Thursday, January 05, 2012

Things work themselves out

What a difference a couple days make. Well, that and realizing not to eat before working out.

Completed my second workout tonight and the result was so much better than the first. On that regretable night, I had arrived at the gym to find a packed parking lot and the city's most popular radio station doing a live remote. Never mind, I thought, pulling back onto the street and heading home.

I decided I'd go back later when the post-work crowd had subsided. So I went home and enjoyed a nice dinner with the family of leftover chili. I only had one bowl.

That was enough.

I drove back into town and overcame the apprehension and walked myself into that Gold's Gym Express. I went into the locker room and removed my jacket, put on my iPod and walked decisively out into the large open room full of evvery kind of workout apparatus imaginable. I knew I needed to do some cardio. Yet the bikes were positioned in front of the treadmills which were in front of the ellipticals. So rather than become the evening's entertainment, I headed straight for the back row and clambered up onto an elliptical.

Now this wasn't my first muscle machine rodeo. I know what an elliptical is capable of doing to even people who are in shape, much less morbidly obese people like me. But I was going to take it easy.

I tried to turn it on using a Quick Start button but that didn't take. So I hit start and was then cross-examined with a series of questions that included weight, age, gender and probably middle name. One question it asked was how long I wanted to do it. Five minutes seemed pitifully short - so I typed it in. Finally it told me to start.

Immediately, there wasn't as much resistance as I expected. And I don't recall past ellipticals making you feel like you're moon walking. But this one did and eventually I got the rythym and started walking away. It had little poles on the sides like ski poles and a second place to hold on in the middle front. A couple minutes in, I went to grab the middle ones and the machine flashes an alert that I needed to hold the sensors for my heart rate to be measured. Of course there's no normative data, so it gives me a number that really is nothing more than a number to me. Seems kinda high, but isn't that what exercise is all about?

This thing eventually gets harder. But I try not to let up and look like some guy who hasn't been in a gym in over eight years or more. Then it really surprises me and scares the hell out of me. It says my heart rate is too high! That's not exactly the message a person who lives in fear of a heart attack wants to see the first time he tries getting some exercise. I slow down as much as I can.

The rate slowly falls and I try to keep it just under the warning threshold. I though five minutes would never get there.

When I got done, I worked my way around to some machines to work my upper body. I always preferred to do upper body any way. None of the machines was particularly hard - I just tried to get enough reps in to make it matter. But i was winded and continually looking for a drink of water. Hit the water fountain two or three times between machines. Just wasn't catching my stride. I eventually decided - OK, that's enough.

Went into the locker room and immediately sat on the bench to catch my breath and sort of cool off. I immediately became nauseous. It took everything I had to not throw up. Was hot, uncomfortable and almost dizzy. A stranger who came in noticed me looking odd and said, Hey man, you OK?

Told him I wasn't feeling well and just needed to take it easy for a little while. He said, "yeah, you've got to be careful. You're not going to lose it all on first night."

"Yeah," I replied, with what little courtest laughter I could muster, wishing he'd just leave. And he actually did fairly soon.

I must have sat there for 10 or 15 minutes and finally felt good enough to stand. I gathered my stuff and headed for my truck. Called the wife and told her I overdid it.

My second night was tonight. I didn't eat before I went. I did the bicycle instead of the elliptical. And I did even more upper body, and just a little lower body work. I left feeling pretty good. Reminded me of college when I lifted fairly regularly and enjoyed it.

Maybe this will work out after all. What have I got to lose but a hundred pounds or so?

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

An odd ode to a non-musician

It's one thing to be an odd person and another thing completely to be an odd person and realize it.

I fall in the latter category and cannot apologize. I can only state that I was just made this way.

This oddness manifests itself in many ways. My interest in music is one. And it's not the types of music that make me odd. I listen to '80s metal and rock, classic country and modern Texas/Americana music. Those are all popular enough. What's weird is how important music is to me.

I've not played an instrument since the flutaphone in the 4th grade. I remember being jealous of my classmates who got to participate in a program that I presume was like Suzuki strings and they got to learn to play the violin. The rest of us just plodded along on our white-and-red flutaphones playing "Hot Cross Buns" over and over.

That was my one and only experience playing music. Missed the window for band after switching schools. For the rest of my life, I've been a consumer of music. And what a consumer I have been.

Somewhere in the bowels of this blog is a list of concerts I can remember attending. And that didn't include in the last four years, when my number of Texas/Americana shows has skyrocketed. Granted, it's been a few different artists at a lot of shows (Bruce Robison, Kelly Willis, Slaid Cleaves, Lost Immigrants have all seen my face multiple times).

I have a lot of music (enough to fill a 60GB iPod) and don't mind buying it. I've actually bought music after getting it free online. I attend concerts and buy merch.

Two minor asides on these topics: 1) one of my friends is befuddled that I would go see someone more than once. He can't understand why after I've seen the artist live would I want to go see them again. For me, every show is unique. They typically play a different mix of songs, the sound is different, the musical arrangement's sometimes different, the venue is different. Can't fully explain it and so I won't. 2) Buying merch is part of the fun of going to a show, but when you're looking for ultra-fat-man sized T-shirts, you can pretty much write it off. There's nothing worse than convincing yourself that 2X will fit and getting home to find out it will fit a 2X teenaged girl.

Music in so many ways affects me. In high school, I used to know a lot of song lyrics. I could come up with a lyric for almost any situation. I once considered trying to find a way to turn that into a career (like choosing songs for specific scenes in movies) but I probably wisely let that dream fly away.

Still, there are songs that I can listen to over and over and over. And I still can't fully explain that. Other people seem less obsessed with music than me. Many simply don't even think about it. So why am I so odd?

Maybe it's because I have such an appreciation for what goes into a good song. Good writing is so important. Most people don't know this but as a writer, I cannot make myself read fiction any more. Somewhere along the line I stopped and haven't been able to go back. And I pretty much think to myself, well anyone can make up fiction. I *could* do it. I just don't. And so I stick to non-fiction. As a journalism major, I have a super-appreciation for the ability to tell the real story.

Yet it is obvious to me as it probably is to readers of this post that songs are typically fictional. And you know what? That doesn't bother me. I think because I see songwriting as another echelon. Whereas anyone can make up a story, a songwriter (usually) has to make it catchy and most importantly, set it to a melody. And then we're back to my lack of musical talent.

I have no musical talent and only the greatest envy of those who do have it. They can make it seem so easy. I'm one of those people who sings along and play air guitar and drums during the same song, shifting between guitar licks and drum paradiddles with no regard for continuity or accuracy.

In the meantime, I have been writing about music. I write feature stories about musicians for a non-profit music series that brings Texas singer-songwriters (and some who don't fit that mold from time to time) to a city I used to live in. And it's very rewarding for me in many ways. I feel like I can actually do what I do best within an industry I love but would never attempt to make money in. Because that's when it stops being fun.

This allows me to hold my own among creative people whom I admire and no one else tells me how to do it. It's pure freedom that I revel in.

And while no one else really gets that part of me aside from my wife, who shares at least a little of my fanaticism, that's OK. I'm just odd like that.

A non-story of too little too late

So maybe I do believe in writer's block. Or maybe it should be writer's too-lazy-to-go-to-the-trouble, which is kinda what mine's been like. Two years since I wrote here. But a friend's solicitation of blogs to read yielded mine in a private exchange and prompted me to think that I really ought to get back to writing in my blog.

In the last two years, there've been numerous times I've *almost* written something. If Facebook had tolerated longer posts or made its Notes more visible, I might have done it. But I didn't.

I tend to think about writing a lot. I would like to write about that, I often think to myself, usually at a time when I didn't have the time. Then, at times when I do have the time, none of that inspiration is within arm's reach.

One topic I considered today, while waiting for a callback from a utility company, was about how companies that send technicians to your home or even the onese who offer 'customer' service via telephone seldom really care about your time. The preface is that we simply should be available when they are available. My uncle John has some great stories on this topic related to his numerous encounters with the Cuddyback trail camera customer service department.

So I'll mark this spot as the day I got back to writing, and then cop out and not really do anything but freewrite on the subject of getting back to writing. Maybe tomorrow, maybe later tonight, or maybe in 2014....