Avram's journal

Stopped off at the Sports Authority to check out adjustable weight benches; especially to see whether the Weider Pro 125 is any more stable than it looks. None of the display models were what I was looking for. But I did see a possible indoor cardio solution: the Gazelle. I haven’t figured out what the differences are between the Edge, Freestyle, Elite, and Evolution models, other than cost and that the first has a lower user weight capacity. Looks like the Freestyle is the one for me, if I can find a place to try one out first. To make matters more confusing, Sears stocks yet another model, the Supra.

Man, those are some ugly URLs.

Exercise yesterday, drawing today, I almost feel human again.

( Big Melorne picture, over 800 pixels wide )

I’ve also thrown together a quick perl script to build IMG tags with HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes, so I don’t have to keep going through BBEdit. The Image::Size module does all the heavy lifting. Here, in case you need something along those lines:

( Six-line perl script )

I ran into jcb coming out of Ground; he said I look like the weight’s pouring off me, and was surprised when I told him I’d been gaining the past few months. Testimony to the power of belly-tightening abdominal exercise, I guess. Or of wearing dark shirts with light pants.

So, I’ve been really slack on my eating and exercise for about the past eight months or so. As in, lots, and crappy and pretty much not at all respectively. I’ve gained back, well, not all the weight I’ve lost, but more than half of it. My clothes are tight, and I feel like crap. And I’ve only gotten up and gone to the gym like twice in the three weeks since I rejoined.

Today I ate more crap for breakfast, and felt pretty awful for the next few hours — not guilty awful, but tired and sick and cranky awful. Though some of that might be ’cause I got to bed at 6 AM last night. (Games Club post coming up next.)

I tottered around the City Hall area, doing some electronic shopping I wanted to get done before Worldcon. I’ve now got a cellphone, the cheapest one I could get on T-Mobile’s pay-as-you-go plan. And I’ve got a new portable CD player, with MP3 capability and real battery life.

I noticed a much higher than usual proportion of anti-Bush, anti-RNC, anti-Iraq-war, and pro-abortion-rights buttons, signs, stickers, and t-shirts on passers by as I wandered around. When I got back to the WTC Path station, it was surrounded by demonstrators ringing bells to memorialize the dead and “ring out” Bush. The cumulative effect of all the bells was pretty eerie and other-worldly, like a spirits-of-the-dead scene in a Miyazaki movie. I was tempted to get a bell (I was told someone was handing them out) and walk a full circle around the site, but tired and sick and cranky, and also needing a bathroom.

Here’s the good part: After I got home (stopping off at Ground for a cold drink, a political argument, and reading a couple chapters of The Well of Lost Plots), got the cellphone plugged in and charging, figured out how to put together the CD player, I noticed I felt better. More than that, I felt a strong aversion to junk food, and a craving for fruit and veggies. With luck this’ll last into tomorrow, and maybe even sprout a craving for exercise. It feels like a return to the healthy mindset I was in a year ago.

Now it’s time to figure out how to screen-scrape the Noreascon program and chunk it into a set of Palm Datebook appointments.

I’ve noticed myself turning back into pudding these past few months — muscle tone vanishing, pants getting tighter. A couple months back I set aside $55 cash on a shelf, one month’s membership in the gym, so I’d have one less excuse to rejoin if I woke up early and felt like working out. A couple weeks ago I printed out a lower-body workout. Last night I finally decided that just relying on myself to get up early and feel like going wasn’t gonna cut it, so I went to bed at 11 and set my alarm for 7. Somebody courteously sent a helicopter to buzz my neighborhood at 6 AM just to help wake me up.

(  Lower-body workout numbers  )

Discoveries: I’ve lost a little strength in my hamstrings, but not much. I’ve been taking it too easy on my calves and quads — I accidentally incremented with 25-lb weights instead of 10-pounders on the leg press, and still didn’t have as much difficulty as I ought. And I might give up on the ab machine and just do crunches. Or not. Maybe I’m using it wrong; I’d expect 100 pounds to be giving me trouble.

I was going back over recent posts to nail down when I stopped going to the gym (end of March, looks like; I’m such a lazy fuck), and I noticed that my 17 April post about goyishe bar- and bat-mitzvahs had a new comment, from the girl mentioned in the quoted article. I checked with Google, and yes, my post is the #1 hit for her name. Poor girl. Sorry, Kimya!

( Cardio numbers )

“Big Sur” by The Thrills sounds a whole lot like the theme song from The Monkees.

( Cardio numbers )

Startling to see that weight pop back. I suppose it could be upper-body musculature, but more likely it’s yesterday’s udon, or the extra half-wrap I had later on. Or the second helping of pistachio nuts late last night. OK, I see a problem here. Guess it’s back to chicken and spinach pie for lunch. (The deli next to my office makes amazing chicken.)

One annoyance on the elliptical cross-trainer was that my underwear kept sliding down my butt. It wasn’t till later in the day that I noticed the brand name — John Henry. It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious; that’s an ill-omened name to be wearing while pitting one’s endurance against a machine. And he died with a hammer in his pants, Lord Lord!

These past few days at work I’ve been doing similar. The particular part of the project I’m working on now is something I was convinced was impossible as late as last Thursday (having spent most of that day and the day before trying various approaches and failing). Finally on Friday I came up with a new approach, and slowly but surely, the difficult designs are yielding to a combination of intelligence and effort. I’d forgotten how good that feels.

The weekend’s trips seem to have left me with the early stages of a cold. Who’d’ve thought waiting in the cold rain for an hour for a bus could do that? On the up side, the phlegm coating my vocal cords let me hit some nice low notes singing “Proud Mary” in the shower this morning. I think I brushed up against our bathroom’s resonant frequency.

While hunting for something else, I found a post from last year about what I was eating last spring, right around the time I first dropped below 270 pounds. This was before Body for Life, while I was alternating Heavyhands around the neighborhood with simple dumbbell routines in my bedroom. The food looked really good. I’d forgotten how much I liked eating healthy and exercising. So I stopped off at the supermarket for veggies, and took out enough money for a month’s gym membership. Now to see if I can get up at 7 tomorrow. Short term target: 250 by the end of April. Longer terms: 220 by Worldcon, 200 by the end of the year. (If you’re the wagering type, put money on the first target, but not the other two.)