This long weekend has been awfully short

I don't know where the three days went. Oh, Saturday, as usual, was lost to walking and sleep and eating. Sunday turned into a vaccuum cleaner buying extravaganza, where we bought an outrageously expensive Dyson. It's great, I love it. To celebrate, we played on all the exercise equipment in the store, the store in question being Sears. After being used to gym threadmills and exerbikes and the like, the home equipment is tremendously unsteady, even when new. The weirdest one was the Gazelle -- I had seen the infomercials, I had thought it might be cool -- until I tried it out.

Oh, and I found out an acquaintance has cancer. I've been in shock and denial.

Today, we tried to get the missing part that we had bought the vaccuum for, and experienced the Sears customer service ethic. Now, it might just be the Portland Sears customer service ethic, which I really hope, because it sucks rather severely, and I have experienced it multiple times with large appliances. We came in, brought the extra part that doesn't work at all with our Dyson, and asked for the pet hair attachment. Oh, you have to return the entire vaccuum, there's no other way to do it. So, two hours and a half hours later, we walk out with the floor model of the pet hair attachment after watching the salesman open two boxes, after multiple chats with the manager, including one where he ended a call with fuck you.

What's really frustrating is that we had a great saleslady when we bought it, who demonstrated all the possibilities, talked about her own experience, yaddayaddayadda -- very compelling. She was a pro. And even though we were on the other side of town, we decided to buy it from her because she had spent time with us, thoughtfully answered questions, and seemed interested in getting us a quality product. When we had to return the vaccuum, she lost the commission. The guy who ran interference this a.m. was kind enough to let us know that it was not a small commission either. The manager said that we shouldn't worry about her commission (along with a dig towards his own staff), which angered us further.

Sigh. Anyways, it was an exhausting experience.

I had planned all weekend that Monday I was going to ride my bike to the gym, do my upper body workout, and ride home. By the time I actually made it on the bike, the laundry list included also getting my 15,000 steps in. So, I rode in -- it was sunny and beautiful, and the Esplanade was full of people. The river was particularly attractive, so I stayed out bike riding for a little while longer.

Then into the gym. I did my upperbody stuff, which felt great and tough (I've missed a week of sessions), and then in a fit of insanity, I got on the treadmill and did an hour and a half. I learned that I do about 119 steps a minute -- which partially explains how slow I am. I tried hiking the speed up to a 15 minute mile, and found that my heart rate monitor (HRM) was showing really high percentages (like, out of fat burning and into anaerobic work). Oh, and then while I was trying to count steps, I tripped and almost fell off the treadmill.

But what was very cool was that I was wearing my HRM, and the treadmill read out was showing my heart rate -- it was automatically reading it!

Then it was time to get back onto the bike and ride back home, all uphill. Oh boy! Of course, my heart rate was very high at the end of the treadmill because of the whole 15 minute/mile step counting and tripping episode, which wasn't a very good thing, because it never dropped in the 40 minutes coming home. I did walk the bike up some hills, but I rode a lot of it. Slowly. And I felt exhausted when I got home. My sweetie asked me, did I feel exhilarated? Um, no, not really.

Now it's time for bed, with work waiting tomorrow, and I just feel ripped off. I don't feel like I've had a long weekend. Oh well, get over it, VJ!