It's Been A Week
Jun. 26th, 2004 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosTuesday evening I had my emotional, cathartic return to working out.
Wednesday morning, I arrived at work all ready to deal with two and a half days of meetings involving out of town personnel visiting headquarters. Jeannie had some handouts for me to photocopy, and others for me to color print. Vicki had the same for her own boss's staff meeting. The photocopier on our floor was out of order, so we each had to go to a different floor to get our copies. The color printer on my end of our floor is out of order and waiting for a replacement part. The color printer on her end decided it only wanted hand-fed paper for a while - and it took me five or six minutes to figure out how to make it pull from the tray again. Then it ran out of yellow ink, and it took me another while to find the cartridge and then figure out how to change it. And then my stapler ran out of staples. So did Vicki's. We were not Happy Admins.
And it gets worse. More than a month ago, I had reserved a conference room for all day Wednesday and Thursday.
Imagine my shock and dismay when I take the tray of bagels to "my" conference room only to find another group telling my guests that they have the room reserved. A call to the reception desk - official keeper of reservations - revealed that The Other Folks did, indeed, have the room. This came as a shock to the receptionist, since she remembered making the reservation with me. But their name was on the calendar, and according to the rules, they got it. The other slots for the day had also been filled. Of course there were no conference rooms open all day, but there was one available for the next hour near my desk, and so - bagels and all - we trooped up one flight of stairs and I settled them in there.
Meanwhile, Jeannie, my boss, was in her boss's staff meeting. She had planned to leave after 15-20 minutes to join our guests in the previously reserved room. So I spent fifteen minutes standing in the hallway outside the staff room, so I could tell her where she needed to go instead, of the room listed on her calendar, trying to figure out how in the world I was going to explain we didn't have a meeting place afterall, and somehow salvage the situation. At that time, I was near tears, thinking how somehow I had managed to fumble a major element of the first big event I was handling for Jeannie. She's going to fire me, I thought - and knew I was overreacting, but I was feeling such a mixture of failure, guilt, stress, and worry that I wasn't entirely rational.
Fortunately, Jeannie has a great sense of proportion, and I have good relationships with the admin staff, so with the help of the receptionist and the CEO's assistant (who controls access to executive floor conference rooms) I found places for my boss and our guests to sit for several hours at a time. The fact that they had an off-site Wednesday afternoon helped -- but also have been the reason the original reservation got screwed up. When we changed it from a full day to a half day, there may have been a glitch of some kind.
Anyway. . . Wednesday and Thursday were both days of major stress as I made sure the guest speakers were kept updated with the musical chairs of conference room switching. On Thursday afternoon, the same group who had taken my reservation Wednesday morning turned up in the executive level conference room I'd reserved. I learned this via a phone call from Jeannie, who was sounding about at the end of her tolerance level - although not at me, thank God. I printed out my copy of the confirmed room reservation, charged upstairs (taking the elevator, which I usually don't do), and went to get Terrie, the CEO's admin, was joined by my boss's boss, and we all trooped into the conference room and threw out the interlopers, who hadn't realized that they weren't authorized to reserve the room on their own. But in the meantime, Jeannie and her group had found a 'fishbowl' reception area open and had settled themselves there, and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon.
It turns out that Jeannie heard from several people that a lot of conference room reservations had been messed up during a conversion to a new system, so she doesn't blame me for what happened. In fact, she commended me on Friday afternoon for handling everying so well. But by Friday afternoon I was exhausted. I had also made several trips down to her car for supplies, taken goodies to another building for snack time, come up with trivia questions, and a whole bunch of other little things.
The only good part of the week - besides Jeannie thinking I did a good job - was that Vicki and I had reached a new level of simpatico by Friday afternoon. The crises with the failing office technology put us in the mindset of allies under siege by the forces of chaos, and I took care to make sure I was applying my new principles of self-restraint and self-control where she was concerned. By taking my pride down a few notches and accepting the fact that the team here is organized differently than I've been used to elsewhere in the company, I've managed to smooth things out. In fact, by Friday morning, when we were carrying snacks in together from her car, I was actually finding myself glad I had someone else to share the responsibilities with.
Friday afternoon, Carla - my boss's boss/Vicki's boss - sent Vicki over to my desk with a gift: a brand new high-end cell phone that had been given to her as a sample. List price on the manufacturer's website: $499. It came with a post-it note thanking me for my patience and my good work. I was boggled.
I left work Friday with a sense of being set free. (Getting my first full-time/permanent paycheck helped a great deal!) Then I headed back to the gym, where I met with the nutritionist and then worked out with Adam. Jade was there, and we had a few minutes to hug and say good-bye, and he left while I was getting started.
Adam doesn't have Jade's amazing warmth, but they're cut from a similar cloth: the all-around scholar-jock (Adam is a med student, Jade just graduated from the same school) -- and good-looking to boot.
And I surprised him.
Folks, I am 5'4" and right now I weigh 184 pounds. Not Good. But my muscles remember how to lift weights with proper form, and -- even more importantly -- my mental strength is still there. I still can push through to muscle failure. It may come more quickly now, and at lower weights than before, but I can do it. The mental toughness is there. Adam said several times, "You're doing really well," with a note of surprise in his voice that I don't think he was entirely conscious of. I certainly don't look like I have that kind of toughness in me. But it's there.
Now I have to apply that toughness to my nutritional discipline, when I'm alone.
The other vindication I felt Friday night was that even though I couldn't do as many push-ups or sit-ups as I wanted to, was slower on the treadmill than I used to be, and couldn't chest press what I used to, my legs are still strong. On the leg press machine, I moved 175 pounds out and back with full control -- and the trim little nutritionist (who has the same frame as I do under less bulk) can only move 60 pounds. All those months of climbing the stairs to the eighth floor several times a day has paid off.
So now it's Saturday morning, I finally have time to write, and I'm sore and my house is a mess, but I'm going to spend time with The Child, clean house with her, and then we're going out to have some fun together.
I haven't even looked at LJ for two days or so now, so it will take a while for me to catch up with my comments.
Wednesday morning, I arrived at work all ready to deal with two and a half days of meetings involving out of town personnel visiting headquarters. Jeannie had some handouts for me to photocopy, and others for me to color print. Vicki had the same for her own boss's staff meeting. The photocopier on our floor was out of order, so we each had to go to a different floor to get our copies. The color printer on my end of our floor is out of order and waiting for a replacement part. The color printer on her end decided it only wanted hand-fed paper for a while - and it took me five or six minutes to figure out how to make it pull from the tray again. Then it ran out of yellow ink, and it took me another while to find the cartridge and then figure out how to change it. And then my stapler ran out of staples. So did Vicki's. We were not Happy Admins.
And it gets worse. More than a month ago, I had reserved a conference room for all day Wednesday and Thursday.
Imagine my shock and dismay when I take the tray of bagels to "my" conference room only to find another group telling my guests that they have the room reserved. A call to the reception desk - official keeper of reservations - revealed that The Other Folks did, indeed, have the room. This came as a shock to the receptionist, since she remembered making the reservation with me. But their name was on the calendar, and according to the rules, they got it. The other slots for the day had also been filled. Of course there were no conference rooms open all day, but there was one available for the next hour near my desk, and so - bagels and all - we trooped up one flight of stairs and I settled them in there.
Meanwhile, Jeannie, my boss, was in her boss's staff meeting. She had planned to leave after 15-20 minutes to join our guests in the previously reserved room. So I spent fifteen minutes standing in the hallway outside the staff room, so I could tell her where she needed to go instead, of the room listed on her calendar, trying to figure out how in the world I was going to explain we didn't have a meeting place afterall, and somehow salvage the situation. At that time, I was near tears, thinking how somehow I had managed to fumble a major element of the first big event I was handling for Jeannie. She's going to fire me, I thought - and knew I was overreacting, but I was feeling such a mixture of failure, guilt, stress, and worry that I wasn't entirely rational.
Fortunately, Jeannie has a great sense of proportion, and I have good relationships with the admin staff, so with the help of the receptionist and the CEO's assistant (who controls access to executive floor conference rooms) I found places for my boss and our guests to sit for several hours at a time. The fact that they had an off-site Wednesday afternoon helped -- but also have been the reason the original reservation got screwed up. When we changed it from a full day to a half day, there may have been a glitch of some kind.
Anyway. . . Wednesday and Thursday were both days of major stress as I made sure the guest speakers were kept updated with the musical chairs of conference room switching. On Thursday afternoon, the same group who had taken my reservation Wednesday morning turned up in the executive level conference room I'd reserved. I learned this via a phone call from Jeannie, who was sounding about at the end of her tolerance level - although not at me, thank God. I printed out my copy of the confirmed room reservation, charged upstairs (taking the elevator, which I usually don't do), and went to get Terrie, the CEO's admin, was joined by my boss's boss, and we all trooped into the conference room and threw out the interlopers, who hadn't realized that they weren't authorized to reserve the room on their own. But in the meantime, Jeannie and her group had found a 'fishbowl' reception area open and had settled themselves there, and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon.
It turns out that Jeannie heard from several people that a lot of conference room reservations had been messed up during a conversion to a new system, so she doesn't blame me for what happened. In fact, she commended me on Friday afternoon for handling everying so well. But by Friday afternoon I was exhausted. I had also made several trips down to her car for supplies, taken goodies to another building for snack time, come up with trivia questions, and a whole bunch of other little things.
The only good part of the week - besides Jeannie thinking I did a good job - was that Vicki and I had reached a new level of simpatico by Friday afternoon. The crises with the failing office technology put us in the mindset of allies under siege by the forces of chaos, and I took care to make sure I was applying my new principles of self-restraint and self-control where she was concerned. By taking my pride down a few notches and accepting the fact that the team here is organized differently than I've been used to elsewhere in the company, I've managed to smooth things out. In fact, by Friday morning, when we were carrying snacks in together from her car, I was actually finding myself glad I had someone else to share the responsibilities with.
Friday afternoon, Carla - my boss's boss/Vicki's boss - sent Vicki over to my desk with a gift: a brand new high-end cell phone that had been given to her as a sample. List price on the manufacturer's website: $499. It came with a post-it note thanking me for my patience and my good work. I was boggled.
I left work Friday with a sense of being set free. (Getting my first full-time/permanent paycheck helped a great deal!) Then I headed back to the gym, where I met with the nutritionist and then worked out with Adam. Jade was there, and we had a few minutes to hug and say good-bye, and he left while I was getting started.
Adam doesn't have Jade's amazing warmth, but they're cut from a similar cloth: the all-around scholar-jock (Adam is a med student, Jade just graduated from the same school) -- and good-looking to boot.
And I surprised him.
Folks, I am 5'4" and right now I weigh 184 pounds. Not Good. But my muscles remember how to lift weights with proper form, and -- even more importantly -- my mental strength is still there. I still can push through to muscle failure. It may come more quickly now, and at lower weights than before, but I can do it. The mental toughness is there. Adam said several times, "You're doing really well," with a note of surprise in his voice that I don't think he was entirely conscious of. I certainly don't look like I have that kind of toughness in me. But it's there.
Now I have to apply that toughness to my nutritional discipline, when I'm alone.
The other vindication I felt Friday night was that even though I couldn't do as many push-ups or sit-ups as I wanted to, was slower on the treadmill than I used to be, and couldn't chest press what I used to, my legs are still strong. On the leg press machine, I moved 175 pounds out and back with full control -- and the trim little nutritionist (who has the same frame as I do under less bulk) can only move 60 pounds. All those months of climbing the stairs to the eighth floor several times a day has paid off.
So now it's Saturday morning, I finally have time to write, and I'm sore and my house is a mess, but I'm going to spend time with The Child, clean house with her, and then we're going out to have some fun together.
I haven't even looked at LJ for two days or so now, so it will take a while for me to catch up with my comments.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-26 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-27 06:28 pm (UTC)wow, you ARE strong! i am a wuss! but i also weigh 184 pounds. :>