I Can't Feel My Legs

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

Also, I need a better seat. Ow.

Damn You, Elliptical

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!

Miscellany From The Last Day of Shooting

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!

There Goes That Idea

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.

Tri'ed and Failed

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.

You've Gotta Have Goals

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

Formerly Obese Man Always Showing Everyone His Old Pants

RUFFS DALE, PA—According to John Swink's friends, family, coworkers, and casual acquaintances, as well as a growing number of local waiters and...

Things I Did Not Need To See

...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.

Try, Athlete

Lap-swimming 750 meters: 16 minutes.

Recumbent-biking 20 kilometers: 51 minutes.

Ellipticaling 5 kilometers: 35 minutes.

Completing a sprint triathlon (aka half an Olympic triathlon) at the gym: Priceless. Well, except the price I will pay in pain later today and tomorrow. That should be fun.

Now I have to see if I can actually bring those times down to something moderately respectable.

Reader Alert

Posting's going to be pretty light this week, as I'm trying to keep up the exercise even as we ramp up towards the first day of shooting on the pilot Friday.

At this point, I'm spending maybe half an hour each day at home that is not a) doing physical therapy or b) getting ready for work or c) sleeping.

So y'all may just have to entertain yourselves for a while.

People Are Dicks, Vol. 2

People are dicks when they commit two key, related fouls in the lap pool at the gym:

1. Taking up over 2/3 of the very large lane, leaving me a sliver in which to swim. For the most part, I was okay, but this dick was...

2. Still managing to flail so wildly as to lock arms with me abruptly as he passed me going the opposite direction, leaving a huge bruise on my bicep and wrenching my back-shoulder muscle. He also smacked into me another time, but that was more annoying than all-day painful.

The fact that he did this on a day when I was going to be schlepping coolers and cases of water and mountains of paper around all day made it all the more delightful.

Congratulations, sir of the complete lack of attention and/or boundaries. You're officially a dick.

And you owe me a bottle of Advil.

Swimming, Swimming, In The Swimming Pool

Having an hour and a half round trip commute, I'm trying to shave precious minutes off my various morning duties so that I can get a little more sleep.

In this spirit, I started swimming again. I can burn about the same number of calories swimming in 40 minutes as I can in about 1hr 20 when I'm on the elliptical/lifting.

I used to swim a lot. My junior year of high school, when I was in probably the best shape of my life (not to say it was particularly good, but that weight is what I'm shooting for with all this exercise), I swam a kilometer every morning before school.

I swim too fast to make that worthwhile as a weight loss program, so I go about 2/3 farther, and swim a mile, which is taking me about 37-38 minutes. There are a few things I'd forgotten, good and bad, about swimming for exercise:

• It really dries out your skin. And working in a place where you're already ridiculously dry, this can be pretty annoying.
  
• You're not covered in sweat after a good workout. I forgot how nice that is.
  
• Dirty old men hitting on women 40-50 years their junior at the pool. Yeah...good times. One guy in particular I'm about ready to tell to fuck off, except I think he'd like it too much.
  
• It uses really different muscles. In the shoulders especially. Even after a couple weeks, they're still REALLY sore.
  
• People who don't understand that when you split a lane, you have to pick a side. Otherwise you're just going to wind up bonking into each other.
  
• How good it feels to break through the wall when you're swimming. When you think you have nothing left, it feels a lot better when you're swimming to find your reserves when it does when you're on the elliptical. Maybe because there's more of an illusion of movement.
  
• The delightful detritus at the bottom of lap pools. Lots of band-aids and sand at my gym. Yum!

Anyway, I'm at least now getting about half an hour more sleep during the week, and feeling pretty good about still getting a good amount of exercise despite it not taking as long.

'Cause I'm A Liar

I realized today when I finally shed one very, very tenacious pound: I am lying about my weight on my driver's license.

The difference from the previous state of affairs? I am now officially one pound lighter than my driver's license claims I am, instead of being 20 pounds heavier, as I was when I first moved out here.

29 to go. Woo!

Health Update

Good News: I was able to drag myself to the gym today and did 35 minutes on the elliptical, which felt great.

Bad News: Then I came home and passed out for four hours, which felt much better.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll only pass out for 2-3 hours after working out...

One Year Later

A year ago this weekend, I got on the scale, and the number I saw almost made my eyes bug out of my head.

I'd had to greatly reduce my gym time because of my ongoing foot problems, and I hit a number I'd sworn I'd never let myself hit. I saw that number, and said, goddamn it, that's it.

I am doing something about my weight, and I'm getting this shit off for good. I am losing the eighty pounds it will take me to get back to where I was my junior year of high school, when I was swimming a kilometer a day, five days a week.

I am not eating obscene amounts of food anymore, I am drawing a line in the fucking sand, and saying this is the end of being dangerously overweight and horribly out of shape.

Of course, I didn't actually say anything about it at the time, because I've tried to draw these lines before. I've dieted and dieted and dieted and taken the occasional stab at exercise. It has always come back with a vengeance.

This time, it's different. This time exercise is the primary objective, with portion control following. I didn't go on a diet, I changed the way I live my life. And I'll be goddamned: It actually worked.

One calendar year later, nine months of working out until I practically fell over at the gym later (plus three months off for foot surgery and related follies), I have dropped 42 pounds. More than halfway to my eventual goal, and a very encouraging distance from where I started.

Two jeans sizes (and close to a third) smaller. Wearing shit I haven't worn in years. Weighing what I weighed my sophomore year of college, a ridiculous seven years ago.

If I sound like I'm proud of myself, I damn well am. I'll be honest, I did not know if I could do this. But when I started keeping an eye on calories and actually working out at the gym, instead of just going to the gym, it started coming off.

I can almost leg press my own body weight now. I'm doing bicep curls with 85 lbs, and chest-pressing 90 (after being almost killed by 40 lbs on each at the beginning). And the difference both the weight loss and the strength training I'm doing have made with my bad leg are huge.

When I first tried to switch from the recumbent bike to the elliptical in October, I could barely do 5 minutes without feeling like my leg was going to fall off. Now I can do 25 minutes AFTER doing a strenuous half hour on the bike.

I just feel so much better physically, it's hard to describe without using a corny and overly literal phrase like "a weight off my shoulders."

There's a whole section of my life that's been throw into ridiculous turmoil lately, but for this to finally, FINALLY, start to go right, it gives me so much more confidence that I can overcome the other nonsense that I've stressed so much less about the turmoil than I would have a year ago.

I will now give myself public motivation to finish the job: My goal, and it is a pretty big one, is to lose the remaining 38 pounds by Halloween. That puts me at losing about five pounds a month, which is roughly the speed I've been going.

It has to be done, and for once in my life, I can finally say with confidence: It will.

The Last Cliché of 2007

A few New Year's Resolutions, because if I post them somewhere, maybe I'll actually live up to them:

1. Continue to lose weight. Have lost: 33 lbs (net; had lost 35 but gained back 2 lbs stuffing my face with Waffle House and other assorted goodies over the holidays). To lose: 47 lbs. Mark my words, it will be done by the end of 2008.

2. Relegate Mr. Cranky Ankle to his former status as My Left Ankle. I've been sick of this shit long enough, this is the year that my weight loss and continued diligence with my foot exercises finally pays off.

3. Get a good job. Getting a job is part one of this, since I kind of need to, you know, eat. But I want to get another job that I'll be proud of, and not simply something that will get me through the duration of the strike.

4. Record songs I've written since last album. Once upon a time, I was a songwriter, and a half-decent one at that. Maybe I should at least put some tracks down to see if I can turn them into anything good.

5. Get out of the goddamn house. Between the entire Foot Fiasco of '07 that prevented me from leaving the house for 2 months, and the ongoing foot issues that left me extremely reluctant to for most of the rest of the year because of the pain, I feel like I've turned into a complete hermit/crazy cat lady. I promise that, once I have a job to pay for it, I am going to go out and be a social person, dammit! Just as soon as I finish this disc of Battlestar Galactica that just came in from Netflix...

6. Finish Redesigning my website. Not the blog, this is certainly sufficient for me at the moment (who knows what I'll think if I can't find a job for a couple of months and get REALLY bored). But as several people have pointed out to me, the main site could use a little update. Probably best to try and make it less than five years old.

And those are really the major ones. I considered adding in "get a girlfriend," as I suspect several people are awfully tired of hearing me whine about not having one, but I fear if I officially add it to the list, I'll just jinx myself, and I've had enough bad luck in that department as is.

Anyway, Happy 2008! Enjoy yourselves, and for the love of god, don't drink and drive. Unless you're just drinking water. Then, I think you're okay.

Connect A Cut

So I am here now, and I will make several observations.

1. It is not nearly as cold as I feared it would be. However, at about 27 degrees, it is still painfully cold for a SoCal wimp like me.

2. Good lord, Wheaten Terriers have a lot of energy. My mom had thought my aunt's new dog was a Bichon Frisé, but it only looked like that when she was a puppy. Now she looks like a Honey I Blew Up The Bichon Frise, and was dragging me all over the black ice in the parking lot when I helped my aunt take her for a walk.

Still: Not taking me for a walk anywhere near as much as the late, lamented Rosie the Rottweiler.

3. Guest passes to health clubs are ridiculously expensive. My uncle was nice enough to get me one to the L.A. Fitness he goes to, and just for a week, it's more than I pay for a month at 24 Hour Fitness. I felt bad, but I'm way too broke to make a magnanimous offer to pay for it, and will accept it as my xmas gift from him.

4. My god, Grandfather clocks are annoying if you're not used to them. My aunt and uncle have one that BONGGGGs every 15 minutes, and I don't know how the hell I'm going to be able to get to sleep tonight.

Thank You, PDT

My god, it is so much easier to drag my ass to the gym when it's at least a little light out.

Noted

It is a hell of a lot harder to drag yourself out of bed to go to the gym at 5:45 AM when it's pitch black outside than when it's at least a little bit light out.

At least if it's a little light out, you get the sense that maybe, somewhere, other people are awake. That illusion disappears in the pitch black.

Not Dead

Just damn busy. Work's been a bit nuts, and working out 5 days a week is just about killing me.

On the upside, I did get a free ticket to the Dave Matthews Band concert on Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl through work. The show was awesome (guest apperances by some spectacular banjo player whose name I never caught, John Mayer playing way better than I'd previously given him credit for, and Ziggy and Steven Marley) and as we have a connection to Dave, the seats were great.

A couple other bits of miscellany I've been meaning to post but haven't got around to it:

- My gym recently rearranged their equipment, and now all the recumbent bikes (the ones where you sit down and your feet are out in front of you rather than below you like a regular bike), which are the ones I use because they're easier on Mister Cranky Ankle, are out in front of the room where the spin class takes place.

There's one bike nobody ever rides unless every other bike is full, because it's the one directly outside the spin class, so you spend your entire ride having to listen to the really obnoxious instructor try to motivate people by being so annoying that they're imagining each pedal push to be a stomp on her face.

I got stuck on that bike TWICE this week. I am literally going to stuff a sock in her mouth if I get stuck on it again.


- I don't think I've ever gotten as strong reactions to wearing my Cubs hat as I did at Oktoberfest down in Torrance last weekend. Apparently a lot of heavy beer-drinkers are Brewers fans! Who'd have thought?


- Another reason posting has been lacking is that I've only managed to delete one season pass so far of the stuff that's premiered. There's a remarkable number of decent shows (Chuck being the primary standout) and only one real stinker (Big Shots).

There's a few more shows I'll probably shitcan after the second or third episode if they don't improve, including a few that I've watched for several seasons but that have recently taken some unbelievably dumb plot twists.


- So the writers are going to authorize a strike and their contract expires at the end of the month. The working theory is that this is just saber-rattling, and that they won't walk until the actors' and directors' contracts are up in May, since working together they can shut down the whole industry.

The problem is, by authorizing a strike right now, they basically leave the threat of a walkout, which would shut down production shortly thereafter, hanging over Hollywood for seven months. Guys, I'm begging you. Please wait until May. My strike fund is not ready yet.

A Sense of Accomplishment

I've lost 27 pounds since mid-February, despite a three-month break from the gym for two casts and a surgery. That's good, but it's not what I'm proud of.

What I'm proud of is that finally, nine months into 2007, I've finally finished reading 2006 issues of Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Entertainment Weekly.

If I keep going at this rate, I might actually catch up with the present sometime in 2008.

Exercise The Demons

Part of why things have trailed off a touch on this blog is because of the absolutely absurd amount of gym time I've been putting in lately.

5 days a week, killing myself at the gym, waiting for the tiny little reward on Sundays when I see that, if I'm lucky and have been trying to watch what I eat, all that fighting has lost...one pound!

This all started in February, after several weeks of sedentary moping, when I looked at the scale and saw a number I swore I'd never see.

I'm a quarter of the way to where I want to be from where I was, which, thinking about it, is actually pretty decent. But the slow, slow pace is just maddening.

I'm hitting something similar with my foot (which I go to Physical Therapy for the other two days a week), where it's miles better than it was, but the pain and continued PT are making me nuts.

I want to be in shape and running around, not fighting for ever tenth of an inch of plantarflexion and just about dying on the recumbent bike.

Stupid body. Why must you make me pay for my prior indiscretions?

Das Gym

Being back at the gym all the time on top of three nights a week of physical therapy leaves me very little free time to do goddamn near anything else.

I like being back at the gym because it's a massive stress reliever, but it kills an extra hour to hour and a half out of every day I go.

That hour to hour and a half gets killed out of every other day by physical therapy, so with four days a week at the gym and three at PT, plus minimum 10-12 hours a day at work, there ain't much left.

I find it ironic that in order to get in shape to enjoy life, I have to pretty much commit to not having one.

Progress Report

So I'm finally back out of the boot, which is good. Walking around in regular shoes for the first time in a couple of months is a bit weird.

What's really weird is that my physical therapist wants me to wear sneakers. I've worn nothing but hiking boots for the last several years, so trying to wear sneakers, I feel like my ankles are constantly in danger of turning over.

My foot is healing at an okay pace, although I still have a pretty decent limp. The best piece of news is that I've finally gotten cleared to start hitting the gym again.

The bad news is, now I have no excuse not to go to the gym.

Oh well. At least I can start hacking away at the giant stack of magazines that started piling back up again while I wasn't going.

Oh, Darn!

The office park where the 24 Hour Fitness I go to is located is having its power shut off overnight tonight into tomorrow morning, so 24HF is closed until 8am.

Since I have to be at work at 8, this means I can't work out tomorrow morning. Let me tell you, I am just so very crushed that I won't have to get up at 6am.

I don't know if I'll ever recover from this terrible blow.

The Arms Race

So in anticipation of probably at least needing some sort of surgery and having to cart my ass around on crutches for a period of time longer than five minutes, I've started lifting weights.

The last time I was on crutches, I was on them for about three days of actually using them properly, and my arms just about fell off.

The fact that I'm very overweight also really hit me hard I was on crutches. Every time I took a step with crutches, it was basically like doing a 200+ lb bench press. I had just about zero muscle tone in my arms, and it became quite literally painfully obvious.

This time, however, I've got a little warning. I can at least focus my workouts so that my arms only feel like they're going to fall off at a point where they don't have to carry my body weight.

Since realistically any surgery is not going to happen until the third week of May, I've got about eight weeks to get my arms, shoulders, and chest as strong as possible, and it's a race against time for me to try and get ready.

My start hasn't been great. I can really only do about 30 lbs. on several of the machines, and no more than 50 on anything.

I did 50 on one machine this morning (I have no idea what it's called, but you lift straight up over your head and it works the back and the muscles under your upper arm), and I couldn't lift my arms above shoulder level until late this afternoon.

I'm going to try and meet with a trainer at my gym next week to get some advice on what muscle groups I need to target. Hopefully I can gain enough strength so that the transition to crutches isn't too horrible.

However, if I don't post for a few days, it probably means I've overdone it and I can't lift my hands to the keyboard. If that happens, I'll try to type out SEND HELP with my nose.

Stop Me, Before I Subscribe Again!

So I was cleaning this weekend, and I got all my magazines sorted into stacks. And even though I've been plowing through them at the gym, the stacks were still huge.

Just today, I finished August's Sports Illustrateds...August of 2005. I'm a year behind in Entertainment Weekly, a year and two months in Newsweek.

I did the math, and when I get to a point that I am a year behind in all three, it will take me four and a half months (assuming I go at my current rate of 3 per gym visit 3x weekly) to get through that year. And then I'll still be four and a half months behind!

And you know what I did last year? Renewed all three magazines.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Not Dead Yet

Yes, I am still alive. Down the rabbit hole a bit, but still alive. Here's a brief recap of a few things going on:

- Thanksgiving with mom went well, then Cleo stopped by for a few days. I need a neon "vacancy" sign.

- I joined 24 Hour Fitness. I'm trying to work out 4-5 days a week, 45 minutes a day. Doing this means getting up at 6am every. damn. day. during the week. Because of this, I'm a little tired.

- Work has been insane. This past week was less insane than the previous week, but still nice and batshit crazy.

- UCLA beating USC and thus knocking Florida into the title game has set up a battle royale over college football between two of my good friends. It is going to be hilarious.

- Did I mention that I'm a little tired?

- I got a fortune cookie with my Chinese food tonight that told me, "An admirer is concealing his affection from you." I found this rather weird.

- This week is going to be completely nuts because Saturday is the holiday party, which I've spent the last couple months pulling together. And I'm singing with the band that's playing...and I haven't sung in front of 300 people in about 3 years.

- My head hurts. Then again, so does every muscle in my body. So I suppose that evens out.

More than likely no blogging this week again. Once I have some shred of sanity back, it will return. Until then, I'm afraid you're just going to have to entertain yourselves.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Week!

Posting will be light this week due to the following whiny excuses reasons:

1. I have to go to the dentist at 7am tomorrow and get a cavity filled.

2. I have to do about a week and a half's worth of work in three days. Oh, and do so while pulling double-duty on Wednesday.

3. My mom is coming to town.

4. Because of #3, I spent half the weekend cleaning and will spend most of tomorrow doing so as well.

5. I agreed to bake a pie (and signed mom up to bake one, too) for the potluck Thanksgiving we're going to. This is my first attempt at baking a pie. While I'm generally good at baking things, I sense that this is going to be hilarious.

6. Did I mention that my mom is coming to town?

7. I'm finally rejoining a health club Saturday, so I have to go exercise. No, seriously.

Wheeeeeeeeee! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!