My schedule lately has dictated slightly later swims than I'd prefer. I love the serenity that comes from knowing that I am solely responsible for any and all of the waves in the pool, and I admit I find it a little funny to see the changing of the lifeguards knowing the only life they are guarding is mine.

Despite being the same people, the nine a.m. - ten a.m. guards are different than the noontime guards. Winter weekday mid-mornings discourage casual swimmers, and the only people likely to be seen jumping in the water are the regulars. Regularity brings chatter: they are the ones that come in every day, who know that Sam's wife just had a baby (and named her Megan Elizabeth) and that Tall Brian (as opposed to Dark Short Brian) is planning a road trip to Florida in a couple of weeks.

Notes from the couch while watching television:

"I'm not exactly sure how that diet pill works, but apparently it makes you turn around and yell 'Yes!'"


"You know, that would be kinda dangerous if that happened to me while I was on an elliptical machine."


"Good thing you don't have to exercise while taking diet pills, I guess."

* * * * *

Now. I've gotta ask you people something. Maybe you know the answer. Maybe you don't.

Part One: Women

There's a rule. Don't go to Yarn Expressions on one of their variable-percentage sale days. (Draw a ticket to determine your discount. Most people get 20% off, a few people get more, one person gets 75% off.) Sure, the flyers are lovely, and the possibility of drawing one of the lucky tickets is enticing, but the actual experience of trying to make a purchase at the store on sale day can only be described as craptastic.

The dumbfounded question of the week: "What do you mean, there was a miscommunication and Sprint disconnected the wrong T1 line?"

End result? Radio silence for me, and most of my friends, for the past two days. Almost all of us have email accounts and websites on the same machine (omnipotent.net, all hail Gareth!). The techops, dconsecurity, dragoncontv and Huntsville locals mailing lists were all down as a result.

I've begun to suspect that there's a new craze sweeping my gym, and quite frankly, I'd like to find out who started the craze so that I may kill them.I think of them as the Anti-Fan Nazis. They're the people who come into the gym, turn off all the fans, and proceed to do a workout so light and easy I hesitate to even use the prefix work- in conjunction with it. Meanwhile, those of us who are working out, truly working out, are dying on the elliptical vine, drowning in our own sweat.

My list for today:

Amazing. About a week before Christmas, suddenly the suburban population of Huntsville wakes up and says, collectively, "Holy shit, Christmas is next weekend?

When I was a teenager, I would stay up late on Christmas Eve, an ear on the quiet in the house and a mug of hot chocolate in my hand, watching whatever TV specials were available. Christmas Day was for family, but Christmas Eve was mine alone, a day of peace and quiet and reading.

Christmas Eve is a jazz day for me, the day that I dig out my Cassandra Wilson and Diana Krall and soak myself in the quieter side of life. Christmas Day is for family and yelling and presents and food and laughter; Christmas Eve belongs to me.

This page explains in truly gory detail exactly how you would make a turducken. (Photos are worksafe, but page contains words that aren't.)

Yes, I know a couple of you are vegetarians … you know who you are. Just don't even read this, ok? You'd cry. But for the rest of you carnivores, you're about to encounter instructions like these:

Suddenly I have a plethora of good news and I hardly know where to begin. It's such a rare and lovely situation; forgive me for wanting to sit back and sip it slowly, single-malt style.

The good news is that I have a trainer again. The better news is that it's the trainer I've wanted all along: yes, I'm working with Val again. Her life has calmed down enough that she has time to add back a few clients, and that calmness coincided with my decision to toss her a why-not email to see if maybe she'd still have time for me.

I had begun laying groundwork to work with someone else and I realized that the 'fit' just wasn't there. I understood Val's methods, and agreed with them, and I just didn't want to work with anyone else.

We met yesterday, and a day later I'm still turning over the new numbers in my head. It's a lot to think about.

I stopped weight training in the fall, mostly due to dragon*con. After I got back home and committed to working Tromadance this coming January, I realized that I was willing to sacrifice weight training for a while in order to focus on cardio work, to ensure that I'd be in the best possible shape for dealing with the higher-than-usual altitudes of the trip.

(Fort Collins is 5,000ft above sea level. Park City is 7,000-10,000ft above sea level depending on where you are.)

I shouldn't be surprised that this work has paid off, but I am, and it has. When I first started my exercise program in January of 2004, my resting heart rate was 82 beats/minute, and my blood pressure was 111/82. Yesterday it was 64 beats/minute, and 98/56.

I thought about it while I was doing pool laps today, and for a moment the difference was crystalline: I realized that I was pushing myself hard in today's swim because it felt good. I could feel the exertion in my muscles, feel myself breathing harder than normal, but it was exertion, not exhaustion. There's a difference. Push harder, and the muscles respond. Slack off, and the breathing slows back down to normal.

I got in the water before I could lose my nerve, dodging kids and parents and heading for the lane markers. It was everything I remembered: chlorine tang, water chill, the slowing drag of the water on limb and torso. I got in the water and my fear went away, unlike so many people I know whose fear only begins the moment they land in the water; I got in the water and knew I was slow, and clumsy, and far different than I was ten years ago…but I was home.

My muscles, worn out after weightlifting, only had enough strength for me to do one lap. One measly lap. I wanted to hate myself for it, but instead I picked a quiet spot near the wall and let my body float in the current, and I discovered that the water was stronger than my self-hatred.

'chlorinated', 1 June 2004

Remember? One lap. One. Now, every day: forty-five minutes, and an unknown number of laps, the daily tally slowly increased, one at a time, until they made a stack that was tall enough and strong enough that even I had to admit respect.

Still, the current numbers have come with a bit of a tradeoff. My body fat calculations indicate that my shift in focus from weightlifting to endurance cardio has dropped my underlying total lean mass by about four pounds. Translation: I've lost a bit of muscle, which must be expected. Even with that, my final target weight still looks to be 170 pounds (25% bodyfat). Thirty-three down. Twenty-five to go.

* * * * *

Now that I have a new weights routine from Val, I plan to resume weight training in the next few days. I fly in 17 days, and I'd like to get past the initial muscle soreness of a new weights regimen before I fly. Silly me, planning to do workouts while vacationing.

Here's what's on tap:

Group 1

• Dumbbell bench presses on ball
• One-armed row (on one leg)
• One-legged squats against ball on wall
• weighted crunches

Group 2

• Dumbbell pec flies on ball
• Prone reverse flies on bench
• Backwards lunges w/medicine ball
• Alternating twisting crunches on ball

Group 3

• Pushups - hands on ball, feet on floor
• Bent, fixed-arm standing lat pulldowns
• One-legged supine hamstring pulls on ball
• Oblique crunches on ball with tubing

Group 4

• Pushups - feet on ball, hands on floor
• Standing alternating bicep curls
• One-legged leg extensions
• Reverse situps on ball

Group 5

• 'W-O' lateral raises
• Tricep kickbacks
• Calf raises
• Oblique crunches with medicine ball

Twice weekly, do two sets of 12 while ensuring instability (balancing on a ball, single leg/arm exercises, etc.) to encourage balance. Once weekly, do three pyramid sets (12/10/8 reps) while stable (on floor or bench, using both legs/arms, etc.) to encourage strength.

Do only 4 of the 5 groups. Omit a different group each time. Mix up the order of groups.

Whimper only when no one's looking. ;) Know that yes, the soreness is coming, but that it will pass. It always has, and always will.

…and for those of you who are trying to keep up with what I look like from month to month, here are two more photos -- me posing with friends at the bowling alley (I'm in the blue shirt) and me making hand gestures to explain what went wrong with the ball I'd just rolled.