sounds familiar

3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon and the clouds in the sky are dark and look heavy with threats of rain.  Some live Wishbone Ash just shuffled up on the iPod and I’m bound to write.

I’m fresh back from the gym and am having trouble stopping the sweat.  The workout is over, my body, the workout is over.  And yeah, I’m still going to that place… still working out, still enjoying it  – and have shed 15lbs since it all started.  It’s encouraging, to say the least, especially so far getting measurable positive results in short-order.  I guess I’m not missing my calories, I mean I don’t feel starved or anything… so that’s a plus.

You know, I’m by no means a gym-rat after my measly not-even-enough-to-establish-a-habit three weeks of working out, but I have learned that one thing is constant: When you tell people you’ve started going to the gym, started working out or eating right in the pursuit of fitness, everyone becomes an expert; everyone knows the best regimen for you.

I know folks mean well, and I appreciate that.  But, in practice, I find myself shying away from mentioning the whole “working out” thing because I’m sure of the interrogation that’ll follow:  “Oh yeah?  How often you going?  You doing weights and cardio?  How many calories you eat per day?”  Now, this line of questioning alone wouldn’t even be that bad, I don’t really mind talking about what I’m doing, about my own personal little thing I’ve worked out and am doing.  No I would mind, except that I can have no 100% right answers for any of the inquiries.

If I’m going every other day in the evenings, I should really look into goings mornings three-days-on two-days-off.  If I’m eating three squares a day, I should actually be targeting six-to-seven smaller meals instead.  If weights on upper and lower body on alternating days, I should really try doing a little of each every time instead of breaking it up.  If I’m keeping my heartrate around the 160s during cardio, I really want to be around 130 (or is it 140, or 150) to get into that “zone” where the pounds will just drip off.

Yeah, well, I just keep to my own thing, thanks.  Maybe later, when I’ve decided I’m truly doing this and I’m not just gonna fail again, I’ll put some more rigor to the process.  For now, I’m just glad I’m getting in there and breathing hard… sloppy or not.

See ya there; I’ll be the dude doing everything wrong.

Friday already?  Awesome.

The other day, Sharaun joined Facebook.

Since then, I’ve been demoted to fourth place.  Keaton, New Kids on the Block, Facebook, and then me, laboring along trying to catch up and bringing up the rear.  That’s how the race is shaping up.

Over the years, I’ve always managed to stay away from the social networking thing.  When MySpace was the jam, I chose to abstain.  When Facebook’s more “college” clean and neat look became so obviously better than MySpace’s “highschool kid” clutter and everyone jumped ship, I kept my distance.  Friendster, no sir.  Bebo, heck no.  And, when every person I’ve ever worked with, all the way back to the skeezy dude who slammed lines on the prep table at Subway when I was 16, asked me to join them on LinkedIn, I made a special e-mail rule to send the requests directly into the bin.  “No thanks,” I thought.  The blog right here has always been enough “putting it out there” for me.

People have come to know of my social networking resistance, and chide me for it.  I’m too good for it, they say.  Too cool.  Think myself above it.  Am just reveling in the “coolness” of being the last holdout.  I’ve heard it all.  I dunno if it’s something like that or not, but I do kinda get a kick of someone asking, with a touch of incredulity, “You’re not on Facebook?”  In fact, people have gone so far as to send me articles about Facebook.  Here’s one of the best: “You Have No Friends. ”  After you read it, I bet you’ll be almost convinced you should join… I was.  Almost.  (Who am I kidding, I’m sure you’re already ‘bookin’ with the others.)

And so it’s come to pass that I, a social networking virgin, have watched my wife lift that pipe to her lips and draw deep – and end up hopelessly addicted from the first hit.  It’s been a measley two days and she’s strung out on the thing like a Facebook junkie.  Each night I get to hear about who she “found” that day, get to share in the rejoice as lost souls from the gradeschool-chum milk cartons in her mind are found alive and well, working in Des Moines for the school district.  Hey, did you hear that awkward skateboarding kid from Bible Camp is a fireman and noted philanthropist in Boston?  Dude, Dylan is a roughneck?  Wonder how he ended up in that line of work.  OMG, Amber is totally into chicks!

I gotta admit, it all looks a bit fun.

Not quite fun enough that I’m compelled to sign up for myself, but there is a certain appeal to seeing pictures of things you remember from the past (Tuesday’s entry, anyone?).  I suppose, now that Sharaun is on, I can kind of peek over her shoulder now and again for my own secondhand-smoke fix.  Can surreptitiously stay caught up on who went to the dentist, who just got a new Jeep, and whose kid is in swimming lessons via the nightly Facebook status reports.  I’m sure soon she’ll put it on her iPhone and I can get updates at any and all times.

So, if you see my lady in and around your Facebook area… can you spraypaint on her fence or whatever and let her know I’m gonna be gone for an hour or so up at the gym and Keaton’s running wild in the backyard?  Thanks; I can’t get her to turn her head from the dang screen.

Goodnight.

Sunday.  By tradition (or decree, depending on your bent), a day of rest.  And, who am I to mess with tradition?

(Note: I read somewhere that Stephen King once said to an editor something along the lines of, “Whoever made the rule that sentences can’t start with ‘and’ is an idiot,” and went on to note the usefulness and impact of doing so in literature.  And I gotta say, while I’m not a bona-fide writer, I totally agree on this one.  It’s got to be one of the worst, most limiting rules of grammar.  So, I do it.)

My sabbath plan includes a trip to the gym, listening to some music, and reading a little from my book (ten years later and I’m once again trying to finish the Wheel of Time series… but we know how that’s gone for me before).  The iPod is on a Grateful Dead thing, shuffling them up disproportionally – not a bad thing, it’s a good day for some Dead.

I talked about the rain the other day, in the context of our night-of-horrors with sleep-averse Keaton.  Well today the sun’s out and (most of) the clouds have retreated to wring the mountains dominating the eastern horizon.  Most of the time sun after rain is a welcomed change, but we could really use some more rain here… and the bright skies did none-too-much to drive off the chill in the air – so it’s more the kind of sunshine and blue skies you admire from behind windows.  It’s does pick-up the mood a bit though, cheerier than grey and wet to be sure.

So after the gym, and after a quick contorted nap on the loveseat (Sharaun had the couch), we piled into the car as a family and went grocery shopping together. This is a rare treat for me, as more often than not I’m banished from trips to the grocery store.  Sharaun doesn’t do well with my experimentalist approach to  discovering new foods – and has a low tolerance for my aisle-wandering in while I search for interesting stuff I’ve never eaten before.  I want to buy steel-cut oats in bulk, am drawn to the cans with Spanish labeling and a picture of a rooster in flames perched on an ear of blue corn (what the heck could that even be, I wonder), all of the sudden get a hankering for some braunschweiger on rye toast.

In the end I went along with “the list,” and we stuck to our normal fare.

And now I’m outta here to read a little bit more.  Goodnight.