Decked Out

My birthday was last week (Happy Birthday, me) and as usual, my enthusiasm for this fact was at an all time low. I don't know, really, why my birthday bothers me so much, but it does.

And it's one of those weird, contradictory sorts of things; I don't want people to make a fuss about it. At the same time, if people forget about it, I'm grumpy. I do apologize to all my friends for whom I have been ungrateful, annoying, and otherwise cantankerous about it.

(My husband theorizes that it's my mother's fault, because my birthday parties as a kid weren't for me so much as they were for her to show off the amount of money my dad made, and frequently involved inviting people I didn't like to my party. Seriously. The girl who wouldn't let me wait on her porch for the bus, even when it was pouring down rain while everyone else from the block sat inside and watched tv? Came to my birthday party - sans present - every. single. year. My birthday parties tended to be pretty fancy for the time; my mom did things like rent out the local video arcade, or took everyone to the movies, or Kings Dominion... and the cakes were fantastic. The one year we did the video arcade? My cake was a giant pacman, with a smaller cake as the power-dot and cupcakes as the point-dots. Pretty nifty... and yet, I'd spend the whole party sulking because Donna was there, making sure my guests didn't actually talk to me, breaking my presents, and telling me how ugly I was. Or that so-and-so CuteBoy from school thought I was a slimy, diseased little gecko. Oh well, at least she was creative.)

Anyway, I did get some really spiff stuff for my birthday and I'm quite happy with my gifts...

From one friend, I got a heart-rate monitor/pedometer watch. This thing has some serious bells and whistles... I'm still figuring it all out, but it does record my steps, check my heart rate, keep track of milage, displays my calories burned, etc. I've had a couple of problems with it, the first of which is a design flaw and the second of which is my inability to actually remember how to use any sort of complicated gidget.... the first problem is that the step-meter turns itself off after 15 minutes of inactivity; which means if I'm sitting at my computer desk for a bit, I have to remember to turn it back on. The second problem is that I'm constantly, accidentally recording my current heart rate as my resting heart rate. I think (I'm not sure, but I think) that this is botching up my calories burned number, since if my "resting" heart rate is recorded as 120, it doesn't think I'm working very hard when my heart rate is 150.

She also gave me a bottle of sunscreen (yes, thank you for the hint, my sunburn is much better...) and a flashlight for my walk.

My other friend got me a waistpack for my walking that carries one water bottle and has a multitude of pockets and straps. I'll be road-testing that on Sunday, but so far is seems pretty good. If nothing else, it'll STOP me from hurting my collarbone with wearing my shoulder-bag incorrectly. (I've got a nice wear-spot on my chest... dang, when did I get these bony things just under my neck? weird! weird!)

So, I'm all decked out for my walking!