August 3, 2008: Seven

Seven days and going strong, mostly. My shoulder is beginning to hurt from the throwing motion in my workout and my legs are beginning to fatigue. I may take tomorrow off and allow myself to heal some. I want to make it 19 straight days (that would be everyday until I go back to work) but I don't think it is advisable to do so. Besides, I have softball practice tomorrow, so I will still be getting the exercise. While I was working out, Michelle and Evan were at the pool with Dan, Wendy, and Aidan. I arrived at the gym hours after them so I didn't spend hardly anytime with them. Instead I saw the new movie The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (as I mentioned yesterday). It was as I expected/predicted, action packed with good effects, but not very good. I would say it was "OK." 2.5 out of 5 stars.



This evening we went to Nicole and John's for Nicole's birthday. It was nice and relaxing. We grilled out, I'm sorry, since they are also New Yorkers I guess I should say "we had a barbecue." Either way was fine, there were chicken wings, hot dogs and hamburgers. Slaw, potato salad, and so on.

My dad also forwarded me a link to a news video that you should see. it is about automobile tires. I am sure after you watch it that you will go outside and check your tires right away. I did and on the van my tires had the code 2807, 3007, 0808, 0908. So the van is good. As for the Ford, the tires are a little older and must have the code printed on the backside of the tire. I will look under there tomorrow in the day light. You are just going to have to watch the video to find out what the numbers mean. And I highly encourage you to do so!

Aged Tires: A Driving Hazard? (ABCNews.com)

August 2, 2008: 6, and Counting!

Today makes 6 straight days! I am serious about this, I am going to lose this weight. I will continue to push myself, but I will do it. I have to remember to be patient. It took me many years to gain all this weight, so I can't expect to lose it over night. It will probably take years to shed it too. But that is a good thing, by that time, I will have crossed from the need/want to exercise and eating right stage to the habit of exercising and eating right. And once it becomes a habit, I will have changed my lifestyle, and hopefully it will stay that way. When I woke up this morning I thought I may have jinxed myself in yesterday's post. That is, I said how my work out routine put me on the edge of sore, yet this morning my muscles were feeling a little fatigued. Fortunately, once I got out of bed and ate breakfast, I felt much better. Apparently, it is not a good idea to exercise so intensely that late and go to sleep because I woke up famished! I felt that I NEEDED to eat first thing (and I did - a bagel and cream cheese).

Evan had his second soccer practice today. He enjoys soccer, he gets to run around and kick a ball some. It is good for him to get out and exercise too. I am not sure his team this year will have as much success as last year's team (undefeated) but regardless, I am sure he will have fun. His first game will be against Chris' team. It should be fun.

Today I received my information for the start of school: parking tag and agenda for the first week. I am looking forward to the year starting, yet, c'mon, let's be serious, who really wants to go back to work? All new textbooks this year will pose a bit of a challenge, but if the deal proposed to me goes through, I will not have more than one average class per semester. Now that is a pretty good deal! Sure, it will mean more work in prep, but will mean less struggle with each student. I am looking forward to that. I have already set up a separate blog and netvibes page specifically for the AP Economics class. Hopefully the students will notice it and participate some before the semester begins, it would be nice to get an advance idea of how these students will be thinking, kind of a "heads up" on what each student is capable of. But I still have to wait and see until someone actually reads and posts comments.

Tomorrow we are planning on seeing the latest installment of The Mummy, it is called Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It is not getting great reviews, but I am sure the effects will be cool. We'll see.

August 1, 2008: 5 in a Row!

Five for Five this week... Monday - Friday, I hit the gym every day this week and I am teetering on the edge of sore, but making it. The workout the trainer gave me seems to be just right. It pushes me to be as the edge of my anaerobic threshold this way I do not burn all sugar and create a lactic acid build up in my muscles (it is the lactic acid that makes the muscle feel sore). The big question is do I try and go tomorrow or do I take a day off? My present goal, in addition to building lean muscle mass to more efficiently burn calories, especially from the stored fat, is to strengthen the muscles around my right shoulder. I continue to suffer from a football injury. Not that I played football, no, but when I coached, I really messed up the shoulder. As wide receivers coach, I had to throw between 100 and 200 passes each day. My arm was not up to the task. I am sure that if a doctor did an MRI on the shoulder I would see some ligament damage. It really only hurts when I play softball. This week from the out field I was having a difficult time throwing the ball to the infield, so I have to get the muscles there stronger. I am not going to let the pain stop me. As we get older we just have to exercise smarter.

July 29, 2008 - Evan Is Back to School

This week Evan has gone back to school. It is hard to believe that he is in 2nd grade already! His teach is Mrs. Edwards, he says she is nice. He will have homework every week, which is a BIG change from last year where he practically had no homework at all. But this is good, I am glad he has homework. I was a little nervous about Monday. I anticipated Evan would be very difficult to get to school through all the crying and complaining since that is how he went to bed Sunday night. But much to my surprise, he got excited about going. His big thing was that he wanted to find out who would be sitting at his table with him. I was glad he was able to find something positive and he stuck with that. It definitely made my morning easier. Today went off just as well, in fact, maybe a little easier. He woke up early, which I was not happy to see since I wanted every minute of sleep I could get this morning. On the bright side, I didn't have to spend any time waking him up and we got started earlier (I even got him to school on time today, he was late yesterday). This afternoon we bought him some new cleats for soccer, tomorrow is his first practice or the season.

Now that Evan is back at school, I will be going to the gym every morning straight from dropping him off. I have been sticking with the plan laid out by the physical trainer I met with but I some how don't feel like I am doing enough. I feel my routine lacks variety. That is to say, I work on cardio everyday (which I am supposed to do) but every other day I alternate between exercises and lower aerobic cardio versus high aerobic cardio only. I am thinking about adding a few exercises for my abs on the high cardio days and see how I respond to it.

I have also begun some school work. All new textbooks this year is going to make things a little more challenging but will also force me to rely less on the textbooks and focus more on student directed inquiry. We'll see how that goes. I also finished book 7 of Harry Potter (again). It was the only one I hadn't read twice so I had to have another go. I did have to read book 6 again before book 7, so now I have read book 6 thrice. Now that I am done, I believe the books will sit on the book shelf until Evan is old enough and desires to read them.

July 19, 2008: More Beach

In case you don't know me, I can't stand the beach. The sand is everywhere, nothing is ever truly dry, the sun burns. I can't stand it. So when I woke up this morning to find that it was raining, and would most likely do so most of the day, let's just say I was relieved. So we went to Kure Beach and had breakfast at a little corner restaurant, the kind with little more than a dozen tables, near a dozen people waiting, and plenty of homemade food. This little spot was Dan's suggestion, who was also eating breakfast their with his family and sister's family (who are in town from California) and his father. With the weather dreary, went headed down the road a short distance to the aquarium. It was a nice aquarium, Evan, Aidan, and Dan's nieces Sarah and Jenny enjoyed all that there was to see. It seems that both Evan and Sarah share an interest in marine life, they were following each other throughout the aquarium. Not long after we returned to the hotel, the weather cleared enough to down to the beach. I chose not to, which is giving me the time to upload pictures and write this post. I can everyone at the beach from the balcony here, but I can also see the clouds getting darker and drawing nearer to the shore. I don't think they will be down there much longer.

This weekend's pictures have been added to My Photo Album:
Carolina Beach (July 17-20)

July 18, 2008: Carolina Beach

Earlier this week, Michelle made the plans to head to the beach. She has been desperately needing this trip, and here we are, Carolina Beach. The weather is awesome, not too hot, and of course, it is the summer, so not cold. We arrived yesterday about 3pm and hit the beach within 20 minutes of checking in. We spent a few hours on the beach, came back upstairs to shower then went to town to get some flip flops for me and some dinner. We scoped out what appeared to a good seafood place, and it was confirmed by the wait, but we did not stay to critique the food. So we went next door to Wings, bought some flip flops and beach pull over for Michelle. Then we hit Pop's Diner for some chicken fingers and hot dogs, went out to the boardwalk and tooled around until 9pm for the fireworks on the beach. Back at the hotel, we just chilled out, watched tv, took pictures of the moon, and then hit the hay.

This morning we woke up to sunny skies that quickly darkened and dumped a lot of rain in a short time. Fortunately this hotel has an indoor pool, and that is where we stayed dry, so to speak. Once the rain stopped and the skies cleared we spent the rest of the day on the beach (which amounted to six hours) and then went back to the indoor pool at 4:30pm, until about 5:45. So here we are getting ready to head out to dinner listening to the band play at the tiki hut on the pier right outside our window. Very nice. I will upload some pictures soon.

July 15, 2008: Body Age = 40

Evan and I spent another 4 hours at the gym today. Unfortunately the rock climbing wall was not there while we were there so Evan did not get a chance to do that. Instead he hung out in the kids room while I met with a physical trainer and then we ate lunch at the cafe and headed out to the pool. The physical trainer today gave me a body evaluation, sort of a baseline for before I begin my routine. This test included a brisk walk on the treadmill, a flexibility test (where I sit on the floor and stretch as far as I can), a strength test (where I curl a fixed curling bar), and body fat measurement (with the "pincher"). I was expecting my body age to come back somewhere around 50. Instead I was surprised to be evaluated at 40. Tomorrow I will meet with the trainer to create a work out regiment to reach my goals, or at least the goals put forth by the evaluation. I have bigger goals than the machine but one step at a time, I suppose.