cindy's world

Lunch was great! I had a strenuous workout, someone found and turned in my workout gloves to lost-n-found and thereby restored my faith in humanity, and a very fit guy at the gym complimented me on my personality. Heh. When I got back to work, I had a Tijuana bakery cookie that my reporter’s friend at the gym just brought back fresh, a white peach, and a tomato. It’s not pizza, but yummy nonetheless.

The 45 minutes of hard cardio I hammered out at lunchtime didn’t revive me as it usually does. I’m just tired and my eyes and skin are sore. I almost skipped the gym today to join my coworkers for a comfort food binge at a local Mexican food restaurant, but at the last minute, I remembered that I’m supposed to give advertising help/tutorials to a friend and his business partners after work, and that my friend had planned to order pizza for the meeting.
Ah, pizza… that’s always something to look forward to and save calories for. Unless the plan falls apart, in which case I may be just as content to clean my house and veg out in front of my bigscreen and order my own pizza.
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gan aft a-gley. Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”

The workout I just had kicked my ass! As I told my court reporter in the locker room, you know you had a good workout when the heat coming off your body makes you smell your shampoo. 10 min bike warmup, 20 mins weights (3 sets each of a chest, back and leg exercise in a superset circuit), 20 mins biking cardio. I can no longer claim that I don’t sweat, I merely glisten.

Awaiting the Michael Jackson verdict… Got the radio on for live coverage, Jackson’s ETA is in 7 minutes. They’ll do some court stuff on the record first so the verdict will probably be read closer to 2pm.

I changed up my lunchtime workout. I’m gonna do cardio every day (as opposed to alternating cardio and weight training days) to crank up the fat-burn factor. How much more muscle does a girl need, anyway? Once the fat layer’s burned off, the existing muscle will show up nicer. So Tuesday I resistance-trained all the minor muscle groups; Wednesday I biked; Thursday I ran 3 miles (hills and all); today I biked 5 mins, then supersetted 1 chest, 1 leg, 1 back excercise in a 3-set circuit (15 reps per set), then went back on the bike for 20 minutes. The workout kicked my butt! But I felt much better coming back to work after that.

My staff and I had a conversation today about how “living” is not to spend countless hours every night at a bar, stationary except for the constant arm movement lifting alcohol to mouth, forking over hard-earned money in exchange for useless calories and inebriation. Living is visiting important friends and meeting his/her friends, and doing things like bike rides in beautiful wine country, creating friendships, new perspectives, and memories. When I look back over the last couple of years, it looks like a life in shadow. Blurry, cold, frustrating, drudging. Trying not to get dragged down into the sludgy viscosity, trying to watch deluded drunk men’s backs as the only sober person, while trying to watch my own back to keep from being dragged into barfights or destruction of others’ personal property. In wonderous contrast, where I have been the last few weeks is sunny, colorful, vibrant. This is living! This is learning, experiencing, growing. I hope I never again become stagnant like I had been.

I’m having trouble registering for my Kenpo Karate class online, so I guess I’ll do it in person later on in the week. It won’t be tomorrow, tho, since I will be attending a specialized bread-making class after work. 🙂 This is living!

…College students aren’t the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. “Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments,” says Pressman.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. (Partial quote of article from WebMD)

Oh, great. Well, that’s yet another reason to broaden my social network right now. While I’m still young enough and energetic enough to do so. I’ve always been one for taking prophylactic measures, which is why I work out, save for retirement, have a college fund for a kid I don’t even have yet, take vitamin supplements. All the little problems that people have in their mid-late 30s really begin in their early 20s. The back problems, the high blood pressure, certain types of diabetes, heart/cholesterol problems, knee problems, even osteoperosis. My newest thing is anti-wrinkle cream! I figure it’s easier to keep my skin supple than to erase wrinkles once they’re in place. I’m trying to prevent the old adage, “If I only knew then what I know now…” because I think a lot of the information the older people have, the younger people also have access to, and it’s up to us to apply the knowledge to prevent one day repeating the adage.

Last Wednesday, I had a conversation with a coworker at the gym while the two of us were doing our cardio set on the stationary bike. He made a breezy comment about seeing me work out daily and how I only need to keep it up until I get married. I turned and looked at him in surprise. “You think I’m doing this just to land a husband?” I asked. He looked at ME as if it had never occured to him that a girl would be at the gym for any other reason but to sweeten the bait to hook some naive young buck. “I wouldn’t do that to my husband,” I told him, “Even after years of marriage I still want to make my husband proud to have me on his arm and I still want his friends to be envious that his wife looks a certain way.” My coworker looked impressed, and I bit my tongue against the urge to add, “I’m sorry your wife got fat on you.” Which, of course, I don’t know for a fact because I’ve never seen his wife, but I’m sure she’s lovely.