We arrived yesterday after a fairly uneventful flight. They lost one of our suitcases, which I thought was pretty difficult since we didn't change planes during the flight from Dulles to here (although we stopped in Chicago). It turns out that my suitcase never made it on the plane in Dulles. This has happened to me before so I know the drill. This time worked out much better than the previous 2 times and they brought the suitcase to Gail's house around 9pm last night. It's chillier than we thought but it's supposed to be in the 70s soon. I haven't even put a toe in the hot tub yet and it's calling my name when it gets warmer!
We worked on Mike's resume last night and I worked the phones and the Internet in the afternoon trying to figure out the myriad of benefits options that are offered to me. I called each insurance company to get more detailed information and I'll say that one of them has the worst automated phone system ever. Since I'm not a member or provider, it didn't understand what to do with me. I finally reached an operator who transferred me to another automated phone system that wanted my tax ID. Since I didn't give it one, it hung up on me! I realize after looking at all my options, CSCI did offer really great benefits and I'm going to miss it a lot.
I've found a new career for Mike if things don't work out with this IT thing - personal coach/trainer. We went for a run today in a nice little park nearby. Mike's idea was to do a "warm up" run over to the park - nice and slow. I felt pretty good when we arrived at the park, I felt pretty good and we decided to do some interval training. One loop around the park is a mile. I had hope to do about 3 miles today, but would have been fine with 2 or 2.5. Our first loop included running fast for 2 minutes, running slow for 2 minutes. I couldn't hack it so we dropped it down to running for 1.5 minutes a little slower. My slow runs turned to walking with Mike pushing me to "keep going" (he's evil, that one!) I was sucking wind after 1 loop, but we did another lap. This time my knee started hurting. At the end of the 2nd loop, we walked over to an open basketball court and Mike decided I was going to run sprints. All he needed was a whistle!
Mike's very good at encouraging people to push themselves. I've seen him sneak an extra 1/2 mile out of his other running partners or work someone a little harder at volleyball. It's not like we can't handle the extra push, but gosh darn it, sometimes we want to be a little lazy! That won't happen with Mike around. Don't count on taking a nice leisurely stroll with Mike, especially if he knows you can do more. If you tell him your goal, he will coax you to reach that goal by any means necessary! It's all good. Because of Mike, I did three 5Ks this year and am probably in better shape than I was before chemo. I won't complain about the results, but man is it torture getting in shape! :-)
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