Mi veturas al la kunveno de la Esperanta grupo per buso, kaj hodiaŭ mi povas vidi plenan lunon. Ĝi supreniras malantaŭ la buso haltejo.
Category: News
2023-11-27 08:27
Moonset over the solar farm.
Finally back to doing workouts
I’ve had a draft post that was originally called my “fall workout plan,” and then called my “late fall workout plan,” but that I never posted because while I was sick I couldn’t work out at all, beyond walking the dog. I will post it. Perhaps not until it makes more sense to post a “winter workout plan.”
In the meantime though, I am, finally, back to doing workouts, and thought I might talk about what I’m doing, because my workout plan is to do workouts very similar to what I’ve been doing over the past week or so.
- Two weeks ago, Sunday November 11th was a HEMA practice session.
- Monday I did some kettlebell swings with my adjustable kettlebell adjusted to 40 lb. The previous week I’d done 10 x 10 swings emom (every minute on the minute), so I went ahead and did 10 x 11 swings emom. I’ll continue bumping that up until I hit 10 x 20, and then I’ll go up in weight and drop the reps back down to 10. (There’s a 45 lb kettlebell in the fitness room, and I own a 53 lb kettlebell, so I have a couple of options.)
- Tuesday I did a 1-handed club workout with my Adex adjustable club at 10 lbs, doing 9 x 5 L / 5 R outside circles, shield cast, and inside circle. That was pretty easy, so I did one more set with the club adjusted to 12.5 lbs. That worked okay, so I decided I could use that as my working weight for a while.
- Wednesday and Thursday were rest days.
- Friday I went back to 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R with the new, higher, weight of 12.5 lbs.
- Saturday was a rest day.
- Sunday was another HEMA practice session,
- Monday and Tuesday were rest days.
- Wednesday I did kettlebell clean and press, with the kettlebell adjusted to 20 lbs, doing 6 x 4L / 4R in a reverse ladder. (That is, I did 4 clean & press with the left hand, then 4 with the right hand, the 3 left and 3 right, then 2 left and 2 right, then 1 left and 1 right. Then I put the weight down and rested a couple of minutes. That was 1 set. I did 6 sets.) After that I bumped the weight up to 25 lbs and did one more set, which went okay. I think I can carry on with 25 lbs going forward.
- Thursday I did 10 x 12 kettlebell swings emom with the 40 lb kettlebell. Then I did some 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R. I’d have expected that I’d have done 6 sets, but 5 is what I wrote down in my notebook.
- Friday was a rest day
- Today, Saturday November 25th, I went to the fitness room and did a (mostly) bodyweight circuit. I did 3 rounds of 5 exercises, each for 30 seconds, then with 15 seconds to rest and move to the next exercise. I did jump rope, negative pull ups, goblet squats ( with 20 lb and 25 lb dumbbells), push ups, and hollowbody holds. That’s pretty close to what I was doing during the pandemic, except the fitness room was closed, so instead of dumbells for the goblet squats, I had to just do more reps without weights.
2023-12-23 13:48
Ashley and Moose Tracks tussling in the dog park.
Moose Tracks is still a puppy, and kinda bitey, but Ashley did very well at simultaneously tolerating his behavior and teaching him how to do better. #dogsofmastodon
The best light-therapy light for SAD
My whole adult life I’ve suffered from SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Years ago I got a light-therapy light, and found that I used it quite reflexively: It would pretty much stay off all summer and early fall, then one day in mid-October or so I’d turn it on without even thinking about it. Only later would I realize, “Oh, yeah. I needed that.”
This year I didn’t have the urge to turn the light on until yesterday, which is several weeks later than typical in recent years.
This morning, while out walking the dog, I realized why it was so much later: I’m out walking the dog close to sunrise nearly ever day.
And, as everyone knows (if they think about it), the best light-therapy light is the sun.
Highly recommended: Get outdoors while the sun is still low in the sky. Get yourself some light, along with some vitamin N (nature), and some outdorphins.,\
2023-11-22 14:14
Ashley lay down on the floor in the bedroom, so I sat down on the floor next to her. She started woofing at me, so I woofed back at her.
She seemed non-plussed. #dogsofmastodon
2023-11-22 06:36
Google offered several filters to make this sky more dramatic or colorful, but I decided that I liked it best with no filter. Dawn sky over the prairie next to Winfield Village.
Finally recovered, I think
Back at the end of September I came down with West Nile Fever, which made me pretty sick for a long time. The only time in my life before I was that sick for that long was when I had Mononucleosis when I was a freshman in college. That time I was sick for most of the term, and it took several weeks of the Christmas vacation to fully recover.
With West Nile it took about three weeks to recover from the acute phase of the illness. That is, I had a fever constantly for three weeks. Then it took another three weeks to get my energy levels back. For that period I could walk the dog, fix breakfast, and then do one thing, after which I needed to go back to bed and take a nap.
As of a couple of days ago, I think I’m back to full health. I’ve been doing workouts—not as frequently as I’d like, but often enough that I’ve been able to start pushing the weights up again, although not up to what I doing before I was sick. I’ve been for a couple of runs, both of which were harder and slower than I’d like, but were okay—I didn’t feel like I was sick, just like I hadn’t been running enough the past few weeks.
On Sunday I got a Covid booster, so I felt slightly less energetic Monday, but that has already passed.
After too many weeks, I finally feel back to normal!
2023-11-20 17:56
Dum mi atendas la aliajn membrojn de la grupo, mi trinkas bieron “U of IPA.”
2023-11-20 11:47
Just because I felt like it, I made a thermosy french press of coffee, so Jackie and I could have 4th coffee this morning.