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!