Delirity

I’ve been back from vacation for a while now, but unfortunately things sort of fell apart at work while I was gone (not because I was gone) and since I’ve been back I’ve been working a lot again. Too much. Mainly because we’re now very short handed. But, we’ve got some high school interns for the next few weeks to help with the tons of manual labor we’ve got (unboxing different parts, labeling computers, setting up computers, testing computers and handsets…), so that should help.

I’ve been so busy with work and life that I haven’t really had the energy to focus on myself. That, combined with being injured for so much of last year and the beginning of this year and I’ve gained more weight than I care to admit to. I need to buckle down, clean up my diet and get myself into the gym on a more regular basis. I’m just not sure I can do it yet. That sounds stupid and I know I’m just going to have to do it – but when there’s so much else going on that I have to juggle it’s hard to find the extra willpower. I know I need to do it for my health though… so, baby steps.

Jesse and I have been doing a lot of sitting recently. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s good that I’ve been sitting and relaxing instead of doing work on weekends or in the evening. It’s a bad thing that I’ve been watching so much tv instead of going to the gym or doing more practical things around the house. But, it’s actually something I’ve made a concerted effort to do for myself.  And I’ve been reading! Yes, it’s more sitting, but it’s something for me and it’s something relaxing. In my own ity bity ways I will find easy ways to do things for myself and eventually that relaxation is going to help me be better prepared to put my world back in order. (That really makes things sound like they’re all messed up – it’s not that messed up – it’s just not how I want or need it to be. But more on that later.)

Next week, I’ll be taking off for vacation. I’ll be spending a little over a week down in San Diego with family and friends. My fingers are crossed that this is what I need to recharge myself. Recently, I’ve felt like I’ve had no energy and it’s all I can do to get the basic things taken care of during the day. After a week of eating well and hitting the gym 4 mornings I feel about a million times better. I’m really happy to have gotten back to these things and I think that the combination of this and the vacation is going to make life much more enjoyable once I get back!

I’m currently in vacation prep mode. This weekend I’m cleaning the apartment and making sure there will be plenty of things for Jesse to eat while I’m gone. Monday through Wednesday at work will be spent getting things (especially my desk that has gotten so horribly messy!) organized. I always love having a nice fresh start when I get back from a vacation – who wants to come home to a big mess?! It’s bad enough to have to put away everything from the trip…

The only thing I can’t do this weekend that I’d really like to do is buy new shade loving plants for the back porch. After a big heatwave in the past few weeks, plus my hopes that plants that need sun might do ok on our shady deck, all the plants out there are dead. It looks horrible! I can’t wait to have it all replanted with flowers that will do well back there.

I can’t seem to get myself back into regular blogging. I’m busy at work all the time. And once I get home I’m busy with making dinner, getting lunches and things ready for the next day, and generally trying to keep things in order … all while trying to fit in some time for relaxing. It’s busy for me. And Jesse is in the busiest quarter ever (and keeps taking on more and more fabulous activities which makes it even worse). We’re lucky we see each other before we pass out at night.

So, what’s so busy?

Work:

• The Mini Living Laboratory – I’m in charge of our network of 8 homes in the community “lab”
• The BRP Study – I’m working on both the technical (a little) and clinical side of the BRP study which will grow to about 250 people in the next year
• In addition to several other projects: ADCS (we’re providing computers for neuropsych testing and medtrackers -our cool pillboxes- to several centers around the country)

Home:

• Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning (I can’t help that I like to have a clean, tidy home!)
• Cooking (I’m the resident grocery shopper and chef)
• Baking (birthday coming up? I’ll be making cookies… in fact, I even make cookies to bring in to work, so perhaps this should go under work as well…)
• Bills (I’m also the CFO of our household)

My Sanity:

• Trying to hit the gym 5 days a week
• Meet some new people (thank you to Meetup and the wonderful group of women I’m going to start doing things with)
• Relax occasionally – this includes the 9 (eep!) tv shows we watch, trying to see movies occasionally and going shopping!

My lab is on the cusp of beginning a 3 year study. Part of what we’re doing is giving our subjects (older adults, some of whom have 0 computer experience) computers so that we can monitor their computer use. We obviously need to give them some virus and spyware protection because they’re likely to accidentally click somewhere and get something, however, we want these programs to be able to run in the background and not ask them what they’d like to do with certain files (just quarantine them all) because they’re not going to know what to do with them most likely.

On one hand we’d like to just go with all microsoft type stuff because that way if there’s a problem and a program says it’s time for an update we can tell them that if it says microsoft they can update. On the other hand, there are better programs out there in some cases that might catch some of the microsoft spyware.

Right now we’re thinking we’ll probably go with the Avira AntiVirus (it’s what we use on all the computers at work and we know it doesn’t get in the way much) and I’m checking out different spyware to see if it can be made to run in the background (currently looking at windows defender, next will be spybot and adaware). Any other suggestions for things to check out?

In case you don’t know, I’m a research assistant in a lab that finds ways of using technology to help older adults stay in their own homes longer. We recently got written up in The New York Times about one of the studies we completed recently. The jist of it is that we can use motion sensors to pick up movement patterns within a persons home and that people with Alzheimer’s show recognizably different patterns. Pretty cool, hmm?