life hereafter

Well, at least the State of Pennsylvania received my tax return. I realized this as I saw my check has cleared the bank. Unfortunately tax refunds don’t happen as fast as tax collections…

Where’s that rebate check…

is only exciting when you don’t make enough to have to actually owe anything.

I finally filed my return on Friday. It was an extreme hassle this year. Basically the IRS has some silly little rule that says you can’t e-file if you worked in more than four states. Funny thing is, TurboTax doesn’t tell you that until after you have paid for the software and filled out all the forms.

This resulted in my printing over 57 pages of paper forms to file with the five states The Firm made me work in this past year.  I gathered together what I think was appropriately sized envelopes and a ridiculous number of stamps and placed the letters in the mail. Now I wait, hoping I don’t get any “return to senders,” and that the good ole’ USPS doesn’t lose what I sent to Uncle Sam. The only real way I will know that everything got where it should go is when I see that canceled check.

Nothing like coming back from the doctors office feeling worse than when you entered.

I had my Executive Health Exam today, which is a fancy way of saying my routine physical. This is the first physical I’ve had in about four years, and boy have things changed since going to my pediatric doctor.  Let’s just say that I feel I should have at least gotten dinner and a movie out of this appointment…

I was very worried going into the physical. Lately I’ve found out that both parents have high blood pressure, and an informal test at a pharmacy (I was playing on one of those blood pressure machines with some friends) I had a pressure of about 138/90. Which is quite high. During the exam my pressure was 118/74 which I think puts me in the very save zone.  ::Whew::

ok.

diet starts tomorrow.

I might not be fat on the outside, but I’m a fat kid on the inside, and it really isn’t healthy!

right after that fogo de chow for dinner…

crap.

and I have an eating disorder.

I happened to find myself near 9th and Passayunk this afternoon and for no reason what so ever, I decided it was a good idea to grab a cheesesteak. Now mind you, I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t drawn in my the tourist attraction, I just felt the desire to eat one… solely because it was there.

Philadelphia really is the fattest city…

So I’ve been flirting with the idea of buying a puppy for some time now. Realistically, I know it can’t happen at this stage of my life. The roommate wouldn’t be too excited, or take care of the thing. I’d feel bad keeping it in an apartment, I’ll be away a lot, I won’t want to train it etc… but that doesn’t stop be from still wanting a puppy (or a penguin.)

Saturday was spent visiting two animal shelters with a friend. The Camden County Anmial Shelter (CCAS) in NJ, and the PAWS of Philadelphia shelter.

If I were to get a puppy, it would have to be a small to medium sized dog, ideally a daschund or bulldog, however I am open to anything awesome. The CCAS facility was fairly nice, with a decent amount of animals. They didn’t have anything small, but they did have this awesome pit bull. She was all white and really mellow. And it really wanted to be taken out of its cage and played with. She was 1 - 2 years old seemed to have a really great temperament, I really wanted my friend to adopt this one since I knew I would get to puppy sit. Alas, it was just too big for apartment living.

PAWS of Philadelphia was the scariest and saddest place I have ever been.  The animals are all kept in doors and in very tiny cages. The entire place was dirty and smelled terrible. I felt so bad for the animals. Most of the dogs were huge rottweilers with very very angry tempermets. It looked like a few of those dogs had been in a fight or two… Needless to say, we left that place pretty quickly.

The result of the day was no puppies adopted. I’ll be on the lookout, if anyone comes across a stray chimp or penguin, send it my way. I have an elaborate plan.

For the past five years Winter has meant one horrible, painstakingly boring thing; Winter Workouts.

It was easy in college, if you didn’t do the workouts odds are you didn’t stand a chance at making the boat come Spring.  You had a coach and a team to let down if you didn’t make your way down to the field house for endless hours of steady-state.

Life afterwards is a whole other story. Now your by youself, theres no one there to yell at you, or give you the motivation to get up and get out there. And by out there, I mean in there, because its much to cold to venture outside. It’s up to you now, your motivator has to be the scale and the heart-rate monitor.

In an effort to curb the boredom I purchased a few books filled with various workouts.  It’s better than trying to figure them out on my own. Perhaps if I stick it out and push through the Winter hard enough, I can find a consistent group of people to ride with, just for a little extra motivation :).

Heres to a whole lot of catching up on movies and TV during those lovely indoor workouts.