polyglot in training

Today’s 5K was a horrendous waste of time.

I was told that the course - up and down the Hollywood Beach boardwalk - was beautiful and shady and quick.

I’ll agree that it was beautiful before the sun came up and there was a nice breeze. I’ll disagree with the shady and quick. As far as I’m concerned, that wonderful shady stretch just meant that the humidity was trapped by the trees that bestowed their shade upon the sweltering masses who decided that running in South Florida is a Good Thing. And, of course, running through soup doesn’t necessarily equate to speed.

It’s the “Fire Hero 5K” - a double whammy because it was held on September 11th - and there were firefighters in full gear running the fucking thing. 3 miles in 20+ pounds of gear. Nope. I wanted to pass out just looking at them.

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, most of them not good.

But let’s start with a good one.

My husband and I are firm believers in the fact that a guide book with only take you so far. At some point, you need to put the book down and explore. We spent almost the entire week in Lviv just walking around, just my bad Ukrainian and a city map to make sure we didn’t get too lost… and we had some of the best experiences that way.

Same during this last trip to London. We took the train out to a friend’s so we could meet up and do the Harry Potter Studio Tour together. While we were waiting at the “station” for our ride, we popped into a little cafe right there on the platform. The guy saw our Arsenal caps and… we got an education on Gunner history and lore. AMAZING. (But, he ended up being outshone by the fan seated next to me at Emirates Stadium. I learned… things.)

Also, during this last trip to London, as I so loudly put as we were walking down the road towards Buckingham Palace, WE SAW THE FUCKING QUEEN.

Fun fact - if the Queen (or I guess King, now) is in residence, the Royal Standard flies above the palace. Do not ask me where I learned that. I cannot tell you… it’s like it’s always just been in my head, waiting to be useful. Anyway, the Royal Standard was flying over Buckingham during that trip. We were going to - I think - be tourists and watch the Changing of the Guard again. (I will always try to do the touristy things, but I will not revolve a trip around them unless I absolutely have to.) As we were walking, we were just chit chatting and trying not to run over the stupid American tourists in front of us who were walking stupid slow and buried so deep in their books and maps that they didn’t realise a car was coming towards us. A car that had a flag on it. A flag that just happened to the the Royal Fucking Standard. THE QUEEN WAS IN THE CAR. AND I SAW HER.

I also let anyone within hearing distance know that, “OH MY GOD, THAT’S THE MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN.”

(Shush. Let me have my random moment of being an obnoxious American tourist.)

So yeah… kind of surreal to think that Queen Elizabeth is dead. She seemed… indestructible.

I don’t know. The other stuff that’s been weighing on my mind… I thought I was ready to talk about it, but I’m still not. Two people know about the panic attack at the gas station and the google search that destroyed my Friday night and most of Saturday. Just two… any more and the thought of sharing that kicks up another flight or fight reaction.

I’m not ready to talk about Phoenix Day, or my Ukrainian lessons… none of it.

So, this post was pretty pointless.

I guess most of them are, but this one is even more so than usual.

pssst…. we saw the Queen

My running coach is on vacation, so I decided to load up on local 5Ks to make sure I get some outdoor miles.

I’m very disappointed and mostly confused about today’s 5K.

I ran intervals a bit - started out way too fast and burned out, so I walked for about a little more than a mile, and then I went back to intervals. According to my Garmin, my first few runs were at a 9/10 minute pace and my walks at 17. That was pretty decent, but my runs really should have been at a 12/13 mm. I watched my Garmin the entire second half to keep my pace in the slower range. And… surprise! I felt better. It just goes to show that - IN THIS CASE - I should not listen to my body. Apparently, my body thinks a 9mm is my speed. It’d be nice if it were sustainable, but I can’t even do a 30 second run interval at that speed without wheezing and seriously questioning my sanity.

But, then I finished the course and looked at my Garmin.

In “feels like 90” with 86% humidity, I ran 3.35 miles at a 15:15 pace. I WAS THRILLED..

And then I looked at my chip time.

It didn’t matter what I did in the end. My chip time was 16:30.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

I walk a fucking 16:30. Without intervals.

And I RAN this time. That should have helped…

I know my pace is thrown off because my distance was off and it makes me question a lot of things. Like I started my watch late and yet still hit mile markers a full quarter mile after the watch registered a mile.

It might be the foot pod. I forgot to take it off my shoe when I got dressed this morning and it’s calibrated to the treadmill. (I used three different data sources to make sure the foot pod was recording a similar speed. I mean, if it matches Nike Run Club, Strava, and the treadmill, then it’s calibrated correctly as far as I’m concerned.) I’m guessing that if it’s overriding the GPS, it’s clocking a quicker speed because I did an offset. I don’t know. But, at the same time, I’m scared to take it off because I had to basically reprogram my Garmin so it would read correctly. I used to have a really nice Garmin foot pod but it died and Garmin doesn’t sell that model any more. I couldn’t even get a refurbed one from them. I ended up with a Stryd pod, based on a lot of research, but I hate it. (I had to change my watch face to add one of Stryd’s data fields and now I don’t get the information I want / am used to. First world problems, I guess.)

In other news, I’m building absolutely ridiculous excel spreadsheets again.

At my new job, we’ve been hoarding paper. You know it’s bad when the printing companies can’t get their hands on a C1S 80 pound cover, or whatever.

SO. Our Production Manager doesn’t understand how to manage inventory and it’s being complicated by the fact that our inventory is spread over four warehouses and some other issues. She has this excel spreadsheet which is basically an out of control data dump. She can’t even assign dollar values so that I can properly value our inventory at month-end… and we’re sitting on about a million dollars worth of paper.

Because we’re still using Excel 2010, I really had to go back to basics, which was miserable.

I ended up taking her spreadsheet and working through the messy transactions, cleaning it up and making sense of it. I got about 25 lines in before I wanted to throw things. At that point, it was better to move on to the formulas and figure out how to get it to export some real data.

I love pivot tables, so that was kind of the endgame. It took so much trial and error to carry the dollar values, to calculate the inventory without double counting it..  but in the end, I got there.

Three pivot tables:

1) Inventory location showing stock size, type, brand, and quantity

2) Stock value by stock type

3) Number of sheets allocated or used by a job

It’s clumsy as fuck and it’s a little convoluted to get the data actually in, but now that it’s set up, it shouldn’t be that hard to maintain.

It’s honestly the stuff of nightmares.

And with that said, I’m off to find some food, play some Sims and do some Ukrainian homework.

I know. My life is SUPER exciting.

I’m constantly fascinated by the amount of assholery I see in the world. Although I don’t know why… I mean, I’m the biggest asshole I know.

I mentioned - in passing - that I had a Ukrainian lesson this morning. (The first one in five (FIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) years.) And I was told that I shouldn’t be wasting my time on a ‘trendy’ language since nobody speaks it in Florida.

Sure.

There isn’t a Ukrainian community in Miami.

There isn’t one in Orlando, either.

And even more importantly, I don’t have an emotional or a biological connection to Ukraine.

Nope.

Also of note: “Why do you have all this Ukrainian crap all over Facebook?” / “Your bio didn’t say anything about being Ukrainian until the war started.”

Whatever.

I was listening to a YouTube playlist the other day and this popped up. I can’t say it’s my favourite OE song, but I might have repeated it once or twice… or seventy eleven billion times, but who’s counting? What I could understand of the lyrics pulled me in, and then Lyrics Translate filled in the blanks.

Which is a nice segue to a recap of my Ukrainian lesson…

I told the teacher that I was basically starting from scratch, but it turns out that’s not exactly true.

I can remember the “first chapter” stuff - greetings, how to read the alphabet - but once we get into the meat of the language, I’ll be totally useless. Then again, I’m getting better at reading. A lot of words stand out and I can put together a simple translation of a paragraph or a headline.

I’m also listening to more music than ever before and trying to translate the lyrics, sometimes with absolutely hysterical results. (Remember AND YOU DON’T EVEN BLOW YOUR MUSTACHE, YOU ARRANGE YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!!! I still giggle every time I hear that line.)  I’ve been on the lookout for new bands for a while now and I found KALUSH prior to this year’s Eurovision competition but I didn’t put two and two together for a while. It wasn’t until they started getting a lot of exposure that I recognised the rapper’s voice. This song has been on repeat for-fucking-ever during my commute. One, because Slava rapping is a kink I didn’t know I had (I don’t know if it’s rapping… more like over enunciating? Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.) and two, what the fuck is the guy in the pink hat saying?

I like learning songs that are hard. (ha. I said hard.)  Guns and Ships from Hamilton. It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) from R.E.M. Диагноз from Бумбокс. The speed of the lyrics. The cadence. Even the way certain words are accented. It’s challenge I love. And one that I’m not all that great at in Ukrainian.

So. KALUSH.

If some of their videos didn’t have the lyrics, I think I would die. He hits certain words weird to make them fit better in his rapid fire style. I maybe understand one or two words each time he goes off because he’s just so fucking fast. Maybe if I was fluent, maybe if I could at least read quicker, if I could speak faster, it wouldn’t be quite so tongue twisty…

Example 1 (a quick teaser of the Eurovision winner because it has the lyrics):

Also.. watching him live? Fuck me. How much did he have to practice?!?!?!

(I love this video because it was filmed in Площі Ринок (Market Square) in Lviv. I walked that cobblestone street and I know exactly where it was filmed which makes me happy in ways I can’t explain. Too bad the quality isn’t the greatest.)

Example 2:

(And no. I don’t know what’s up with the “carpet guy”. I should probably google it, but I kind of like not knowing.)

So. Yeah.

I would apologise, because I had a blog set up specifically for my Ukrainian posts, but I don’t like it over there. I’m actually going to shut it down whenever I get to it… I had an idea for a different Ukrainian themed site, but we’ll see where that goes. Probably nowhere right now.

It’s the very last RTI racery event and I have bitten off more than I can chew… but I always do.

I took yesterday and Monday off - I needed some time to myself and I’m not that busy at work. Plus, it’s the first four days of The Final Battle and I figured that I would cap the first four days.

I had the bright Idea that I would run a mile for every day that Russian has been in Ukraine and donate $1 for each mile. (117 by the end of the event.) I had it planned out perfectly: Four caps would put me at 60 days. I could then cap the final weekend as well, which would push me to 90 before I ran a single mile on a workday.

Well.

I capped yesterday and today… I have not felt like a functional human at all.

I bite my nails. I always have. All the way down to the quick and sometimes a little extra. When I’m super stressed, I always manage to rip the entire nail off one (if not both) of my pinkies.

I saw a hypnotist. I’ve talked about it in therapy. I’ve worn false ones.

And I even bought this shit that was practically guaranteed to keep my fingers out of my mouth.  (Oh. My. God. It was absolutely disgusting… But. It didn’t work.)

Several years ago, I had a great epiphany: I self-harm.

Still haven’t figured out how to get people to understand why I consider it self-harm, but the end result is the same.

Still haven’t figured out how to stop it either.

(Seriously! I saw a fucking hypnotist, I was so desperate to stop doing it. Apparently, I’m so fucked up that they couldn’t figure out a way to help.)

So anyhoo…

In 47 years on this earth, I have never seriously hurt myself. (The pain of a missing fingernail dissipates rather quickly when you’re used to it.)

Well, Thursday night I wound up in Urgent Care.

Managed to rip off my thumbnail and get an infection.

My thumb was swollen to twice it’s normal size and there was a little spot that had turned green.

It was the first time I’d ever been afraid of what I was capable of.

I suppose, in it’s own way, it’s not that much different from a blade slipping and cutting a vein or something.

Of course… in the car Friday morning on the way to the grocery store, I managed to chew off the remaining nails on that hand.

(All that to say I didn’t get in a cap today because I had a bad reaction to the antibiotic they prescribed me.)

This has been on repeat today… I’m not sure why, but it fits my mood perfectly.

Back in December, I talked about the Boxes of Doom!

Well. I’ve spent way too much quality weekend time going through those in that blog post and some others.

We’re painting the room we call the Person Cave and we needed to figure out a way to maximise the closet space. Last weekend, he painted the closet white and installed shelves. I’ve been trying to reorganise 40+ years of crap.

I suppose it goes without saying that I’ve spent most of the last two weekends crying.

But… I’ve actually thrown away a lot of memorabilia. Like my parent’s honeymoon photos, my mother’s UCONN scrapbook, their wedding album, my baby book. One of my rules was that I would only keep it if it didn’t piss me off to look at it. So. No pictures of people I didn’t know. No pictures of places I’ve never been. No pictures of people who are dead to me. I kept a bunch of photos of my parents, back when they were young and in love, but only because my father looked so happy in them. The one thing he kept saying during our last conversation was that he wished I knew the woman he married. The woman she used to be. I look at those pictures and I see a strange woman laughing with my father and smiling at him. The only reason I know who she is is because I look like her, and well… historical context. I mean, as far as I know, my father only married once. And if it’s not my mother in those photos than the people I’ve always thought of as my grandparents are… not.

It’s all a bit of a head fuck, to be honest.

Today’s unexpected memory landmine was a bunch of stuff from the UCONN Mens’ Ice Hockey coach, Coach Marshall. He was such a good guy and it showed in the post it notes stuck to every single ticket he left at the door for me, the random letters he’d send me as part of the fundraising bullshit he had to do, the letter of recommendation he wrote for me.  And at some point, past me decided it would be a good idea to keep the booklet from his memorial service with all that. Fuck. I’m crying just thinking about all of it. When it came to getting a job in hockey, he was my number one cheerleader. I owe that man so much. And he’s gone.

Yeah.

So… it’s been a bit of a tough day for me.

Let’s end this on a happy note, yeah?

This may very well be my favourite lyric of any song ever (well, as of right now):

Нині не льотна погода
Сказала мені, шоби я
Літав собі голий по хаті,
Показував дулі з вікна.
На мене багато хто скаже,
Шо я тіпа з боку смішний,
А той, хто багато говорить,
По-моєму трохи дурний.

Roughly translates to: The weather is bad today. I’m walking around the house naked, showing my bits from the window. People say I look funny, but I think people who talk too much are dumb.

Seeing how it’s been fucking raining since Thursday, I thought it fitting.