Tentative

I'm not sure what I'm doing on this upright, no I know what I'm doing, taking that first baby step on coming back to 'the routine.' I'm big on routine. Others appear to enjoy swimming in chaos, Bill prefers calm.

At this point I'm far too cautious to declare normality, I've been bitten too many times on this one. But I'm hopeful. I can better empathize with others who hit an interruption to the routine and simply don't come back to the gym. I get it.

Now that it appears the crises is past and the logjam cleared all the crap piling up behind it must be addressed. Monthly reports, reviews, that thing and um NOW! You're problems have been addressed, what's the hold up here?!

So mentally it becomes very, VERY easy to start thinking, "I'll just go to work tomorrow and further catch up." until suddenly it's gone, the gym, all of it and flabby Bill is back in the mirror. It's also a tightrope, yesterday I HAD to finish some administrative things, and I did about 9pm last night.

That's why I'm back on this bike doing a twenty minute tempo routine, trying to keep a cadence over 100 at level nine. I did fairly well at it for ten minutes but then the cadence dropped to around eighty (I didn't back off the level 9). What I noticed was how my HR just kept going up, oh yeah I was feeling it.

Then ABS and some of those I have to do two reps on, I only did one but I did one of each. It was a start ya know?

While I'm stumbling around doing the ABS thing, awesomeGirl is doing one of Bubbles patented step routines. It sounded like that water feature in Kill Bill where Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman square off in that Japanese garden.

blonk-blonk pause blonk-blonk

It was peaceful, which is how I feel right now. Talk to me later so we can see how many minutes that lasted!

I'm On It

Hi, I'm sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I'm working on a post but it's kinda funny because I have a lot to say or at least babble about and not enough cycles to say it. I'm curious about the effects of excessive stress and exercise and how it relates to Bill.

I haven't been in the gym nearly as much as I need to be. I never thought I'd find myself in this situation but there it is. I'll be trying to ramp myself back up this week.

That had better happen, I have no intention of pissing away nine months of hard work.

Breakdown

"You were on the USS QP during the summer and fall of 09?!"

I stare frankly at the wide eyed kid, "Aye."

"Then you know... you know about the threads," he shudders.

I softly reply, "We'd sit alone in our cubicles, or sometimes in groups and and watch the thread count start to rise and each of us would invoke various gods and talismans trying to make the thread count fall. It was all we could do at that point, and sometimes that thread he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that thread looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a thread is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... until he bites your response time, and those black eyes roll over wide and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'."

For those of you thinking I'm babbling about sewing - a thread is a tiny process or subroutine running inside another process, I'm already too deep in the jargon. When you push 'submit' on your browser it will fire off a thread on the system it's talking too. If you wanna be bored to tears or are in need of a good nap go here to learn more about threads. When the thread count starts to rise it means some other process, program, or system further down the line is slowing down for some reason. If the thread count continues to rise then it's good buddy response time will start to rise and that's a very bad thing.

I work for an organization consisting of various groups and departments that pride themselves on delivering the best user experience. We're tiny, we ain't no google but we're staffed with top notch, very bright people and we've been stymied by this problem for months.

A blog is by it's very definition egocentric so you've been watching/reading about my slow decent into madness, frustration, and despair. I want to point out that I have not been suffering alone. There are currently twenty to thirty additional people crammed on the USS QP which is normally staffed by a crew of ten or so. All of them digging deep into the problem, whatever it might be.

Last evening while I was monitoring the system I got the following email, "Good news is we can fix it." It just might take a few days.

Once again I hope, fool that I am.

I was determined to suffer in the gym today so I got in there pretty early around 4:50am or so but any suffering I had in mind couldn't come close to the suffering of the ghostPeople. Tears flowed down their face as one leaned on a treadmill and the other sat in the trainer's chair.

"What's up?" I ask.

"HUSH! This is a real tear jerker!"

What sort of hellish routine has Bubbles or Diablo cooked up now? Forced to watch The Women in Trouble Network... fiendish! Those monsters! I won't even glance at the screen figuring it would drive my HR through the roof. They show me various sweat stains on their shirts and other evidence of extreme exertion before ephemerally disappearing.

I'm more old school when it comes to this exercise thing. I want to Suffer. I plop down on an upright bike, plug in the ear buds, do a five minute warm up and then hammer Bubbles interval routine. As hard as I can. Somewhere around the seventh work interval I want to puke. I mean really. I try and take a swig of water and end up exhaling so hard that my mouthful spews all over me and the bike. How attractive. I'm already out of shape. sigh. I keep pushing it hard, the music on shuffle laid out perfectly for my mindset, nothing too slow, songs about desperation and losers. Then times up.

I exchange a few words with IronMan on my way out. He's looking uncomfortable on an elliptical. I miss that boy and hope to spend more time, soon, when this boat quits rolling and yawing. I also get to see goodMood and Kingsley briefly.

Sigh, that's today's news from the front.

Everything's Fiiiiinnnneeee

I want to write haiku. I want to scream. I am definitely feeling it now! ::nervous giggle, wrings hands:: You probably don't have a clue what I'm babbling about.

Do you need to?

I don't think so, the particulars of the situation(s) don't matter. What matters is the stress, the never ending, ongoing stress. Cracks are starting to show in the facade and everything's fine, it's fine, it's fiiiiinnnneeee. We'll solve this, this problem, this broken thing, but it's beginning to feel like a race against time and time is running out.

mmhmm

I woke up at 3am today, looked at the clock mutering, "Are you KIDDING me?" and went back to bed before dragging my ever widening ass out of bed at 4:05am. Suited up for the gym and here I sit on my big comfy chair typing this manifesto, this pseudo diary, this grand experiment in exercise. The gym wont happen today. It could have but it wont, not today. It's not delivering the 'kick' I need at the moment...

What I need is for this stress to abate, this problem solved, this nut cracked and then oh say a week off AND THEN business as usual.

Well let's see what today brings shall we?

Already on deck - Take the kids to the dentist, figure out what to wing for dinner and work.

I'm tired. Probably should have gone to the gym.

Dreaming of the crank
Whirring pedals, burning thighs
Prospect shimmering

Planned Parenthood Day One

I'm trying to cope with the single parent thing and thanking my lucky stars this is only temporary, but I have five working days of it. Bubbles (ever helpful) was kind (?) enough to throw something together, telling me, "This should take less than 30 minutes."

It took me forty. Maybe by Friday I'll have it down to thirty :-)

It's intense (for me) and I felt it :-)

Warm-up: Push-up/Jumping jack progression (Working from 1-10 and 10-1)

Set 1:

A. Five 1-minute stations as follows:

• 1 minute jog around gym
• 1 minute Squat Jumps
• 1 minute jog around gym
• 1 minute Squat Jumps
• 1 minute mountain climbers

B. 1 minute DB chest press on SB

Set 2:

A. Four 1-minute stations as follows:

• Medicine Ball Russian Twists
• Line Run (should take less than 30 seconds)
  • run from end line to 10’ line, back to end line
  • run to mid-court, back to end line
  • run to opposite 10’ line, back to end line
  • run to opposite end line, back to end line
• Medicine ball squat jump toss
• Shuffles

B. 1 minute DB Pullover on SB

Set 3:

A. Wall Sit (1 Minute) and Walking Lunge (1 Minute)

B. 1 minute Biceps Curls

Set 4:

A. Repeat Sequence (1 Minute): DB Sumo squat, squat, narrow squat

B. 1 minute split-stance bent over rows

Set 5:

A. Elbow Plank (1 Minute)

B. Alternating Superman’s (1 Minute)

Have a great day!

Prayers to Broken Stone

I love that phrase, prayers to broken stone. It's from a T.S. Eliot poem The Hollow Men. I wish I'd written it.

I'm suited up, changing the station from The Women in Trouble! network to The Talking Heads channel. I'm resigned to the workout. I hear the door clack open and in strolls IronMan, he takes one look at me and says, "You ready to go?"

He's wearing street clothes and I smile ruefully saying, "Don't yank my chain on this, after yesterday I could probably use some misbehaving." He's not kidding, reading something in my eyes or posture.

I dress for work and we head to Bob Evans.

Of course it's closed.

We head to McDonalds.

Of course it's closed.

But its drive-through is open. We order something and head back to the gym all the while I'm filling him in on yesterday's events. We plop down on some chairs in the lounge (for lack of a better word) and talk. That's about all I want to say on the matter (except Thanks IronMan!), it's work, it's bad and getting worse.

Yesterday's surprise cut deep.

There will be no more wishing, building sandcastles or hoping things get better. We're in the end game now, the short strokes. Everything is personal now.

Be well.

Sandcastle Dreams

I always start the mornings off filled with the hope that planned things will get done, recently by 10am I'm crushed and filled with despair. I can't get anything work wise DONE, it's annoying and piling up. Why you ask? Well OK you didn't ask but I'm gonna pretend you did.

There's this one Zulu Problem. It's the root of all my and many other folks pain. Thing is we can't find the squirrely fiend, but he's out there - oh yes indeedy! He/she/it pops up about every other day, wrecks havoc and then is gone, leaving some Terminator vibe of "I'll be back!" I'm doing the best I can to cope and Bubbles helped with that a bit this morning, showing off her new wheels.

If that doesn't say, "Expectant Mother" nothing does!

My wife has been super helpful and supportive and she's dealing with a different set of Zulu problems. So... we'll see how all of this pans out. Hopefully in this blog and not on the front pages of your local newspaper. Tutu wearing madman, reading from The Second Coming, refuses to leave building. Cuz heads up, if I'm going down it's gonna be in a tutu shrieking, "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world!" mmhmm

Today I worked on the Thursday variation of the total body. I decided to focus on Bubbles dynamic warm up and time it. Twenty minutes! And I wasn't my usual yappy self, OK there was yapping, but not yapping. So I view my warm up as a mini-workout.

awesomeGirl flat out refused to do some I Love Lucy inspired pratfall which was a bit of a downer and IronMan scoffed at the steps and amused himself by jumping up on one of the benches. He made it look too easy but wouldn't try it with a BOSU ball on the thing. Maybe next week.

I'm now trying to pop off little Zulu Problems in some vain attempt at stemming the tide. As I gaze from my lofty sandcastle turret I'm in slightly better spirits. These walls are bound to hold! Maybe today will be drama free.

Hey, a boy can dream.