Mountains Made Low

Someone recently told me that if they hadn’t seen the pictures of my progressive weight loss, they wouldn’t have believed it. So I now present the evidence to each and every one of you. I don’t have any fun with over-sized clothes pics, but I think these should be evidence enough. And bragging enough, too.

Just remember that there was somewhere between 20 and 40 pounds of loss before that first one, too (for which I, thank God, have no photographic evidence).

I feel like I’ve gotten behind here on the blog. To “catch up,” I’ll be posting some updates to stories from the past month or so. I would feel somewhat cheesy posting these short updates individually, however, so I’ll conglomerate them all right here in this one post. Then, I’ll move on to new stuff, and relatively soon.

Update #1 – Got Gas? The gas prices just keep falling here in the wonderful town of Fremont. As of this morning (well, last night on my way home, when the gas station was closed and, therefore, already had today’s price posted on the sign), the place that serves as my everyday touchstone for gas prices had fired their newest shot in this war: $2.599. I’m thinking that, even with the general economy in the pooper, and the other factors that I and others have discussed before (Got Gas?), I don’t trust it. Must buy gas today, even though I don’t need gas. Which, if nothing else, should guarantee that it goes down again soon. (Also just got a report that it’s down to $2.359 in at least one specific location in Columbus—maybe it’s not just small towns….)

Update #2 – Books I’m Reading—Or Not. If you can say that about them. I’ve pretty much given up the one that had been a logjam for me as a bad job. I can’t say anything bad about it, but I can’t get into it (it, in this case, is Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult). It seems like, as I struggle to make it through the œveure of my favorite writers, I inevitably strike that one book of theirs that I can’t quite dig. I think I’ve found it for Picoult. So I’m putting that back on the shelf, for now, to come back to later (as I did with King’s Misery for a while), and moving on. Actually, I’ve already done this. A while ago. But the book that has replaced Picture Perfect in the queue is a 1,200-page behemoth that’s taking me a while. I’ll get there though; yes, I’m reading Atlas Shrugged.

Update #3 – Writing. I haven’t been writing here in the blog or anywhere else in the past week or so. Maybe I’ll remedy that other situation later today, too. I’d hate to leave two manuscript pages worth of my work hanging out there as the only bit that has ever been seen by anyone but a special few. That really would be a tease, wouldn’t it?

Update #4 – The Gym and Dr. Kapper. I’ve made good on at least one of the ten things I needed a month ago today (sheesh! really? and, for the record, it’s really 3 of them that I’ve made good on). I want to focus, though, on the fact that I’ve become a known quantity in the Student Activities Center here on campus. This is primarily a large lounge with TVs and ping-pong and pool tables, where students (all our students are commuters) can hang out and relax between their classes. It’s also the area that everyone has to walk through to get to the gym where I work out. Several of my students frequent the SAC, and they have noticed my regular presence there, on my way to and from the gym. I suppose, though, that what I’m doing now counts as “regularity” with regard to the working out, since my student now expect to see me, and ask me where I was when they don’t. And, again for the record, the answer to that question is usually, “I go earlier (or later) in the day on Monday/Tuesday/etc….”

Enough updates for the time being?

Yeah, I thought so, too.

I had forgotten why a hiatus from working out is a bad idea.

In addition to having to work back up to where I was before, my muscles (particularly in my calves) are screaming, “Remember us?!” at me this morning. They have tightened up very nicely over night.

So now it’s time to be serious about the whole exercise thing again and answer their screams without mercy—work them again today, and beat them into submission.

On the other hand, I am also remembering that endorphins are good, and that working out does help, at least somewhat, with the (lack of) sleep situation. Hooray!

And I guess I didn’t really say them—I wrote them, but the sentiment is equally as surprising, no matter the mode of expression. Let me back up a bit….

I am, as I sit and write this, at my parents’ house in Ohio. I drove up yesterday. There were a number of projects here that needed to be done, and that I had to do: setting up the electronic equipment in their living room for their new entertainment unit, rebuilding the hard drive on their computer, downloading ring tones for their new cell phones. Also, unplanned, but serendipitous, my dad and I will be be meeting with my uncle later in the week to talk about a new business venture that said uncle is getting into, the possibility of my dad working for him in that venture, and—the key for me— the possibility of me designing the Web site for that venture.

Did I say I needed a summer project or did I just think it? In either case, ask and you shall receive.

At any rate, I started the computer project this morning: salvaged data off their hard drive, formatted it, and installed a clean build of Windows XP. There is still a lot of work to do on that particular part of my list, but it’s begun, and it’s going pretty smoothly so far.

Also, I got my dad hooked up with the ringtone he wanted today, and Mom can make up her mind about what she wants and we’ll probably clear that part up when she gets home from work tonight. Finally, Dad and I got the equipment in the living room rearranged and re-hooked-up this afternoon. Now he’s off doing some goat business, and I’ve got a few minutes to sit back and reflect on my day. Which has, all in all, been a good one.

But as I was thinking back over the day, I realized that I had, earlier in the day, sent an email in which I used the sentence, “I’m going to the gym with my dad.”

Let me rewind a little bit again.

Those of you who know me, and have known me for more than a year and/or know me other than through my blog, know how weird the idea of me going to the gym regularly is. Those of you who knew me three years ago, on or about my 30th birthday, when I weighed at or about 400 pounds, must be utterly blown away by it—as, in fairness, is probably anyone who’s known me since I was about 19 or so, because I have never, since then, made exercise anything of a priority, nor weighed less than about 320. So, for those who read who knew me in my teens and/or twenties, the idea of me going to work out with anything resembling regularity (let alone 6-7 days a week), is probably shocking.

And for those who also know my dad, the idea of working out being something that we share is probably doubly and heart-attack-inducingly shocking…. Shocking to the point of scandalous no doubt!

Yet I wrote that sentence this afternoon. We went to the Y in Orrville—Dad’s health insurance makes him a member there, and my membership in the Avery County YMCA gets me in for a week or so because the YMCA is a bunch of nice guys.

Dad is currently rehabbing a knee surgery that he had about a month ago, and he rides the recumbent stationary bike for 10-15 minutes in that rehab effort every day. So today, since I’m here, we went to the Y together. Dad did his bike riding, and I cranked up the elliptical machine (not as good as the one at my Y). Then Dad took Mom’s car to be serviced, washed, and cleaned on the inside, and came back and got me at the Y. I went 50 minutes, 5.1 miles, and 710 calories worth on the machine today (I know I haven’t reported the specifics lately, and I thought you might be interested today…particularly after the failed running on the track experiment on Tuesday and the day completely off for travel yesterday.)

But who would ever have thought that I would have told anyone that my dad and I were going to the gym? I mean really….

…different.

Okay, okay, I know that’s not the lyric. But it fits.

It sneaks up on me every year. The end of the semester, particularly the spring semester. For those who are wondering where I’ve been the last little while, I offer two words: Finals Week.

Granted, that “week” started more than a week ago (on Saturday, May 3), and the finals part of Finals Week ended on Wednesday, May 7. But then there’s all the other stuff. Grading—mountains and mountains of grading. And turning in final grades. And students asking questions about those final grades, including that perennial favorite, “Can you please give me the B?” And imposing order on the stacks of projects that students can’t be bothered to come and reclaim (my office looks more like an Office Max right now, with all the binders strewn about). And, of course, Commencement. At 10 am. On Saturday.

After that week, is it any wonder I spent yesterday, after graduation, napping and mowing my grass?

But that explains the five-day silence on my part (I actually started writing this post on Thursday!); or at least is a lame excuse for that silence.

It’s not just, though, the end of the semester that sneaks up on me, because that would happen every semester, not once a year. It’s what the end of the spring semester represents: That summer’s here, or nearly so. And that there’s a major shift in my lifestyle afoot.

My time is now, for a while anyway, my own. I don’t have to be anywhere at any given time, and I can travel if and when I want (and the ever-rising cost of gasoline allows). I can work on all of the projects that have been on the back burner for at least the academic year. I can stay up late and sleep in. I can go to bed early and get up with the sun. I can not sleep at all at night and nap the afternoon away.

I can confuse the hell out of my cat.

But the considerate administration where I work has decided that we should all be eased into that summertime lifestyle. Because before that happens 100%, there’s one more meeting tomorrow. But it’s at 11, and it does include lunch. I have, however, already begun my summer’s endeavors. Here’s how it’s shaping up so far:

Today, I spent a good chunk of the day writing code. XHTML and CSS—getting my geek on, in other words. This wasn’t for fun though, or even for me. It was an actual paying gig. I was doing some Web design for one of my colleagues at work. We haven’t settled on payment yet, but it’ll be somewhere between a beer and a couple of hundred bucks. Summer’s not even 100% officially here yet, and already one item is ticked off from the list.

Tomorrow, as mentioned, there’s a meeting. But before the meeting, I’m planning on going to the track on campus and seeing if I’m in as good of shape as I’ve about half convinced myself I am. I want to see how different actual running is to doing the elliptical machine at the gym, to see if I’m anywhere near ready to run a 5k, among other people, in 3 weeks. I mostly believe I am—4.5+ miles on the elliptical every day at the gym makes me believe that, but I want to try it in relative seclusion on the track at school before I do anything foolhardy like signing up for a 5k. I’ll definitely report back on this one—let you all know now my 12½ laps go in the morning, and how quickly—I’m shooting for 30 minutes, but we’ll see.

On Wednesday, in the words of Saving Jane (correct lyrics, this time), “I’m heading for my home in Ohio.” I’m going to see the parents, and be their geek for hire (for room and board) for a few days. They need some help with their computer, and their new cell phones, and all kinds of other geeky stuff. My dad has already checked for me, and—for a few days, anyway—I can use my YMCA membership at their YMCA, where Dad also works out (still more rehab from knee surgery than working out for him, but still). Haven’t decided yet how long I’m going for, but it’ll likely be through the weekend at any rate.

And that’s about it in terms of solid plans for travel (though I’ll probably try to make it over to my sister’s in Tennessee at some point this summer).

The rest of my summer will likely be about writing. I’ve got four scholarly articles I want to get drafted and sent out (one is revised and sent out, but still). There’s also a book prospectus that I’ve been kicking around for a while, and some newly simmering ideas for collections I might work on editing (yes, more than one). There’s no way all of that will fit in a summer, but who knows. Maybe I’ll get really ambitious.

And at the end of May (Saturday the 31st), there’s that 5k that I’m thinking about. I was going to do one in the fall, but it didn’t happen. I’m feeling more confident about my abilities now than I did then, but that may all go away in the morning. Again, we’ll see.

But for now, I’m going to call it a night, so I can be bright-tailed and bushy-eyed to test the 5k theory and to put the final touches on my fourth year as an honest-to-goodness professor (there are still times I can’t believe I get paid for this—they alternate with the times I know I’m not getting paid nearly enough; ain’t that just the way it goes?).

Different is good!