Out of Sorts

Back from the gym, first Saturday in months. I feel like crap. I am hating the meds right now. I am hoping the lexapro side effects will settle down; I don't remember it affecting me this way before. Next week I'm going to Yoga like Riley; maybe it will help me because at the moment I'm having anger issues too.

A Late start, but...

Been walking to work every day since mid-last week, saves a little money and adds 2 miles to my walk (it's 1 mile each way to the Metro). Too bad the C&O Canal is looking all swampy now; it was pretty in the Spring. Did Cardio yesterday; intervals on the ellipse for the first time. It wasn't too bad, so I may try to continue that. Also trying to watch what I eat, especially at night. Slept pretty well last night, but I have been having bizarre dreams for weeks now.

Achoo!

I thought my allergies were worse than usual yesterday and today. The weed pollen count is 'very high'

I'm Back

Probably no one is reading this anymore... Anyway, day one of a new diet. We'll see how it goes. I'm also hopng to do some major home cleaning this weekend...

JKL

Since my last post inspired more comments than any in recent memory, I thought I'd go ahead and post a more provocative picture of my current crush. Wow is he dreamy or what?

Oh, and I got my nipple pierced today, Randy talked me into it. What can I say, I am weak. I have had my ear pierced 2x but this hurt a bit more. I took the opportunity to badger him about the Mormons and prop 8., At least he admitted that he voted for Obama, so there is hope for him.

Sick of being Sick

I've had a horrid sore throat all week, on top of a nasty cough (nothing like a cough to make that sore throat extra painful! Not much else is new; the Olympics are winding down. There are construction guys just outside my window to fix the leak above it. To do that, they have to tear out the brickwork, so there is pounding and grinding and stuff falling just outside right behind me.

I'm ready to go home.

Working out

Yesterday: 25 mins of ellipse (360 cals) and some crunches. Taught 45 min spin (approx 500 cals).
Today: 35 mins of ellipse (460 cals) before work. Hope to get in weights this afternoon.

Now if only I could eat better...

Ow ow ow

I'm getting old. Besides the agony of my increasing farsightedness is an assortment of little aches and pains. This morning my right hip is hurting (though I can't tell if it is just muscle pain or a deeper problem; I don't want a hip replacement at my age!!), and yesterday during spin class, my right knee felt a little unstable. The kind of ironic thing is that what usually causes me the most discomfort is walking, not spinning or ellipse.

Exercise Rush

I made it to the gym again this morning! I left the house at 6:20, got in 35 mins of cardio (460 calories on the machine) and was at work by 7:45. I always feel so good after a workout and shower. Of course after a 7 minute walk in the humid DC morning, I was perspiring again. Yuck.

At least at 6:30 in the morning the Metro was practically deserted.

I'm Fat

Yes I know, that's nothing new. I complain periodically that I'm fat. But you'd think someone who walks 2 miles a day, does 30 minutes of cardio every day, and teaches four 45-minute spin classes a week would be as lean and mean as some of the cyclists I see whipping by on the bike path every morning. But I have a little gut, and these annoying love handles. And I think I'm starting to get the dreaded man-boobs. Gah!

I could probably stand to lose ten pounds, and since I can't seem to rein in my bad eating habits, I'm going to try exercising even more as my main attack, and try to cut back on the junk a little. Wednesday night I went to crazy Carlos' hour spin class, and this morning I got up a little earlier and went to WSC near work that I normally go to in the afternoon for 30 mins more of cardio. That club (K. Street) was just as dead as it is at 2:00 pm, which kind of surprised me; I figured it would be packed. This afternoon I hope to do weights. I'd like to try this double-workout at least one other day, and add an afternoon workout on Saturday or Sunday. Whew.

Oh and I've seen Doug-Doug the cycle stud (remember him?) twice this week at the gym after not seeing him for probably a year. He looks the same, except maybe he's been out in the sun a little too much. Still seems kind of arrogant.

After the Spin

Before every class, even after four years, I get a little tiny bit nervous, mixed in with a strange kind of feeling of dread. And every time I go the the Clarendon club, as I approach I am hoping in the back of my mind that it will be closed (as it has been several times due to flooding). Nothing like I did early on, but just a bit of a twinge these days.

The club wasn't closed, I had more people than ever for this new Monday night class. And as usual, I feel better after the class and glad I got the exercise. Though, the scenery in the weights area (which I can see through a wall of glass at the back of the spin room) wasn't as good as usual.

And yes, I did get some sushi. And a Sapporo. Yum.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day. Though, frankly, with people like George "I don't like Kyoto" Herbert "Carbon Dioxide is not a Greenhouse Gas" Walker "Looky! I have a plan to fight Global Warming!" Bush in charge, I think civilization as we know it is screwed. Oh, the earth will get by, but there will be a lot of extinctions, and in the next hundred years I fear that there will be famines and massive death from starvation, flooding, storms, and war. People are going to start fighting over the limited resources (oh, wait. We already are). A lot of the equatorial areas will become uninhabitable for humans. It'll be a mess. I'm glad I won't be around.

One small thing you can do: Stop buying bottled water. You know where those plastic bottles come from, don't you? Petroleum products. And you know that most of that water is just tap water anyway. At the gym I use a cycling water bottle (not a regular 1-use plastic water bottle) I fill from the drinking fountain, which has a filter. At home I use a Brita. In the WP today I believe it said something like 23 million plastic water bottles are thrown away an hour. And don't get too smug just cause you recycle some of them. Plastic has limited recycling usefulness. Here's some info from This page:

Problem #1: it takes 3-5 times more water to create the plastic water bottle than will actually fit in the bottle. Considering each bottle should only be used once (to prevent the leeching of phthalates)- that is a lot of water that is wasted for each bottle we drink.

Problem #2: Plastic is made from petroleum, so we are depleting our non-renewable resources for a bottle that will be used once. The Pacific Institute calculates that the process of making the plastic bottles consumed in the U.S. uses approximately 17 million barrels of oil per year.

Problem #3: Plastic bottles aren’t recycled: only about 12% of plastic bottles were recycled in 2003. Recycling these bottles would ensure less petroleum was used in the production of more plastic bottles. Instead, these bottles pile up in the landfill, taking as long as 1000 years to decompose.

Problem #4: It may be just tap water. Bottled water seems to be more pure and safer because it comes out of a bottle that you had to buy. However, 25% of bottled water is just reprocessed tap water, meaning you’re not getting anything special. In fact, you could save yourself a lot of money (and the planet a lot of pollution) by buying a water filter.

In other News:

• I just love that Jimmy Carter is thumbing his nose at the Bush administration. I've always had a sneaking admiration for Carter, going back to the memory of him announcing a "Windfall Profits Tax" on the oil industry back in the 70s. The tax money would be used to research alternative energies. That was freakin' thirty years ago. Of course that went nowhere. And, here we are. There's enough solar energy coming down to earth to supply us with all the energy we would need hundreds of times over, with zero greenhouse gases or even heat waste. Duh. I want a house with solar panels.

• My legs are killing me, especially my glutes and hamstrings; it's a combination of stiffness and soreness. I was afraid I was going to die teaching class last night, but once I was warmed up I was fine. Today though, crouching or even sitting is painful. I haven't done weights since Thursday; what's up with this?

Oink

Well, after losing 5 pounds over the last few weeks on my reduced-carb diet, I pigged out over the weekend. The biggest sin was going to an Italian restaurant on Saturday with V. and a friend of his from NY. It was yummy though, especially the fried cheese in oil. I also kind of overdid it on Sunday with carby stuff. Back on the Wagon!

Ow, ow, ow

I did weights again yesterday afternoon, and for the first time in a long time I did the exercises that work the inside and outside of your legs... the adductors and abductors maybe? Anyway my hips and the insides of my thighs are sore! At least there was nice scenery at the gym, the little Latino boy who is the locker room housekeeper was working out. He has an amazing body. ;-)

I probably shouldn't have walked to work this morning (50 minutes!) but it was nice and cool, and I really need to ramp up the exercise (and cut my intake of course).

It Lives!

Yuck what a crappy last few days. I went home early Thursday and went to bed. I woke up feeling crappy Friday so I stayed home and pretty much slept all day. Saturday and Sunday I did my Spin classes but very little else. I just mostly rested and slept and watched TV. During my convalescence I watched 4 Voyager Episodes (damn, that Harry was so cute, and his ass looked great in that uniform), The original Matrix (Keanu was smokin' hot), and Real Genius (remember that one from the 80's? With the hilarious 80's fashions and the Tears For Fears music (and Val Kilmer, of course).

I'm not totally back 100%, but definitely feel way better than I have in awhile. Everyone is talking about how bad the pollen is though.

Observer Redux

Loyal readers (I know there are a few of you still out there) will remember my obsession with Mysterious Asian Man a few years back. Actually I wouldn't call it an obsession; but there was just something compelling and interesting about him to me.

Today at the G-town club I encountered a totally different guy, who nevertheless was fascinating to observe as he got dressed. I felt a little bad because when I first saw him as I walked into the locker room, he was kind of stumbling as he pulled on his boxer shorts. That's always embarrassing: losing your balance when your pulling on your underwear. He was a young white guy, maybe in his mid-20's, short, a little stocky, with nearly-black hair, very dark eyes and fair skin. I wondered what his racial background might be with that combination.

I tried to make it a point not to stare, but there was something about the extra-careful, but sort of fretting way he was dressing that made me wonder if this was not a typical routine for him, like maybe he was preparing for an interview. He had a huge clear plastic travel bag of toiletries. He was dressing in a suit, and when he put his pants on, the right-rear pocket was inside out. I was tempted to warn him, but the next time I looked he'd fixed it himself. Then he combed his previously-wild hair (not a very flattering style) and spent an inordinate amount of time at the mirror arranging the odd white-with-orange-trim handkerchief in his breast pocket. All through this he kept glancing over at me (while I was changing into my spin gear, not with an expression like he thought I was staring, but more curious. Finally he put on a pair of tennis shoes (I assume he had dress shoes to change into). Finally, in a kind of cute boyish gesture, he stood on the bench on his toes to see up to the back of the shelf in his locker and fished out a wallet or something. I was half-afraid he was going to tip the bench over. Well wherever he was headed, I hope it goes well for him.

In other news, I think I must have a sinus infection. It's been nearly two weeks, and I still have a cough and drainage, and when I get home at night I pretty much go to bed and go right to sleep. I'm gonna take my sister's advice and try to do the neti pot more often, and if not better next week, maybe see if the Dr. thinks it might be bacterial and need antibiotics.

Spinning and lingering hydrocodone

I took my cough medicine early last night so that it would be well past the 12-hour supposed effective time before I was spinning this morning. I think it lasted a little longer. Between the darkened room with just a few dim blue lights on, the trancy music and the sweaty faces all looking at me, there were several moments when the situation took on a disturbingly hallucinogenic feeling. And not in a good way. I feel okay now though; glad to have finally gotten some exercise.

Oh, and I have David Archadorable singing Long and Winding Road completely stuck in my head. Apparently there was some speculation that he didn't sing the first verse of Imagine because of its agnostic message (and he's a Mormon, ugh!)

Goggle "Decide"

Dr said I had a virus on top of allergies, gave me a cortizone spray which he said would really help the allergies long term, and a narcotic cough syrup to help me sleep. Last night I took my temperature. 102°F Sounds like I have the flu.

I had some real fun hydrocodone-fueled dreams (I slept quite a bit better than the last couple of nights, but still woke up a few times). one dream was that there was something called Google Decide. This morning I had to go to this page just to be sure that I hadn't actually seen something like that there.

Anyway, Google Decide was this program that would answer certain subjective questions for you. It was limited in some ways, and could be a bit too literal, but it came up with interesting results. For instance you could ask it "Who was a worse president, George W. Bush or Millard Fillmore?" First it would give you a disclaimer that there wasn't much historical perspective for the Bush Presidency, and it wasn't even over yet. Then Decide would search the internet, using a wide variety of sources to make a determination. You could also upload two images of human face and ask it which one was more attractive. It would search for norms for attractiveness, examine the images, and give an answer (Actually I remember a TIME Magazine cover several years back with a series of computer-morphed faces of a young woman, with various racial influences subtly shifting from one to the next; I think it was about 'what is beauty?') So, you could ask it any number of fairly specific questions, and it would use whatever web resources (Wikipedia, images files) it thought appropriate to give you an answer. It would rate sources on their credibility and take at into account.

While Google announced this thing as an amusement, they were really just getting the public to help them test out a new artificial intelligence program they had been working on....

Bleah

What a crappy weekend. I survived Sunday morning class but I still feel like crap, my throat is so raw. I got very little sleep last night. I am going to try to get an appt with an otolaryngologist today, because obviously this is more than an allergy. Interestingly, my health biorhythm is bottoming out right now...

Allergies Suck

I was pretty much laid out all yesterday with my pollen allergy. The Zyrtec and the Singulair didn't seem to make a dent in it. I don't get so much the sneezing or congestion, as I get this drainage that goes down my throat and tries to go in my trachea, and of course it doesn't like that, so I cough... and cough and cough. My throat is raw. A couple of my coughing fits were so violent that I... well you get the picture.

A bit better this morning, but I have to go teach spin class with my voice already halfway gone.