Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Little Things

The last few days have been happy ones, as far as finances go. It's not like anything all that fabulous has happened, just little things to feel good about.
First of all, I finally got around to filing an expense report at work, and was reimbursed for over $1,600. I often lose track of how much I have outstanding for reimbursement, so I never count it towards my net worth at the end of the month. Realizing I hadn't actually spent that money on myself kind of feels like winning the lottery!

Then, there was a little shopping expedition I did with a friend in the suburbs. We went to the local Sports Authority, thinking we'd buy her a pair of swimming goggles and both of us a pair of surf shoes so we wouldn't be skeeved out by swimming in a lake near her house. Lo and behold, the Sports Authority was having a sidewalk sale with big discounts, and one of the items featured was surf shoes, at $6 a pair! I was so happy to check that off my list, I was ready to quit right there but my friend wanted to look at the other tables, one of which turned out to have a pile of my favorite kind of flip flops. I'd been thinking I could use a new pair, but it has always bothered me to pay over $20 for flip flops-- it just seems wrong! But at the Sports Authority that day, it was all right: they were marked down to $11 on the table, and then when I paid for the two pairs I grabbed, the cashier marked them down a further 40%! I love it when things like that happen!!

And I also love it when you can kill two birds with one stone. My recent discovery that I have high cholesterol has had me eating a lot less meat, which has made meals a bit cheaper. It's also inspired me to try to exercise more. In order to make it easier to fit exercise into my day, I've been starting to go to the gym in the morning, instead of after work. This is something I never thought I could do. I am totally not a morning person and the idea of exercising in the morning was just incomprehensible to me. But now that I've been seeing someone who lives in the same country as me, who I can actually spend time with, it's harder to go to the gym in the evenings, and once I started to force myself to go in the morning, I discovered that I actually love it. It's really refreshing to start my day with a nice swim, and if I eat just a yogurt or a granola bar or a banana before I get on the subway, my energy level is fine. So this means I'm not buying breakfast in the deli as much. I stock up on breakfast items to eat at home, and then just buy coffee and make instant oatmeal in the office. I think I might even have lost a teensy bit of weight already but I may just be thinking over-optimistically about that... and that would be a third dead bird, which begins to seem cruel.

Anyway, don't you love it when the little things in life work out? It makes the big things seem less daunting...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good for you on all your great finds.
About more exercise - remember that you will be building muscle which weighs more than fat - so you may be losing fat but it may not show up on the scale. Your measurements will change and with more muscle you will burn more calories. Who knew a morning swim could do all that ;)
Bellen

Anonymous said...

"I love it when a plan comes together." - Hannibal (The A team)

Sounds like everything is working out.

By the way, muscle doesn't weigh more than fat (a pound of each is still a pound) it is denser than fat.

Anonymous said...

Also, you're only going to gain any significant amount of muscle if you do strength training. Since swimming isn't even a weight-bearing exercise, you're really not going to build much muscle. But good for you for jumping on the healthy bandwagon!!!

Caleb said...

Right, but swimming will help build cardiovascular endurance! A healthy heart is never a bad thing.

Anonymous said...

Bronx Chica- Congrats on getting more for your money! I've started to only by coffee when i bring breakfast to work. Also it's the "little things" that matter in life.

Anonymous said...

Instant oatmeal is one of the worst things you can eat. Because the oat is chopped up and not whole, it hits your bloodstream with a load of sugar in one hit. The likely effect of this is that you will start craving more sugar.

Try having regular whole oats. 1/3c oats with 2/3c water. Nuke for 1.5 minutes, stir. Nuke another 1.5 mins. Regular oats hit your blood stream much more slowly and gives sustained energy through the morning instead of a quick hit that leaves you craving more sugar.

Anonymous said...

I wonder which gym you use in NYC that has a nice swimming pool? This is something I've been looking into for a while now. A decent swimming pool for a good price is hard to come by. I used to pay $700/year as an alumni at my college athletics center, but the sanitation level wasn't up to par. Other gyms that charge about $1200/year don't seem to have pools that are a decent size/length. Where do people find the good deals for swimming in NYC?

Madame X said...

I have found that the NY Health and Racquet Club has pools at almost all locations but some are small. NY Sports Club has a few pools that I think are decently sized, as does Bally, I think, in at least one location. The YMCAs tend to have good-sized pools, and then there are some public NYC parks dept. pools that are indoor that are a decent size though I've never actually used one. Check out the listings in the Not For Tourists Guide to NYC, I think they have a lot of info. But other than the YMCA, don't expect to get a "good deal"-- I think gyms with pools are always relatively expensive.

Jerry said...

TAking care of yourself is your best insurance against disease and it's good for your wallet, too. Less trips to the doctor should be sweet medicine to anyone! I hope the changes lead to bigger and better things.

Jerry
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