I went horseback riding today with my camera, the pictures that were not completely blurry are now up on Flickr. Western-style riding is ideal for this, since you only need to keep one hand on the reins at all times, instead of both (as you do when you ride English-style).

However, it is not ideal when your horse randomly decides to break into a trot coming down a hill and you have to try and pull hard enough to stop him with just one hand because the other holds your very expensive camera. That was fun.

By the way, remember how I said I was going out with the Old Fart Bike Brigade 2: Electric Jewgaloo? They’re in way better shape than the Atlanta crowd. I got totally dusted by four guys over the age of seventy biking up a looooong but gentle incline.

They even managed to go up one hell of a steep hill at the end. I took one look at the hill and said, “This is No Country For Young Whippersnappers.” My dad and one other guy agreed with me, and all three of us felt really old.

Went for a little ride with the Old Fart Bike Brigade: Atlanta Edition today. And when I say “a little ride”, I mean this nice 28 mile loop. I’m a little tired now. 

While I did manage to do better than my dad (in his defense, he’s almost 72 and I’m 27), I was slightly dismayed to find that I was huffing and puffing to keep pace with a barely-breaking-a-sweat 65 year old prostate cancer patient.

I’m in better shape than I was, but I apparently still have a ways to go. We’ll see how I hold up Wednesday with Old Fart Bike Brigade 2: Electric Jewgaloo (aka the Wood River Jewish Community ride).

Vegas was a good news, bad news situation.

The bad news was that I lost $15 playing Roulette, because I never fucking remember that you have to have at least $100 to win squat at Roulette until I drop at least $10 in the frame of three minutes.

The good news was that I turned around and turned $20 into $60 off a blackjack-dealing Elvis impersonator. My mother was so proud when I told her (she, as you may or may not recall, is an insane Elvis fan).

The bad news was that I somehow managed to not notice that the ticket I’d bought to The Dark Knight was to a 35mm show, not an IMAX show, and the bulb on the projector was clearly on its last legs as well.

The good news was that The Dark Knight was still so unbelievably, jaw-droppingly fantastic that now I’m happy I have an excuse to see it again, and in even more brain-meltingly awesome IMAX.

Anyway, I meandered up here to Sun Valley on Friday, and then have been enjoying showing my dad and stepmom my new personality as an insane exercise addict.

I did 2500 meters in the pool and a six mile bike ride. Well, really, a three mile downhill cruise and a three mile lung-punishing climb, to be more accurate. Actually, both bits were pretty lung-punishing, as I’d forgotten how much thinner the air is here than in L.A.

I also have a nice little strip of sunburn right above my left eyebrow to show for my troubles, in the space between the top of the eyebrow and the bottom of my swim cap. Let me tell you, it is an attractive look.

But my level of relaxation is reaching critical mass. Tomorrow’s plan includes a four mile walk, more swimming, and a screening of Mamma Mia. The latter was my stepmom’s idea, as my feelings on that musical/film are well summed up by a quote from the movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert:

“NO MORE BLOODY ABBA!”

Noted: 35 miles is kind of a long way to bike.

Also, I need a better seat. Ow.

First, your distance calculator decides that I’m running a thirteen minute mile.

If I could run on a treadmill without incurring extreme pain, I feel like it would be maybe an eight or nine minute mile. Nothing to write home about, but certainly not as horrifyingly slow as a 13 minute mile.

Then, you arbitrarily reset sometime after I’ve gone a mile and a half into the 3.1 miles I need to finish my gym triathlon, and I have no idea how much further I have to go.

I wound up doing another mile and a half after I noticed it had reset and still coming in at 1:59, but I probably could have made it to 1:55 if I had actually known how far I’d gone in the few minutes between when I saw I’d crossed 1.5 miles and when I noticed it had reset.

Bah. I’ll probably do one more of these before I try my Batshit Crazy Plan of doing a full Olympic-length gym triathlon during the Olympics. That’ll be double the distance I’ve been doing, and will therefore probably take about four hours.

At least I was able to verify that I’ve dropped my swim time to just over 15 minutes to do 15 laps from just over 18 minutes to do 15 laps. Yay, progress!

A few bits of errata, Laz style:

– Because we were on a Wednesday-Sunday shooting schedule, I had taken to calling each day “Fake ____”. Like Wednesday was Fake Monday, Thursday was Fake Tuesday, Friday was Fake Wednesday.

Today, the last day I have to deal with this shift, I found a flaw in my cunning plan: I forgot that it was Fake Wednesday, not real Wednesday, and that therefore the aqua aerobics class would be taking over the pool at 9 instead of 9:30, and got kicked out of the pool halfway through my laps.

– Are you really really bored? Try to identify the candy bar simply by looking at a cross-section. I went 14 for 20.

– I am extremely excited to see Wall-E tomorrow. Almost as excited as I am to actually have a Saturday off.

–Our entertainment this evening was chasing the mouse that lives in the kitchen all over the office. My PA was taking videos of this with his cellphone, one of which has me saying in the background, “Well, the mystery guy who lost his clothes finally called back.”

No, I will not be posting these videos.

–We finally finished shooting!

This has been a fun show, and a very good learning experience. The shifted week thing has been an absolute bear, but at least it was only for three weeks. I pulled a couple sixth-day paychecks, which is helpful in the realm of “Mama needs a new pair of everything.”

I’m back to a normal schedule for the next couple weeks (well, I’ll be in for a couple hours Sunday, but nothing like my schedule previous sundays of 5pm-5am), and then I’m scrambling for a new job. Gotta love the freelance world!

All the good ellipticals were taken at the gym this evening, so I elected to try doing some jogging on the treadmill to see if my idea to improve my gym triathalon time would work.

I got about three steps and my ankle gave me a very decisive (and rather painful) verdict of “Fuck you, asshole.”

I was okay with doing a very rapid walk on a real steep incline, but once I started with the bouncier jogging, it was all over pretty much instantly.

Perhaps I’ll try again after I take off my remaining poundage, I’m sure that can’t possibly be helping with the pain aspect. Still: BAH.

Did another gym triathlon this morning, and instead of being able to at least make the same time, if not make up time, I actually did ten minutes worse, coming in at exactly 2 hours.

I think almost all of that increase can be blamed on using a different type of elliptical machine. I’m debating seeing if my ankle can handle going on the treadmill, since I suspect that will be significantly faster than either elliptical.

Or at least it will be until my ankle shatters into a million pieces. After that, it might be a bit slower.

If I actually manage to lose enough weight to get down to where I really want to be, I will totally be doing this:

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…at 5:30 this morning as I dragged my sorry ass to the gym: A freakishly gigantic spider dangling from my porch light RIGHT AT EYE LEVEL.

I considered stomping on it when it rapidly descended to the ground, but the damn thing was so big, I feared I would only make it angry.

I’m just praying that leaving it alone will cause it to never actually try to get in my house. I was too tired to scream externally, just to give a brief “Euugh!”, but in my head, and if I ever see that in my house, I was giving a full-throated horror movie scream.