Since my time on my runs fell to below 53 mins consistently for a couple of weeks I've bumped up my distance to get back to around 68 mins again. I found two variations to my route that keep me above 60 mins. One is a hill work out that really works my glutes. The other is more level but lets me go further distance wise. I'm not sure where I am at with my distances now but I'm fairly certain I'm going further than 5k at this point. But I am more concerned with the total time I'm running rather than distance. One of the guys at work said to get the Garmin watch for mapping where I go. I think that is interesting and will look into it. Right now I'm using a Polar HRM watch which has been how I've been making sure I'm doing the right level of exercise. Last week we ordered a pair of GAP jeans that were a size smaller than what I was wearing. They came and I put them on and lo and behold they fit and are loose! Way cool! So, since I started Singulair I have lost 8 inches off my waist and over 70 pounds. It'll be interesting to see some of my colleagues at the Las Vegas conference next week. I haven't seen some of them in over a year so they will be very surprised at how much smaller I am. Or at least I hope so. People have a tendency to not notice me much anyway lately...

I have time to do this post because I'm upgrading my Lotus Notes client on my laptop. I hope this doesn't fail on me. I did do an xcopy backup of my hard drive just in case. What I don't get is why the people who write these installers insist on having so many popups and inputs. This has been going on for over an hour now and the fact that I have had to click on buttons so many times is ridiculous. Who wants to sit here and stare at a screen? I certainly don't. I'm using my home computer anyhow so I shouldn't have to keep the laptop next to me while it is installing.

Some bad stuff happened in the office this week. Some of the folks I work with were mocking me. That made me feel pretty, pretty bad. So I turned in my badge to my client team and told them I wasn't going back. I'm not going to be treated like someones kicking post. My managers have not reacted well to this news. But I have been telling them since last December that things have been steadily going down hill and they did nothing. The handwriting was on the wall on this one. I was no longer in a leadership position and just like anyone else who is demoted people just did not see me as an authority figure but instead somone they can buck up against.

My virtual wall is looking pretty good. Check it out at http://www.alexandre.polozoff.com/

We had a friend of ours visit on Tuesday night. I went out and got some lobsters and steak and cooked out on the grill. Sandra set up her raclette though I did most of the prep work on the veg. It was a fun evening. Eddie certainly has a lot of great stories to tell from his days as a police man in England.

So it looks like I must have finished downloading the new notes client installer. Now I've typed my password in 2 times. What on earth for!? Great, "the installation of the Notes 7 mail template failed." ARGH I hope this doesn't leave me in email limbo now. Well, gotta go and take care of this.

Check out http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html which I put on my machines here at home. It is great and creates really complex passwords like for your online banking site. Easy to use too!

A friend of mine emailed me yesterday. She has a MySQL database and is looking to provide a web front end to it. She asked which engine would be the best to use. Tomcat, of course! It is free, open source, Java based and one of the best and easiest ways to webify an application.

Continuing my thought process from my Nov 2 posting... What if the probes we send into space and leave our solar system have some effect on the universe? The probe could be a good thing like a white blood cell off to repair some damage or it could be a virus that is then battled by other organisms in the universe. Where we are pushing probes out of our solar system there must be other civilizations pushing out their own probes that are looking for our probes. Maybe what we need to focus on are probes that have more intelligence and can do some scouting for other probes on their own.

Tomorrow will be our 1st year anniversary in the house. A few days later is the anniversary of me trying to run 3 blocks and having my lungs burn up before I could get 2 blocks in. It was my test "run" to see how badly off my lungs were from asthma as I was just starting on Singulair. I needed to have a test run to see what progress I would make.

Now, a year later, I'm running 5k distances 5 times a week for 25k a week! I will finish my 3rd 25k week tomorrow (it rained today). And 4 weeks ago I did a 20k week. Does anyone realize how significant this is for me? It is the first time in my life I've been able to sustain exercise long enough to make a difference in my life. Steroids haven't done much to control my asthma in a useful way. Sure I had good days but then I also had bad days/weeks where I could not exercise.

Now, after a year on Singulair I've been able to run EVERY week since June 1 of last year. Granted when I first started running I wasn't going very far because the body needed to recover. But now I'm well in shape. I still have a lot of weight to lose, 100 pounds in fact before I feel I will be at a good weight. However, with the advent of doing 25k weekly runs I'm losing weight like never before. I bought a new belt 4 weeks ago that was too small on purpose and did not fit. Today I am on the 2nd notch of the belt. That is easily an inch or two lost around the belly in 4 weeks.

One additional drug I started a couple of months ago is Spiriva. While I don't think it has made much difference in my life I do think I am snoring less. At least Sandra says she doesn't notice it as much as she used to.

What I really like is the two drugs that have helped me a lot are non-steroidal. That is really nice and I hope as I get closer to my weight goal that I'll be able to drop the steroids and just stay on Singulair and Spiriva.

I got a Polar F11 HRM last weekend. Been using it this past week and really impressed with the data I've been able to collect. Granted, it doesn't have stuff like distance which would be nice but at half the price of the s625x I can't complain.

I'm going to head out again today and get an 8th workout in this week!