Mid-Week Report

It's been about 48 hours since I've blogged, but it seems much longer.  I've had a very busy two days with lots going on - and little time to blog and read other's blogs (sorry to my on-line friends - or dot-comrades as Rick would call them...).  Here's what's been going on:

• My right arm is still a bit bruised from the failed apheresis donation.  Yesterday, the marks in the two places where the "saline bubbles" were had a nice shade of crimsony-purple.  Today, they have faded to a dark shade of lavender.  I'll probably be ready to try another donation again next week...if I can find time in my schedule.
• I was able to get the first two sets of Week 3 push ups in yesterday and today (so my arm wasn't feeling too bad).  Yesterday was 80 total (14, 18, 14, 14, 20) and today I did 102 (20, 25, 15, 15, 27)!  The third set this week looks brutal - 120 total if I can do them all.
• I got a run in this morning.  Again, I decided against braving the cold (it was 20 degrees outside...not too cold, but I just didn't want to deal with it this morning).  I hit the gym and tried one of the "programs" on the treadmill which change the incline every minute or so.  I chose the "Sports Fitness 5K" program - which I assumed would be 3.1 miles, right?  WRONG!  I'm not sure how long the program actually is since I stopped it at 3.1 miles.  Maybe I'll find out next time.  I listened to Jack Johnson which kept me movin' along.
• I'm looking ahead to my Saturday morning long run.  This week I have a 9 miler scheduled.  However, the overnight low on Friday night is forecasted to be 4 degrees.  I'm definitely not running in that.  So Saturday morning may be a long dreadmill slog.  I'm trying to prepare myself for it now...
• In the continuing saga of the broken Polar Heart Rate monitor, I was contacted by the Polar Customer Service team (as a result of my blog posting!) that they would give me a nice discount to upgrade my watch.  It's a nice offer, however, I wasn't really in the market to purchase a new HRM at this point (no raises or bonuses at work this year...see next bullet on that one).  I then contacted the service center that serviced my watch in November.  The representative there looked at my file and said that my repair is still under warranty and that I should send it back in and they'll fix it for free (they are going to email me a UPS label as well so I don't need to pay for shipping - Sweet!).  However, I'm still without my primary HRM for a while and back to the backup - and more basic model - that I have.
• The last big news story of the day - my company announced today that they are filing for bankruptcy protection.  Not good news.  There is already low morale amongst employees due to our struggles over the past few years (since 1999, we have lost over 2/3 of our workforce...we were about 95,000 employees in the late 90s and around 30,000 employees now).  I'm on a very big project right now with a customer who is growing - so I don't think I have much to worry about in terms of being laid off.  However, there is a lot of uncertainty of how this restructuring will progress and where all the pieces will fall.  There's not much I can do about it right now, so there's no use stressing about it - but of course everyone in the company is stressed out about it...