Just about every day (weather permitting) on my lunch break I walk twice around the jail (two miles), usually with another tech, D, who happens to be about 17 weeks pregnant right now.
We were just finishing up our first lap when we passed one of the secretaries who works in the criminal patrol section. She smiled and waved at us and then called out:
“I see the pregnant ladies are getting their exercise!”
All right, I figured out a work-around solution. All participants now have their own Progress Chart pages (sort of) which they can pseudo-blog on.
Anyone who wants can still join up!
Well. It is beginning to look as if I will not be able to do what I wanted to do with my Great Weight Loss Tracker Page Thingummy through Wordpress. What I wanted was to basically set up a second blog on my domain that was open to others for them to post their stats and progress and updates on their weight loss/fitnessy stuff, while keeping my own “main” blog for me and me only. Apparently this is not possible. So, my next thought was to at least figure out a way that people could post comments on the page I have in existence already for the 2006 Weight Loss Dare, but I can’t figure out a way to make that happen either. A Nerdly Friend of mine suggested making each “chart” a blog entry in one particular category and allow people to comment on their own charts, but for some reason when I switch to category view of a post that has a table in it, the table is all screwed up/nonexistent until you click on the comments section.
Soooo… I’m still scratching my head on this one. I really would like the participants to be able to post comments about their progress easily. Any Wordpress experts out there with an idea?
An interview of yours truly by John Joseph Adams is online at
http://www.tuginternet.com/jja/journal/archives/003401.html!
I also received a call today from Judy from Writers of the Future to tell me that I’m being featured in their e-newsletter because of my win and because of my Katrina experiences. Cool! She also said I need to send a picture to go with the article. Not Cool! Sheesh, I have been scrounging through files all night trying to find something that I can send. Gah. The only decent pictures of me are waaaay old. And normally I’d go ahead and send a way old picture, except that my hair was also waaay short and it would be pretty obvious that it was not a recent pic. Bah.
I went to the drugstore yesterday for various items, among them a new toothbrush. As I perused the selection I noticed that many had the enticement of “Comfort Grip!” And I had to wonder, is hand fatigue that big of a problem when it comes to brushing teeth?
I worked out for the first time in my new gym this afternoon. I’m definitely going to like it there. I got there by 3:30 and it was nearly empty. I have a feeling it doesn’t really start to fill up until about 5pm, and I’ll almost always be out of there by then. The other nice thing is that it’s about five minutes away from Anna’s daycare, so I can go right over and pick her up after I finish.
The project for this evening was picking up the carpet squares that I’d ordered from Home Depot for my rental house. However, I made a the deadly mistake of Being Nice and not saying anything when a much older couple cut in front of me in the line, and unfortunately they ended up having an oddly complicated order and thus I had to stand in line for 45 minutes. When it was finally my turn it took a whole 30 seconds for the lady to pull my order up. Unfortunately (again), it took another 45 minutes for them to then find someone to actually pull my order out of the warehouse and bring it out to the car (Jack’s Expedition, which ended up being filled to the absolute brim!) I heard someone grumbling about, “They need to hire more people!” and I wanted to turn around and bitch slap them for being stupid. Good grief, every business down here has Help Wanted signs out front. The population has exploded, and the infrastructure is groaning at the seams.
Is this the last day for Holidailies? Hmmm… I think that perhaps it is. Well, I think I only missed one day. (Maybe two?) Which is the first time I’ve ever missed a day during Holidailies, but heck, this year I was utterly insanely busy for the month of December, so I think that I’m lucky that I only missed one (maybe two) days of posting. Hopefully I’ve picked up a few more Loyal Readers, and hopefully they’ll stick around through the dreadfully unexciting entries about the minutae of my life for the occasional reward of a post about something nifty and cool (usually work-related.) Fortunately I do have an exceedingly cool job that does produce some nifty anecdotes at times.
And, again, if anyone is interested in joining up with my whole weight loss and fitness thingummy deal, let me know. I’m about to get more organized with it all, and participants will (hopefully!) be able to post their own progress reports in the “Weight Loss Dare” section.
So, as usual, I’m ready for Holidailies to be over, simply for the chance to kinda catch my breath. Of course I’ll join up again next year and go through it all again, despite all of the pressures that occur during December. Maybe we should start up a mid-summer holidailies for when there aren’t a million other commitments going on. 
Thanks to Debbie, I found a gym! I checked out the Downtown Fitness Center at her recommendation, and signed up five minutes after I walked through the door. It totally had the “serious” gym aura about it, and it had all the machines and weights I could possibly need. Totally Cool. I am psyched.
I was incredibly virtuous this morning. Last night I set the alarm for a time where the first number is less than 5. And then this morning I actually got up (and worked out!) when it went off, despite a night of extremely shitty sleep thanks to the Kid and a spouse who is obviously experiencing a touch of sinus trouble because he was snoring last night and he usually does not snore.
Now if I can just kick my own sinus trouble. Bleh.
A number of people have expressed interest in joining my Great Weight Loss and Health Extravaganza, though there have been a few who have said something to the effect of, “If you think I’m actually going to let people know what I weigh right now you’re smoking evidence.) Therefore, I am offering, to anyone who wants it, the chance to remain anonymous, yet stll have their stats and progress posted. Just email me your beginning weight and measurements and your Seekrit Codename and I’ll make a chart for you. And, if you want to include a “before” picture, I’ll post that too, and will even block your face out (or any other identifying marks, scars, or tattoos!) if you so desire.
And, it doesn’t have to be a weight loss goal. If you have some other health/fitness related goal, we’ll take that too.
Did about half an hour of weights on the home gym last night–just a light overall upperbody workout, just to remind my muscles that they’re still there. I haven’t lifted a weight since beginning of November, so I don’t want to get too crazy. After the weights I did about half an hour on the stationary bike. Today I’m walking at lunch (we’ll probably do two miles), and I’ll do the rest of my workout after my doctor’s appointment this afternoon.
We lucked out on getting a home gym a couple of months ago (got it for a third off because it had gotten wet during the storm), and if not for that I think there’d just be no hope right now. Actually going to a gym requires a much larger investment in time–not to mention the kid either has to be at daycare or with a babysitter. At least with the home gym I can work out after she’s gone to bed.
However, there are aspects of actually going to a gym that I like and miss. I can’t stand yuppie mega-gyms where the prices are sky high because you’re paying for a million cardio classes that the soccer moms dutifully strap on their spandex shorts for, where every machine is gleaming chrome and more people are paid to keep the chrome gleaming than are paid to help the members, where 50% of the people spend most of their time standing around socializing, usually on the piece of equipment that you want to use, and where 90% of the people are working out wrong and no one says anything to them!
The gym where I used to work out (which, unfortunately is no longer in existence due to health problems on the part of the owner, and besides it was on the other side of the parish from where I live now) had a lot of muscle-heads, but it also had the little old ladies and average joes and janes. But for some reason it was just a nice easy comfortable place to workout, where you didn’t feel intimidated by a bunch of spandex and silicone. Everyone was really helpful and encouraging, even to the people who had miles and miles to go before they could even see their toes. And if someone was doing an exercise wrong or inefficiently or in a manner that was inviting injury, someone who knew better would gently and nicely correct that person. This gym had no classes or spinning or cardio-pump or anything like that. It had a generous selection of weights and machines, four treadmills, four elliptical machines, and six stationary bikes. There was one cranky tanning bed in a back room and one shower and one toilet in each locker room.
I loved it. Sigh. I was briefly a member of a gym very close to where I work, but the selection of weights and machines wasn’t the greatest and I began to feel as if I was wasting my money. There was only one squat rack and one smith machine. There was no lying leg curl machine, and there was no free-weight leg press. Getting the home gym was darn near the equivalent of going to that gym. And, it really is sufficient for about 80% of what I’m wanting to do now, but I think that in about a month I’m going to get frustrated by its limitations. Don’t let the fat ass in my picture fool you–I used to be pretty damn serious about the weightlifting, and I do know what I’m doing.
So, I figure I’ll go for about a month and see how much progress I make, then I’ll probably buckle down and do an intensive search for some sort of gym that will suffice. I’m working 7 to 3 now, so I could conceivably get in a decent workout before having to get the kid from daycare.
Anyway, right now I’m just going to shoot for a loss of about 2 pounds a week. I’ll start thinking about those defined abdominals after 20 pounds or so.
