how's life?
Nov. 16th, 2014 05:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'm up early because I fell asleep early. I can't go downstairs because Pippin will want to be fed, and it's not mealtime yet. (He doesn't come upstairs and meow at me, though he will do that to B. It would work on me, too: he just doesn't know that.) So instead I sit in my office and computerize.
It may have been incipient tiredness, though I wasn't consciously aware of it, that made me decide to skip out on going out last night to a chamber music concert I didn't have a ticket for, or to the local fannish party, and in fact I could have done both. What I consciously thought was, no, I'd rather relax in my toasty little cottage with my wife and my cats. And thus we cocoon. So instead, I stayed home and got further jerked around by the authors of this Thursday's episode of Gracepoint. Thank ghu it's only a miniseries.
And possibly I was tired because I've been exercising. Yes, sports fans, months after B. joined a local outlet of 24-Hour Fitness she has finally lured me in after her. Considering how much I loathed gyms in childhood, when I was forced to use them, this is a major achievement. I'd been taking walks, but weather is iffy, it's hard to build up constant speed, and concrete sidewalks are hard on the shins. We have an exercise bike, but I find that hard on the knees, and when I'm out on my real bicycle I coast about 3/4 of the time. I've liked treadmills when I've tried them in hotel exercise rooms, but one of those wouldn't fit in our little Minnipin cottage. So I started by walking the treadmill there.
Then I had a free appointment with one of the trainers. This turned out to be a young, bubbly, and somewhat pushy woman who wanted me to sign up for regular training sessions for mucho bucks. I don't think so. Not just because of the money; I don't want a ghoddam program with goals. I just wanted some advice on what would do me some good. And I got that: she advised me on the best length of time for treadmilling, and on its built-in programs. And she introduced me to the rowing machine - a device I have not yet convinced myself I believe in - and the recumbent bike, which I liked much more. And some floor exercises, which I do at home, because they looked ridiculous enough on her.
So for now I'm doing half an hour every other day at the gym, split between the treadmill and the recumbent bike. I may work up to daily, but for now that's too exhausting. That I drive there feels less ironic than it sounds, because I get much better quality exercising there than on a walk, and if I walked I'd be too tired and sore to do it when I got there, let alone walk the mile home uphill afterwards. I won't lose weight this way - I started out as a baby, and have only ever gotten larger since - but at least it'll be good in other ways.
One last question: What do I do while on these machines? Unlike on a walk or a bike ride, I don't have to watch where I'm going. I'm not going to watch the TVs on the wall set to the sports channels, that's for sure. I find that the attention I give to most reading is too fragile to survive simultaneous exercising, and only the most engrossing book - John Cleese's memoirs worked, but I finished that - can survive it. So I listen to MP3s instead, with the earbuds I bought last summer, the only comfortable ones - this is the kind - that I've ever used. I need energetic music that I like, and I'd already tagged the upbeat songs - a small percentage of her total output - when I ripped my Enya collection, so for now I listen to that. Eventually I'll get tired of that temporarily, as has happened before, and I'll switch to something else for a while.
Otherwise? Work on next year's Tolkien journal is building up like a thunderhead, and my job as executor is finally beginning to softly, if not suddenly, vanish away.
It may have been incipient tiredness, though I wasn't consciously aware of it, that made me decide to skip out on going out last night to a chamber music concert I didn't have a ticket for, or to the local fannish party, and in fact I could have done both. What I consciously thought was, no, I'd rather relax in my toasty little cottage with my wife and my cats. And thus we cocoon. So instead, I stayed home and got further jerked around by the authors of this Thursday's episode of Gracepoint. Thank ghu it's only a miniseries.
And possibly I was tired because I've been exercising. Yes, sports fans, months after B. joined a local outlet of 24-Hour Fitness she has finally lured me in after her. Considering how much I loathed gyms in childhood, when I was forced to use them, this is a major achievement. I'd been taking walks, but weather is iffy, it's hard to build up constant speed, and concrete sidewalks are hard on the shins. We have an exercise bike, but I find that hard on the knees, and when I'm out on my real bicycle I coast about 3/4 of the time. I've liked treadmills when I've tried them in hotel exercise rooms, but one of those wouldn't fit in our little Minnipin cottage. So I started by walking the treadmill there.
Then I had a free appointment with one of the trainers. This turned out to be a young, bubbly, and somewhat pushy woman who wanted me to sign up for regular training sessions for mucho bucks. I don't think so. Not just because of the money; I don't want a ghoddam program with goals. I just wanted some advice on what would do me some good. And I got that: she advised me on the best length of time for treadmilling, and on its built-in programs. And she introduced me to the rowing machine - a device I have not yet convinced myself I believe in - and the recumbent bike, which I liked much more. And some floor exercises, which I do at home, because they looked ridiculous enough on her.
So for now I'm doing half an hour every other day at the gym, split between the treadmill and the recumbent bike. I may work up to daily, but for now that's too exhausting. That I drive there feels less ironic than it sounds, because I get much better quality exercising there than on a walk, and if I walked I'd be too tired and sore to do it when I got there, let alone walk the mile home uphill afterwards. I won't lose weight this way - I started out as a baby, and have only ever gotten larger since - but at least it'll be good in other ways.
One last question: What do I do while on these machines? Unlike on a walk or a bike ride, I don't have to watch where I'm going. I'm not going to watch the TVs on the wall set to the sports channels, that's for sure. I find that the attention I give to most reading is too fragile to survive simultaneous exercising, and only the most engrossing book - John Cleese's memoirs worked, but I finished that - can survive it. So I listen to MP3s instead, with the earbuds I bought last summer, the only comfortable ones - this is the kind - that I've ever used. I need energetic music that I like, and I'd already tagged the upbeat songs - a small percentage of her total output - when I ripped my Enya collection, so for now I listen to that. Eventually I'll get tired of that temporarily, as has happened before, and I'll switch to something else for a while.
Otherwise? Work on next year's Tolkien journal is building up like a thunderhead, and my job as executor is finally beginning to softly, if not suddenly, vanish away.
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no subject
Date: 2014-11-19 05:36 pm (UTC)Insert snarky comments here about how there certainly isn't a plot or any extended arguments in British politics. From another perspective, though, British politics is nothing but extended arguments. The one about Scottish independence has been going on for about 800 years.