Weekend Update: Last Weekend in January

I had a pretty nice weekend if you’re wondering. 

It rained Friday, but I ended up riding into the office anyway because I’d read that it was supposed to clear up.  And while that’s true, and it did, that didn’t happen until late morning.  So I got drenched and muddy on my way in, which was okay from the standpoint that my office has a shower—I don’t ever wear my work clothes when I’m commuting on the bike—but it sucked because when I was leaving on Friday afternoon, I ended up having to put on my wet and muddy clothes again just so I could ride back up to the train station and catch my ride home.  Still, since it was warm Friday afternoon, and I was already soaked to the bone and filthy, there wasn’t any reason not to ride aggressively from the office back up to 125^th Street.  It wasn’t like I was gonna get sweaty and somehow start smelling worse.  And anyway, I’ve been doing some spinning classes lately, and they’ve featured a lot of out-of-the-saddle attacks.  I was curious to see if I’d feel any stronger out-of-the-saddle on a real bike with that work behind me.  My being wet-and-muddy state made Friday the perfect chance to test out my new fitness.  There’s a long hill from 96^th Street up to about 106^th, so I attacked and fairly flew upwards.  As weekend openings go that was a good one.

Friday's Ride Route

 I got home Friday night and found that the Girl Scout meeting was canceled, and that Sally had decided to order pizza.  I was supposed to go to the gym during Girl Scouts, but with the change, I cancelled my plans and cracked a beer.  Truth be told, I was happy enough to have an excuse to skip my workout, not least because it had not only been an aggressive ride home, it had also been windy as Hell.  Between that and a full work week—my first of the new year—I was tired as all-get-out.  In fact, I couldn’t even muster the energy to watch TV after dinner on Friday night.  Once the kids were in bed, I promptly fell asleep on the couch.

It was a good thing, too.  Our crazy dog woke me up at 3 am on Saturday morning, and as you might’ve read in my Insomnia post, I never made it back to sleep.

*sigh*

But, y’know, Saturday wasn’t a bad day or anything.  With the early start, I got a heck of a lot done, all of it geeky.  I wrote that blog post, planned out the next month or so of Sellswords of Luskan, designed a few monsters for that same game, redesigned and simplified the look of this blog, got breakfast ready for the girls and then cleaned up the kitchen while Sally took the dog for a (much needed) walk, and basically puttered around drinking coffee until I felt half-way human.  By 11:15, Sally was back, and I was going a little stir-crazy.

Sally encouraged me to go to yoga class.

I’ll tell you, I love yoga.  Sometimes it seems like my mind races non-stop, all the time, but nothing in this world clears it like yoga does.  Anyway, I wasn’t expecting too much out of this particular class, but it turned out to be a good one.  Intense.  The instructor was a maybe 55-year-old dude, wearing a pair of dirty old grey sweat pants and a cut-off tank top.  Long stringy hair that looked like it came off a used mop.  He warmed us up slowly, focusing mostly on the lower back and hamstrings—two serious problem areas for me.  I enjoyed that part of it.  But then he uncorked a LOOOOOONG series of quad exercises—Warrior I, Warrior 2, straight-up squats to a standing Mountain with arms raised, etc—that, along with the burn from Friday afternoon’s climbing, left me quivering like jello.  Somewhere in there he started adding twists, until we got all the way up to the Bird of Paradise, which, trust me, was a Hell of a lot more intimidating in person than it looks in a picture.  I mean, you expect something like Bird of Paradise out of a 92-pound Chinese acrobat.  Seeing it from a 55-year-old dude with stringy hair and dirty sweats is a whole ‘nother thing entirely.  Needless to say, after that I started taking the class a little more seriously. 

Heh.  My right oblique is so sore right now it feels like somebody punched me in the kidney. 

We finished class, and I headed into the gym to lift weights.  Did chest, shoulders, and tri’s and pushed a little harder than I have the past few weeks.  I took the last year or so off from weights to focus on swimming and on endurance racing in general, but then Sally decided that my arms had gotten too skinny.  So this is maybe my fourth week back, and I’m only just starting to get back to something like full-speed in the weight room.  Still, it’s been tough to find motivation.  Weight-lifting is a great fit with yoga, but it doesn’t help my running any, and any extra weight I gain actively hurts my riding.

Ah… the things we do for love.

Got home Saturday afternoon and made some lunch.  Sally and the girls had gone to see Pinkalicious at the local cabaret, so I had the place to myself.  I ate, showered, and started ironing.  ‘Course the girls got home as soon as I actually got the ironing board set up and put Camelot on the TV via Netflix, but I’m not convinced that that was some great loss.  I wound up watching The Finder.

Saturday night was dull.  We had dinner, and then Sally went out with some of her friends.  I gave the girls a bath and put them to bed and then finished watching my episode of Camelot.  Then I went to bed—at 9pm.  And slept like a baby.

Spider-Man 677: Quite a cool read.

Sunday was the better day.  Sally’s mom came over in the morning to watch the girls while Sally and I went for a run-date.  Personally, I would’ve preferred to do a simple Long Slow Distance run, but since we’re doing the YMCA Sweetheart Race in Stratford in two weeks, and the course is really hilly, Sally talked me into previewing it Sunday morning.  I ended up working the hills, so that it became a kind of intense tempo run instead of the easy, breezy affair we’d planned.  Afterwards, we came home and made brunch, and then I threw the kids out for awhile.  Sunday was beautiful but a little windy, and the girls were badly in need of some fresh air.  And having them out of the house offered some other benefits.  Anyway, after that, I cleaned up the kitchen, collected the kids, and the three of us went to the comic book store and the local library.  I picked up the latest two issues of the Amazing Spider-Man, the new Batman, the last issue of Conan: Road of Kings and the first issue of King Conan, and a couple of others.  Meanwhile, my girls got Scooby Doo, Young Justice, Strawberry Shortcake, and the new Super Dinosaur.  Of those, my recommendations are Amazing Spider-Man and Super Dinosaur.  On Spider-Man, writer Dan Slott put out my absolute favorite single-issue of 2011 in issue 676, and he’s been running hot ever since.  Super Dinosaur, meanwhile, is written by Robert Kirkman, the guy who created The Walking Dead, which is now a hit series with rave reviews on cable TV.  It’s awesomely wacky stuff.

Sunday afternoon, the girls and I caught up on the Thundercats via IO On-Demand, and I started ironing again.  Yeah, it was a lot of ironing, but now the girls and I have clothes for the next week or so, and I have a few extra shirts and whatnot in case next weekend is actually busy.  Still, once the Thundercats finished, TV was an utter wasteland.  I tried to get into the Winter X Games but found it unwatchable.  Eventually I settled on the Lingerie Football League’s playoffs, but even that was only interesting by comparison.  I found myself wondering how those poor girls avoided getting rug burn from the Astroturf.

Sunday night we had salmon and brown rice, and for dessert, we had the last of the pink cupcakes Sally made for Pinkalicious.  And they were.  Pinkalicious, I mean.  Then we sent the girls to bed and sat down together for awhile before heading up ourselves.  All told, it was a nice day, and I really enjoyed it.