Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Program, chapter II

By way of update, I’ve graduated from Phase I of the 20/20 Lifestyles program; going into my fourth week in Phase II.

That means I work out with Penelope only twice a week and check in with my nutritionist every fortnight.

I’m still at the gym six mornings a week because, surprisingly, it feels good. And I started layering in some intervals on the treadmill. You have to understand that I never thought I’d walk a 12:30 mile again when I started with Penelope in July. But now my “rest” speed on the intervals is 12:45. While my “work” speed isn’t going to win any races, it’s still a matter of amazement that I can actually move in some form approximating a jog.

Even for two-minute intervals.

On the food side, I’ve actually had a couple of glasses of wine over the past three weeks—whoo-hoo! But for the rest, I’m still on the weight-loss (as opposed to maintenance) track. I’m about 70% of goal, and feeling pretty good.

Well, except that the intervals have buggered my knees. Or exacerbated the existing condition. My physical therapist diagnosed uneven muscles around the knees, so I’m laying off the intervals, doing some killer stretches(evidently intended to even out the muscles) and buying the most expensive pair of running shoes I’ve ever owned.

(I spent 30 minutes at Super Jock ‘n Jill, trying on shoes, sprinting up the hill next to the shop & then reporting back to Morgan, the sales clerk, on the level of pain shooting through my knees. I’m satisfied that however these manufacturers architect their wares, the designs really do make a difference.)

Well, it was either shell out for the runners or give up the intervals. And after working out six days a week for four months, I’ve got the bug, and I just can’t be satisfied with the elliptical contraption.

So: 15 weeks after start, feeling demonstrably better, getting into my skinny clothes and looking forward to pounding the pavements around town.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Pie in the sky

Ah, one of the comedic rocks of my childhood has passed: Soupy Sales is dead at age 83.

I never liked Our Gang, the Three Stooges or any of those staples of non-network children’s programming. In fact, let me stress that there’s nothing at all about the Three Stooges that I have ever found funny.

But Soupy was like Rocky & Bullwinkle. I didn’t understand everything that was going on in his shows, but it still struck me as hilarious.

(It broke my heart to discover recently that the Dudley Do-Right Emporium, next to the Jay Ward Studios off the Sunset Strip, had closed. I wonder if that makes my Super Chicken tee shirt more valuable? & if you have a bottle of Evening in South Pasadena cologne, it’ll probably put your kids through professional school.)

I imagine the Afterlife is finding itself covered in pie cream about now.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Greek to me

It’s been a rough few weeks for Bas Bleu—the strain of refraining from committing justifiable homicide several times over has laid me low.

But this story from NPR finally broke through my black fog: the Greeks have opened a museum of antiquities dedicated to the Acropolis.

With a great, huge gaping space for the marble friezes chiseled from the Parthenon 200 years ago by a Brit and sold to the British Museum. The BM has steadfastly refused ever since to repatriate the marbles, the reasons reinvented every time one is kneecapped by the Greeks.

I suppose the underlying cause for the intransigence is that imperial legacy that the Brits just can’t shake off. “We stole them righteously when we were the Big Boy on the Global Block; we’re keeping them because we can.”

Well, maybe. But I love the Greek approach—rather like one of my journalism professors, who was always threatening to publish an issue of the paper with a gaping hole of white space and marking it “this space courtesy of Reporter X, who missed deadlines”.

That’s one museum I’ve got on my must-do list. Almost makes me lose the thoughts of mayhem.