Failed user pic #1

I worked up a new user pic today, but it turns out that I still don’t quite have the hang of making a drawing that’ll work well shrunk down to 100x100 pixels (as you can see below). I need to work smaller, with thicker lines. And the drawing itself isn’t quite right.

Hot Point: early results

Today is my third day on the Hot Point Fitness plan; actually my second day of working out on it. (Starting out it advocates three days per week of weight routines, of which today will be my second. Later I ramp up to four days per week. There’s an advanced plan for athletes that involves five days per week, but screw that.) I could have gone in to the gym and done aerobics yesterday, but I decided I ached too much.

I’ve been on the nutrition plan too, but not adhering to it strictly. It’s weird — I feel like I’ve been eating more than I have for the past few months, but I seem to be losing weight. Sunday morning I was 286.5, yesterday 285.5, and today 284.5. (I don’t expect that progression to continue, but wouldn’t that be something?)

Egg Beaters egg substitutes aren’t quite as good as real eggs, but they’re close enough that I can make palatable scrambled eggs if I chop in mushrooms and bell peppers, and grind some black pepper on top.

So now I’m killing time waiting for 90 minutes to pass since I ate so I can go to the gym; around noon ought to do it. I also need to call Chris to wish her a happy birthday and arrange to meet later. I’d call now, but I don’t expect her to be awake yet.

Chris's birthday

Second Hot Point workout day today; I think it went a little better than Sunday. I’m doing mostly different exercises (that’s the whole point of the Hot Point regime: not doing the same thing each time), and I liked this set better than the last one. I tried out the elliptical cross-trainer for my five-minute pre-workout warm-up, and it wasn‘t as bad as I feared. I don’t think I’m up to using it for the post-workout 20-minute aerobics; I used the treadmill for that on Sunday, and the stationary recumbent bike today. The heart-rate monitor helps a lot.

After I got back Chris and I played phone-tag for a bit around our showers. Eventually I got invited to go along with her and her mom to dinner for Chris’s birthday. I fell way off the Hot Point nutrition plan today, but the beef stew was way tasty.

Oh, and the weather’s finally gotten civilized. Highs in the low eighties. On my way home, the sky was the color of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Tomorrow's comics

How much of a comics geek am I? I’m so much the comics geek that I’ve got a perl script that greps through the New Comics Releases Page each Tuesday for the comics I read. You can practically smell the nerd pheremones coming through the monitor, can’t ya? This week’s results:

• Strangers In Paradise Book 3 Part 4 HC, $39.95
• Sparks Urban Fairy Tale GN, $35.95
• Authority Kev, $4.95
• Naughty Bits #36, $2.95
• Weasel #5, $4.95

The first item is a minor false positive — I get Strangers in Paradise in individual issues, and sometimes buy the collections in softcover, but my program isn’t smart enough to tell the difference between the different versions; it just looks for Strangers in Paradise.

I’ve never bought an issue of Sparks, but what i’ve seen and heard about it makes me want to get it. I don’t know about spending $36 for it; I hope that’s a hardcover, with a softcover coming out eventually.

Authority Kev is a one-shot Authority comic written by Garth Ennis; worth at least looking at.

I’ve been getting Naughty Bits since it started; glad to see a new issue. And I’m downright overjoyed to see Weasel #5 out at long, long last! OK, it’s not as long as I waited for Mage 2, but it’s been a serious while.