Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Tag: webdesign

One Month

Tomorrow will be one month into #projectspring and I wanted to do a quick progress check.  I have quite a few goals, and I want to get through as many of them as I can.

House projectsslow start.  We cleaned out the workout room, but have not yet made the purchases to set it up as the pain cave.  We’ve talked about kitchen and deck remodels and looked at sheds at Lowe’s but haven’t done much else.  This weekend, we’ve got plans to tackle either the office or the vanity area, so we can cross that off the list next check in at least!

Apr11-1

After actually unclipping the right way and not falling down, I took pictures to celebrate the momentous occasion!

Becoming a biker chickslow start, but picking up.  I rode my bike (with the clips) twice last week and more importantly, I spent 10-15 mins in the backyard with Zliten holding me up practicing the “unclipping one leg and resting on it without unclipping the other” move.  Proudly, I did that once, very slowly, with no traffic around, on the ride on Saturday.  I plan to ride (if just around the block a few times) a few times this week and continue to practice, and ride this week at the Pflug if I can find a non-stormy window of time.

Energy and enthusiasm backcheck.  While I’m not waking up before my alarm (most of the time), I’m not dragging myself out of bed (most of the time) either.  I feel like a different person – a peppier and happier person.  I’m back to making plans and being excited to follow through on them instead of dreading them.  I’m spending as much time as humanly possible outside and loving it.

happy

This is both a happy face and a smaller face.

#projectraceweightcheck on the following the plan, sort of check on the body deciding to cooperate.  Besides the two camping weekends where I did my best to be REASONABLE and get a lot of activity, I’ve followed the tracking as close to -1000 calories per day plan for a month now.  I’m definitely looking better, I’m definitely feeling better, but the scale isn’t really budging (much) yet.  It’s ok.  I’m following what has worked for me in the past and I’m seeing some progress and I’m being patient.  On Friday the 15th I take one month progress pics and I’m pretty sure I’ll see a difference.

The exercise part of #projectraceweightsorta check, sorta not.  10k steps per day, I’ve nailed it.  Yesterday was the first day in 3 weeks I didn’t, because my uterus decided it wanted to wage nuclear warfare on me with the worst cramps I’ve had in many, many years (TMI maybe but… OW).  6 303 muscle relaxers (throughout the day) and 3 aleve pills (all at once) barely fought it back to the stage before *crying on the floor in the fetal position*.   I have not yet resumed weights and I still feel like I need a little more time to heal my body (and brain) before I get into high intensity short intervals.  But, I have swam in the lake, ridden my bike, and ran at least a few times with some level of intensity so not all is lost.

Doing something with this sitesomewhere between in progress and check. It is so, so, so, so much better than it was before.  I still have a small list of things I’d like to do… (edits as I do them…)

  • Widget for mail subscription – researching…
  • Widget/form for contacting meDONE
  • Widget for related posts – DONE!  I had to retag all the posts, but I decided to only go back a few years.  But that’s fine.
  • Update the content of all my pages – DONE!
  • About me widgetDONE!
  • Take more picture for the roating header image that are the appropriate size (apparently, I’m a vertical picture taker, not horizontal!) – ongoing, as I go do cool shit I’ll get more pics.
  • Decide if I want to do something with the fairly plain Adjusted Reality header (image background? color? just leave it as is because it’s clean an uncluttered?) – inclined to leave it alone after consideration.  I’m not an artist and I tend to clutter stuff up I shouldn’t. 🙂
  • Decide on a tagline.  Do I like the created-on-a-whim “becoming more awesome one day at a time” or is that silly? – DONE! found one!  I may change these as my fancy strikes, but I’m happy with it for now.

…but if my site didn’t change at all for a while, I’d still be pretty happy with what I’ve done so far.  Any opinions or things that look weird, or things you like to see on a website, hit me up in the comments!

Finish processing the Bonaire picscheck.  Can we go again, like, now?

Apr11-2

If you want to check out my public album, it’s HERE.

Camping tripscheck.  We’ve gone twice.  I’ve definitely got the bug.  I think we’ll have to skip May’s trip due to other commitments but we’re already talking about where to go the first weekend in June!  This has definitely reminded me how awesome being outside is and how I don’t have to be triathlon training to enjoy it.

Water timecheck.  I’ve been in (swimming) or on (paddleboarding, fishing, etc) quite a bit this month and it will only get more and more prevalent as the temperatures rise.  This week it’s warmer (yay) but also stormy (boo), so we’ll see how it goes.  Also, I am counting the days (46) to the water park opening!

Doing Thangskinda check and more this month.  While I don’t feel like I’ve been boring, I haven’t really fulfilled the spirit of this particular thing.  The next 3 weeks we can’t escape town and go camping or anything, so we’ve got more of these types of plans.  This week, we have a comedy show and Saturday night dance lessons + social dancing on tap!  In 2 weeks, we have a festival in Temple, TX to go to.  I don’t know what’s between then, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

Crafty and creative in my spare timenot yet.  Maybe once it becomes a little less awesome to be outdoors every moment.

Apr4-4

Beautiful weather trumps crafts.  Sorry.  Always has, always will.

Here are five goals for things I would like to accomplish in the next month that I probably will ignore if I don’t specify:

  • Incorporate weights at least 2xweek.  If that’s all I add in April to my general activity, that’s fine.
  • Have what we want pretty well documented and get at least one estimate for the kitchen and/or patio remodel.
  • Ride my bike with the clips 3xweek.  If nothing else, around the block a few times.  Spend some time practicing clipping and unclipping like a rockstar each time instead of a scaredy biker.
  • Bike commute to work at least once a week.
  • Finish up the work on my website so I can cross this one off the list (either do all the things on my list or decide I can live without them).

Cheers to a great first 28 days of #projectspring, and an even better next 28!

Ask the audience: what did you do last weekend?

Under Construction

I’m finally beginning to take the plunge and tinkering with this little corner of the internet, so expect things to fluctuate wildly around here until I get my bearings.  I’m sure it would be more elegant to do this all at once behind the scenes and then publish, but I don’t roll like that and you’ll see it changing in real time, warts and all!  Won’t that be fun?

Nov24-1

#mfw doing web design shit. I don’t know why, but it makes me IRRATIONALLY angry.  Hulk smash!

First, I switched to the default layout for two reasons.  First, being super boring will hopefully motivate me to get this project done sooner than later.  Second, I just wanted to start from zero.  Nuke it from orbit.  Sometimes it’s the only way.

Second, with a lot of Zliten and the Internet’s help, I was able to finally, after 8 years, get rid of my ugly ugly main flash page and load the blog directly from the main adjustedreality.com site.  Effing HALLELUJAH!

I’m happy with my progress for the moment, but it’s definitely not done.  We’re not basic functionality and white and drab green around here, no sireee!  I may not do all these things in order, but it’s good to have goals, so here’s what’s coming up.

Next, I’d like to get all of that good ol’ social media and community stuff going.

  • Actual links to me on twitter, instagram, and dailymile. (DONE)
  • Ways to share my rambles brilliant content on all the said social medias.
  • A way to subscribe to my blog if you can’t get enough of my brilliant content rambles.
  • A site search (happily appeared on the default template, but I didn’t have one before and want to make sure it stays). (DONE)
  • An official “contact me” form that actually goes somewhere I check.  Y’know, in case one of the three people that read this want to say hi. 🙂

After that, I plan to update the template to a more mobile-friendly wordpress format.  I’m going to try WordPress’s 2016 official one, and see if I can do what I want with that, but while *I* am not a huge phone blog reader, I am definitely in the minority.  And I know I hate unfriendly sites when I DO click on a link somewhere on zee mobile. (EDIT: DONE)

Then I want to do some cosmetic shit. This is the stuff I actually have fun with, so I should definitely save it for last so I don’t stop before doing everything else.

  • Pretty up the headers with rotating pictures, or at least some static pictures that represent me better than a grainy vacation picture from 2011. (IN PROGRESS)
  • Figure out a color scheme I like instead of whatever exists. (DONE – I actually like the default.  For reals.)
  • Find a way to sort my archives into years, and only display months for the current year (8 years of blog = lots of archives).
  • Add a related posts section to the bottom of posts.  I really like this on other blogs and I’ll have to look for a plugin to do it for mine.
  • I’ll also probably scrub and polish all the pages to be relevant (Bio, Races, etc).  They are all a year or five out of date.

Finally, I have a little soul searching to do.  Adjusted Reality has been my playspace since I’ve been out of college and wayyyy before I started doing this biking, swimming, or even running thing (hell, before I even started losing weight from stay puff’t marshmallow gal), and I haven’t ever really found my message.  “Becoming more awesome one day at a time” popped into my head so I went with it temporarily, but I’m not quite sure it fits right.  Who am I?  What does my little corner of the internet want to say to the world?

EDIT: Also, once I decide this, also decide if I want to change the title image.

If I can get there, I’ll be happy with my progress and feel *comfortable* in my own skin here for a while!  Stick around to see how it develops.

Questions: anything else you think a good personal website/blog needs?  Also, if you can think of a tagline for me, please submit it below.  If I use it you get… something cool.  I’ll work it out.

 

#projectspring

I’m super de duper excited to shift my focus away from serious endurance sports training and towards tackling some other stuff I want to accomplish in my life that don’t involve running, biking, and swimming really fast or far.  I’m dubbing it – #projectspring.  At first I was super bummed about missing my favorite time of the year to train and race, but realizing that I can do so many other awesome things outside (and inside) helped a lot!

runningselfie2

Step one, be able to produce this level of excitement for ANYTHING.

My first order of business is to get my energy and enthusiasm back.  This starts immediately.  My goal is to get to the point where I’m waking up before my alarm or at the very least up and at ’em the minute it goes off most mornings.  Monday night I fell asleep for over 10 hours, and I still snoozed for 40 mins before I dragged myself out of bed.  I just feel kind of beat up.  My goal in March is to sleep until I can’t sleep no mo’.  I miss having energy.

Mar8-1

Missing THESE days where my clothes fit.

After finishing birthdaymas celebrations, March 15th, I start #projectraceweight.   Yes, it’s a Tuesday, Zliten’s birthday is on that Monday.  No judgies.

This is the ultimate goal of these next 4 months and the reason I decided to take the spring completely off.  I’m not trying to eliminate food groups or demonize junk food or eliminate gluten or white colored food or whatever from my diet.  But I’m going to lose some fucking weight.  There is no “try my best if I can” here, it’s time to DO IT.  The specific goal is to make the number on the scale go down as quickly as possible/reasonable while not sabotaging my health (or fall season).

I know how to do this.  I lost 5 lbs in July without losing my mind.  Sadly, I put that and more back on with the failed fueling experiment, but it is proof that I know how to do this.

The plan is:

  • 1200-1500 calories 5 days a week.  1200 is HARD but will get me results quicker.  1500 is much more doable but will take longer.  I’m hoping to hit somewhere in this zone, as low as possible, without eating inanimate objects.
  • 1500-2000 calories 2 days a week.  I’m hoping to time this with slightly higher activity days, but either way, I know myself and I have to allow a few indulgences or I will go fucking crazy.
  • Attempting to hit my macros (100g protein, 40-60g fat, 25g fiber).  On 1200 days it will be challenging but that will keep me eating mostly good food and not junk.
  • Detraining but not completely.  I’ll introduce these things once I’m fully and completely healed from the marathon.  I know that the best ways for me to not be 100% complete jello when I return to being an endurance athlete in July are:
    • Short HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts a few times a week – I’m thinking 20 mins max.  One minute sprint, one minute easy type things.
    • Weights/conditioning – while I know it’s hard to lose weight while building muscle, I don’t want to lose what I’ve got.  The goal is more maintenance than killing myself in the gym lifting heavy here.
    • 10k steps per day goal – it’s actually pretty easy to hit this with just a few walks per day at work even on days off training.  This is just a constant reminder to stay active.

The mindset:

When I was first on my way down weight-wise, I definitely had some negative type reinforcement with myself and mental issues to work through.  Not to say that I don’t have separate shit to work through (hello, disappointment in my fall 2015 winter 2016 season), but I understand the process a little better and hopefully I can be a little more gentle on my psyche.  Though the action still is the same, the message is different.

2007 me: You don’t deserve that piece of cake because you’re a worthless fat piece of shit.  Eat celery forever and cry, fucker.

2016 me: You don’t deserve that piece of cake because you’re choosing to invest your time and effort into #projectspring.  You deserve better than to sabotage your hard work.  Cake will still exist in 4 months.

And this is the truth.  If it’s hard – that’s fine.  Because this is my project. I am training to not fall face down on a bag of chips or a pie or a bottle of vodka.  This is the hard I am choosing to tackle right now and I can deal with it.

I suppose if I had to put a number on it, I’d like to weigh no more than 160-something (169.9 is acceptable) come July 1st.  My wildest dreams would be seeing 150 lbs.  Either way, I’ll feel so much better than I do now not carrying around a bunch of extra sacks of flour on my body.

Mar8-2

This is a before shot of our workout room.  Just enough space had been cleared to make the treadmill usable.

Mar8-3

Let’s call this a progress picture from the same angle – after 2 hours of work, it’s not yet the pain cave we want it to be, but it is an organized and usable room!  Wheee!

I want to make some progress on house projects.  This involves two categories:

Cleaning and organizing (need only time)

  • Vanity area in the bathroom
  • Office
  • Workout room (DONE!)
  • Guest room closet

Bigger projects (need time and money):

  • Kitchen remodel – new cabinets, new counters, potentially a new floor, paint, and backsplash
  • Back patio remodel – repouring the concrete, maybe sprucing it up a little, possibly adding a cover to the patio and also a space for a future hot tub.
  • Replacing the shed we had torn down with one that closes and locks to store bikes (increasing the potential for more bikes down the road :D), camping equipment, kayak stuff, etc.
  • Workout room as a pain cave set up – we need one cheapo computer to be a Zwift machine, one TV on swiveling mount, some inspirational decorations, and probably a better ceiling fan (the organization is done, now we just need to buy all the stuff).

I talked about it in depth here but this spring is when I become a biker chick.  I want to become less of a scaredy biker and bike with groups more. I really want to start using my cruiser bike (and feet) to commute and transport myself whenever possible.  I rarely venture more than a few miles from where I live and it’s ridiculous to drive everywhere.

I want to get a for real triathlon bike, with the right tri bike geometry.  I need to do all my research so I spend money on what matters and not just because it’s 2 grams lighter and 3 grand more.

I’d really like to do something with this site.  After I decompress enough to get a little bored in the evenings, I want to make this site into something a little less… eclectic.  Something more intentional than a hodgepodge of my attempt at a artsy web design job application in 2004 and a very haphazard theme and awkward set up with a blog jammed into the middle of it.  It still works as a place to vomit my thoughts every once in a while, but I’d like to actually give this place a makeover.  Y’know, make her fit into 2016… either under my own power or spend a little $$$ to get someone to do it for me if I give up.

Bonaire2-14

It may have been cute to wait a little while to process my Bonaire pics because I didn’t want the vacation to end, but it’s been months.  It’s time to dig through the 800 or so I have left and then count the days until I can go back.

I want to go camping once a month.  It soothes my soul even if my body gets tired from roughing it.  Potential targets include:
-March, Sherwood Forest
-April, enchanted rock
-May/June, Inks Lake? Pace Bend?

While I doubt I’ll keep this up during the heat of summer, I’d like to remember it’s an option even during training season, because it’s an AWESOME way to go run and ride in new and interesting places.  We just get lazy about it.

I may not want to be IN the water just yet but it’s getting close to time to be ON the water, which means I’ll be sup’ing and kayaking as much as I can once the lake is closer to 70 degrees and not 60.  And, of course, this will transition into waterpark and snorkeling in the lake as it becomes warmer.

July15-1

I want to go do things!  There are so many things in Austin to do.  They all sound fun!  The kite festival!  The weiner dog races!  Eeyore’s birthday!  Some random band is playing somewhere!  I mean, maybe not THOSE SPECIFIC THINGS, but THINGS!  They sound much less desirable after beating the hell out of myself on the road all morning/afternoon/week.  I’m looking forward to combining this with locomotion without cars (cruiser bikes + walking + train) and doing more fun things around town.  I’m also looking forward to having the spontaneity, energy, and flexibility to go do random shit that comes up instead of choosing my couch.

I miss being crafty and creative in my spare time.  Coloring has filled the void in a nicely mindless way right now, but I miss stuff like making jewelry.  I would like to refresh my memory at the piano, it’s been years, and it’s sitting there staring at me, taunting me.  I would like to make some progress with sewing, another inanimate object that mocks me constantly.  I have a book idea that woke me up in the middle of the night last week and I’d like to make some progress with it.  I am actually a creative person when I don’t beat all the enthusiasm out of myself.

I’m so excited to start on all these things right away, which is a good sign that #projectspring step 1 (get my mojo back) is already in the works.

Question: what’s your biggest goal this spring?

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