Down to a trim 175 and feeling great.   Running 20-25 miles a week!

See you soon.

I am alive.  I spent a few days in Tennessee visiting with my family and some of my wife’s family who invaded from the Lone Star State. 

I drove home this morning, and I was going to mow the yard, but it was too wet.  I drove to the office and finished my grades.  Before I submitted Fs for students who deserved them, I wanted to make certain that none had dropped the course, and I did not have my folders with me.  I got my grades in and had to submit a silly report that my college requires about three times every semester. 

I came home and worked in the yard.  I mowed, edged and blew.  Gosh, it was wonderfully delightful outside.  It was in the high 80s, and there was the nicest breeze blowing.  It almost reminded me of California weather. 

Tonight, I am eating brown rice and some pinto beans and watching the Olympics.

It appears that John Edwards is, in fact, the weasel I always suspected he was.  It’s so nice to be proven right.

I did manage to work out this week.  I lifted three days and did some cardio on Monday and today.  The weights, surprisingly, felt good.  I am no where near where I used to be, but it feels good to be pushing my body again.  My diet has been really bad;  I guess I have not gotten serious enough/disgusted enough yet.  The way for me to lose weight is steady exercise and weight watchers;  I am about the same weight I was when I began weight watchers several years ago and was successful.  To be honest, I have not gotten on the scale for more than a week.  I have not been brave enough.

In the morning, I will get up early and treadmill.  Then I will drive to Tennessee and join everyone at my mom’s house.  Two of the kids are doing a swim meet in Chattanooga, and my nephew Benjamin is being Christened Sunday. 

I posted an announcement to my online students stating that I would not be online until Monday.  Imagine that!   

I am surprised at this weight, considering the way I gorged myself last night on low-grade Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger mix.  Crap if I did not eat the whole thing.  The reason, though, is that I had not eaten all day song sans two pieces of dry toast in the morning.   I exercised a few times this week, too, but I can do better, and after yesterday’s lapse, I feel better today and have my focus back.

Today I have had the following:

2 pieces of dry wheat toast and coffee for breaksfast
1 cheese sandwich, red grapes, and raisens for lunch

I am going to work out in the morning real hard — some cardio and strength training.  I am going to need to do better and stay with it to get to 219.5 next week. 

On a different front, it appears I have a fungus attacking my “lawn” in the front yard.  Large dry brown spots surrounded by green spots.  At first, I unabashedly turned my wrath on the often misunderstood and maligned grub.  But I swung by the Co-Op today on the way to the office and got steered toward some product that should help combat the plague.  I will take pictures before and after.  I am not holding my breath; it always seems that a “bag of this” is always twenty dollars and “guaranteed” to be what you nedd to get the job done. 

I worked a little on my next chapter of my dissertation today, and I think I am going to be off to a good start.  I sent my director an e-mail last night announcing that the focus of this chapter was going to shift a little.  I have not heard anything back from him yet, but he should be okay with it. 

115 calories: 3 cups of coffee w/creamer
120 calories: 2 pieces dry wheat toast

Lunch:

45: 1 small orange
350 : 1 chicken sandwhich:

Snack:

Salad w/ tomatos and bell pepper.  Light dressing.

Dinner:

1 small bowl of pasta/red sauce
1 piece of bread

Had a good workout on the Orbitrek — a good sweat for thirty minutes, and then I did some light weights, taking it easy to avoid further back strain.

Later:  The stratocaster arrived tonight while the kids were swimming.  I unpacked it and surveyed it.  It appears to be in terrific physical shape.  I immediately re-strung it with a set of .09s I had.  The set up on this guitar was simply awful.  I couldn’t put my finger on what was going on.   I could not play it and thought, “Well, I’ve been playing bluegrass for two-three solid years now.”  The strat felt heavy, and I could not strum the thing.  Aha, the pickups were ridiculously high — hitting the strings! 

I did a little research online and found a nice site explaining pickup height adjustment.  I did that and it is already light years better.  I will still take it to the local guitar tech and have him do a set-up on it.  I think there is too much relief in the neck, too, and the intonation needs setting.  I will put a set of .10s on it, which will make it not so twangy and buzzy.   I bought the set last night on E-bay.  I thought I’d try a set of Elixir light nanowebs.  I like Elixirs on my acoustic, and I have never tried their electric strings. 

I stayed up too late — to 11:15 playing it through the pod.  It was great fun. 

In the past, I have thought it may be stress related.  My body does not process stress well.  It’s not uncommon for me to pop a stress blister or some other ailment — pains in arms and back, etc.  This time, the onset may be traced to either a moment of overzealous exercising:  “Can this treadmill really do a ten percent incline?”  Or, it may have been the workout with weights yesterday, although I really did not push myself for fear of injury.  Maybe in the fear of injury I became stressed and that caused my back to flare up. 

We had a pretty quiet Memorial Day all in all.  Late in the day we trekked across town to a friend’s and hung out, barbecued some burgers and hotdogs, chips, beans, ice cream, and a couple of beers. Heck, if you can’t indulge a little on a national holiday, then there is something drastically wrong.  I brought my Martin D-18 and the Gibson A9 mandolin.  I find that having an instrument or two with me helps me cope extended social visits;  yes, i realize that these may be thought of a wooden pacifiers.

I did not have a good weigh in today:  223.5

I need to get my focus back.  Tomorrow, our summer session begins, and I am teaching the ten-week session.  Here is what I am proposing to myself:  lose two pounds a week for ten weeks.  No beer or ice cream (with the exception of the 4th of July; it’s a national holiday).  This would put me close to 200 by the end of the summer,  I can do this if I put my mind to it.  I have done it before.  I am tired of carrying this extra weight around.  I really do not feel well at all. 

Ran by wal-mart and bought a USB cable to connect the newer Dell monitor to the tower.  This way we can access four USB ports off the monitor and not have to crawl down and try to access the two that hard to reach on the lower front panel of the tower.  That was a pretty poor design, actually. 

Worked out for an hour on the treadmill;  I managed to burn 650 calories walking four miles.  It felt great!  I’ve had a pretty good day calorie/point wise, too.  I’ve just eaten a bowl of grapenuts and some coffee today — and lots of water.

I will dig around and find pictures of some of the other instruments soon.  I am still researching strings for the upright bass.  There are a few good forums out there devoted to basses.  The Bluegrass Bass Place looks good, but they have yet to activate my account, so I cannot post to it yet. 

Yesterday, my longer (25′) microphone cable arrived.  I bought it to reach the music room, specifically so that I could record the piano.  My oldest two are quite accomplished players, and I wanted to make sure to get some recordings of them playing.  I’ve never recorded a piano, and, having only one microphone, I knew it would be challenging.  I use a Studio Projects B1 large diaphram condenser microphone on almost everything because . . . well . . . it’s all I have.  I was actually pleasantly suprised at the fidelity.  My son was tired, though, and quickly became frustrated at the numerous takes, so we sacked it and will try again later.  I think, although I’m not sure, that a lot of the sound of a console piano resonates off its back, which means I might be better off pulling it from the wall a little.  I don’t know.  Do you? 

I placed the mic on a boom about six feet up over his right shoulder, angled downward at the piano at about forty-five degrees.  I cloned the track (since it is recorded in mono) and it did not sound too bad.  I look forward to doing more recording.  I really want to get the boys excited about it;  I want them to be as creative as possible when it comes to their music.  They are both so gifted. 

I spent a little bit of time yesterday cleaning/clearing off the tower computer and workstation  This is all part of an agreement between my wife and me.  She really wanted a new laptop for scooting around to various swim meets and the like, so we bought her a new Dell laptop, and her concession was that I could use the main home computer for recording.  I am going to work today on configuring the work area so that it is more usable.  The main problem is that the area becomes a dumping ground for various tidbits of paper, mail, trash, etc.