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Yes, I have neglected these pages.
I seem to be busy with working out -- plus exhaustion from working out...
(Yeah, I keep trying to pretend that I am not old -- but let's face it:
I'm not exactly young, either.)
For example, during the past few days:
- Wednesday: TRX class. This is an excellent workout. I love it. It is true, of course, that what you get out of it depends on what you put into it... and I pretty much go all out. Afterwards, I have trouble not falling asleep reading a book or watching television or even just sitting in front of a computer.
- Thursday: I got up around five, had coffee, checked email, gathered my stuff and went off to the Y to do some lap swimming a bit after six. Came home, had breakfast, came into my home office and put in a full day of work. After work Nancy and I went to the Y for an Outdoor Bootcamp program they had. That night it was a whole series of activities -- rope workout (pick up the ends of two really big fat heavy ropes, the other ends tied to a fence, and work the ropes so they were making curled patterns... they get amazingly heavy very quickly) -- picnic table squats ("sit" in the air in front of a picnic table bench with your hands behind you on the bench, now lower your bottom toward the ground and back up -- repeat -- for 45 seconds -- which begins to feel like a long time) -- picnic table pushups (put your hands on the top of the table -- or, just to make it harder, on the bench -- or to be really difficult, assume a hands on the ground pushup position but have your feet on the table bend -- now do pushups) -- a racing kettle-ball carry -- then try a course of rods about 18 inches off the ground every two or three feet where you have to run the course jumping over each rod and then repeat and repeat until 45 seconds is up (have I mentioned that 45 seconds can begin to seem like a long time?) -- then a plastic ladder pattern laid out on the grass, race from one end to the the other in various hopping and skipping patterns and then repeat and repeat. Spend 45 seconds for each station, grab a breath and a drink and then repeat... and repeat.. And then run across a field towing a parachute behind you. It was fun -- and a good workout -- and I am trying to convince Nancy that we should do this every Thursday in June.
- Friday: pool work with my trainer. This was great because he was able to show me something I was doing wrong. I was breathing wrong, going too far between breaths, which had the result of making me exhausted and very short of breath. So now I am breathing much more frequently. Then, after finishing a long swimming workout, I got dressed and walked home. It's just a fraction short of three miles from the Y to home (more than half of it being on the bike path). It's not really that much of a distance, but it followed my swim workout and a lot of it was up hill.
Yesterday I spent the morning running various errands, and then Nancy and
I went to join some friends at a cookout. On the way there we witnessed
a head on automobile accident. The car we were following was struck head
on by a minivan coming the other way. The van had just drifted out of its
lane and smashed right iinto the car. Pieces of automobile flew in all
directions, the car spun around on the highway, the van flipped into the
air, landed on its front and then went over with its roof on the road and
slid off onto the shoulder. We terrified at first that we would find dead
people when we ran up to the vehicles, but the young couple in the van
were able to talk to another person who had stopped. They wereshaken up
and bloody and trapped (glass everywhere) and she was pinned underneath
him and was naturally feeling panic. The woman driving the other car was
shaken up with some cuts but then she began to show shock and got very
faint and non-responsive.
When the ambulances and the police showed up, Nancy waved to one of the
crews and told them the driver of the car had lost consciousness and they
quickly ran to take care of her. I was amazed at how quickly and professionally
they were able to free her from the vehicle and get her onto a backboard
and then onto a gurney. A doctor got out of a passing car and she began
checking the woman and then the woman's husband showed up (when we first
got to her car and she was still lucid she had been able to tell someone
her home number so they could call her husband). Nancy and I gave written
statements to the police (since we had seen the accident happen) and then
we left. As we were leaving, the fire department's hazard team had arrived
and they were cutting the doors off the van so they could get the young
couple out.
I am taking an online course in rock music history via Coursera. I got
the idea from Stephanie, who had mentioned it on Facebook, and then I told
my brother about it and he signed up too. He got 30 out of 30 right on
the first quiz. I knew the answers but I accidentally clicked the wrong
box on one question (the right answer was B but somehow I clicked A), so
I only got 29 out of 30. I think we can have three tries at a quiz, but
I figured it wasn't worth retaking it -- I'd probably fix that answer but
would finger fumble half a dozen others. It's a free course I'm taking
for fun, so it really doesn't matter anyway.
So... that's some of what I've been doing recently that I should have written
about here but somehow have gotten bogged down with other stuff...
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