Someone has to surf the net while you’re working
Today is my birthday! Hooray! My birthday weekend included surprise parties, dancing, good food, way too much desserts and of course fun with my family and friends. Thanks to everyone who has sent birthday wishes my way and a special thanks to those of you who managed to celebrate it with me as well.
Now if you’ll excuse me, the weekend is finally catching up to me and I need to rest. I’m not getting any younger after all.
Over the weekend L caught some sort of bug. By Monday it had passed on to me and it hit me hard. Sinuses were congested and my throat felt rough and irritated. I can deal with those symptoms though; I’ve had worse from some bad allergy attacks.
The worst thing about being sick is how weak it makes me feel. It isn’t a feeling of being tired or exhausted because I do have the energy to get up and go. The problem is that the energy doesn’t seem to go where I want it to go. Almost like when you don’t have enough water pressure for your shower; the water is still flowing but since it isn’t flowing strong you’ll need more of it to rinse the shampoo out of your hair.
I have noticed that this feeling of weakness has bothered me more now that I’m practicing a martial art. My Arnis has made me more comfortable with my body and with what it can do. This makes it easier to gauge just how sick I am because of how much less I am able to do.
All of this must sound like common sense but it’s something that just occurred to me today. You have plenty of time to reflect when you’re recuperating in bed.
While I appreciate the milder weather we are having right now, it does pose a bit of a problem for me. When the weather is colder my work attire usually consists of a sweater or a light fleece jacket worn on top of a dress shirt and slacks. Not only would this ensemble keep me warm in the office it would also let me get away with not ironing my dress shirts.
Now that the weather is warmer I do not need an extra sweater or jacket. This is where the problem lies: with no second layer, my dress shirts are exposed meaning I can’t get away with wearing them un-ironed. Blast. I am not the biggest fan of ironing clothes; mainly because it takes me so long to complete one shirt. Things would probably go faster if I bought a proper ironing board instead of using the half-sized one that sits on the kitchen table. Ugh.
I know, I know, I lead such a difficult life. Humor me, it’s my blog after all.
Somehow L and I found ourselves sifting through YouTube for funny McDonalds commercials. Here are some of our favourites.
I would have embedded them directly into the post but code for the videos is being stripped from my post for some reason. Stupid WordPress.
I did not enjoy my commute home tonight. I made it out of work just in time for the 4:30 commuter bus. The wind was pretty harsh but luckily I was bundled up including a second pair of pants to keep my legs warm. The bus seemed to be running a little late so I cracked open the DS for a bit of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
After a couple of cross examinations I checked the time and noticed it was coming around to 5:00. That’s strange, it looks like the 4:30 bus must have been canceled for some reason. Since the next one was due any minute I just kept playing my video game.
More time passes and my feet are starting to really feel the cold. Worn out Blundstones are not meant to deal with the cold weather. I check the time again and it’s 5:25! What the heck is going on here?!?
That makes two absent buses on one of the coldest nights in recent memory. I have been waiting in the cold for over an hour and there is no way I can make it downtown by 6:00 for my arnis class. I am cold, annoyed, hungry and tired; not a happy camper in the least. Still the next commuter bus is scheduled to come after 5:30. I have waited here long enough, I can tough it out a few more minutes, right? Right!
Wrong.
5:35 and no bus in sight. Completely defeated, I start to walk up to the closest major street so I can take the regular local bus back to the subway. The walk helps warm my feet but the cold has already penetrated my layers of clothing, literally chilling me to the bone. It is only a 10 minute walk up and the regular buses are pretty frequent. I should have done this when I missed the first bus but I was too caught up into my game to notice the time flying by.
Then as I hit the main road I see it; the commuter bus. It is turning around the bend and is heading towards the bus stop behind me. As it passes I raise my arms in a sign of frustration and let out a choice expletive or two. I don’t attempt to run after it though, I don’t even look back. From where I am the bus stop is too far away and I know it. All that is left for me to do is to hang my head low and catch the next local bus.
The lesson to take away from this is simple: Go find yourself a copy of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It’s great game play and witty dialouge is good enough to risk frostbite over. Take it from me!
Last night was pretty successful. I stayed of the computer just like I said I would. Instead, I curled up on the couch and decided to dig into my reading pile.
After dinner I cracked open my copy of the Silver Surfer Omnibus. This earlier Silver Surfer is great stuff, but boy can Norrin Radd lay the Emo-spread on thick. “No one understand me! Why does humanity see me as a monster? How can I escape from this world and get back to where I belong?” All you need is a montage of him surfing around the world set to the music of Fall Out Boy and the kids would eat it up!
I also started reading a book about Medieval sword fighting techniques. What was interesting is that this book was written by a women and was intended to highlight the differences between the sexes when it comes to swordplay. Because of our different body shapes and structures, what may seem comfortable and natural to a man is quite uncomfortable to a women.
For example according to the book when asked to hold a stick in their hand comfortably, 95% of males will hold the stick so that it is about 90 degrees to their forearm. However, for 95% of the women, their natural grip will place the stick at about 135 degrees instead. Fascinating stuff really! I could actually see what she was talking about when I started thinking back to our arnis classes.
I’d love to give you the name of the book but unfortunately it escapes me right now. The name of the book is The Armored Rose by Duchess Elina of Beckenham.
It felt good to get away from the PC for the evening. Although I admit after our workout this morning the first thing I did was check my e-mail and skim a few feeds. Like I said, baby steps, but I do like where these steps are going. Reserving an evening for reading sounds like an excellent addition to my schedule.
Normally when I get home one of the first things I do is turn on the computer. For the majority of the evening you’ll find me there; surfing the web, reading my RSS feeds, watching a video podcast, playing one video game or another.
Tonight I am going to try and stay off the computer as much as possible. Not for the entire week, just for tonight. If it works out I’ll try it again next Tuesday. Who knows, I might eventually manage to keep Tuesdays my “offline evening” for the week.
I’ll admit, coming home at 8:30 because of my Arnis Class helps. Things would be really different if I decided to do this on Sundays when I have all the free time in the world. But, it’s best to start out small and work your way up to bigger things.
Although I’m not quite ready to give up the DS tonight as well … like I said, baby steps.
L and I woke up at 6:00 this morning to exercise. While L decided follow one of her awesome DVD workouts I decided to run through a couple of class drills instead.
I started out with trying to do 50 burpees as fast as I could. That took me a whopping 20 minutes which is pretty bad considering this guy can do 100 burpees in about 5 minutes. I’m thinking of it as a goal to work towards.
Next I ran through some stick drills including:
I need to work on my figure eights as they are noticeably slower than the rest of my stick work. The rest of the drills were pretty fast but I could always use a bit more speed. I do think I am consciously going a bit slower because there isn’t much room in this apartment to swing a stick around. L would kill me if I accidentally decapitated one of our new house plants!
All in all a pretty good morning workout.
Today in class our Guro decided to work our cardio. After a couple of footwork drills she had the class running laps around the dojo. While we’re running each student takes their turn in the middle of the dojo to do a set of strength training. We don’t stop running till everyone has taken their turn in the middle.
After that Guro set up the pylons on the mats and had us running zig-zag patterns around them while working our freestyle stick work. So now you not only have to worry about your feet but you’ve also got to keep your arms moving as well. This was much harder than I thought it would be and I could really see how doing a lot of this would help with your co-ordination.
Running has never been my strong point. Having a nagging knee injury doesn’t help with it either. But today I think I managed to keep up a pretty good pace. I was breathing well and watching out for my knee which made it through the entire class without bothering me too much. I was starting to get a side stitch near the end of the second set of zig-zag laps but I managed to keep it from flaring up by controlling my breathing.
All in all we did a good 30 minutes of cardio training and it felt really good. I think I’d like to add more cardio training into my exercise routine as well as I’m sure it would help keep the old blood pressure down. I don’t think I’ll take up jogging but I might look into swimming at the local Y. Anyone else have any suggestions?
I weighed in tonight at 226.6 lbs. Wow.
A week and I’ve already dropped some weight. I don’t think I’ve done much other than try to make some better decisions when eating. L and I are trying to cook only vegetarian dishes at home and we’ve been pretty successful. When we do need protein we are sticking to eggs and fish. We’re not cutting out meat, chicken or pork completely though. We save those for when we eat out at restaurants which we try to keep down to a minimum anyway.
One big change I have made this past month is what I eat after my weekday Arnis classes. Instead of a regular meal I’ve been eating cottage cheese melted on toast with tomatoes. Very tasty with a little salt and pepper for seasoning. I know what you’re thinking but it tastes pretty good and is surprisingly satisfying. I used to think that I needed a big meal after practice but I find just this, some fruit and a good couple glasses of water are all I need.
While it’s great that these little diet changes have dropped my weight I’ll still need to start increasing my activity levels. That’s the next step in the plan, fitting in at least another session or two of exercise sometime during my week. Maybe some Hip Hop Abs or perhaps a session of Turbo Jam … we’ll see.
