Blood

Tonight was yet another lesson in the world of physical fitness. It is probably a good thing that I picked up on this one quickly.
Yesterday I gave blood through a program where a local hospital comes to our church. It is super convenient because it takes out the whole making an appointment aspect. The church announces when the blood drive is going to happen. Once you are in the system the hospital sends out cards letting everyone who has given in the past know when the next date is. They ask everyone to sign up for a time but in reality they are willing to take folks whenever they have space to take them. I try to get there early so that I have the service to sit through before trying to drive anywhere. It would be a serious bummer to get dizzy behind the wheel of the car. If I get dizzy in church though I figure that God is more willing to forgive me than the wall on next to the road!
They hand us a little sheet of paper that tells us what our blood pressure, pulse and various other vitals are. This paper also has final instructions. It reminds the reader that people with certain kinds of history should not give blood. It also gives instructions for post donation activities. I diligently drank the water that it said I should drink. i diligently passed the water they said I should drink through to the other side. Instead of going to the gym I took the dog for a short walk. In all honesty the walk was shorter than planned in part because the water they told me to drink was ready to get off the bus...yesterday.
Tonight I went to the gym. It was past the 24 hour period in which I was told to not to crazy exciting exercise so I figured I was safe. I did notice around the half hour mark that things were not going exactly according to plan. Normally my body is doing fine but my head tells me to stop. I just override my head and keep going. Tonight though my body seemed to agree with my head. I looked down at the little screen on the elliptical machine and saw that my heart rate was up to about 185! Normally at that stage of the game it is only up to about 165. It never gets up to 180. I quickly slowed the pace down by a few miles per hour and let my heart rate stabilize before slowly increasing my speed with an eye on my heart rate.
I guess the lesson I learned tonight goes something like this. My iron levels in my blood were on the lower side of normal. When the blood was drawn that dropped the amount of oxygen that my blood could move. If my blood couldn't move as much oxygen as my body was used to and needed to have moved my body responded by increasing my heart rate in order to circulate the blood quicker.
The moral of the story? I'm going to have to take it easy for a few days!

Hope

Right now the United States is celebrating a new president. This has been an interesting thing for me to watch. I was overseas when George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton started their presidencies. I was here for George W. Bush but when he became president half of the country hated him. This is the first time that I have been in country for the start of a presidency that people are actually excited about.
One thing that I have noticed is that people everywhere are treating President Obama as a modern day messiah. Supposedly he is going to fix the economy, bring peace to the world, stop all corporate crime, provide millions of jobs, keep our neighbors happy and do it all while looking cool. He isn't going to step on any toes, have any scandals, enact any policies that are going to be controversial or waffle on any issues. This guy is perfect.
So here is my concern. What happens when he isn't able to do all of these things? What happens when he makes decisions that are not popular with his support base? What happens when he does not see eye to eye with congress let alone his own party? Remember, this guy hasn't even served a full term in the Senate, his only experience in government. What happens if and when he discovers that some of the Bush policies might have actually been good policies now that he has a lot more information to go on? What happens when the honeymoon is over?
Right now his approval ratings are through the ceiling. We have our first Black president. People are almost more excited about the color of his skin than they are about anything he actually has to say. What happens when people notice that he is human? What will happen to his approval ratings? I'm concerned that so much expectation has been piled on him that there is no way to live up to the expectations and that his ability to govern will be affected by that.
So what will happen then?

Gompers

I turned down a call this morning. It was a P.E. call too. Honestly, I hate turning down work, especially when I'm hurting for work. There was a reason though that I turned this job down.
First of all you don't call me and ask me to drive all the way down to Watts a minute after school has started according to the schedule on the phone. Yeah, I have at least a half hour drive to get there...on a good day. Normally it will take at least 45 minutes or longer. By the time I get parked and to the gym things are not looking good.
Secondly, Gompers has a horrible reputation. Gompers is that school that the other subs warn you about. I have subbed at Gompers once before. It was a P.E. assignment. During the course of the day I had to grab a student to keep him from tackling another student during a football game on the black top. After grabbing him he yelled at me about how I wasn't allowed to touch him. That meant I had to go to the office and deal with reporting the situation. They didn't seem to know who I needed to talk to so I burned a bunch of time in the office until things got worked out. Later on in the day I had a class of kids who refused to listen to me. I was trying to keep control of the classroom and keep them from playing a game where they picked one person to chase and then ran after them punching them when they got close enough. Eventually the student would be held while the others hit them. The whole time the department head was standing there doing nothing about it. Right, like I'm going to go to Gompers when they call me after school starts. Like I'm going to go to Gompers when I got that kind of support from the department chair. Like I'm going to go to Gompers when one of the P.E. coaches was openly talking about how much he wanted to transfer to another school!
Thanks, but I'll take my chances with being broke!

A Week In

I am a week back into going to the gym regularly. May I just say that it is not fun being a little stiff and a little tender. That being said I am surprised by how quickly my body is responding to the exercise. One my first night back to the gym I over did things which led my stomach to seriously contemplate ridding itself of what ever contents it might hold through what normally is considered the intake valve. I had cold sweat and tightness in my lungs. My heart rate was in the upper 170's. I was certain that this whole process was going to take a while. Every time I have been to the gym since things have gotten easier. I haven't tried to push myself harder but my body has naturally picked up the pace. Tonight I was back on the elliptical machine going much fast than the first night on the machine but my heart rate was a lot lower than the first night. Amazing.
Now I just wish the push ups would come back this quickly. My pecs and ribs are still complaining about having to do something that they used to do so easily before. I have even cut back on the number of reps per set and they are still unhappy. Oh well. If I give them time to continue to adjust the soreness will eventually go away and it will become a lot easier to do them again. I was hoping that with a day off yesterday they would be doing a lot better today. That wasn't the case. This part of getting back into my fitness routine might take a little longer than planned. The important thing though is that I am working hard and getting back into a routine. The extra bit of waistline that I picked up over the holidays should be gone soon enough and I'll be ready for summer again!

Exonerated

This week has been a week of ups and downs for poor Oso. Earlier this week he suffered from a lapse in self control and was almost donated to an Chinese meat market after he took a fresh loaf of bread off the kitchen table and left what he couldn't eat in the middle of the living room floor. Yeah, that wasn't pleasant to find. Oso also did his best "I'm sorry I ate your bread" routine as long as he thought he needed to before eating the little chunks off the carpet as I walked out.
Not good. No, not good.
This week has had some other similar moments when I have found various articles that I left in the trash can out in the living room. Oso is not a fan of getting yelled at but he is a huge fan of exploring the interior of the trash can. He also has not quite figured out how to cover his tracks. He pretty much gets busted every time. Cringes that he is sorry every time, then forgets how much he hates getting yelled at within a few days.
So why is this entry titled Exonerated?
First off, I love my dog. I figure that this is just practice for if I ever have kids. Either that or this is an opportunity for my parents to chuckle and be amused that I am having to deal with just a taste of what I put them through. Honestly though, Oso is a great dog. He just has this little issue with digging in the trash...and trying to convert every cat he meets into neat piles of poop.
Tonight I grilled. It has been up in the 80's since Monday. I had already noticed that we had fresh gopher activity while bathing Oso early in the afternoon. Of course Oso rolled in the gopher hills while he was waiting for the shampoo to set. Silly dog. He was sooo happy with himself. He had just had all the dirt that he carefully accumulated over more than a month washed out but had immediately rectified by rolling in fresh gopher hill. The doggy smile was washed off his face as all the dirt washed away with the shampoo. Fast forward several hours (and a long walk around the park) later and I was just finishing up a tri-tip on the grill. I called the dog to follow me into the house and he came out of his pen area at a trot. He was one proud dog and rightly so. In his mouth was a fresh gopher! I actually felt bad as I tried to convince him that he had to leave the carcass outside instead of bringing it in.
Totally exonerated. I have the best dog in the world!

Another lesson

Last night I baked two beautiful loaves of rye bread. The recipe calls for 5 cups of white bread flour but I substituted 3 cups of whole wheat flour and two cups of white flour. The smell of baking bread was a little overwhelming so I had some relatively fresh from the oven. It was amazing. I love rye bread, so moist rye that is still warm from the oven was incredible. I couldn't even tell that I had substituted the whole wheat in. Before going to bed I finished slicing the one that I had already sampled and left the other out on the table to finish cooling.
I made the mistake of letting my driver's license expire. Whoopsies! Today I went down to take care of that little mistake. After waiting in line for a while I got to stand around and wait for my number to be posted. They were really nice and didn't charge extra for letting my license expire. They also took a new picture which is really nice since I look like a thug in my old one.
I got home to a happy dog. He greeted me just like normal with wild excitement. Then I noticed something odd was lying in the living room. Oso has recently decided that what is in the trash is fair game. I have been working on correcting that assumption with limited success. The thing that was odd was that there was no trash in the trash can that was worth digging into. I went into the living room for a closer look and discovered that the lovely loaf of rye bread that I had left sitting on the table was not only on the living room floor but was about 1/3 consumed. I called over the perpetrator who suddenly decided that he had probably made a poor choice of activities while I was away and cowered over. I grabbed his ruff to pull him closer and he yelped the yelp of momentary repentance. I held his nose into the bread and told him "NO NO!" several times. I then grabbed the loaf and held it to his nose, shaking it in his face repeating the verbal thrashing from before. His ears were back, his eyes were wide and he was cowering away from the loaf even as chunks and large crumbs fell off of the wreckage that was supposed to help get me through the next two weeks. Everything about him screamed that he was sorry.
I left him whimpering on his stomach to throw the loaf in the outside trash. As I walked through the kitchen to the back door I glanced over my shoulder.
Oso was gobbling up the chunks and crumbs that fell off the loaf as I shook it in his face.
So much for that leaving a lasting impact.
So much for bread being left on the table in the future! I learned my lesson.

Just A Reminder

This last month or so has defined the new word "meh" in just about every way. Other than a really fun trip to the Borrego Desert there was a lot of time spent at home doing nothing. All this doing nothing motivated me to...do more nothing. Just about every aspect of my life suffered from neglect. It hasn't been a beautiful time.
Today classes resumed for LAUSD. I got up, showered, got ready, and didn't get a call. I decided to go back to bed. I also decided though that I would make it to the gym today. I haven't been to the gym in about a month. Sure, I walked the dog a few times, but I have been eating a lot of junk without exercising and I can tell. My belt can tell too.
Before going to the gym I put together some rye bread dough and set it out to rise. Then it was off to the gym. I stepped onto the scale with fear and trepidation only to discover that my weight really hasn't changed. So basically my tummy got a little bigger and my legs got a little smaller. At least I hadn't gained a whole lot of weight like I was afraid I had.
So now we get to the little reminder part. When you haven't been exercising in a month or so it is important to start out a little slow for a few days and then work your way back into the exercise regimen that you had before. The consequences of not doing this may include a really high heart rate, light headedness, aching lungs, and a sudden urge to empty the contents of the stomach onto the gym floor. Starting out slow was the plan. I had every intention of doing this. I got on the elliptical machine and started going and suddenly I was really going. It felt so good to be going. I did notice though that the initial burst of energy didn't stick around that long. Soon I was sweating like a pig and really laboring to keep going. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. All I wanted to do was to get off the machine and go home. Over and over I had to tell myself to keep going, don't give up. I knew that I was pushing myself harder than I should but at the same time I didn't want to give up on my first day back. Giving up today would just make it easier to give up tomorrow. Finally I reached half an hour. I pushed on. About two minutes later I suddenly noticed that I was light headed and my stomach was feeling a little queasy. Immediately I slowed down to a crawl. For a while there I was really fighting to keep from throwing up right there on the floor. My forehead broke out in a cold sweat.
After a few minutes of going slow the world righted itself and I was actually able to pick up the pace to a more moderate level and finish out the hour. I actually felt really good after the hour was up too.
Lesson learned. When I go for a while without exercise take it slow. Perhaps the better lesson is not to go so long without exercise.