Bit my tongue, bad. Hurth.
Updath: Getting better, thill hurths a bith.
Marko’s book came in the mail Sunday on a special delivery from Amazon, but it took me until Monday to crack the cover. It’s a honkin’ good read, lots of the characters I seem to know already. I am at chapter 23 and stayed up past my usual bedtime to get there – it’s a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see/read what happens next – and what the next book will be like.
My 80-something active Mom who never smoked once in her life now needs an oxygen supplement since a bit of invasive avian lung-crud has reduced her blood-oxygen levels, and my 90’something Dad who was once a very able-bodied Midshipman and Annapolis crew-team rower can’t hardly lift a 8-foot 2×4.
They were both into healthy lifestyles and eating right (as Missionaries it boils down to the Scriptural-advice of 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Your body is a temple, don’t put anything bad into it.” ) before it was a fad – but Dad also always eschewed the Jack La Lane life of “Physical Culture” – of the Venice Beach bodybuilder types who did handstands and chin-ups and weightlifting for show, and my own youthful strength training as such was was in swimming and water-polo and bicycling – cyclic, endurance based activities rather than ground-pounding or lifting things.
For one thing, I started early and took Swimming and Polo on purpose, so that I never had to spend another Jr. High moment among the acrid stench of sweat-socks and nasty towels and weird PE teachers ever again. Water with a bit of chlorine was clarifying, clean, and refreshing – even if practice started at 6:00am on cold days rain or shine – and rain was just water in the air. The strength that built lasted a long time, and helped me while tramping around odd places on this wet rock, but time has a way of eroding things and replacing them with gauzy memories.
Now in our second half-century, with my a bunch of trauma-induced University desk-weight lost by She Who Endears Us, we are kicking-away at the side of the pool so to speak, and kicking away from the Groaning Table of fatted-calf sloth and the wretched zombie-life of Cubicleland. It’s reported that Strength itself is a desireable goal, and now is the time to restore our capability – so we’re hefting hand-weights and doing crunches and reading Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, and watching the DVD — and now looking for a bar.
Rippetoe says, “For home gym purposes, a 28.5mm or 29mm bar will be the most durable and provide the best service over time.” As a Pro-Level Capitalist Consumer the advice is blandly generic however, and being totally unfamiliar with the inside of a sweaty-stinky gym I have nowhere to begin and there is no familiar landscape of brand-names to guide me. Do you get the Super-Sumo Yakuza II Japanese bar, or the EinfachGewicht Überheber-3000 machined on an X-Y-Z-axis device from pure Edelstahl on the Continent? I dunno.
The only advice I recognize is, “…expect to pay around $300 for a good bar.” But as a Pro-Level Capitalist Consumer I really hate shopping from the right side of the Menu, you might end up with something inedible. Oh well…and where am I gonna put this stuff, in the garage? What about the motorcycles?
UPDATE: Found it under Resources > Equipment: “We recommend the 20kg Burgener & Rippetoe bar. Here’s the Guys and here’s the Gals versions.
In the evening the Low-Grade 101 fever returned. Feeling dull as dishwater, I attempted to take a nap – and began shivering in bed. Convulsively. My neck was cold and with the chest-wall pain there was nowhere to turn, or turn-over and find comfort. I couldn’t lay flat, I couldn’t lay on either side. The chills escalated into muscles spasms that yanked at every corner – Yowww!
I understand Fever, it’s your body actively burning off the crud and nasty goop that’s hanging around too long, but what’s with Chills and Shivers? Is it the semi-passive lymph system trying to shake-off and physically process that cast-off crud and goobers?
I also remember this happened last time after the motocross incident – and it was also after a few days of going around semi-normal but with pain and general listlessness. Wham! The chills, I also remember that after that episode, things all started to march along – it signaled the end of it all and the beginning of an upward curve. So good, we’ll be all happy-dappy soon enough.
Decided also that the only way to get any sleep would be to sleep sitting-up, it’s like an airplane with more leg-room. So we got a cushion from the couch and brought it in to the bedroom. I can do this. More ibuprofen and went to bed with the alarm set to wake me in 5-hours when it was time to take another dose. Sleep was forthcoming, gradually.
UPDATE: Awoke feeling all chipper and much better. No chills and the chest-wall was almost sound. Amazing. Had a green smoothie and went down to Folsom Kaiser for a past-due eye-exam. Now that we’re retired it’s all Kaiser all the time. Could be worse, the facility is unlike the BayAryan one in many-many positive (too me) respects. Our eyes are 100% and the necessary correction showed improvement – which needed a slight reduction.
Worst thing about the visit was the magazines to read: Hunting & Fishing (I guess we REALLY aren’t in the BayArea!), Home Decor, Airplanes! Someomne had left an AOPA Pilot magazine to read. I live near the airport, the little planes fly over, maybe I should learn to fly – besides, with a truck and a motorcycle we really don’t need a second car. Not gonna live forever and we don’t have any heirs, and certainly not gonna waste good money on Bad Gov.
It seems we DID move far-enough away, and onto a rock outcropping, so we felt nothing and our sleep was undisturbed. Watching the morning newscast with a hint of panic in the audio, it also seems apparent that some of the news-readers and standup camera-bodies chattering away are not originally from around here – or are so young then don’t remember Loma Prieta, which was 25 years ago.
As Old NFO said in comments, I’ve got a work-out goin’ on. We fought the rocks and the rocks won. 86° Fahrenheit yesterday and the hottest day of the year so-far – 16-degrees above average.
We started moving the rocks off the tree roots in preparation for laying down tan-bark – something more gentle on the shrubbery. And the pseudo-curbside had rock-chip in place but the smooth river-rock (known to dirtbike riders as “baby-heads”) only wrapped around a portion of the frontage, stopping at the walkway, so we started filling-in. My little plastic wagon was taxed mightily and has not yet broken despite our efforts, the “dump” feature coming in very handy. We stopped yesterday at about 16-feet of frontage. There’s more roundy-river-rock in places we don’t need or want, but the work is heavy-lifting and we’re takin’ a break.
UPDATE: Back at it – this is morning work, by the time the sun gets way-up there’s no shade.