Soooo....

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by MerryPrankster

I hope you have at least one or two assistants to help. May the force be with you!

Lol- thank you! I'll need it. Is corporeal punishment still out of vogue?

[Prudence]

Okay. So I bought a treadmill with my tax return. A good one. One I hope to some day run on. But I had to start walking. I'm fat and asthmatic and each condition is making the other worse in a terrifying spiral of expanding waistline and labored breathing. And at first I could only do 15 minutes. Now I can do up to 45 minutes (at 3 mph), although I had to take a week off for recovery from oral surgery (their orders), then a cold, which dropped me back to 30 minutes again. Although if I'd taken my puffer tonight I probably could have done longer. (Another improvement -- it was 15 minutes with albuterol hits pre and post, now it's 30+ minutes with a bit of wheezing after, but no puffer at all.)

And I know I was getting better, because I hiked all over WDW, all day for 6 days, and barely used my inhaler at all. And wasn't even sore. And hubby was saying my butt was less flabby, and so forth, but the scale wasn't moving. Not at all. In fact, it appeared to go up a few pounds, despite my work. So I stopped weighing myself at all and had trouble motivating myself to keep on the treadmill.

So tonight, on a whim, even though I'm bloated and for some reason ate an enormous dinner, I decided to weigh myself.

And even with the bloating and HUGE meal (and although food has gone in, poo has not yet come out) I was 4 pounds less than I weighed last time after doing everything I could do to lighten the load.

I know that given how far I have to go it's not a huge number. But I swear -- the numbers haven't budged downward in probably 10 years so I'm feeling a bit boastful at the moment.

[BarTopDancer]

Way to go Prudence!!!!!! Boast away! It is a wonderful feeling that is often motivating!!! Please try and remember to go by a combo of how your clothes fit and what the scale says. Just because it hasn't gone down doesn't mean you aren't toning and losing calories!! (three cheers for you!)

[Ghoulish Delight]

What BTD said. Remember, muscle is significantly denser than fat. So a large amount of fat loss can be quickly "erased" according to your scale by the corresponding muscle gain. But weight isn't what matters, it's body fat percentage, which is sure to have gone down at this point.

This week I've motivated myself to get back on my revolutionary "Eat Less, Move More™" plan. To state that in laymen's terms...I'm eating less and moving more. The money has dried up for clinical trials, but even without the hard data, I'm reasonably confident that I will lose weight that way.

This year's brand of movement...running. Normally because of my asthma, swimming or stationary bike are my most comfortable choices, but they both take up an inordinate amount of time. I love swimming but too easily back out of it when I don't feel like getting into cold water. And the bike gets massively boring, even with a book to read. Running is quick and easy and the scenery constantly changes. Right now, I'm lasting about 10 minutes before the wheezing sets in. But that's a marked improvement from the very slow paced 5 minutes of day one. Any day now I'll be able to get through the entire length of my running route without taking walking breaks.

[Prudence]

My treadmill is extremely compatible with my reality teevee addiction. And thank the powers that be for remotes! I can flip back and forth as my teensy little attention span dictates!

On a completely unrelated note, I just read this pair of sentences in my casebook and it makes me chuckle to myself: "Rejection of the seat belt defense can no longer be based on the antediluvian doctrine that one need not anticipate the negligence of others. There is nothing to anticipate; the negligence of motorists is omnipresent."

I want to be a judge just so I can write stuff like this. (Or have my clerk write stuff like this and put my name on it.)

[CoasterMatt]

Originally Posted by Prudence

"Rejection of the seat belt defense can no longer be based on the antediluvian doctrine that one need not anticipate the negligence of others. There is nothing to anticipate; the negligence of motorists is omnipresent."

I read that, and all I can think of is...

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!

[Kevy Baby]

Between Prudence's post and CoasterMatt's signature* I am reminded of this line from a comedian:

Think about how stupid the average person is. Now realize that half the people are dumber than that!









* For the ancient archiologist who finds this thread buried in some historical discovery, CoasterMatt's signature as of this post is "The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"

[Kevy Baby]

So I've been seeing bumper stickers lately that say, "Drive Safely; School's Out."

And then we'll see, "Drive Safely, School's Back In Session."

When do I get to drive like a homocidal maniac?

[Ghoulish Delight]

So I just wrote a very long post, then proceded to have it disappear when I ran something that I thought would open a new window, but instead just used the existing IE window. And there's no way I have the energy to recreate that now. Oh well, it's probably for the best as, now that it's gone, I'm having second thoughts about posting it to begin with.

[Prudence]

So. My husband's boss tells him this afternoon that "something came up this week" and he needs to meet with her and the human resources consultant tomorrow afternoon.

WTF?!

That can NOT be good. HRCs do not bring good news. It just doesn't happen.

And he said he didn't want to meet with them unless he could have a union rep present. And she said she could understand why he'd want that. !!!!! She did NOT say "oh, don't worry, it's nothing like that." No, she said she understood why someone in his position would want their union rep present.

!!!!!

Now, here's where it gets weird. She said she was not allowed to tell him what it was about. But we work for the same university. I deal with personnel issues in my position. I have the documentation at my finger tips that says in all disciplinary actions that the supervisor is REQUIRED to present the employee with a pre-meeting memo outlining the topic and informing them of their right to have a union rep present. I even went online to check for sure because some civil service rule reforms are going into effect July 1, and the disciplinary rules have already been updated and they confirm what I just wrote -- notice is required in all disciplinary actions.

So to summarize the facts:

Boss tells him today that he has to meet with her and HRC tomorrow evening.
HRCs only come out to be boss's witnesses/advocates in disciplinary actions and ensure employer's butt is covered.
Tomorrow is a Friday before a 3-day weekend.
Boss tells him she can't disclose the reason for the meeting.
State employment rules state that he must be notified in writing of, at the very least, the right to have a union rep present.
Boss does not provide any such notification.
Boss says she can understand why someone in his position would want a union rep present.

I can't figure out what's going on. Obviously he's being disciplined for something. But why are they not telling him what about? (And by the way, he's been through this before with another position so we're familiar with the process. State gives 12 sick days/year, but university rules say you're only permitted to *use* 9 days/year. So his boss tried to hold a formal counseling, which didn't work because he didn't do the informal counseling first, which is still required with the revised rules as of july 1, 2005.)

The only thing I can think of is that he's being disciplined, possibly terminated, and they've received some waiver so they don't have to tell him in advance because they are afraid he might be violent.

I know it's not good news. Whatever it is is so bad that they aren't even going by the rules and won't tell him what it is. And if he's fired for cause he won't get unemployment, he won't get another comperable job, and I don't know how the hell I'm going to pay the mortgage.

dammitdammitdammit.