Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Guest blogger: Jim

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[An infinite number of Jims, walking on an infinite number of keyboards, will eventually blog Hamlet.]

Laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose

Maryland's primary is Tuesday. I'm a registered Democrat and still undecided. A friend was giving me a hard time about that (the undecided part) back on Super Bowl Sunday. I pointed out that with my track record of backing losers, there wasn't much point in deciding too much before the primary, because if I did my candidate was sure to be gone by then.

I've taken some of the online "pick your candidate" quizzes, and they keep coming up with Dennis Kucinich at the top of my list.

And actually, philosophically, I am probably closer to Kucinich than any other candidate on the ballot. But I'm also a pragmatist. Just because I agree with a lot of his ideals doesn't mean I think he'd be an effective president in a less than ideal world.

My most liberal friends don't appreciate the pragmatism, my conservative friends think I'm a Red. I imagine myself in the middle of the road, along with the yellow line and the dead skunk, trying to decide what to compromise.

Hoping it's not a matter of Every way you look at you, you lose.

workout

gym, 40-second intervals, 2 circuits. HR was up there...I think they increased resistance.

Good advice

Really, don't stress over stress management.

Oh my goodness, I am doing just that.

Thanks, Zenchick!

Ah, a simple tuna sandwich

I didn't realize it 'til last night, but tuna is such a comfort food to me.

We had tuna salad sandwiches for dinner. I went to the salad bar after the gym to get celery and onion, and in the interest of adding more vegetables where ever I can, I added bell pepper and radishes to the mix too, so the salad had some good crunch. Then when I got home, I realized we were almost out of mayonaise, so I had to improvise with the dressing...a squirt of yellow mustard (which was all we had...how often do you run out of multiple condiments at once?) and some olive oil. I figured tuna gets packed in olive oil, right?

It worked well. It was moist enough, it tasted really good, and it calmed me down a bit after a sad visit to the vet.

I have bad reactions to a lot of fish (salmon, unfortunately, being the worst) but I can eat tuna. When I was a kid I ate it all the time...I'd actually take it right from the can and spoon it onto slices of cheese and eat it that way. When we had something for dinner I didn't like (like pork chops) I'd eat tuna instead. (The deal at my house was, if you didn't like what mom made, you didn't have to eat it, but you had to make your own dinner without getting in her way and you still had to eat with the family.) One of the few foods my dad made was tuna salad, which he served on toast with a pickle spear and a milkshake. One of the first "dinners" I cooked was the mock tuna casserole...a box of macaroni and cheese, a can of peas, and a can of tuna. I kept making that into adulthood; my ex-husband called it "chunky puke" but ate it anyway.

Victor makes me the Tom Servo special sometimes. You need to know your Mystery Science Theater to understand:

Mmmm, this tuna melt sammich
Really tastes quite nice.
[spoken] Ohh, I got sesame seeds in the bun.
Plus it comes with cole slaw n' a pickle,
And I must say it's reasonably priced.

I've gotten a little more fancy with my tuna lately, grilling real filets or making Fagioli Toscanelli con Tonno. But sometimes simple is best. I have the rest of the tuna salad with me for lunch today, and bread to toast for my sandwich. If I had a pickle, it would be perfect.

workout

Thursday: gym, 40-second intervals, two circuits.

Got some new Leslie Sansone DVDs, including two that are hour-long workouts. I may be deluding myself, but I feel like I have toned up, at least from the waist up. At the health fair they used an instument on my upper arm to measure percent fat, and mine came up 19-20%.

Friday: Walk Away the Pounds Express 3-miles (45 minutes, walking aerobics with some upper-body toning).

A'yuh, y'all can have some fun with this

Do you speak Yankee or Dixie?

This is a little quiz based on the Harvard Computer Society Dialect Survey to show whether your speech is more northern or southern (sorry, midwest, you don't get a category of your own.) I'm 53% Dixie, which makes perfect sense, given my location just south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The actual results of the Harvard survey are pretty fun to look at, too...you can see how people in your state mispronounce things and that a smattering of New Englanders seems to think that "shotgun" is called "hosey."

workout

I'm still doing it, at least. Yesterday: gym, 40-second intervals, two circuits. Today: WATP 1-mile (15 minutes). Going to the game in a few minutes...wasn't sure how long I had. Something is better than nothing. Obviously that has become a mantra for me.

Stress Management for Dummies

We had a health fair at work this week...a "healthy lifestyle" emphasis. (Our seminar speaker wasn't used to dealing with scientists, though...he was a little taken aback when he put up a slide with a pie chart showing that 51% of the factors affecting one's health are lifestyle, and half the room asked where the data came from. He didn't know, unfortunately.)

Even without the data source, I'll accept the hypothesis that lifestyle affects health.

So I went through the health fair stations being weighed and measured, and I'm damn healthy. (Of course, I've been working on that for several years now.) Cholesterol 165. BMI 19.3. High praise for my diet and exercise habits (newly-acquired though they are).

I had one problem. My blood pressure was 144/80, and on my "Do you suffer from stress" quiz, where a score of 15 or higher indicated "Watch out," I scored a 35.

I know I handle stress poorly, and lately I have been poorly handling loads and loads of it. I am not sleeping well. I've had massive frequent headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, and my eye won't stop twitching. I'm in a terrible mood. My blog posts have sucked.

I believe in a mind-body connection all right. I wish I could disconnect my mind from my body, frankly. And my health fair handouts were not particularly helpful: breathe deeply. Remove yourself from the situation. Put it in perspective.

Well, I remove myself from the situation every afternoon and it follows me home, like one of those annoying yappy dogs trying to bite my heels.

In seriousness, I know I need to get a handle on how I react to things, because my blood pressure is going to get so high I'll blow the top of my head clean off, or I'll alienate every friend I have because I'm such a bitch to be around.

We have an Employee Assistance Program; in fact, they were the ones who did our health fair. I might call them. On the other hand, at the fair when I asked about stress management at the booth, they gave me a balloon filled with sand.

So last night I took the first step after admitting I had a problem...I went out and bought a book. Stress Management for Dummies. It worked when I needed to learn UNIX really fast, so I shall see where this gets me.

Black and white

I don't usually get too inflamed about political issues because I can usually see that there are multiple ways to see the issue...multiple approaches to a problem...opinions I can respect even if I don't share them. I see almost everything in 256 shades of grey.

But not this.

If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America.

This makes me so angry on so many levels I'm afraid I may just be sputtering instead of reasonable.

If you read the full text of the remarks, the President frames it as a states-rights issue in danger of being lost to the activist courts. I understand the legal issues.

What I don't understand is how extending the civil institution of marriage to homosexual adult couples in any way threatens the institution, or families, or children, or society.

Until someone can give me a good answer to that question, I remain firmly convinced that it is a matter of discrimination and bigotry, and I don't see shades of grey there.

The other extreme

I write a lot about obesity and its costs, and my own efforts (and occasional lapses) in trying to maintain a healthy diet.

I noticed this morning that this week is "National Eating Disorders Awareness Week." Actually, what caught my eye was a statistic quoted by the The Alliance of Eating Disorders Awareness:

According to a recent study, over 1/2 the females between the ages of 18-25 would prefer to be run over by a truck then be fat, and 2/3 surveyed would rather be mean or stupid.

I can only hope that a large percentage of the women in that survey were not taking it seriously.

I know someone...a talented, smart young woman...who ended up hospitalized with a tube down her nose. I'll be honest, it baffles me how anyone could starve herself (or himself...men and boys make up a significantly smaller percent of the sufferers, but they do exist). Bulimia nervosa is even harder for me to comprehend.

It is outside my experience and has been pretty much off my radar, so I know very little about eating disorders, but this might be a good week for some eduction:

• National Eating Disorders Screening Program
• The Academy for Eating Disorders
• Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc.
• National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders
• The Renfrew Center Foundation

workout

Shape Up with Weights for Dummies tape
12x2 except where noted, 5# dumbbells except where noted

Squats
Lunges
Plie squat
One arm row (7.5#)
Lat raise
Tricep kickback
Bicep curl
Shoulder press
Flye (only one set)
Pushup
Crunch
Oblique crunch (only one set)

Felt pretty shaky afterwards. I'm also feeling all the upper body work in shoulders and back, not chest.

Throw me some beads moon pies, Mister!

Driving around yesterday noticing Ash Wednesday service times on signs outside churches reminded me that it's Mardi Gras time Down South.

I forget about Mardi Gras now that I'm home...I'm sure some bars will have specials on Tuesday, but it's a bit longer of a celebration down on the Gulf Coast, and not just New Orleans.

That was a real novelty to me when I lived down there. The city where I lived had a few parades, and I checked them out purely out of curiosity. They were a mixture of high school bands, local politicans, and flatbed trucks sponsored by local businesses, with oddly-costumed people throwing candy and beads and moon pies.

Moon pies were really big. (Actually, the stupid plastic beads were pretty popular too, I discovered when I bent down to pick up a strand that had landed in front of me, and a woman stepped on my fingers and hissed "Those are mine!)

Apparently moon pies are a tradition, but during my first Mardi Gras a neighboring city actually passed an emergency safety ordinance that krewes (the people who actually do this) couldn't toss anything bigger than moon pies. That was after somebody'd been injured by a very frozen half gallon of ice cream thrown off a float.

This isn't as dumb as it sounds. See, the krewes super-froze the ice cream so that the lucky folks who caught it would be able to get it home without it melting, not because they couldn't find enough cinder blocks to throw at people.

I remember coming home from my first parade with a bewildering collection of loot: plastic beads, plastic coins, several slightly smashed moon pies, bubble gum, and a coupon for a free sandwich at Subway.

I was in a state of semi-culture shock nearly the whole time I lived there, but after gratefully returning home I did come to appreciate some of what the Gulf Coast offered: 50-degree winter days, deep frying, strangers throwing moon pies. It was charming, in a goofy way. I almost miss it.

I wonder what would happen if I took moon pies to work on Tuesday and threw them at people...

workout

Friday: gym, 60-second intervals, two circuits. Stressed from work.
Next week going back to 30-second intervals, but higher resistance on the machines.

Today: WATP 2-mile, with 2.5 pound weights. Once past the warmup, my HR was well into the aerobic zone, 130-160.

Saying goodbye

I case you were wondering, my funk this week hasn't been about the Capitals trading Peter Bondra, it's been about work. But the Bondra trade is one of the many things I haven't been able to gather the energy to discuss...

I'm still not going to, really. There's nothing to say that hasn't been said. And as much as I liked Bondra, appreciated his on-ice ability and what he did for the community off the ice, the looming trade that's gonna hurt me most will be Olie Kolzig.

In my desk...used to be on a bulletin board, but you know how things get shuffled when you move offices...is a 1995 hockey card with a picture of Olie in his red road jersey holding a hot dog with "Olaf" written in mustard. The way I heard the story, he and the photographer were just goofing around when the picture was shot.

Back when we were at the Capital Centre, where I sat behind the players' bench, I used to see Kolzig goof around quite a bit. During warm-ups he'd stand behind the tv announcer (I think it was Dave Johnson then, but maybe Al Koken) and make rabbit ears. He was obviously a guy with a good sense of humor and fun, and I think that's important...for everyone, really, but how can you play a game for a living and not have fun? That just wouldn't be right.

Kolzig didn't start much then...remember Jim Carey?...but his first NHL shutout (against Phoenix) was on my birthday. (Technically the night before, but growing up the game closest to my birthday was my birthday game.) I was already a big Kolzig fan by then, because of his personality.

(I was talking to my sister about it this morning...since the team moved downtown, and we relocated the seats to the nosebleeds, we don't have a sense of the players' personalities anymore. Back then we could see who gave pucks to kids during warmups, who threw temper tantrums, who seemed to have fun. I'm pretty much resigned that when Gonchar and Kolzig go, that's the end of the Capitals as I knew them.)

I was thrilled to see Kolzig's game improve over the seasons, and my heart has gone out to his family as they've dealt with their son's autism. I don't presume to actually know the man, but I, who have had very few "favorite" players in 30 years, consider him that.

The last trade that really hurt me was Ryan Walter, and that worked out well in the end. I only hope everything with the CBA and lockout and rebuilding work out well, but I'm expecting to be hurting sometime in the next two weeks.

An itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie rant

I'm too beat to work up a full-blown tirade (much less a well-thought-out essay, which I'd have been capable of, once, when I still had cognitive skills)...

I know it's coming every year, but every year I forget about it til I open the mailbox and see it, and every year I get pissed off all over again.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. No sports, and way more illustration than I care to see.

workout

Did moderate session of Weight Watchers dvd, aerobic/strength circuit. I had trouble following the moves on the aerobics (why I like Leslie Sansone...not so many compound dancey things klutzy I can't do) but the weights were not bad. HR not nearly as high as gym...low 120s mostly. 30 minutes.

workout

This is about all I can muster today...

Tuesday: 20 minutes (segment 1) of Walk Off Weigh DVD. Something is better than nothing.

Today: gym, 60-second intervals, one circuit plus leg press, upright row, obliques, chest press, hamstring/quad, shoulder press, and abs. Didn't do the step in between all of them, but wanted the extra weights to get some stress out...

The bright side is that I did work out instead of, say, going out for cheeseburgers instead.

Not dead after all...

The Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) is going to make another go of it for the 2005 season. They've launched a ticket campaign, Keep the WUSA Dream Alive, for fans to pledge support.

When the league suspended operations last fall I felt guilty for not being supportive this year...I'm glad I have a chance to make up for it.

If all goes well, I'll be using my ticket vouchers to take my niece to see the Freedom. And come to think of it, I'll take my nephews, too.

workout

I'm patting myself on the back, because I did not want to go, but I went. Yay me.

60-second intervals, one circuit plus shoulder press, quad/hamstring, ab, chest press. (They rearranged the machines.)

I will be amazed if I actually manage to drag my ass out of bed to do a dvd in the morning.

I feel so...less clean

I took a shower before coming to work this morning, of course. (I'm at work. We don't get federal holidays.) I was feeling all squeeky clean til I caught this while skimming Nature's news page: Biohazard lurks in bathrooms.

Yes, this is just what I wanted to read:

Each time you take a shower you are engulfed by an aerosol of bacteria, Pace told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. In most cases, that will not be dangerous. But if you have an unprotected cut, or your immune system is suppressed, it could be a different story.

The bacteria probably feed on volatile organic chemicals shed from human bodies, says Pace, rather than on soap. "When you cough, belch or fart, you're putting a lot of organic chemistry in there," he says.

Now as far as I know my immune system is functioning just fine, and I don't stand there in the shower belching and farting, thank you very much. But still...I could have made it through the day without the thought that I'd showered in a bacteria aerosal.

Name that Tune

Playing that 80's song quiz reminded me of a "name that tune" game a buddy of mine and I used to play in boring classes (art history, Psych 100) back in school. One person would jot a line in a notebook and pass it to the other. We killed hours this way; somehow seeing the words on paper, divorced of tune and voice and surrounding lyrics, made recognizing songs we knew well more difficult than expected.

Since I took the 80's quiz I've been thinking of songs more my speed. I was toying with making a quiz, but all it would show was whether somebody else out there in Internetland has a record collection like mine.

So here are ten...I think they are dead easy, since they are all from songs with lots of radio play. Anybody know 'em?

The sheriff and his buddies with their samurai swords

Feelin' near as faded as my jeans

Then you flew your Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia
To see a total eclipse of the sun

And I was so pleased to be informed of this that I ran
Twenty red lights in his honor

I'm the friendly stranger in the black sedan

Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor

You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet

So baby, don't expect to see me
With no double martini in any high-brow society news

So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed

When the radical priest come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

workout

I did go to the gym Friday and Saturday, just didn't bother to enter it then: 60-second intervals, one circuit +6 stations. Saturday was my 1-month weigh in...up half a pound. Heh.

Today I did a new Lelslie Sansone dvd, which is actually older than the one I have, Walk Off Weight. 30 minutes was the warm up, 1 mile, and cool down. Not as intense as the WATP. Wasn't wearing the monitor so I don't know where I actually was.

Plan for this week: gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. We have games Tuesday and Thursday; I may try to get up early and do the WATP dvd before work. Feel free to laugh at that notion...

Lot of home games between now and the end of the season, which wil make the schedule a little tricky. Til the end I'll have to be content with "something is better than nothing" and re-evaluate in April.

Too old to rock & roll, too young to die

Usually I listen to the news/weather/traffic station in my car. It's a little pathetic, I know, but around here traffic reports are very important.

Last night on the way home from work I got annoyed by a commercial and starting jabbing the radio buttons. I hit the classic rock station, where they were playing some Led Zeppelin.

(For the record...I was a big Led Zeppelin fan when I was in school. I was more of a Who fan, but I certainly knew my hard rock/classic rock/even-into-heavy-metal music. Ask Victor...no synthesized 80s pop in my album collection.)

So it's Friday night, I have Led Zeppelin on the radio, and two things occur to me:

1. That's freaking loud. Must turn down the volume.
2. "Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time..." God, that's bad poetry.

The next thought, of course: When did I get old?

Valentine's Day

I'm not really cut out for Valentine's Day. I'm not a flower fan, because cut flowers are, well, dead. Not a big chocolate fan. The jewelry I wear usually consists of a Timex (and it has a velcro watchband). I'm also not very good at coming up with cute, flirty, or romantic gifts for him, either.

I don't hate Valentine's day, I just don't feel a need for it.

I do, however, enjoy the cynical and dark anti-Valentine's Day industry that has cropped up; for example, BitterSweets.

And hey, one of the candy hearts in the "Dejected" collection says "U C MY BLOG?"

...but some food is better than others...

Victor needs comfort food tonight, and wants to try a restaurant called Cheeburger Cheeburger.

(I can't wait to see if they have No Coke, Pepsi and No Fries, Cheeeeps.)

Generally if I'm going to a chain restaurant I try to check out a menu and nutritional information on their web page before hand...informed consumer, common sense, like I've been saying.

So I checked out the Cheeburger Cheeburger menu, and...whoa nelly!

Our Famous Pounder - Actually a huge 20 ounces!* If you can actually finish this monster, we’ll take a picture of you and put it on the wall with the other Cheeburger Cheeburger “Wall of Famers”

But I give them credit...veggie burgers, portobello mushrooms, and salads. That's really all I want...a few healthier options amid the giant slabs of less healthy indulgences. And they have red wine.

workout

gym, 60-second intervals, one circuit plus bicep, shoulder press, quad/hamstring, ab.

Food is good!

I wish I'd made it to the Theobroma Cacao: Ancient Crop, Medicinal Plant, Surprising Future symposium that was in town this week. How cool is this...science, poetry, and chocolate tastings!

Because of the Valentine's Day tie-in, I guess, the story from the symposium seems to be Chocolate May Contain Health Benefits. It actually isn't a new discovery...scientists have been studying phenolic phytochemicals (components of cocoa, red wine, tea, coffee, fruit, vegetables, herbs...in other words, plant-based foods) for years. Evidence suggests that these micronutrients have cardioprotective benefits, and may have synergistic effects with each other as well as macronutrients like amino acids to optimize metabolic function.

Or as I prefer to think of it: food is good for you.

With my frequent rants about obesity I probably come across as a food cop type, and I'm not, not really. I love food. I don't believe there's any food that ought to be taken off the market. I even eat at McDonald's.

What I do think is that many people are...naive. They get bombarded with good information, bad information, and incomplete information, and maybe somebody heard the "Hey, chocolate is good for your heart" story on the top 40 radio station this morning and used it as an excuse to buy the King Size Snicker, which would be a poor application of that bit of incomplete information.

There's a good paper (Reductionism and the Narrowing Nutrition Perspective: Time for Reevaluation and Emphasis on Food Synergy) on the 5 a Day web page. (Who pays the bill: the produce industry.) It highlights the importance of an "increased emphasis on overall dietary pattern" rather than focusing on one particular component or food.

Something to consider when making lunch...not flavonoids, not carbs, not calories, but lunch.

You can't be completely lazy, you can't be completely dependent on restaurants, you can't believe every advertisement or book, but it is not that hard to eat a reasonable and healthy diet.

I think I've determined that I'd like to be a nutritionist when I grow up. These are the stories that get me fired up, that spur me into doing more research and compel me to write absudly long blog posts I doubt anyone reads. I want to deliver the message: food is good.

(Too bad I'm already grown up, and have become accustomed to the standard of living provided by a lower management job and an 8-hour day. I do toy with the idea of chucking it all, going back to school, finding part-time jobs that will meet the mortgage, and then entering the exciting world of making half my current salary as a nutritionist when I graduate. Then I think, maybe I should just keep blogging.)

workout

Nothing yesterday.

Today: Gym, 60-second intervals, 1 circuit plus leg press, chest press/row, abduction/adduction, bicep/tricep, abs.

Hold on, I have a picture of it somewhere...

Ted has a list of what's on his desk. He got the idea from somebody else who got it from somebody else...and this is the kind of thing I love.

What's on my desk (this is at work, where, after all, I spend most of my time):

Phone
Mousepad
Tums EX
Rolodex
Copyholder
Speakers
Coffee cup (nasty residue of dried coffee inside)
Antibacterial hand gel
Orange bandana
Bottle of water
Can of Diet Pepsi Twist
Post-it notes (many, many Post-it notes)
Bottle cap (from yesterday's water)
Monitor
On top of monitor: turtle-shaped stress toy from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, two bobble-head dogs, two lizard Beanie Babies...all gifts
Packet of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride (with the drugs inside)
Packet of "Pain Aid" (empty)
Dilbert calendar
Lint brush
Highlighters
Calculator
Two cups of pens
Bowl of paperclips
Framed pictures of my niece and nephews (one each)
Frame with picture of the dog and iguana
Clock
Charger for my cell phone
Miniature Zen rock garden
Desk blotter
Two staplers, regular and industrial-strength
Tape dispenser
Staple remover
Multiple pens
X-Acto knife
Safety glasses
Clipboard
Desk blotter
Six shifting piles of paper and folders
Overflowing inbox

I found my picture...it's worse now.

Holes in my head

I went to a brutal self-help seminar a couple of years ago (long story behind that) and the second night...after two 16-hour days of having the emotional crap kicked out of us...the facilitator asked who had a headache. Nearly every hand in the room went up. He then led us through a visualization exercise to get rid of the pain, and to my complete surprise, it really helped.

I'm thinking about it now because I have a cluster headache going into hour 13, and no OTC painkiller has put a dent in it.

My ex-husband once told me that I experience the opposite of the placebo effect...I'm so cynical that even things that should work on me don't. Now I'm much less cynical that I used to be, and after a dozen years in pharmaceuticals (employement-wise, not being an addict) I understand something of pharmacodynamics.

This headache should be gone.

It's all about chemicals, pain is. You get your cascading prostaglandins and histamine and what-not, jumping those synapses until the message gets to your brain that you have a giant ice pick being stabbed repeatedly through your skull. Then all those good drugs get in there and interupt the synthesis of the painful chemicals or mimic the structure of nice soothing chemicals...ah, endorphins. Or opiates...just bind to those receptors, baby, and make the stabbing stop.

My chemicals need some better titration, because this headache is not quitting.

So back to the visualization thing. I haven't suceeded at getting that to work well myself, but it isn't for lack of belief. After all, thoughts...neural activities...are just more chemical transactions in the brain, right? Why shouldn't I be able to cause the internal chemical transaction that will for the love of God please keep the ice pick from penetrating my brain one more time...

...because I am starting to think that the reason the nice chemicals aren't working is that they have leaked out of the holes in my head and are lying in a puddle on the floor.

All my blogs are going to be rat infested

Victor came up with a great caption: Tell me how cute I am or I'll shoot you with my laser beam eyes!

workout

No F&F tonight, so I went to the gym. 60-second intervals...so it's a full circuit plus. i did lats, obliques, and leg press twice. Heart rate didn't go up and down as much with the longer sets, but it was more fatiguing.

I do still love hockey

When I turned on the NHL All-Star game I was wondering when the next one will be. As much as I have been trying to avoid the business news of the NHL--the huge rift between the league and the player's union that will likely cause a lockout next season--it is crossing my radar. For me, I think it is putting more of a damper on the year than the Cap's play.

The actual game was fun to watch, though. For awhile the All-Star games were like watching basketball...just going from one end to the other scoring. Last couple of years, though, the players have managed some defense even without the checking, and I think it shows hockey in a wonderful light. When I watch it I think, how can anybody not like this sport?

Watching Miracle put me in a good hockey mood, then the All-Star game improved it. Of course, the NHL had me years ago...I don't need inane Jim Belushi (or worse, Shania Twain) commercials to explain the game. They get my ticket revenue even on nights when we have an ice storm or I'm home sick. I am wearing some officially-licensed merchandise right now. I'm doing my part.

I'm going to try to block the CBA from my mind again. I'm going to try to ignore the trade deadline and the fact that half the team are on the auction block. I'm going to watch for guys playing like they love what they are doing.

If I can't find it at the MCI Center, maybe I can find it watching mites play at 4 am at the local rink.

No workout

Victor and I went down to Harrisonburg to pick up a rat this morning. It is only six hours...how in the world can six hours sitting on your butt in a car be so exhausting?

In the course of doing errands I did manage to pick up a couple workout DVDs for the next time rats cause me to miss the gym, but I wasn't feeling well enough to do one tonight.

My real goal with health and fitness is to reach a point where I can spend a day without exercising and eating crappy food and not have it ruin how I feel.

Well, I'm ok with the lack of exercise on occasion, but the crappy food left me feeling crappy. My body now rejects too much grease, I guess. To think my college diet was McDonald's, 7-11, and vending machines...

workout

It was tempting to blow off the gym, given the crappy weather, but I did just watch a movie of Herb Brooks making players do sprints in the dark.

so: gym, 40-second intervals, 2 circuits plus stretching. no extra sets, though.

My thoughts on Miracle

Spoiler: The US team wins. ;-)

I liked it fine. I had a few nit-picks that didn't ruin it for me, but I never forgot I was watching a movie, either. Here's what made the difference to me:

Victor has a DVD of a documentary about the 1980 team. He was watching it a few weeks ago and I happened to walk through the room during the part about the Soviet game. I stopped and watched. As Al Michaels said "Do you believe in miracles?" I teared up...

I liked the movie, but my eyes stayed completely dry.

After we got home, I checked the DVD because I wanted to look for some nitpicky details (like the width of the goalies' leg pads, and the rink...in the movie it looked like an NHL rink, not international; there wasn't enough ice behind the net...utter nitpicks, as I said). When Al Michaels said "Do you believe in miracles?" I teared up. It is an involuntary response to the real thing, I guess.

I've seen a few reviews of Miracle that find the political aspect forced. I think some of the dialogue may have been forced, but the context certainly wasn't. I have to wonder if those reviewers have actual memories of the games, or if they are like my friend.

Maybe you had to be there.

Miracle

A few years ago I shared an office with a coworker 8 years my junior. We joked about everything that became a generation gap between us...like my thinking of U2 as an alternative band while she thought they were classic rock.

Our biggest gap was revealed when another coworker of ours came in one day to tell us about the vacation she was planning to Lake Placid. I said "Whoa, cool!" while Junior said "Wasn't that a horror movie?"

I stared at her in disbelief. "The 1980 winter Olympics?" I asked. "Remember them?"

"I was three," she pointed out.

"But surely you have heard of them?" She shrugged. She knew nothing of Eric Heiden's five gold medals nor even the Miracle on Ice.

So I told her. I spent an afternoon explaining the Cold War and the hostages in Iran and the fact that the Soviet hockey team were really professionals whereas the U.S. team was college kids. (She didn't realize that Olympic teams weren't always pro-filled "dream teams." If I'm recalling my political history correctly, allowing pro atheletes into the Olympics was a move to level the playing field against the Soviet and Soviet bloc sports machines, just as those machines were breaking down.)

For me, personally, there was an aspect to the hockey gold not part of the greater social and political context. By 1980 I'd been a hockey fan in the DC suburbs for six years. If you think Washington is not a hockey town now, you should have seen it in the '70's. Wearing our Capitals shirts and trying to organize street hockey games in the neighborhood, my sister and I were the freaks of our elementry school.

(We also had a Capitals connection on the 1980 team...Craig Patrick, the assistant coach and GM, had played here. I'd even met him at a street hockey clinic the team gave for kids in 1977.)

After USA beat the Soviets, everybody was interested in hockey. I can remember going to the local mall on Saturday (the day after the win over the Soviet Union, the day before the gold medal game versus Finland) and seeing people clustered around a tv in an appliance store watching replays and cheering again. I remember seeing people actually wearing hockey jerseys.

The players who went from the Olympics to the NHL were a big draw. I remember hearing commercials "Come see Jim Craig!" and the Caps had their own Olympian, Dave Christian. (One of my favorite players over the years, in fact.)

The post-gold surge in hockey interest did die down...in 1982 the Capitals came close to folding, and I do wonder what the NHL will look like after next year's (years'?) lockout.

But when I got a voicemail message from Junior a few weeks ago saying "Nic, I just saw a preview for a movie about a seminal event in your life" I knew exactly what she was talking about, although I'd not realized Miracle was in the making.

I'll be heading out in a little while to see it. I've heard mixed reviews and I don't much care...of course it is a feel-good, triumph of the underdog, rah-America movie...it was a feel-good, triumph of the underdog, rah-America event. I just hope it's good hockey.

workout

gym, 40-second, 2 circuits.

Did the same as yesterday starting with abs, then after the second circuit I did the extra leg press for calves, then did the third ab set.

They added a new stretching poster (stretching for aerobics) with a series of stretches for the whole body, so I did those afterwords.

Except for being very hungry, I feel pretty good.

Pop music...talk about

My sister couldn't believe how well I did, considering how much I hated most pop music in the '80's (James Taylor fan, here, remember?)

I would have done better, actually, except I got "Your generation stuck mine with a motherload of cultural horrors (bradys! disco! plaid! roller skating!). -30% for being a yuppie. " from the author.

(See, Victor? Yuppie scum!)

workout

gym, 40 seconds intervals, 2 circuits.

had a clif bar when i got home, and definitely felt better...no bonky headache/nausea now.

started and finished on ab machine, so on the first set i wasn't already beat from the squats. ending there gave me one extra set. on the middle set i did an extra interval on the pad to let my heartrate drop more.

also did an extra set on the leg press, using my toes to get calves.

Wild rice and feta salad

I have a horrible mess of a junk drawer in my desk at work. I had to empty it out this morning in a search for staples (which I did not find...staples are the one office supply I never run out of, and yet, no staples.) In the process I found this recipe, which I made up a few years ago as a standard pot luck contribution. I guess it was good enough for someone to ask for my recipe, otherwise it would not have made its way to my kitchenless office.

The recipe is ...

• 1 cup uncooked wild rice (or mix of wild and brown rice)
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup dried canberries (I use sweetened Craisins)
• 6 to 8 ouces feta cheese, crumbled
• Vinaigrette salad dressing (I use an herb-y bottled vinaigrette)

Cook the rice and allow to cool. Mix the rice, celery, pecans, and cranberries, then enough vinaigrette to coat but not so much that the salad is swimming in oil. Mix in the crumbled feta shortly before serving. Can be served chilled or close to room temperature.

Keep me away from sharp things

No, that's not a suicide threat or anything, just an admission of how freaking clumsy (and dumb) I can be.

A few months ago I sliced my finger open cutting an onion, requiring some stitches and a couple hundred bucks since I went to an out-of-network emergency facility.

Sunday I was joking about it with a friend who almost cut his thumb off with a saw.

Earlier this evening I was cleaning the girls' cage and decided to put a hole in a piece of cloth so I could chain it to the wire of the cage (if you have rats you understand.) So I got the proper tool grapped a pair of dull scissors and carefully pointed them away from any flesh pushed them with great force right through my left index finger.

Direct pressure, hand over my head...

I hope the bleeding stops soon, I've still got rats to medicate and I'm getting woozy.

On the other hand (Heh. All I have now is the other hand!) I was contemplating ordering a cheesesteak for dinner. Now I have an excuse; I need some iron.

workout

Gym, 40-second intervals, 2 circuits.

HR...in "aerobic zone" with spikes into "high intensity" according to the chart on the wall. i give up trying to remember. they are selling the polar a5 and m32. i am tempted.

next week we do 60-second intervals. the squats will kill me. i've slowed them down, but my HR still was 172 after. i should start on the abs so i can do one good, unfatigued set there.

No workout yesterday. The kitchen probably isn't intense enough to count but I get home too late and too tired. Maybe I should do Sun. am as a longer workout.

It will be August

I keep telling myself that. To get through August, we must go through February. To get through August, we must go through February. To get through August, we must go through February.

If I had any sense, I'd get through February in Aruba.

It could be worse, I could talk about the halftime show

Not every February post will be about cardiovascular health, I'm sure. But this is my soapbox, after all...

A blurb in this month's Shape magazine led me back to the Journal of the American Medical Association to check out the report "Ability of Exercise Testing to Predict Cardiovascular and All-Cause Death in Asymptomatic Women." Johns Hopkins, where the study was conducted, also published a summary: Exercise Measures Identify Heart Disease in Seemingly Healthy Women.

What Shape picked up on, and what most interested me:

...women who performed below average in peak exercise capacity and recovery rate were 3.5 times more likely to die of heart disease than women who were above average. Among women with seemingly low risk for heart disease based on traditional criteria, those who scored below average on these measures were nearly 13 times more likely to die of heart disease than those who performed better on the tests.

So:

Samia Mora, lead study author and a senior clinical fellow in Hopkins' Division of Cardiology, said, "Our study suggests that women may benefit from higher fitness levels, independent of changes in weight, blood pressure or cholesterol levels. Exercise capacity might be improved by 15 to 30 percent with moderate regular physical activity."

WebMD's coverage of the Hopkins study adds the practical advice for interested women who aren't scheduled for a stress test in the near future:

...Mora tells WebMD that you can get a rough idea of your recovery level by doing a little math during and immediately following an intense workout.

"While you exercise at the highest level possible, check your heart rate by counting the beats for 15 seconds and then multiplying by four," she says. "Then, when you stop exercising completely, sit in a chair for two minutes and then count your heart rate again. Subtract the two numbers."

In her study, when the initial difference between those two numbers was 55 or more, women were less likely to die of heart disease decades later than when the difference was less than 55 beats at that two-minute measurement.

February is Heart Month

This year there seems to be a particular focus on women's heart health, judging by the press releases I've been getting.

In my own family, cardiovascular problems...hypertension, stroke, cholesterol...have affected the men and women, but the men seem to die younger from cancer while the women have lingered through more years of, frankly, lousy quality of life.

Something's going to get me in the end, and sometimes I think it's a big cosmic roll of the dice as to what it will be. But I've sat in enough waiting rooms, pushed enough wheelchairs, and looked up enough drug information to make me realize the value of doing what I can now to minimize the risk of dying how my grandmother did...one stroke at a time for eight years.

I know I get preachy when I wear my Public Health hat, so I'll try to be lower-key and just put up some links to some appropriate sites:

♥ The Heart Truth from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH.

♥ Go Red for Women from the American Heart Association.

♥ Sister to Sister: Everyone Has A Heart Foundation, Inc.

♥ The Women's Health Initiative at NIH.

workout

I was going to go to the "real" gym, but when Victor said he didn't want to I wussed out. So...home workout.

Atlantic Soul Classics CD. Warmed up bouncing on the ball for the first song, then bounced between weights (space in list) for a song. Total time ~35 minutes, heart rate from 120s to 170.

Weights:
Dumbbell squat, 3x10, 7.5#
Toe raises with 7.5# dumbbells, 3x10

Dumbbell fly, 3x10, 5#
Upright row, 12# bodybar, 2x10

Overhead dumbbell press, 5#, 2x10, 1x5
Bentover row, bodybar, 2x10

Overhead tricep extensions, 5# dumbbell, 2x10, 1x5

Crunch, 2x12
Reverse crunch 2x12 (heartrate down to 113 by end of crunches)

Didn't do biceps because they've been getting good work at the gym, didn't do more legs because of the bouncing.