Friday, September 16, 2011

did it

CrossFit:  a set of Power Cleans and then HSPU.  Power Cleans consist of grabbing an olympic bar and heaving it up, getting under neath it, just below your shoulders.  HSPU's are hand-stand push-ups.  Come on.  Who can do hand-stand pull ups?  I wimped out and did some modified version with a box, upside-down, too dumb looking to even write it out.  Had some weird twitching muscle spasm in my clavical all the way home. 

I swam this morning.  Not a great workout  - but a workout nonetheless.  Nice mix of IM, free, and kicking. 

Thursday, September 15, 2011

redirect to center

Water.  I'm going to starting drinking water in addition to coffee and alcohol.

Exercise.  I'm going to turn off Nova. And the Nightly Business Report on PBS. I might even get my aged self up and out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and move again soon.  Too bad the cold is coming. I am starting to long for the water again. That will always be within me - the need to swim.  I can drop it at times, even get kind of tired of it - but it comes back like an old friend; we don't even skip a beat

I went to Dubai recently. Interesting place.  Tall buildings.  Sandy. Hot.  Speeding taxis.  Pictures of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John Wayne at the bar where the Americans drank.  I worked out one morning at the hotel fitness room and could hear the call to prayers echoing over the city.  I liked it - good to experience other culture.  I was trying to kip my pull-ups to the rhythm of the Arabic broadcast.  To 'kip' is to swing and attempt to use your body weight to throw yourself up to the bar - a CrossFit thing.  I'm horrible at it.  Good for nothing at pull-ups.  The prayers didn't help me much either. 

The worlds tallest building is in Dubai.  It's a pretty thing, shiny, a true architectural feat I'm sure. But there is something missing - I'm not sure what. I have these two really tall oak trees in my front yard that were planted once precisely on either side of the sidewalk leading to my front door. They drop an enormous amount of acorns every other year. And I spend countless hours toiling away cleaning up after them, as if they're my children.  Their beauty is exceedingly better than that building in the sand.