Crazies come, Crazies go

And peace is restored to the world. My world, anyway.

Upstairs neighbor moved out yesterday, just about two months after she moved in. She actually didn’t move away, just to another unit in the apartment complex. I’m not sure why; I did see her and we chatted but I didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer an explanation. Either way – yay! Although she and I had reached an easy truce, it’s still very nice not to have anyone overhead. Of course that means I will eventually get another neighbor who could be worse, for now, I’ll enjoy the situation.

Also, Drama Girl officially moved away about two weeks ago. To give credit where credit is due, before she left she did stop by to apologize for what happened the night of the art show, and to let me know she was leaving. I didn’t ask where she was going, but I presume she went to Philly, as she’d mentioned she might move there one day when we were out walking. (And then, she wasn’t moving; and then, she was going to stay with her parents; and then….) She dropped her lawsuit against the building management, and dropped her campaign against the guy who allegedly assaulted her (I presume he’ll still be prosecuted, but by a real lawyer on behalf of The People, not by her as a part of a dog and pony show it’s not even worth my trying to describe here). So, that weird life chapter is done!

I haven’t been motivated to blog that much lately, obviously. I belong to a couple of fitness boards and am in two check-ins, and I post my daily stuff there; probably what I should do is post my dailies here, and C & P them there. However, I’d probably bore y’all stiff in no time. Maybe I’ll do them in a sidebar… hmmm. I’ll play with that one.

I’m about to start my final week of New Rules of Lifting for Women. It’s very hard for me to believe this is almost over! And if I hadn’t decided to do two laps of Stage 7, it would be over. This stage has been a bit more grueling than I expected. The workouts consist of one or two “big” exercises followed by a circuit of four exercises, 15 – 20 reps each, done four times. Let me tell you, that is a lot of counting. I usually do it half in Japanese, half in English, and vary the way I count (i.e., twice to ten, four times to five, five times to four) so I don’t go insane. Adding sweat to the fest, the AC in the gym has been on the fritz, so I’ve come out of there absolutely drenched the past few times. I hope to hell it’s fixed by tomorrow; temps are back in the 90’s (grrr) and that place has got to be getting pretty rank.

The running is going very well. My speed is going up, pretty much without much effort on my part. In fact what feels slow now is a half minute plus per mile faster than fast felt last month. To that, I am crediting both general increased fitness, plus my glute exercises, which still have me thrilled beyond belief. I cannot get over the fact that I have an actual ass – it’s like having a new toy. In fact I’ve changed my plans for weight training during the half marathon prep because I don’t want to give up these exercises.

To that end, I’ve decided to use the workouts from the first two stages of Female Body Breakthrough instead of workouts from NROL because the FBB workouts have built in glute exercises; I can do them as-is or ramp them up to the necessary degree of difficulty, but in either case I don’t have to add them on, as I’m doing now. I don’t plan to do her warm-up; in fact I wouldn’t say I’m doing her program at all, but I am using what amounts to four workouts from the program for my own purposes. At some point, possibly even right after the half, I’ll do the program properly, but for now it’s just not what I need or want.

I think the scale has finally stopped moving, although I haven’t remembered to step on it in some time. I quite honestly don’t think I’ve dropped any more weight, nor do I now think I’ll even try to. I’m fitting into clothes that used to fit when I was about 5 pounds lighter than I think I am and they’re falling off; I almost need a belt for my favorite shorts. My stomach has never been flatter, and it’s very clear to me, by sight and by feel, that I’ve added muscle. My body fat is – if accumeasure calipers are to be believed – 15%, and if they’re not to be believed, it’s significantly less than when I started this program. Could I lose a few more pounds? Sure, but I really don’t have the motivation to try. My face is close to the border of looking, well, closer to my age, and as is, I can without a shred of self consciousness run around the neighborhood in a bra top, which is something I’ve never dared to before. Lots of credit there to both NROL/W and the glute exercises.

I’ve been playing with a few other things, as well – mostly out of curiosity – but I’m about written out for today, so I’ll hit them later this week. Probably. :p