(again, random thoughts, personal stuff; nothing to see here)
The Liz (my 15.83 y.o. daughter) has been on my case lately for two reasons: 1) I've been getting a little heavier and 2) being a female teenager, she feels she is as well. So after visiting her Mom in California and doing some workouts with Ma, she decided that we needed to do the same. So I had an old healthclub membership that I could renew ($300/yr for the both of us; NICE). Well after three weeks of yelling at the old man, I finally got up off my butt and renewed the membership, added her and we both started with workouts tonight. Cardio only for me for probably six-eight weeks because I need to rebuild a little stamina before doing some lifting. So as the lower cased one would have you believe, you need both brains and brawn. I've got some strength from lifting a few years back, but the overall brawn thing was really lacking. I'm a girlie-man and need to change that. I need to get pumped up again. When I worked in NYC, I regularly spent time at the World Trade Center Marriott (when I didn't keep an apartment in NYC) and they had an outstanding gym on the top floor. I really was able to increase my strength and maxed out on most of the machines that work the back. My favorite was a machine that emulated "Good Mornings" or working on a roman chair. This exercise works the erector spinae and is great for lower back strength. At my best, I could do 3 sets of 12 reps on the machine max: 460 lbs. Now I'm overweight and weak. I had forgotten in the last few years how much I miss the gym.
I'm glad The Liz is doing something for herself and getting me to do something healthy as well.
By the way, The Liz, like any girl/woman, hates some part of her body. She took Ballet, Jazz and Tap dance for about six or seven years when she was younger and only stopped when she was 12 (to play the Alto Sax, no less; that's another story). But she's got a good figure and she is growing up and developing, if you know what I mean. STOP THAT. Where's my little girl? I suppose she gets more attention than she should, but she is really a little hellfire, so she keeps the guys in their place. Good girl.
Anyways, the other quick thought that I had was just some quick ego-surfing popped up a few interesting links. Mostly, search engines find my comments that I've written to others, but occasionally, I find someone that has me on their blog roll. I found two and this is reason to celebrate. Two people that don't know me that read me AND ADMIT IT IN PUBLIC. I'll mention one tonight and one in a near future post.
The first one that I found is Monish's Blog. He's obviously a .NET guy and is in the Midwest and codes (check the URL). He's got Sahil and I as the only two on the blogroll. You can stop there. That's perfect. You don't want to clutter the place up any further. It appears that he has just started blogging at the beginning of July.
And the other guy that has me on his blogroll (that I'm aware of and actually shows up on google) is a guy who has good things to say about some database issues that I rant about regularly. Give me a few days, as I've got some goodness on this one, because he's got material that gives me an excuse to rant some more (and he gets it right) . . .