It was a very big wildebeest, if that helps

I didn't post anything this morning because I got tired of writing sniveling posts filled with piffling, petty reasons why the exercise didn't get done. That sort of thing is depressing and it's boring. I know I'd pledged to post my feeble excuses, as a way of holding myself accountable, but it makes for a damned feeble post.

So I've decided to take another approach:

• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog yesterday because a nuclear bomb exploded right directly on the track.
• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog in today because I had to rescue an innocent golden-haired child from a rampaging wildebeest before flying off to Stockholm Oslo Maui to accept the Nobel prize for Incredible Wonderfulness.

There. Nothing to do with indigestion, extremely late MAX trains, or general time mis-management.

I refuse to feel guilty about a rampaging wildebeest.

Exercise du jour: A measly 20 minutes ellipticalling

Would you pay me to be awesome?

Quote du jour: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain

Monday? Already? Whose brilliant idea was that? I'd be tempted to go back to bed, but there's too much work to do. My vow for today is to get the run in no matter how much work lies in wait.


Site du jour: The Awesome Foundation. They give away money to encourage people to be more awesome. (I realize that some of you guys are awesome for free, but I'd definitely be more awesome if someone were paying me to be.)

Exercise du jour: Still need to do the 3.5 jog that I couldn't fit into the schedule on Friday.

Update du 10:12 pm: Look, the plain truth is that I'm hopeless. I only managed a 2 mile run on Friday, due to work constraints. Today, I didn't even have that excuse. It was beauuuutiful running weather outside today, and I kept putting it off because I had more work to do. Like the work couldn't have waited until after the run?
I thought I'd have time to do the run tonight, not knowing that the Max would decide to have emotional problems tonight. In other words, I got home over an hour later than scheduled and didn't have time to run. Does it help that I walked 4 miles? No, I thought not.
On the plus side, I did spend so much time at the Max station that the guy sitting next to me started mentioning my sparkling eyes and bubbling personality... does that mean I resemble a bottle of champagne? I would have been more impressed if he hadn't mentioned his several ex-wives. I mean, one ex-wife is a tragedy, but several ex-wives looks like carelessness.
To quote Scarlett O'Hara, "@#$!"*

*[That's also been translated as "Tomorrow is another day." Today, I prefer my version.]

Photo courtesy of Tableatny.

Blogland needs more pictures of Hugh Jackman

Quote du jour: When I became an adult I put away childish things, including the fear of seeming childish and the desire to be very grown-up.
- C.S. Lewis

Site du jour: Finger length indicates athletic ability. An odd study lifted from Dr Mirkin.

Having a ring finger that is longer than your index finger is associated with greater athletic ability in men (American Journal of Human Biology, Mar-April 2009) and in women (British Journal of Sports Medicine, December 2006). The longer your ring finger is compared to your index finger, the better athlete you usually are (Strength Conditioning Research, published online August 20, 2010).

The ratio of the ring finger to the index finger is determined by how high your testosterone levels were in the uterus before you were born. Testosterone stimulates bone growth. Men exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the uterus also tend to have higher levels of testosterone later on.

On the average, men tend to have longer ring fingers, and women tend to have longer index fingers. The higher the testosterone in utero, the greater the length of the ring finger and the more "masculine" the resulting child - whether male or female. The difference between men and women in digit lengths usually is greater on the right hand.

In men, a longer ring finger is also associated with increased risk for prostate cancer; see the 12/5/10 eZine.

Exericse du jour: Jogging 3.5 miles at lunchtime.

Photo courtesy of Nehmans2020.

Do not truffle with my affections, pseudo-chocolate!

Quote du jour:

Mrs. Slocombe — Well, I said to him, quite sternly mind you, I said "If you don't take your hands away, young man, I'm getting off this bar stool and going home!"
Miss Brahms —And did he?
Mrs. Slocombe —He did not.
Miss Brahms —And did you go home?
Mrs. Slocombe —Eventually.
- Are you being served?

WTH du jour: They had an open box of “chocolate” truffles in the kitchen at work. I took one, even though I could see by the label on the box that the main ingredient was palm oil. It tasted rather gross.

I then had two more, to make sure I didn’t like them.


Site du jour: Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation. No, that's not a link to The Onion. That's from the Wall Street Journal, for pete's sake. A conference on boredom. There's something out there for everybody.

Exercise du jour: 20 minutes climbing stairs. Gotta work off those truffles somehow.


Real chocolate truffles courtesy of Nieuw.

The Battlestar Galactica Workout

So, confession time.
No, not like St. Augustine.

I don't spend money on gym memberships or things like that, but even my freestyle exercising can cost money. Especially when I run out of motivation.

When the inner slug waxes wroth and kicks my motivation down the street and into the neighbor's recyclable bin, I tend to bring out the heavy guns re: exercise motivation. In other words, I go shopping.

As a Luddite, my inclination is to ignore anything new. That includes the "hot" TV shows... at least until they've had time to cool off. But after years of denial, I finally watched the TV series Battlestar Galactica. I needed something to watch while I did the elliptical, so I downloaded the first season and watched them while I pedaled.

If you've never seen the show, it's got a lot of conflict and tension. That is a great way to make the time pass while you're exercising. Anyone have any other tense TV shows or movies that help with the workout?


Exercise du jour: 2 miles around Nike. Hopefully at a nice, brisk pace. Maybe I should try to watch a TV show on my iPod while jogging around the trail. Or maybe not. I can just see the headlines. (News at 10: woman injures herself while jogging. "We told her to use a treadmill," friends say.)

Done! Weird -- awful run, hated it. Still faster than the other day. Except that for some reason my knee is bugging me.

Page from Augustine of Hippo's Confessions courtesy of Tomisti.
Cylon courtesy of Fernando Estel.

That kind of day

Quote du jour: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.
- Ranier Maria Rilke

Do you love your job? And if so, why?

Interesting fact du jour: The new Starbucks drink, the Trenta, is actually larger than the average human stomach.

But-it-sounds-so-true du jour: U.S. renews its contract with ground squirrels.

The Department of the Interior announced this week that ongoing negotiations with the nation's population of spotted ground squirrels have been resolved and that the rodents are now contracted to continue activities on U.S. soil through Dec. 31, 2015. [Source The Onion.]

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes with my stairmeister, Fred A. Stairs. Plus, squats, walking.
Done! Total of 1056 steps.

Impressive-looking graph courtesy of Webber.

Is it okay if I'm assertive?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Quote du jour: I'd like to be assertive, if that's all right with everyone.

Site du jour: Get up from your chair every four hours, or else. Another study that finds sitting at a desk all day is unhealthy, even if you do exercise each day. Getting up even for a minute or two trims the waistline. The article suggests that the act of rising up from the chair, using the large muscles of the legs, provides a small but significant workout. (Another reason to do squat!)

I need to be reminded about this. When work is all about pressure, I feel guilty for taking a lunch break to eat -- I eat at my desk instead. (See? I'm a good, hard worker. I sacrifice my lunch time for work.) And taking a whole hour to get out of the building and run around in the rain seems utterly frivolous.

This is all in my head. So long as the work gets done, nobody cares if I get all self-sacrificial. My problem is that the amount of work I need to do, and the time I have to do it in, are not realistic. Not when you consider that they want it perfect.

The heck with all that. I'm back in the habit of exercising every day, and I'm not going to give that up, gain weight, lose momentum, and stress myself out just to make needless brownie points.

So today I am going to ignore the nagging little tug of guilt at the back of my mind, and put myself first at lunch time. I Have Spoken. (And putting that assertion up here is another way of making sure I don't cave in when lunch time rolls around.)

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles around the track. It shall be done. At lunch.
And behold! I did run at lunch. Odd weather: the sky was blue instead of grey, and this was this bright yellow thing up in the sky that made the run much hotter than a normal January workout.

Disaster averted

Quote du jour
Captain Sheridan: Are you trying to cheer me up?
Susan Ivanova: No sir, wouldn't dream of it.
Captain Sheridan: Good, I hate being cheered up. It's depressing.
Susan Ivanova: In that case we're all going to die horrible, painful, lingering deaths.
Captain Sheridan: Thank you, I feel so much better now.
- Babylon 5


Sunday afternoons flat out stink.

The combination of a weekend ending and having to face the thought of going back to work is hard to take. Especially on winter afternoons, when it gets dark so early. For some reason, that makes it seem like Monday's coming all that much sooner.

Anyway, that's my only explanation for the sudden impulse I gave in to:


I don't even like frozen pizza. It's as if the imp of bad eating simply wanted me to buy something bad, anything. It was sick of me being good.

Funny thing is, I bought the stuff and took it home, then realized that I didn't want to actually eat it. The eyes and the taste buds conspired to convince me that they really, really needed this stuff. The stomach said "Hell no!"

So disaster averted. Maybe just the act of buying the stuff was enough to satiate the impulse, some kind of shopping therapy? I have no idea, but I'm not complaining about the money I spent. It's cheaper than a therapist.

Because if I don't post this, I won't do it

Bizarre du jour: Okay, so you probably already know that the Wikihow site can be a bit odd at times. They offer articles like "How to be more popular" or "What to do when the airplane is on fire and the pilots have developed amnesia and can't remember how to land" (or something very close to that). So it's always a good idea to take their posts with a grain of salt, if not a whole shot of tequila. Even so, this one has me stumped: How to make people think you're immortal. I mean... why?


Inappropriate quote du jour: Feeling guilty has never burned a single calorie. - John Tesh

Bah. What does John Tesh know.

This blog is all about guilt.

Well, okay, it's all about getting me to get out there and exercise, but guilt plays a huge part in that. So I'm posting this up here to make me get out there and run today. There are people running under far worse conditions.

Exercise du jour: Jog 3 miles
Done! Finally. A good run. Rain, shmain.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dominique M. Lasco

Dancing with the stairs

see more dog and puppy pictures

Quote du jour:I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Site du jour: The 20 Worst Drinks in America. I have to say I was shocked at the caloric contents in some of these drinks. I was also shocked that the Sobe Green Tea isn't really that good for you. (But gosh! It had such a healthy looking label!)

The quote and the site du jour don't have any bearing on my life as a whole. They just seemed to go well together.

Exercise du jour 15 minutes with my local staircase, Fred A. Stairs. Not dancing, really, more like plodding. But dancing sounded much better. Also, some squats. If I'm feeling better, some walking. (I'm thinking that even if I feel rotten, I could get 15 minutes worth of exercise in. Probably.)
Done! For a short exercise session, stair climbing is an excellent way to get a workout. (10 flights again. 480 steps. Well, down and then up again so 20 flights, 960 steps.)

Like, y'know, totally, dude

see more Political Pictures

Quote du jour: Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.
- Oscar Wilde

Yesterday while eating lunch I looked down and realized an awful truth: I was eating tofu and bean sprouts. It was a bit embarrassing to realize that I was living up to the stereotype of a typical Californian.

But what the hell. I am a Californian; my family has lived there for several generations. Maybe I'm just now starting to blend in. While I haven't started wearing Birkenstocks and doing macrame, I do find being Californian a wonderful excuse for any new thing I want to try.

Sample conversation

Other people: What, you're doing something new and different? Why?
Me: I'm from California.
Other people: Ohhhhhh.... I see. [Patting me on the arm.] You poor thing.

Why is this -- do people in Peoria never try doing anything new?

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles jogging.

I don't know if it's stubborn or stupid, but I'm still trying for to jog outdoors in winter. Today is supposed to be warmer. Also wetter, but that I can deal with. I've got a towel, and I know how to use it.
Done. Finally. Didn't have any kind of pace -- I'm not feeling great -- but I told myself that sweating is a good way to kick a virus out of your system. If it turns out that it makes things worse, then I guess I'm screwed. We'll see.

A Fate Worse than Death

Quote du jour:
Mother: All of my friends are either dead or in assisted living.
Me: Which is worse?
Mother: Assisted living.

If ever I needed an incentive to keep fit, it's looking at the people who've gone before. My grandmother lived a full, rich* and well-traveled life until macular degeneration and osteoporosis left her blind and so afraid of falling that going down two steps while clinging to a hand rail would leave her nearly hysterical with fear. My mother took note, and took supplements, and can still see pretty well even though she's nearly at the age where my grandmother passed away. Unfortunately, she's now lost about five inches in height and is becoming extremely frail. Though the mind is as sharp as ever, the body is getting fragile.

Me, I've taken enough biology classes to know what's coming if I don't take care. Yet another incentive to load-bearing exercise and eating them vegetables.

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes stair climbing. Also, tricep dips and squats.

Done! Spent 15 minutes with Fred A. Stairs, going up and down the 48 steps 10 times. (What? Doesn't everyone name their staircase? Is it just me?) Also squats and tricep dips.

*no, not the kind of rich that you pass on to deserving grandchildren in a very material and financially profitable sense; the kind where you enjoy each new experience to the fullest.


Photo courtesy of Steve Evans. I don't know who the woman is/was, and possibly the photographer didn't either -- it's titled "Old woman of Tajikstan." I just liked the idea of a woman whose face wasn't so much lined as mapped with all the experiences she'd lived through, and who still could manage a smile for the camera.

Next time, snazzy shoes

Quote du jour:


This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.


- George Bernard Shaw





Goal of the month: Still going strong with the vegetarian stuff. Oddly enough, I don't miss what I'm not eating. Doesn't seem to be slowing down the exercise either. (Dear Lord, please don't let that become one of the self-fulfilling prophecies.)



Imaginary Internet People & Fun

Another goal that I haven't blogged much about is the goal to get out, to stop being such a home-bound hermit. Thanks to Julie and Glynis, I got to fraternize with Imaginary Internet Friends. It was great fun. Talked for hours, and the time went by quickly.

The only thing is... next time, I'm wearing snazzier shoes.

Guess which shoe is mine?

The perils that lurk in the heart of a restaurant salad

Doesn't the name Apple Cranberry Chicken Salad sound good? Healthy?

When I met up with the I.I.F.s at a restaurant, I thought I'd just order a vegetarian salad. Would you believe they didn't have one? It wasn't a big deal for me to remove the chicken, though I was surprised that the salad didn't just include chicken; chicken took up about half the salad, six or seven ounces. (In which case it should qualify as a Chicken Apple Cranberry salad, but I digress.)

What caught me by surprise were the glazed pecans. I always thought of a glaze as something that was found on the surface, but these nuts had been saturated in butter and brown sugar to the point where the plain nut had been turned into pure candy. I'd worry about a diabetic eating this salad.

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles jogging. Slightly less mileage this time, so perchance will be a slightly faster pace? The goal is to slug-jog fast enough that I could actually pass a little old lady with a walker.
Well, sorta. The jury's out on whether this deserves a star or not. No, I didn't jog. It was too cold, and I knew what would happen if I tried. I did, however, walk 4 miles instead. So maybe I should put up half a star.

Photo of paragliding in Slovakia courtesy of lietac.

Back to pointless exercise (End of the HBBC challenge)

Quote du jour: “Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition - such as lifting weights - we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.” - Stephen Covey

Since the start of the HBBC challenge coincided roughly with my bothering to track my weight again, I can say definitively that while doing this challenge I have lost 6-1/2 pounds. Except for the two weeks around Christmas, where I gained a little over 3 pounds, I've lost roughly a pound a week since November 20.

If it weren't for the HBBC challenge, I probably would've skipped a few of the elliptical sessions. Focusing on the challenge instead of focusing on the candy canes was helpful.

It was good, but I'm glad it's done. I'm feeling challenged out now. Time for a rest from that kind of thing... maybe for the next eleven months. Sounds about right.

Exercise du jour: Learned something yesterday. Two 45-minute elliptical sessions can leave your muscles a little sore. Today I'm doing nothing more strenuous than some good stretches. Maybe a little light yoga. No points to earn any more.
Done! Worked a brisk jog/walk into the day. Just one mile, but enough to get the blood flowing.


Engraving: Madame Roxey Caplin demonstrates the chest expander

Because some days you can't take life too seriously

see more So Much Pun

Quote du jour: I am not a glutton; I am an explorer of food.
- Erma Bombeck

Seventh day of the vegetarian stuff. Still standing.

Word du jour: Raw prawn. Traditional Australian expression. To quote the Urban Dictionary: "Don't come the raw prawn!" or "Don't come the raw prawn with me!", meaning: "Don't try to put one over me!" or "Don't treat me like a fool!".

Exercise du jour: 45 minutes on the elliptical.
Done! Actually, twice. Morning and night. Quickie mile walk at noon. Got me out of the office, which is good. Got me out into the cold shivery wintertime... not so great. But still exercising was done. Last day of the HBBC: 8

Doing squat at work

Not an actual picture of my office... just an approximation

Word du jour: Am-knees-ia (n). A condition where you forget how bad your knees are until you try to bend them.

It doesn't actually help with getting through long tedious meetings, but doing squat turns out to be useful for other things besides challenges.

At work, there are a large number of computers that need to be kept from overheating and are not stored in a closed-off room. The office thermometer must stay on the low end of comfortable, so I tend to go around bundled up in several layers, like a globular bear. (Yes, even in July.)

Now, if I'm cold or really want to freak out annoying co-workers find myself getting sleepy after lunch, I do a few squats. Because squats use the largest muscles in the body, doing them gets the blood flowing and the body warmed up pretty quickly.

Also, doing the occasional squat helps my knees remember how to bend. Flexing the knees helps keep them from stiffening up.

Now I just need to figure out how to do squat and get paid for it. Any ideas?

Goal of the month: All vegetarian, all the time. So far, so good.
Done!




Exercise du jour: I really hate posting this goal, since I've flailed on the jogging for the last week or so. A couple weeks ago, it was effortless. I'm wondering if the difference is the temperature -- maybe I just need to adjust? Especially hard after coming back from a balmy Christmas in California.

Jog/walk/crawl 3 miles, depending on the temperature.
Done. 4 miles. Didn't crawl, at least. Plus, 30 minutes on the elliptical and 100% veggies means HBBC = 7
1/4 - HBBC 1 (veggies)
1/5 - walked 3, veggies HBBC 4
1/6 - walked 3 miles, jog/walked 3 miles, ellipticalled 15 minutes, veggies. HBBC 8


United States Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang

Taking a leap

Quote du jour: When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
-Cynthia Heimel


Goal of the month: Concentrate on eating Good.

Wait, another goal of the month? Didn't you just do this in November? And didn't you get sick and tired of having a goal of the month?

Yes. But did it help to push myself for a month to purge/sort/organize? Definitely. I now have a house that is clean and fairly organized much less full of stuff. Because I have so much less stuff, I can deal with the stuff I've got. I can even -- wait for it -- park my car in my garage.

So while they make me bitch/moan/whine, a month-long goal can be helpful.

The trouble with me has always been that I can focus on eating right or I can focus on exercising, but when I try to do both at once I drop one or the other.

I'm hoping that I've gotten into the habit of exercising to the point where I don't have to focus on getting it done. I could be dreaming. We'll see.

For the next month, I'm going to focus on going all vegetarian. I know that some people are really into low-carb or no-carb diets, and that's fine if that works for them. I want to see if being a vegetarian makes a difference to my body. If it doesn't, then I'll try something else. Not so much a leap of faith, as a leap of experimentation.

Exercise du jour: Elliptical. I do love that elliptical. It is a really simple, convenient way to get the heart rate up. Unlike squats, I don't need to be careful about the knees while ellipticalling.
Done! 30 minutes on the elliptical. Plus, 100% vegetarian day. (HBBC 3)

1/2 - 30 minutes elliptical, 20 minutes stretching, 45 minutes raking, which I'm inclined to consider at least on the level with "light" aerobics, plus veggies. HBBC points: 7

Photo courtesy of Julianne Showalter.

Patterns: the obligatory end-of-the-year review post

Quote du jour: My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern. -Benoît Mandelbrot

Things I've learned:
Looking back from the time I've started this blog, I really have actually learned things.

- Exercise is for every day, not special occasions. If you force yourself to exercise every day, eventually, eventually, eventually it becomes a habit to do something every day.

- Vegetables aren't all bad. And I love the way I feel after I eat a salad -- light, full of energy -- as opposed to how I feel after I eat a McGreasy burger.

- Even a fat chick can train to run a 5k, do 100 push ups, 200 situps, or 200 squats.

- An injury doesn't mean I need to stop exercising.

Things I still need to pound into my thick skull:

- I still react the wrong way to stress and negative things thrown at me. I want to eat bad food, drink wine, curl up in a ball under a fluffy comforter until the mean people go away. I want to be the kind of person who will get on the elliptical and sweat the anger/fear/frustration/hurt feelings away. And then go calmly confront the mean person, who probably didn't mean to be quite that mean, if you see what I mean.

- It's okay to push myself a bit more sometimes. I don't know my limits until I injure myself, but that's okay. I learn, I avoid the problem next time, and I keep going even if it's at a slower pace or through a different form of exercise.

- However, when I do injure myself, I need to stop and not try to stubborn my way through the pain.

- My exercise plan doesn't have to be followed perfectly; my diet plan doesn't have to be followed perfectly. They just have to be followed. I don't have to be perfect.

Exercise du jour: Wanna do the 3 mile jog. The sun is shining, but it's also cold out there. If the asthma kicks in and I can't jog, I can walk. Or I can whine stay indoors and lift weights. One way or another, I'm going to get a gold star up here.
Done! No, not the jog. I walked instead, but to make up for the slackness of not running I extended the walk to 5-1/2 miles instead. Very brisk walking, thanks to the cold. It was exercise, definitely. (HBBC 5)

Happy New Year!


Mandelbrot set courtesy of SiriusB.

A goat? I'm sure I asked for a pony...

I now own a goat.

The good news is that someone else has to feed it and milk it and deal with any cleanup. Maybe they get to walk it as well.

Some charity organization lets you sponsor a goat or other useful whatnot for people in poorer parts of the world, so instead of buying presents for all her children, my mother bought us all goats. The grandchildren got the gift-wrapped goodies; I got to listen to my brother make jokes about how "that gets my goat."

Actually it's a good thing, feeble jokes aside. Most everyone I know already has everything they need. Indeed, many of them are trying to get rid of stuff, live simply. I like the idea of giving people things that they need instead of a gift they have to unwrap, exchange, and write a thank you note for.

Plus, I'd hate to try to take a goat on the plane.

HBBC:
12/24 - Walked 6 miles
12/25 - Walked 2 miles
12/26 - Walked 2 miles

Exercise du jour: Jog 3 miles

Oh hell. I'm floundering here. The parade of feeble excuses continues:
12/27 - Skipped the jog, did 30 minutes on the elliptical instead (2 points). Told myself it was okay since I'd been up since 4 in order to catch the damn plane.
12/28 - Skipped the jog, did 10 flights of stairs instead. (1 point). Would have gone jogging, but couldn't find an iPod. Couldn't face the thought of jogging without an iPod. So easily we become spoiled.
I wonder what feeble excuse will present itself tomorrow? One of these years, as God is my witness, I'll run again.
12/29 - Well, the excuse du jour is the weather. Mother Nature couldn't decide between hail, snow, rain and sunshine, so she gave me all of them. I couldn't be expected to run in sunshine, could I? Well, I could've if it had lasted for more than three minutes at a time. Sigh. At least I ate all my veggies (1 point)
12/30 - A measly 2 mile walk. Does eating my veggies still count? (3 points)

The inner slug loves the holidays

Quote du jour:
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas", he thought, "doesn't come from a store."
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to blog for the next few days. I'm going to try to get the exercise in anyway. If I can't, then I'll pick up where I left off in a few days. Every time I stop exercising, I am afraid that the inner slug will re-awaken and take over my life again. I'm betting that posting this publicly on the blog will help me keep going.

Have a wonderful Christmas (or whatever it is that you celebrate).



One last picture of the reindog.