The woes of commuting and losing weight

This week I've relied solely on caffeine and the good merits of my career to get me through. A huge exhibition opens at work this weekend and with that comes tons of events and hopefully lots of successful fundraising (that's what I do, PS) and donor cultivation. 

With that, I'm proud to say I've stayed on track with my clean eating for the month of January -- which meant no refined carbohydrates in my diet. That is: no breads, no pastas, nothing with exorbitant amounts of wheat in it, no sugar or sweets (although I allow myself one icee-pop after dinner each night), no (white) potatoes and limiting my dairy intake. (My husband likes to call it "Paleo-lite".) Since the first of the month, I have lost almost 7 lbs, so I'm taking this as a win all around (the goal is 15), but with that comes some woes for commuting...

Passing the Crumbs Bake Shop in Union Station daily is torture, but oh-so-satisfying when I don't let them taunt me and the scale reflects that.

 I'm with you, Dog.

Passing the Sbarro's shop as well, is difficult -- if nothing else, my college days should tell me that eating there is NEVER a good idea, but oh, the smells...the smells!

Oh, sweet, sweet bread. I do miss you.

Drinking so much water that you have to allow more time to get to the train because more pit stops have to be made more frequently. Ugh, stupid bladder.

I've been there, Forrest. Just replace the Dr. Pepper with 15 waters.

Finally, when you lose weight, your pants/tights/hosiery get looser - yay! When you walk as much as I do during a commute, that's not always a good thing. You've never truly lived until you realize how uncomfortable it can be to walk close to a mile with your tights almost down past your rear-end and nowhere to stop and fix them.

 Whoops!

But the good news is, I'm losing weight, so I'll deal with these problems if it means being healthier, fitting into all my clothes better and continuing to feel fit!

Yeah, I've got my tight pants...somewhat.

An Etiquette Lesson

Preach, Emma.

Is chivalry dead? Apparently not on the Metro. While I understand and truly appreciate the concept and act of being polite, especially in the male species, there are times and places where being overtly polite it will actually annoy more people than it really should.

Case in point: Mr. Gentleman in your dapper hat and long coat -- you totally should always let women lead out of or into an entry way, elevator, intersection, etc., but when it comes to morning rush hour on the Metro and people are just trying to get to where they are going, and crowding around the Metro doors, you doing the awkward-"Please, you first."-dance with the woman next to you, it's just irking people behind you trying to also exit the train. 

Again, I'm not saying anything about being polite in every other instance -- believe me that goes a long way for me -- but when there are chances of you being stampeded, I just would err on the side of not being rude, versus chivalrous. 

RIP Robin Williams.

In other news, Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream sent me an e-mail with this image in it this morning. 

She's just being mean, while I'm doing the carb-free, clean eating thing for the month of January, isn't she?! Uggggh.

Hump Day perspective

It always happens, I'm literally seconds or minutes away from missing a train at a connection (i.e. at Rockville transferring from Metro to MARC) and hurts so bad when I can see the MARC train from the Metro car I'm on as it pulls into the station and the MARC train is leaving. Sigh. And then of course, I wait for 20 minutes until the next MARC train in the sub-freezing temperatures. Always.

But things could be worse -- I could ride the Yellow or Green lines everyday and pass through L'Enfant Plaza and I could have been on one of these trains on Monday. 

Yeah, it's all about perspective in either case. Happy Hump Day, y'all.

My glee was a bit premature...

So after my post yesterday, I got an alert that all MARC train service was suspended going west on the Brunswick line (my line). According to all sources I was inquiring to, everything appeared to be FUBAR.

First, I heard there was police activity west of Germantown (my stop), then that a person had been struck by a train west of Rockville, then finally the actual story of pedestrian who was hit and killed at Gaithersburg. 

Once I heard the initial report though, I hauled out of work early to Metro home. They honored my train ticket, so I rode for free (wheee!) and I was able to catch the Ride-On 71 bus from Shady Grove. I was only on the bus for maybe a half hour (?) and walked maybe a quarter mile to get back to my car at the Germantown train station. Overall, it was a good, efficient way to public transit home, when your public transit isn't working - ha!

But seriously, if this (and many other previous situations) has taught me anything, it is ALWAYS good to have a back-up plan when commuting via public transit. And, no, I don't mean, have your spouse or friend come pick you up at the end of the line at Shady Grove. Yes, that works, but it isn't always an option, or the best one. I do the Commuter Connections Guaranteed Ride Home, which thankfully, I haven't needed yet. And, I always have the bus routes in my county easily accessible on my phone. 

Well, I can admit, that sometimes you can't always have a back-up plan and my poor husband (along with millions of other commuters) took almost 3 hours to get to work because of the snow that people didn't think would amount to much. Yes, it's not more than three or four inches outside when it's all said and done, but no, it does not bode well when it starts falling at 5am and the Feds decide, "Hey, that's not snow, that's just dandruff, come on in!" AND none of the school systems decide to close until 8am. 

Either way, as we are all well aware, when there's even a chance of anything wet falling from the sky, well...this happens: 

Happy Tuesday. Only one more day now until FLORIDA!

Back to school, back to school...

Well not really -- today was the first day back to work/school for many in the area and this morning's commute was a breeze compared to what last Friday's commute did to snarl the train schedule into work. Thankfully I was off and didn't have to worry about it, but the e-mail alerts I was getting made me squirm just thinking about it. 

Either way, hopefully this week, there are very little to no issues on the train, as I'm headed to sunny, warm Florida on Thursday to visit my in-laws. Always a plus in why I married my husband ;)

I disagree, Jimmy McMillan.