I do have one more resolution, but it’s really a part of the diet/health resolution.  At the end of the year, I let my membership at the gym at work lapse because, well, it was a shitty gym.  I am feeling the lack of exercise, and I don’t like it.  I don’t have any decent weights, gym equipment or even reasonable facsimiles at the homestead here, so I needed to either find a new gym or think of something else.

Seeing as part of the budget is to not spend money, I decided to think of something else.  Which meant google.  I found a book, You Are Your Own Gym, written by ex-SpecOps trainer Mark Lauren.  It’s all about using your own body weight as resistance.  I’ve skimmed it, and it looks like a decent program – I just need to adapt his method to a more super-slow style, and I’ll be set, I think.  I’ve been doing some pushups and sit-ups just to be doing something, so I think I’ll be able to segue into this as soon as I have time to adapt his exercise schedules and play around with it a bit.

I started my super-slow workout program just now, and despite only doing five exercises for a little over a minute and a half each, I am convinced that this is serious exercise.  It’s been about fifteen minutes since I stopped, and my muscles are still all a-trembly.  I lifted weights semi-regularly for a while back in my twenties.  I seem to remember that the weights were a bit bigger then.  But that’s to be expected, that was almost twenty years ago, and now I am a decrepit old man.

I signed up for the gym in my office building, and I am now having buyer’s remorse.  The machine I thought was a leg press when I looked at it from across the room is actually a leg extension machine.  And there’s no seated row-type machine either.  I substituted a lat pull for the seated row today – next time, I’ll use the free weights to do a proper one.  However, the weights are all dumbbells – there’s no bars or stands.  Which sucks, because I can’t replace the leg press with a squat if there’s no bars or racks.  And what’s really annoying is that I signed up through December because the pro-rated yearly membership was the best deal, by far – only $40 more than a month membership.

So, I used the leg extension machine.  I don’t know if it would make more sense to keep using that – it does hit the quads, after all, or use the one bar I have at home without a rack.  Not safe, really, with no one to spot me.

Thoughts on super-slow based on my now vast-experience with the system: it kicked my ass.  The slow, controlled pace really gets you.  I remember doing multiple sets of ten that didn’t burn like this did.  I was pretty good at guestimating the weight that would get me to failure in about a minute and a half – only slight adjustments will be necessary for next time.  All the upper body exercises (seated row lat pull, chest press, pull down, overhead press) hurt, and my muscles were like jelly after.  Which is, as I understand it, how it should be.  But the leg press extension hurt much more.  It hurt a lot.  It took a fair chunk of will power to get to ninety seconds, and I actually cheesed out a bit and didn’t really go to failure.  I don’t know why that exercise hurt that much more than the others.  Strange.  The explanation for that one is probably wherever my back fat went to.

Despite my disappointment with the lackluster facilities, I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing.  Right now, my arms, back and chest feel pleasantly tingly and sore.  My thighs are recovering, though they still feel week.

I wonder if it might make more sense to price out a power rack and some decent free weights, and spend the money on that rather than on a renewal at this place.  I’ve got room in the garage, and seeing as I work at home, it shouldn’t be hard to find the time.  And after six months or so, I think I’d be in the habit enough to trust myself to keep at it.

I left my door at 8:30 this morning.  I did not sit down at work until 1:30.  Snow, closed metro stations, shuttle to different Metro station caught in traffic jam, hour long wait for train at new station, plus my normal two hours of travel time.  Nightmare.  The way home was much better, it only took me 3 hours instead of five.

I spent more time getting to and from work than I did working.

On the plus side, my new cubicle is a premium, semi-important person, double-sized cubicle.

Because this bitch is under construction. Most features should be fully functional by sometime on Tuesday. In the meantime, please enjoy this 90% complete webpage, free of charge.

Not with a bang, but a whistle.

Longtime Ministry minion and consummate wordsmith Othershoe sums up his final hours at the job he detests. The poetry of his remark ought not be lost on the reader, as Othershow does in fact have a MFA from a respectable program and surely had TS Eliot in mind as he penned,

“Friday is my last day — get my check, rub my balls on the computer keyboard, and leave whistling.”