Then we did curl-ups or if you like, sit-ups.  We have two minutes to do as many as we can.  I did 44, which is the minimum for my age group.  It just wasn’t a good day for sit-ups for me.

Then we did push-ups.  Again, we have two minutes to do as many as we can.  I always reach the “as many as I can” well before the two minutes are over.  I’ve never been good at push-ups.  This time I did 17, which is good for me.  I only have to do 13, so I’m quite pleased with my results on this part.

And then finally, we did the run, the part everyone dreads the most.  We have to run 1.5 miles.  For my age group I have 16 minutes and some odd seconds to do it in, but I was aiming at 15:30 and then I felt I was doing well enough I could maybe do it in 15:00 minutes.  But I did it in 15:18 instead.  So it was a little disappointing for me, but I passed.  I passed everything.  So that’s good.  Now I don’t have to do it again for six months–theoretically–due to the climate here, it’ll probably be in March.  And it was warm (I don’t know the temperature, but when I say “warm” I mean anything between 85F and 99F) and humid.  And I’ve never run well in humid weather.  So I guess I should be satisfied.

Today I’ve been a little sore, but that will pass.  If I ever stop working so many hours (I’ve been working between 60 and 70 hours a week) I’m going to go back to swimming at the pool.  If I can get off by 1700 (5:00 p.m.) every night, I can go to the pool for an hour or so before supper and home.  If I work hard, maybe I can swim the PRT next spring.  That would be cool.  No more running and wheezing and my lungs hurting!  (Hopefully that won’t happen with swimming.)

I also got sick yesterday with a migraine that didn’t respond to medication, even two doses of migraine medication (Zomig).  Up until now, Zomig has worked just fine.  So I had to go home early, and today I still have a headache, but since I’m 90%  better I’ve been ignoring it.  I’ve been really tired and sluggish today, though.  I hope tomorrow’s better–I have a real busy day tomorrow, with a big project to do that I’ve been putting off and which is due tomorrow.  (Isn’t it amazing how many things you find to do when you’re avoiding a particular task?  You can be so productive and get so much done when you’re getting everything but what’s truly important done.)  So tomorrow I have to get it done.

And I have to be at work tomorrow at 0500, so I think I’ll call it a night.  Good night.

Saturday I went to the BSPCA or the Bahrain Animal Shelter.  No, I was not looking for a pet, although I wanted to take a bunch of them home with me.  I went with a friend to volunteer there.  The first thing we did was go into the Cat House and help out there.  There was a staff member sweeping and mopping the cages.  We went behind him and put in the food and water and the litter boxes and beds.  And of course we petted the cats too.  There was a Persian there that looked very funny as it had recently received a haircut.  I never knew they got haircuts.  I hope it looks good when it finally grows out.  There was one cat brought in while I was there.  I never found out why.  Some of the cats had been there since August.  One was such a sweetheart she let me carry her around.  I don’t know why she was there so long.  If I could, I’d adopt her.  But I live in a “no pets” apartment.  There were a few kittens there too.  I expect they’ll go quickly.

After the cats we helped walk the dogs.  The dogs are not kept in kennels but in large pens.  There are around 8-10 dogs in each pen.  It’s easier to walk all the dogs in a pen at the same time instead of individually.  If you know dogs you’ll know why.  If you don’t know dogs, it’s because dogs are like people–they get jealous if they think someone else is getting something they’re not.  Fortunately for them on Saturday there’s usually a lot of volunteers.  So everyone takes one dog and thus the whole pen gets walked at once.  On the other days of the week the staff have to do it when they get time so maybe only one pen gets walked a day.  Even on Saturday, when every dog gets walked, there is still a lot of walking.  That is because there is a lot of pens and a lot of dogs.  It would be easy to spend two hours just walking dogs.

All the dogs seemed small to me, but maybe that’s because I’m used to seeing the big German Shepherd military working dogs on base.  These at the shelter looked to be from 30-40 pounds–so in the medium range of dog size.  They were also mutts and most skinny.  The only one I that didn’t look skinny was the one that looked like a rottweiler, and those dogs don’t look skinny.  My friend said a lot of the dogs had some saluki in them, and saluki is a skinny breed of dog.  There were also a lot of puppies there.  Most were half grown.  But they were all cute and definitely wanted attention.  If I were to be able to get a pet it would be hard to pick out just one.  They all need a good home.

Even though it was hard to leave the animals there, I enjoyed volunteering there and would like to go back.  It was fun being around all those animals that just wanted some care and attention.  But then I like animals, particularly dogs.

Later the same Saturday, I went to taekwondo.  I’d missed two weeks from being out of town and having a migraine.  I’ve had a lot of problems with migraines lately.  I don’t usually get this many.  I had one Saturday night too, but I took my medicine and went anyway.  I didn’t end up staying the whole time.  Maybe it was just as well.  My medicine tends to make me dizzy, and he was having us do these exercises that involved turning around (and around), which is enough to make you dizzy anyway.  Once I spun around too fast and ended up on my face on the mat.  I didn’t even realize I was falling until I was lying face down!  I wasn’t hurt.  That’s why we practice on mats.  The teacher applauded.  That’s what he does every time someone falls.  He says it’s so they don’t feel bad.  It does make it easier to laugh it off.  And it was funny.  I wish I could have seen myself.  I probably looked funny flying around and landing on my face.  So now I can officially say I’ve had my first fall in taekwondo.

The klutziness doesn’t end there.  Yesterday when I was riding my bike home from work I wiped out.  That means I came as close to falling down as makes no difference.  I tried to jump a curb and failed.  I guess I need to find some ten-year-old boy and have him teach me how to do it.  They all know, right?  So I scraped some skin off my knee.  It bled a little bit and hurt some too.  But as both my mom and Jeremy’s mom like to say in situations like this–I’ll live.  The ironic thing was that my senior chief talked to us about bicycle safety at work just that morning.  He’d said that even though it’s not required, we should wear long pants and long sleeves when riding.  I thought that was ridiculous, especially with Bahrain’s climate, but guess what?  I wasn’t wearing pants.  But will this encourage me to wear pants in the future?  Probably not.  So have I learned my lesson?  That would be a negative.  I have learned not to jump curbs.  Does that count for anything?

Well that’s all I can think of for the exciting things that have been happening in my life lately.  In blogging news I took down the “dead” widget from the sidebar.  It’s supposed to tell you the temperature in Bahrain.  It’s really cool, but it stopped working, and I don’t know why.  So I will wait until my computer guru husband comes back and hopefully he can get it working again.  Until then, I put a search bar up in its place.  I figured I have enough posts now that if someone were looking for one it would be annoying to page through all the archives; they should be able to search for what they want.  I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how well it works.  It’s also rather ugly.  Sorry.  Nothing I can do about that.

That’s all, folks.  I’m off to bake a cake–Triple Chocolate Hot Fudge Cake.  All you have to do is add water.  Sounds easy and delicious.  I love chocolate.  I’d share if there were some way to send it electronically.