No Pool For Two Weeks

Last week I decided I wanted to add an additional day of swimming to my workout each week because I want to swim farther and faster. Swimming is so much better for your joints and a better exercise in general than anything else. So this morning I went to the pool instead of race walking which was my usual Monday exercise, but I could not swim. Stacy pool is closed for two weeks for maintenance. Although I am bummed about not being able to swim for two weeks, it means that maybe the heat will be working in the pool when it opens back up. This also makes me realize once the nasty, rainy winter junk comes, I won't be able to swim at all at the pool because it's an outdoor pool and if the lifeguards can't see the bottom of the pool, they make everyone get out. So I guess I may need to start checking out the indoor pool situation again. I'm bummed about that because I'm cheap and I love not having to pay for any pool or gym. But now I know I can't do that year round. I think Roger and I are going to have to go check out the Buda YMCA. It's close, only 15 minutes from our current home and once we move it will be a little closer. And as we all know, YMCA's are cheaper than regular gyms. And the Buda YMCA is new, less than two years old, so it's really nice. I've heard it's got a great indoor pool and it's rarely crowded.

At least I was able to get cheap gas this morning on my drive home from the pool. I stopped at the Super Wal-mart at Southpark Meadows because gas was $1.95 a gallon for regular. I had a quarter of a tank but I had to jump on that. I didn't think I'd ever see gas under $2 again.

Cold Front

A cold front came in this week. This is part of our usual fall weather. And one of the nicest parts of the year for us Texans. The temperatures have been down in the 40's at night and getting up between 70 and 80 during the day. So the days have been really nice. Our air conditioner has not turned on all week. We've been opening the windows in the afternoon to let the cool air in and air out the house. We've been grilling dinner a lot lately also. It's just too nice outside to be inside. The weather this weekend was beautiful and it made the events we attended so much better. The World War II battle reenactment we went to Saturday was so much fun and the weather was gorgeous. There's no way in the summer we'd be at an outdoor event from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Then we had dinner on the outside deck at Roadhouse in Bastrop. The food was great. I was glad we finally got to eat there. Roger's company had their 20th anniversary picnic on Sunday afternoon and it was amazing to be sitting in the sun for three hours and not be dying from the heat. The sun still made it warm but because of the temperature and the low humidity it was way more bearable than summer.

The other nice thing about this weather has been the new windows we had installed in June. Before it was cold around all the windows and it made it super cold in the house during the fall nights and all the time in winter. So it has actually been warm in the house when they are all closed and it's not cold near the windows at all. Normally I would be bundled up in flannel or fleece from head to toe in the evenings but I have been fine, except when we have all the windows open until 10:00 p.m. Even when I go to bed I'm still not cold. Before I would be freezing all the way up to the point of jumping in bed and have to be fully clothed and covered. So the windows are doing their job. When we put the earnest money down on the new house we thought, "And we just put all those new windows in the house." We were concerned we made a bad decision by getting the Cadillac of windows and we weren't going to be able to benefit from them at all. But at least we get one fall and winter out of them. It's better than nothing. And it should be great for resale. So we are looking forward to the nice weather this weekend as we finish one last project on the house before we put it on the market in a week or so.

There's only been one down side to this weather and that's been the 50 degree mornings at the pool. The heat is still not working this week and it might not be until after next week that it will be working. A lifeguard told us the plan to finish the electrical project for the pool first changed this week. I think it's starting to take a toll on all the swimmers. Everyone is griping about how cold it is in the pool and it's only getting colder now so it's not going to get better until the heat is working. I'm already a wimp about the cold so jumping into 50 degree water isn't helping me!

I Found My New Pool

Okay, the gym membership idea is out. I found my new pool. I'm not happy about having to drive there, but it's free, open year round and it's longer so I don't have to swim as many laps to go the same distance. I'm talking about Big Stacy Pool. I swam there once or twice about nine years ago when we lived in East Austin off Oltorf, but once we moved I stopped swimming all together. I swam this morning during the reserved adult lap swimming time, 6am-8am. It wasn't too busy at 7am. I was able to swim no problem, but not in a lane. Still workable. I met some really nice people. Interesting, but very nice. Too much talking though. I rested longer than I would have liked to during the break in my main set, but I didn't want to be rude. And I enjoyed talking with them. I even talked a lady into trying triathlon and doing the Ranger triathlon with me next year.

The pool is fed partially by an artesian well so it's 80 degrees year round. It comes out at 100 degrees but they mix it with city water to cool it down. Now in the dead of winter here, I'll let you know how warm it is. I do not like the cold. I remember when I swam there before that it was after the fall semester ended and my swimming PE class pool was closed so it was probably December when I swam and I remember steam coming off the water and it being cold when I got out of the pool.

And since the pool is 33 yards long instead of the usual 25 yards, I don't have to swim as many laps to go the same distance. Which means it's easier for me to keep up with counting my laps and I just feel like the time goes by faster. Plus this will be better for my training as I will be swimming more and pushing off the wall less. And my 750 meter time was faster than in my neighborhood pool. That's good. So today I swam 1980 yards (30-66 yard laps) which is 1810.5 meters or 1.125 of a mile. Not bad. I am really excited about swimming again. Yeah! What a great way to start the weekend. Thank you God for helping me get motivated again. And I'm home before 9:00 a.m. ready to finish the day. It sucked waking up at 6am (I know, wah!) but I feel great getting over a mile swim in early in the morning and moving on.

Disappointments

Out of six, only one U.S. athlete, Laura Bennett, came close to a medal in triathlon and she was a little over 30 seconds from bronze. The next closest American was Hunter Kemper who placed seventh in the men's triathlon. You can watch both the women's and men's online and rewind and fast forward through out the entire event. The starts, transitions and ends are more exciting than in between although the women had a crash during the cycling leg.

I didn't get to do my cardio workout yesterday because of all the rain we are getting. I'm not complaining about the rain. Believe me, we need it. We have been getting some good rain since Sunday. Our rain gauge in the back yard shows two inches and it's currently pouring down. But since I don't have a gym membership, I have no options for my cardio workouts and I hope this doesn't mess with my swims this week.

And speaking of my swims, my neighborhood pool shortened it's hours again this weekend and has no lap swimming times at all. So now I have to drive to another pool from 6am to 8am so I can swim until August 31st then I have to switch over to another pool from 5am to 8am until October 31st if I can handle the frigid waters of an all year round 68 degree spring fed pool. Then I'll have to join a gym in order to swim during the winter to be ready for the spring triathlons. I really need my own pool. It's the only thing I need from a gym. Although it is hard to run/ride in inclement weather so maybe a gym isn't such a bad idea. I just hate having to drive to workout. I guess I'll have to change my way of thinking on that one. Or buy a bigger house and have my own home gym. Hah! Yeah right. I've got a lot of research to do to find all the swimming options here in Austin.

The rain didn't spoil a free back to school concert we went to last night at The Grove at Southpark Meadows. I got to see one of my favorite Christian performers, Brandon Heath, and get his new album which is being released today. It was a little chilly because of the rain and I actually wore blue jeans. I even got a little chilly sitting outside for the concert so I was glad to have on jeans. We took a picnic dinner of homemade pesto-prosciutto-mozzarella sandwiches, chips and homemade chocolate cookies. It was delicious and the concert was nice. The rain might spoil a Round Rock Express game we're supposed to go to tonight. We'll see. We're taking our rain jackets and umbrella.

Boy, do I need the sun to come out and brighten my day. This rain is bringing me down.

Little Black Dress

Yes, I am a typical female and have already started thinking about what I’m going to wear for graduation. You know how they say all women should have a little black dress that you look fabulous in so in the event something comes up last minute, you have a tried and true dress you can throw on and go. Well, I have a little black dress for dressier functions that I love and purchased on sale last year but haven’t had a reason to wear yet. When I began to think about just what the heck I wanted to wear on graduation, under that lovely, figure flattering graduation gown no doubt, I thought, oh, I can finally wear that little black dress with my killer black pumps and I won’t have to buy anything. Then I started to remember that little black dress was loose on me. Not a bad thing, except I lost ten pounds last semester. When the weather got cooler and I started to wear jeans, none of mine fit and I couldn't figure out why. I eventually weighed myself there was the answer. I couldn't believe ten pounds would make that big of a difference. Now I have been swimming regularly for almost two months (with the plan to continue for the rest of my life) and was kind of hoping to lose ten more pounds by the end of this semester. If it's already loose on me, it's going to be huge on me by May. And if you know me even a little, I don’t like to hide my figure. So now I will not only have to get a new little black dress (more shopping, darn), but I need to hurry up and wear this little black dress before it’s too big. Roger needs to hurry up and get home so he can take me out. That or my girlfriends need to take me out somewhere nice so I can wear it. (Hint, hint.) I’ll lose weight to fit into a dress, but I’m not going to gain weight. Thank goodness I have a back-up for graduation now.

Half Way Done

Wow, I'm bushed. I just finished putting flooring in half the attic. After I worked a little bit this morning, I cut my pieces of plywood. What was great was I didn't have to cut them down anymore to get them to fit through the attic stair hole. That was a relief. And using my dad's pneumatic nail gun made securing the plywood to the joists so easy. I moved all the tubs, boxes, luggage, leftover tile and bags of grout over to the side with flooring to get ready to work on that side of the attic. I wasn't sure what I was going to find under the piece of plywood that was already there, but it turned out to not be so bad. I only found a small Christmas decoration of fake holly, some kind of decorative wicker racket thing and a bottle of light beer. Although I'll never know for sure, I bet it was left behind by the construction workers when they built the house. I've been around construction my whole life and I know they drink a little beer. There was something else under that plywood I knew was going to be there, electrical wiring. Although I'm calling it quits for today, my next step is to cut some notches on the top side of the joists for the electrical wires to fit into so the plywood lays flat across the joists and doesn't kink the wire. Don't want to create a fire hazard. When I'm finished with that and putting more wood down, I will again move more boxes and stuff from under the eaves into that area. Then I can assess if I need to put more flooring down there just for storage.

It was really cold outside (34 degrees) when I was doing all this. So I pulled my car out of the garage and shut the doors. I pulled a fan we have to the doorway so it would pull warm air from the house into the garage. Since I knew the circular saw and nail gun would be loud, I wore my drummer's ear plugs while I was cutting and nailing. I did eventually warm up a bit with all the moving and carrying heavy items around. I even broke a sweat. I'll need to do some yoga tonight though for my back and from swimming an hour yesterday. All in the name of good health.

Now I am going to grab some lunch because I'm starving. Then I will start some anthropology homework and reading. We were given an assignment in class yesterday that's due next Monday. It's only worth five points, but anything will help in the end towards getting an A in my class. Actually I added up all the points each test is worth plus this assignment and you can technically make 105 in the class. So there's no excuse for not making an A. Okay, I'm off to eat lunch. Oh, I almost forgot, I posted pictures from today in a set in Flickr that has more house work pictures. Enjoy!

Let The Jokes Begin

Well, today was an interesting end to a good start. I started school on Tuesday. I’m so stoked, my last semester of school. The semester just started and I’m already excited about graduating. I even have a cap and gown already. My mom’s friend Tribbie is letting me borrow her cap and gown from her master’s graduation at A&M this past December. All I have to do is buy a tassel. I tried it on Tuesday night and it’s perfect. That will save me some money. Thanks Trib. We know the graduation will be either May 9th or May 10th. Once the university goes through all the graduation applications they receive by the end of this month, they will know how many students are graduating from each department of each college and will create a schedule to make it all fit into four ceremonies, two on each day.

As for school, my class, Introduction to Biblical Archaeology, so far has been interesting. I’m not as impressed with the professor as I hoped to be. He doesn’t use any of the available resources or technology the university has created to make his life or the students’ life easier, except for electronic course reserves at the library. Those are old hat if you ask me. The class is packed and you have to be in the room at least 15 minutes before to get a decent seat. You know I like to sit in the front and so far I’ve had to sit about half way up. It’s hard to hear him even with a lapel microphone. I’m going to have to start getting there earlier. Even though we got the “this isn’t a Bible study” lecture the first day of class, he mentions specific scripture and stories from the Bible often. He’s even mentioned Jesus a few times. So for me, it is a Bible study because I’m learning things about the Bible I didn’t know previously. For the next four weeks, we are covering the introduction to Biblical archaeology before we get to specific times periods. We will cover 10,000-8,500 BC to the first century AD. So far we’ve been given a 45 page reading assignment. But of course, the textbook for the class isn’t in the bookstore yet, so the prof (actually his teaching assistant) had to scan the pages in for us and post them on the library electronic course reserves. I don’t think it will be in when the bookstore says, (not surprised) so I ordered mine from Amazon.com (saved $7) and it is already on its way to me. I bet I get my book before the bookstore gets them in.

As for swimming, Thursday was my first day to actually swim. It was great. Everything came back to me, breathing, head placement, arm and leg movement, torso twisting, a few strokes. But I’ve decided to take a stroke clinic or two depending on the cost so I can get further instruction and correction. I was tempted to attempt a flip turn on Thursday, but decided to wait a few weeks. I did a workout I found online. It’s part of an eight week program, but I plan to spread it out since it’s been two and a half years since I’ve swam regularly. The pool was set up for 25 meter lanes. I swam for a total of 45 minutes to one hour with a short 15 minute break in between for a fire drill that required the entire rec center to be evacuated. Turns out workers in one area of the rec center smelled gas so the staff decided to be better safe than sorry. I can appreciate that since I was in an area closer to the boilers and natural gas and heat don’t mix well. It was disturbing to my workout and the cold outside didn’t help. We weren’t allowed to go into the locker rooms to grab more clothes or anything, just evacuate.

So there we were soaking wet only in bathing suits and they are telling us we have to go outside where it is 41 degrees. Yeah, we were happy about that. I had one towel already and they gave us as many towels as we needed plus these huge insulated parkas the swim team uses. I was happy to see those. They helped a lot but it was still cold. We finally went back in and I resumed my workout with a short warm-up. I wish I had some kind of abacus or counting frame to keep up with my laps. I swam about 200 meters before we had to evacuate. That was a 9 minute warm-up and the start of a 9 minute skill refresher. Then I did a 22 minute main set plus a 5 minute cool down. I think in total I swam 700 meters which is about 0.44 of a mile, almost half a mile. Not bad for my first swim in two and a half years. I was starving after that and my legs were slow. My right hip hurt a little also, but I have been doing some yoga hip openers to help with that. I’ll be doing yoga everyday to combat the pain I’ll feel from all this swimming. The time of day I swim isn’t busy at all. I plan to continue swimming at that time. It also gets me in a locker room shower before a swimming conditioning kinesiology class gets out filling up the locker room.

As for the title of this post, two weeks ago I started having pain in my left lower jaw. It has progressively gotten worse, but slowly. I have no idea what I did to my jaw. (Here’s where the jokes begin.) There has not been any popping, grinding, ear pain or headache, just pain near the joint when I chew (more jokes), but not any when I talk (even more jokes). Around Tuesday of this week it actually started getting a little stiff and was tough for me to open. So on Wednesday night I decided I better go to the doctor before it gets worse and I can’t open my mouth at all. (Insert more jokes here.) How would I eat? I’d starve! I did some research online about jaw pain because I wasn’t sure if I should go to the dentist or my PCM. The census online was to go to a TMJ specialist, but I am not comfortable with my dentist at all and on Thursday morning I made an appointment with my PCM. By Thursday evening, thank goodness after dinner, the pain started moving up the side of my face and giving me a headache. I did not feel well. I had previously tried Tylenol and Advil but neither helped. At my appointment, my doctor examined the area externally and internally (which wasn't pleasant) and decided to send me for x-rays. She also gave me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I went straight to the lab for the x-rays hoping they’d be able to get the results to her the same day. After a 30 minute wait in the lobby and ten x-rays in different positions, I was informed the results wouldn’t get to her until Monday. So I have to wait to see what’s going on.

I turned in my prescriptions and ran all the rest of my errands before picking them up to go home and take them. I was planning to work when I got home, but that was before I found out I was going to be prescribed those meds. I wanted to get them in my system as soon as possible. I ate a small meal as to not have an empty stomach then took a half pill of the muscle relaxer and one Tylenol 3 with codeine as the pharmacist recommended. I waited a while and felt nothing. So I took the other half of the muscle relaxer and that helped. I was actually able to chew with no pain. I started to feel a little woozy when I stood up from the Tylenol 3 with codeine and decided I better stay down for a while and that I didn't need the second one yet. I think it has worn off a little, hence being able to blog, but I can’t take anymore for a bit. Darn.

My plan for tomorrow was to go for a long walk in the late morning as it warmed up to 52 degrees and cut plywood for the attic in the early afternoon. I’m not sure how I will feel tomorrow when I wake up, but I can’t drive or operate machinery on either medication. So I have two options, go with the pain until after I do those two things or take the meds and not do anything at all. I probably shouldn’t go for too long of a walk on muscle relaxers and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I wonder if I could walk at all. I was really hoping to be done with one side of the attic this weekend. Oh well, they say when you own a home you never run out of things to do. So putting that off a little longer won’t make a big difference. It will also give me time to hit my family up for help. :)