running this Half marathon not only achievable but ENJOYABLE? That's the key! I'm not going to enjoy physically pushing myself (mostly by myself since I dont yet have a running partner) so this is going to have to be interesting, planned out in advance, and dare I say fun and running in the same sentence?! So then I thought back to the last extremely physical goal I achieved, becoming a Marine. That wasnt fun but the small goal of getting through each day was enough for me at the age of 19. The "Forming Days" and then moving on to the "Training Days", so that is how I am going to approach my training now. I have 119 days from today until the OBX Half- more than enough time. I'm going to use the first 21 days as my "Forming Days" to pick up on my miles and in general ease into the training schedule that I found to use. (More on that in a few). Training Day 1 will begin Aug 1 and Training day 99 will culminate my efforts with Race Day on Nov 12.

As for my training schedule I found this article at www.runnersworld.com and I'm hoping it will be helpful.

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244-258-9369-0,00.html

Any training program that allows me to start with an Easy Day is awesome! :) But getting ready for this race is going to be tougher than I thought. I never thought about doing 'speed work' or even how I would go about doing that, or how many laps is 400/800/1600 repeaters on a track? However that speed work will benefit me outside of this run also (soccer and softball teams may appreciate a faster Jen but probably not any tennis opponent I will face!) so that is additional incentive to get my butt moving and go find a measuring tape!

One thing I learned last night is my tempo run (the speed at which I run) for the Half is a bit faster than I would have thought. Basically it told me to take my 5K pace and add 35 seconds to each mile, this gave me a estimated expected run time of 2:18 for the Half. Now I cant be happy with just saying "I can run it in 2:18", no..... I told you I'm competitive if nothing else, even against myself.... my personal goal is to break 2 hrs. That's a tall order but I feel good about saying that it will be a challenge but I can do it!

OK, I'm off to begin my Forming Day 1! I'm excited and ready to do this! But first I need my kids to wake up so I can take them to the gym with me and I MUST have my coffee. As this training evolves there is a secret little part of me that wants to give up that daily habit of coffee. I cant believe I just said that, I LOVE coffee! I just dont like being dependent on anything.... More on that later I suppose. Have a great day everyone! I WILL run 2.25 miles today!