Weekly Round Up: Send Noods

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I ate lots of noodles, picked a direction for my workouts, and oh yes, thought a lot about Operation Endgame.

Eats (Noods)

All of my dreams came true when The Cheap Lazy Vegan finally gave out her top secret family japchae recipe.  I couldn't make my own fast enough.  I didn't have any tofu, so I made it without and had gyoza on the side.  My review is that I'd like to get a batch of this in my freezer ASAP and always have it on hand as a staple.  To be fair, every japchae recipe that I've tried has been delightful, but hers was easy to follow and it's the most recent in my browser history so I'll probably stick with this.

It's fair to say that I don't always hit the nail on the head when it comes to variety in meals.  I had noods on the brain, so I made lots of noods.  Right when we got back from vacation, I wanted something noodle-y without going to the grocery store, and make a batch of How Sweet Eats Peanut Noodles with Roasted Broccoli.  Except we were low on broccoli so I used Costco frozen stir fry veggies instead.

Workouts

Our flight coming back from vacation was delayed, which meant that we got home at 3 AM on Sunday.  Needless to say, this is not my preferred bedtime.  Between that and the psychology of coming back to work after vacation, I was very fatigued this week and just needed someone to tell me what to do for workouts.

It was finally time to bite the bullet and check out the new CGX (Caroline Girvan) app.  I'm doing the Ultimate Beginner's Program.  In this context "beginner" = short workouts and she talks you through all of the moves.  So far I like it.

Positive things to say: new workouts including a lot of short ones, plus a form library to review all of the movements.

Negative things to say: right now the videos can only be accessed through the app which works on phones and not computers, so it's a bit of a pain/eats up battery.  Yes I can screencast my phone to our gym TV but it's glitchy.  There is a knowledge library but IMO the articles are pretty generic.  On any given topic it's the standard "study x says yea and study y says nay" - which fair enough that if you're doing responsible reporting all that you're really going to get is "it depends" for an answer on any health and fitness topic.  There are some recipes but I didn't see anything earth shattering that's going to make it on to my meal plan.

Summary: the app is $12.99 a month or $99 annually so I splurged on an annual subscription.  If nothing else it's my way of saying thanks for all of the free Youtube videos, but I feel like I'll get my money's worth out of it.

I've kind of decided that going forward I only want to lift three days a week and do cardio on the other days.  To that end...I'm not saying that I'm going to start running again but I have gotten bored with treadmill incline working so I've sorta kinda switched to run/walk.  Stay tuned.

Watching

A few months ago I came across the Antonia Carlotta Youtube channel (the early history of Universal Studios), which has spurred a rewatch of the Universal monster movies.  I watched Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, plus the Spanish language version of Dracula (back in the early sound days there was no way to dub soundtracks, so the practice was to bring in night crews with foreign language casts to make alternate versions of the movies).  While it's weird to see old school Dracula without Bela Lugosi, it was interesting to see the different slant on the story.

Reading

It took me a hot minute to get into The Chateau by Jaclyn Golds.  I started it before vacation but got distracted and now I'm back at it.

The story is razor tight - a 95 year old grandmother summons her granddaughters to her chateau in France to discuss her will and Something Happens.  My issue is the people.  The story is told in alternating viewpoints of the main characters, but everyone is so similar that I can't keep track of who is who so what's the point of the changing viewpoints?  Maybe I wouldn't mind this so much if I wasn't reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at the same time.  There we've got a strong story plus three distinct protagonists.  No one but no one is going to pick up that book and say "Wait who's Sissy?  Who's Katie?  Who's Francie?"  whereas in The Chateau I'm just like "OK, I'm halfway through the chapter and I've forgotten whether the narrator is the fitness guru, the startup owner, the one who owns the restaurant, or the 95 year old grandmother". 

Operation Endgame Update

(the thing where I've decided to quit my job and possibly not go back to work)

• I talked to a health insurance broker.  The good news is that we can get decent coverage on an Obamamcase/ACA plan.  The bad news is family health insurance with a theoretical income level of my husband's income plus me working here and there is astronomical (aka what my company pays for our insurance now).  Then I realized that I gave the broker an incorrect scenario - as long as the hubs is working he should have employer provided insurance so we won't need our own, and if he's not working then our income won't be that high.  I've got a call in to the broker to see what the number would be if the hubs and I were just sitting around the house.
  
• Just when I thought I was out, they might be pulling me back in.  I've talked to three new prospects this week which is a record for any week so far this year.  Will this end differently than any other company that I've interviewed with in the last year and a half🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
  
• The first started strong but ended in a rejection.  The supervisor contacted me directly and did the interview on the spot.  Based on what he described, it was exactly what I'm looking for.  The pay was the same as I make now, but since I'm considering not working at all, I was open to it.  He made it sound like he wanted to get me hired ASAP and then disappeared for a week and sent me a Dear John email.  Oh well.
  
• The second place is a NameBrand company that you have most likely heard of.  It's very rare that I've ever heard of these companies beforehand, let alone understand what they do, let alone have it be something that's cool and useful to the world.  The screening with the recruiter went well and I'll have a better idea of what's up if I move forward.  It pays $5k less than I make now but since it's competing with $0 I'll take it.
• The third company is a hotshot startup that's the highest payer of the three.  The supervisor did the initial screening.  I liked her but didn't love her.  From what I know so far, I could take it or leave it so my heart won't be broken if I don't hear back from them.
  

The takeaway is that I might want to work for NameBrand and after such a long slog of nothingness on the job search front, it's nice to be getting noticed again.

I'm super conflicted over whether I do or don't want to work after I leave my current job.  Lucky me that I have three more weeks to mull this over before my target quit date of August 28.

Peace out!