Is it still a baker's dozen if there's no bread involved?

I kind of fell off the wagon last month.  After a month of low carb, and cravings, and deprivation.. yeah.  I hit the chocolate pretty hard.    Not the bread, surprisingly.  But hell yeah the chocolate.

The time has arrived to start being good again.  I've gone back on the straight and narrow, in the hopes of being a little more narrow myself.  I'm already as straight as I'm getting.

So, back to counting calories.  I'm not actually eating any differently, but I'm dutifully counting.  I wrote down all the easter candy, and the beer, and the shrimp - coconut milk - bok choy creation that JD made for dinner.  And my spinach salad for lunch.  It's all written down and accounted for.

Whose idea was it that writing it all down would work well?  Because it's kind of a pain in the ass.  I'm not a joiner, but Weight Watchers holds a certain appeal in that at least I'd not be typing all the time.  I guess you're still counting, but you're only counting up to 20 or something.  Not 1500.

Anyway, I'm doing that.  Counting.  And trying to eat lots of fruits and veggies.  Wait, let me count.. I had 14 different kinds of fruits and vegetables today.  Of course, many of them were in a salad.  But it still counts.  I'm claiming it.  I'm sure those 8 slices of radish have had some kind of huge nutritional impact, and soon I will be glowing.  Especially if they were farmed in southern MD, down near the nuclear plant.

I've been hitting the gym, too.  I need to tweak my timing.  The tail end of my routine keeps intersecting with the beginning of some class.  This means that I have to bug out of the nice, private, wood floored, mirrored room where I like to work out, and set myself up in the hallway next to the water fountain to finish my workout.  Not private.  Not serene.  You know?

I need to make more time in my day.  I've been giving myself 45 minutes at the gym, and that just isn't satisfying.  All the exercises take a finite amount of time.  I don't want to rush them, as I get less benefit from weights lifted quickly than weights lifted slowly. And some things just can't be rushed.  (Hold this 5 times for 10 seconds each can't really be reduced to less than 50 seconds.)  Perhaps I'll develop gumption and come in to work earlier.  Perhaps pigs will fly.

I heart the Appalachian Trail flick

While I was on my daily walk today, I ran into some coworkers.  I waved, and was surprised to hear one say "We were just talking about you!"  Because we don't work *that* closely.. I run into him a few times a year.

He and his walking pal had just been talking about the National Geographic Appalachian Trail special.  I've heard great things about it.  I guess my name came up because they knew I was hiking last year.  At any rate, we got to talking about it, and I found out it's now available on Netflix!  So tonight JD and I interrupted our X-files marathon to watch the Appalachian Trail show. 

It was awesome!  Spellbinding, for me.  I don't know about JD.  I think he liked it too.  But for me, seeing all those places I've been was amazing.  JD had been to some of them too.  When they got to Harper's Ferry, he said "Hey, I've been there!" And then he instantly realized that not only had he been there, he'd been *right* where the picture was taken from (not from the AT, actually, but from the cliffs up over the town where we walked a couple of weeks ago.)  And that was pretty dang cool.  Not just that, but Laurie Potteiger was in the film, and we met her while we were walking up there!  I mean, JD met her.  I met her again.  I've run into her off and on for the last few years.  She works at the Appalachian Trail Conference office in Harper's Ferry so she shows up at a lot of local AT gatherings, as you might imagine.

I really loved the advance look at some of what I haven't done yet, including chunks of Katahdin.  I'm feeling more comfortable with the climb now.  I mean, it looks rocky, but doable.  Probably I'll be kinda sore the next day.  :)  I think I'll have to stop to look around a lot.  The views looked astounding.

Between the film and the incredibly delicious strawberries that JD picked up at the store today, this was a very, very good evening.

I don't think I've mentioned the gym much other than to say I probably shouldn't have started the hour before a yoga class.  I've been going twice a week, specifically not on yoga days.  So far I'm up to 17 girly push-ups and sixty sit-ups.  I've been varying my other exercises.  I have to be careful not to aggravate my neck bones so lat pull-downs and some of the tricep exercises are out.  But I've been using the assisted pull-up/dip machine and I am feeling very butch for doing pull-ups and dips, even though they're assisted.  It feels plenty difficult to me.  I'm doing big step-ups using a sturdy table, in preparation for climbing big rocks on the trail.  I'm also doing various lunges for same.  I'm doing leg extensions and leg curls to keep my knees and hamstrings strong.  I feel that along with yoga, this stuff is fairly basic maintenance.  Like flossing.  Going to the gym is like flossing.  So I can keep my original teeth and spine longer.  I hear getting either replaced kind of sucks.

A notable moment in my life at NASA

Today kind of sucked for me.  It was like yesterday part two.  But I didn't spill nearly boiling liquids on my ladyparts, so I'm going to say it was an improvement.

I'm attempting to reshape my upper body into something containing fragments of actual muscle, so I have started going to the gym.  Accordingly I stopped by after work today.  (Now, I don't want you to think that I have become a gym rat.  I have no desire to strain anything, and so I am starting out slowly.  One set each of a variety of exercises with weights, hopefully to the point of muscle failure.  And as many situps as I can stomach.  (See what I did there?) The whole exercise takes about fifteen minutes at the moment.  That will ramp up as I get stronger, but not too much I hope.  I really want maximum gain for my minimal time because I don't find being in the gym entertaining.  At all.)

Today as I entered the gym I noticed it was unusually empty, but I didn't think much about it.  I stomped off to the women's locker room, divested myself of overgarments, and stomped back out.  And I found a crowd staring up.  The Shuttle was launching.  They were watching it in real time on the gym's tv.

You have not seen a more serious, somber, but hopeful crowd in a gym than this bunch of NASA employees watching the Shuttle go up.  It's personal for us.  I didn't ask the guy next to me, but I know my own chest tightens up whenever I watch, in anxiety for the crew.  I don't breathe easy until the big rockets burn out.  As soon as they fell away, I nodded and moved off to my first machine.  I noticed that most others stopped watching at the same time.  So I guess we were all nervous about the same thing.

Nobody cheered.  Few people talked.  We just watched, tensely, until it was okay.  And then we went about our lives.  It's a little sad that we have very little triumph any more.  What we hope for is lack of disaster.