Workout, DWC Style

I am afraid of elipitcal workout machines. They scare me. I used one today in my one-hour "circuit" (I call it that) workout. I got on and started to peddle, I felt like I was going to fall off after about a minute and half. I got off that machine awfully quick. Even the minute was effective, though, I could feel "it" in my upper legs after I got off and tried to walk. Okay, to be fair, I started on the stationary bike and did ten minutes. Got my heartrate up to 150 and maintained. I also did some treadmill. That's actually kind of fun, in a strange way. I hit some weights, too. I use 15 lb dumbbells and do some curls and various other arm excercises. Then I walk the weights to the little Reebok Step and stepup-stepdown-stepup-stepdown for the count of 20. Walk the weights back "muscle beach" do some more curles and then hit the leg press, 20 reps, twice. Back to muscle beach, grap the weights again, do the same reps again, ten. Back to the Step, 20. Back to the leg press, 20. To the Hammerstrength machine, 10. Leg curls, 10. Leg lifts, 10. Back to the free weights. I move quickly. I take a sip and only a sip of water as I walk from one station to another. I throw in a five minute bike ride. Do my circuit, again. Weights, legs, hammerstrength, step. I throw in some medicine ball, 12 lb'er: lift, twist, throw over head, catch, lift twist throw, curl, lift, throw, twist. My Mets hat is starting to get sweaty, so am I. Back to the weights, make sure I dont get in anyones way. Back to the leg lifts, leg curls, leg press... Keeping an eye on the time... I want to leave 15 minutes for some serious treadmill action: seven minuts at 4.5 mph. Setting: hills. It feels good to get my heartrate pumping. It feels good to sweat. Just hope I can keep this up and not tail off... I guess we'll see.

earworm memories

recently. a friend of mine who i have known for a few years posted in her blog a link to youtube and she posted the video for the song "hey man, nice shot" by the group filter. the song is about a guy, bud dwyer, a state official in pennsylvania who was accused of taking kickbacks and a bribe. he had a sham trial and was convicted. he called a news conference, protested his innocence and then pulled out a .357 magnum from a manila envelope and pulled the trigger, on live tv. if you want to see the footage, you can find it. i just did. it didn't take too long nor was it too hard, but i'm not going to post any links to it here.

this happened in 1987, i was 13. i was home from school that day because of a snowstorm, until the other day i would of sworn it was in the summer. i remembered being home when it happened, so i figured it was summer time. i didn't see the original broadcast. it had happened just before the noon news. that's how i know i was home that day, i turned on the noontime news to the footage. it had been edited to the point of the gun coming out of the envelope, the actual trigger-pulling was edited out, and the aftermath was shown. it was one of those experiences that really shook me. its one of those blazed in the mind type things.

when the song "hey man, nice shot" came out, i think i was in college, i got into it. i thought it was a great song. i like it to this day. matter of fact, since she posted the video i've been humming the song and singing the chorus. it has become an "ear-worm" as they say. but i still feel really kind of weird about the whole thing. somewhere, in the deep dark recesses of my mind, that dark place that even kdawg doesn't go to, that memory of a 13 year old boy is stirred and that same sensation of dread and fear lurks, just in the background kind of like a malvent searchlight.

i'm not writing this because i'm mad or upset. i'm writing this because i'm a bit surprised at the power of tonal memory. how that song takes me to memories that are still very real. there are a couple other songs that do that to me, too: "zombie," by the cranberries and "looser," by beck. both of those songs take me back to very vivid good memories from college.

i have heard it said that it is good to attach memories to scent. i use colors. when i was studying hebrew i would right out little flash cards in different color ink. if i remember correctly *chuckle* the verbs were green, the nouns red, and the other stuff black. when i read the text i would visualize the colors of the words and that helped me figure out which part of speech it was and the meaning.

the brain is a funny organ. memory is something that i'm fascinated by. particularly how memory changes over time. for example the bud dwyer thing: i was convinced it was summer time, but it wasn't. i had fixed the memory by assuming it was summer because i was home from school when i shouldn't of been: middle of the week= summer. and its equally fasciinating to me that one song can turn on a memory just like that.

what a fascinating machine we are.

Dad Hospital, Again

My father has a heart condition. It is a very serious heart condition. His heart condition is genetic. Simply put: his heart is bad. He is in the hospital, again. He had chest pains or tightness.

The doctor wants him to have a heart-catherization, but my dad isn't too keen on that. He had one three years ago and it was strongly suggested he not have another one. He isn't sure what he will do, right now, I think he is probably leaning towards no.

To look at him he doesn't appear to be sick. He is pink where he needs to be, pretty alert and he walks okay, albeit slower than he used to.

He will probably come home tomorrow. My prayer, right now is for good health and comfort. This probably sounds more dire than it needs to be.

I'll keep you all informed.

Workinout

I started something today that I never done before. I started going to gym. The last few months, or so, I've been thinking that it was time to do something about getting into some kind of shape. In all honesty it started because I got hooked on the show Workout on Bravo. I'm not sure how I got involved in the show, okay, that's kind of a lie. I think it's because it came on after Project Runway (yah, I watched that show, religiously as strange as that might sound). I got drawn into Workout for some reason and started following the characters, but something else happened, I started to realize that I wasn't doing much to keep myself fit. I figure that walking for eight hours a day at work was okay, but it wasn't sustained, that is, I didn't walk for eight hours straight, it is more like short spurts.

I don't want to really gain much muscle. I just want to lose some of the weight I have. I'm just over 200 lbs. I should be about 185 or so for my body type and height and all that. So, I decided a few weeks ago to start looking into gyms and see what was out there. I first checked out Bally's Fitness Centers. I went one day on a lark. Had a grand tour and was taken to an office, sat down, and the hard-pressure sale started. I don't remember much of the pitch, but I remember the number 150 dollars to get started, do you have credit card? Yes, but not with me, thanks for you time.

So, I did some asking around and discovered Cardinal. A friend of mine works out a couple times a week and he told me that Cardinal was a pretty decent place. I checked them out online and thought they sounded alright. Last week, my parents were out and about and found near our house. They stopped in and got some information for me. Last Saturday, I stopped in and checked the place out. Its a simple, no frills place. It has your excercise bikes, elipticals (which make me laugh when I see someone on one), weight machines, and free weights.

As a graduation present, my parents offered to pay the sign-up fee, it was much cheaper than Bally's. Today I went for the first time. I had a quick tutorial on how to use the various machines and let loose. I did some biking, about a half-hour's worth and then I went and checked out some of the weight machines. I worked for about an hour or so. I don't want to jump in too fast because, with my luck, I'll hurt myself and I don't need that. My shoulders are a bit sore, but that's okay.

Degree Conferred MLS

A picture of the family and I after
IUPUI commencement. My dad is on the left, I'm in the center, and my mom is on the right. Those smiles are very real. It felt so good to get that folder, though it is empty at present.

Graduations, commencements, whatever you want to call them are not very different from one another. There is always, though its never really said, a feeling of "good luck and fair thee well, sucka" with graduations and commencements. There are platitudes spoken and well wishes given, but somewhere in the veneer of "alright! you did it" there is a subtle undertow of... I dunno, I can't put my finger on it, but its there. Fear, maybe? On the graduate's part, perhaps.

The commencement that I was a part of was an interesting affair. It was the biggest one I"ve been involve in. I think they said that something like fivethousand sevenhundred diplomas were being awarded this year. I think maybe 2,000 graduates were there, might of been more, it was a sea of people in black robes and multi-colord shashes, hoods, cords, and funny shaped hats. We were in the RCA Dome (where the Indy Colts play). Half of the dome was drape off, that was the "robing area," meaning that's were we put on our funny gowns and colorful hoods and funny flat hats.

I don't know if its like this in other disciplines, but in the SLIS (School of Library Information Science) its tough to make connections with people. I made a few a couple of them are here on myspace: McLarty and Daddypants, but for the most part its kind of being a single manned island. I don't know if its the way the program is set up or the fact that I was only on campus one day a week, but there wasn't much connection with my fellow commencers. Luckily, McLarty was commencing, so I was able to sit next to her and kid around a bit. That made the whole affair a bit more sufferable. It wasn't a bad commencement. It moved along pretty well, commencements/graduations can really drag sometimes. They didn't have a keynote or commencement speaker per se. The presidents of IU and Purdue spoke, but they actually had some good things to say and they said them well.

When SLIS was told to stand to be recognized and get our degreed conferred on us, we let a whoop that just felt good. For me, its been a long, tough two years. I'm still a bit surprised and amazed that I've been able to 1. Keep it together, and 2. Do as well as I have 3. Balance work,school, and life effectively. Actually, it was funny when we stood up a guy about two rows ahead of me (he was from another school, Liberal Arts, I think) turned around, put his finger to his lips and SHHH'd me. Dude, all I have to say is this: I'm a librarian, I'm the only that's allowed to be shooshin, you are the shooshee, I am the shoosher. I should get the Librarian Action figure now with super shooshing action.

I'm not officially done, yet. I have two classes yet to finish. That's six credits. Then the 16-year old dishwasher in my head will maybe, just maybe shut up. Digression: my first job in high school was dishwashing. I worked in a fairly popular restaraunt in a resort area in western Maryland. The first night I came home from work, smelly, greasy and exhausted, I flopped myself down in my parents' bedroom and announced to my mother that I was going to college. The next night I came home, again smelly, greasy, and exhausted and announced that I was going to get a Master's Degree. I'm not sure what happened the next night, but I didn't announce that I was going to go for a PhD. So, I have had this 16 year old in my head prodding me forward. Sadly, though, I don't think he'll be satisfied with one degree... I fear he will be greedy.

All I know is this: this feels good. An accomplishment. I'm not sure what direction I'm going to go in, but it feels good that I have "accomplished" this.

I guess we'll see what happens in the future when that gets here.

Lenski Intrepratations

Today, while I was planting some flowers for my mom I was in our little shed that is behind our house. That is where we keep our, as Arlo Gutherie once sang, "our shovels and rakes and implements of destruction." We also keep some books out there. They are books that we really don't have room for in the house, but we just can't quite bear to part with. For example, my dad's play scripts. He had a couple shelves of them out there.

Evey time I go out to the shed I find myself pulling down a green volume from my dad's collection of Lenksi Intreprations. I'm not sure how many books there are, probably about ten or so. They are biblical commentaries. On my desk by my hand, I have Lensky's book Interpretations of Galatians, Ephesians, and Philipians. I pulled this one down because the last few Sunday's in church our pastors have been doing a preaching series on Philipians. I've read the first couple pages of the Philipians interpreation/commentary, but sadly, I didn't have my Bible, aka the Playbook with me, I was sitting on the porch, so I wasn't able to read the crossreferenced verses Lenski pointed out.

Lenski is easy to read. I have had a little Greek, so I can sort of read the Greek he throws into the writing. I at least can sound it out, I might not know what it means, but he takes care of that for me. I am always a bit cautious about biblical commentaries because I think it is first and foremost the bible reader's job to figure out what the Word is saying to them, not someone else's ideas. However, with that being said, it is good to read what learned people have to say about it, too. It brings a deeper understanding to the Word.

I am a layman, plain and simple. Hopefully, these intrepretations will help in furthering my faith and strengthening it, too.

Gradhood

I got my graduation robes yesterday and because I'll be getting, or is it awarded, a Masters of Library Science, I also have a hood that will go with the gown. Its kind of cool, actually. No, wait, it is really cool, the hood that is. It is black hood, with an inside lining of red and big white stripe (IU's colors are Red and White [crimson and cream]). I'm not sure who decided it, but the color for Library Science is lemon yellow. That borders the hood.

When I put the whole shebang on I felt a bit like a wizard. The hood is quite heavy around the neck. I shall choke because of it, I fear.

Its hard for me to believe that I am almost done. I will be going through the ceremony on Sunday (3 pm) but will be officially done in August after I complete two more classes.

So, Sunday is the end, middle, and beginning of another stage in this strange weird movie called life. Where's Sydney Pollack when you need him.

Gasless Sunday

If you need gas, get it the day before or the day after!

Remember Friend:

Don't Pump Gas

NO GAS...On May 15th 2007
Don't pump gas on may 15th
In April 1997, there was a "gas out" conducted nationwide in protestof gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th 2007, all internet users are to not go to a gas station in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in alot of places. There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet
network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.


If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take
$2,292,000,000.00 (that's almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companys pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one day.

If you agree (which I cant see why you wouldnt) resend this to all your contact list. With it saying, ''Don't pump gas on May 15th"
>

Home

My dad came home yesterday from the hopital. Everything is fine, or at least okay. He has a bad heart, genetically, that is. And there isn't much they can do. They wanted to do a cahterization, but we told them no because a cath was done a few years ago and it almost ended badly. So doctors will continue to treat him with medications. He is doing fine. Prayers answered.