folkstrokes

A new focus

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:18:51 GMT

Up until now, I've been writing about my fitness journey. Boring! It's boring because, mostly it is a daily discipline of doing the same thing over and over. Very small steps with not much dramatic contrast. My passions don't flow like that. Oh, it's important and all, I'm just not sure there is much to say on the topic.

So, a new focus. More about my dreams, and less about the day to day advancement.

I've fallen in love with the idea of an underground house. Now, mind, I've always been interested in the concept. Some say that they're dark. What are you going to do without windows? Well, I look around me, and I never open my windows. They all have curtains on them. Sure, some natural light leaks thru, but we typically supplement that light with electric light, so what's the big deal?

In Georgia, the temperature underground averages a pretty constant 68 degrees F. All year round. That's pretty cool. In the summer, I might need a bit of heat to make my house a comfortable 70 degrees. In the winter, I might need a bit of heat to make my house a comfortable 70 degrees. (Is there an echo in here?) Some of that heat will come from refridgerator motors, fan motors, PCs, some light bulbs (I'm not totally flourescent still..), people breathing and so forth. Still, there are building codes and stuff that say, for example that for x square feet of home, you need y square feet of windows. Well, if I can get all or most of my windows on the south side, then I can have a bit of solar heat, and still meet the code. I'm not decided yet whether I want to have a "backup" heater/furnace/airconditioner.

So, I'm reading up on it, and I've made some choices. I want to make the walls out of surface-bonded stacked "CMU"s (concrete masonry units). I call them cinder blocks, but apparently cinder blocks are much lighter and so not what I really mean at all. As shown in Rob Roy's bood "Earth Sheltered Houses: How to Build an Affordable Undgerground Home", I want to use the ~16" x 12" CMUs but I want to turn the blocks sideways...the wall will be 16" thick, instead of 12". Roughly rectangular, 30' x 40' (or 1200 sq feet). Just now, I had a different thought. I had been picturing 2 walls of blocks 40' long going north to south, and then on the north side, a single 30' wall, for 110 linear feet. But just now I had the thought, it might be better to have the wide side to the south....two 30-foot wals going north and south, and one 40' wall on the north side. Hmmm....

I don't want a poured slab floor, nor do I want a poured slab roof, so I've got some different ideas there. More later....

Determined to succeed

Fri, 02 May 2008 01:20:41 GMT

I've got to figure out a way to insure that I don't get off my diet, and skip my exercizes whenever my work gets stressful. I can sit here (now) and say things like "Charley, your health is important!" and "Charley, you're worth the sacrifice, and you just must take time to keep healthy!" But somehow, when the crisis is there, I stay at work too long, and then when I'm getting home in the dark, it's just hard to have the motivation THEN. So, I don't have that figured out yet.

But now, the work is going back to more normal hours, so now the hurdle to conquer is just the coming back to my journal and also Sparkpeople and re-starting those habits too.

Over a week!?!

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:59:11 GMT

I didn't realize it had been so long since making an entry here. Hmm? Life has been crazy, I can remember that much. Especially this week.

With the change in the stride, my cardio has been going better, but I did decide to repeat W1 this week. I'm doing the intervals, but the speed of 20 minutes per mile (or even slower) is really bad, and I'd like to get my tendons and muscles more in shape before going on. So, anyway, that was Monday W1D1 for the umpteenth time. :)

There was water coming up out of the ground near my driveway. I knew that could be serious. I checked the water meter, at the main shut-off valve near the street, and it seemed to me not to be moving. So, I went to work, scratching my head. Later my wife rechecked and found a small red triangle, which was rotating slowly, indicating that there WAS some unexplained movement of water, just not very much. So, I came back home from work, changed into some work clothes and started in.

I knew I had some tools for cutting the pipes and stuff, but I didn't know exactly where it had been stowed. We have a "storage room", which is a bedroom where all the unfinished projects get dumped. My daughter, Jennifer, who has a talent for getting things arranged in 3D, did a great job in there, but there was really still too much junk there. Anyway, I finally moved enough stuff to be able to peel open the top of a purple tub, and that's where my tools and junk were. So, I put the lid back on, and lifted it and started to carry it out of the room, to discover that I'd trapped myself in the room. I had to put it back down, and then rearrange stuff sufficiently to give me a single path out of the room. Boy, that box seemed heavy.

Using shovel, mattock, and finally my bare hands, I dug a big hole to expose the water line in the vicinity of the 1/8th inch "geysers". Hmm? About 3 feet of white PVC pipe, with no apparent leaks. The ground was very wet. Was the leak from under the driveway? Or further toward the meter?

Just because I didn't want to dig under the driveway, I started expanding the whole toward the meter, another 2 feet or so. I came to a joint where one length of PVC buts into another. (Long discovery period summarized) There was a root directly under the joint. As the tree grew, the root's diameter increased. Now it was about 4 inches in diameter and was pushing up on the joint. This gradually increasing pressure had caused a tiny crack on the upper side of the pipe. I turned on the water again to be sure I'd uncovered it, and there was a fine spray or mist coming up from that joint, about like you might see in the produce aisle of the grocery store. Yep.

So, I cut just above the joint, and just below the joint, leaving a gap of about 9 inches. Using one side of the mattock, I hacked out a 4 or 5 inch section of the offending root. Perhaps I should have figured out some way to cover the severed ends of the water line, to prevent any dirt from getting into the pipe?

I already had some pipe, and it had a fitting built in to one end. I'd bought it with the idea of making a PVC "shakuhachi", but had never gotten around to doing the project (being put off mainly by the need for precise sizes of drill bits, which I didn't have yet). But, I'd obviously need another fitting, and some glue or cement of some sort. Also, I hadn't done a perfect job with the hacksaw, and the cut ends weren't as straight across as I would have wished.

I went to the Home Depot, and got a couple of fittings, and some "purple primer" & cement. I looked for a book, but the best one I could find only had 2 pages on working with PVC, and it was not how to repair it, but how to install it. I wasn't going to spend $10 for 2 pages that weren't really on target. I saw some "scissor" thingy's. More like a sharp blade, with a ratcheting set of pliers that gradually push the blade thru the PVC. It might work better than the hack saw. It was about $10.

OK, so now I'm back home and it didn't work. It works fine on new pipe. But the pipe that had been down in the ground for years, was more brittle. Each time I tried to do it, before it would cut, it would just crack and break, worse than the hacksaw. So I ended up breaking off a few more inches in futile attempts to get a flat edge, and then re-sawing them as best I could. I measure things carefully, and plan it out, and I'm "dry fitting" things to prove that I measured correctly. It cannot work! If I put the fitting on, then I cannot get the pipe into the end, but naturally you cannot do without the fitting. I see now that I should have gotten four 90 degree fittings or something like that, to move the repair out of line with the pipe. I went to the local hardware store this time. I discussed it with the owner. He showed me another idea. This gismo is a "telescoping" section of pipe. You can loosen this section by un-screwing this, and shoving this piston like thing further in, put it in place, pull the piston out and into the fitting (where you cement it), and then tighten this section by re-screwing this thing around. It was $5 bucks. It worked like a charm. I've got purple primer all over my hands and cement everywhere, but it's together. It looks pretty good. The cement's gotta set of 2 hours before we can turn the water on.

Joseph was selected by his High School to be the "STAR pupil". Student and Teacher Achievement Recognition. He chose Ms. Dana Hall as his "STAR teacher". I think the selection had much to do with SAT scores, and Joseph did get a perfect score in the math section, and didn't do so badly in the other sections. So, Tuesday night was the Georgia region 5 recognition banquet for all the regions high school senior STAR pupils and teachers. I got cleaned up as quick as I could (without any water on), and we left for the banquet (Joseph and I). Lauretta was to meet us there. She was coming from PI day activities at Drake Middle School, in Auburn.

We're very proud of Joseph. Each of the students gave a brief speech, introducing the STAR teacher and why they picked them. Each of the teachers gave a brief speech about the student. They got a commemorative picture frame. And a meal at the Marriot (the banquet itself). Well, I guess we actually paid for the meal. It was fun. We were surprised that not all of the high schools in the region were represented. Jordan, Spencer, Kendrick, Shaw and Hardaway didn't have anybody there. And those are all local high schools.

Returning home, we turned on the water at the meter, and it didn't appear to be leaking at all. :-D I decided to leave it exposed over night, and check for leaks again on Wednesday. I cleaned up again, with the water on. I noticed that the valve in my bathroom toilet wasn't completely shutting off. Nothing serious, I guess, about the same amount of water that had been leaking from the pipe underground.

Wednesday, I woke up pretty stiff. All that shovelling, and mattocking, getting up and down off the ground, squatting, kneeling, moving heavy boxes, etc. Really pretty debilitating. The back of my thighs, and the lower back. The abs (particularly where they insert along the margin of the lower ribs), the whole right arm, the pec's, and the triceps on the left arm, and both hands. Whoa! And it just got worse as the day went on.

I had a class all day at work, but after that, I went back to the Home Depot and got a "fill valve", which the package says "replaces most valves in most toilets". I got home and started to work. First I filled in the dirt over the exposed pipe, as it STILL didn't seem to be leaking anymore. I wonder why it is that the dirt you take out of whole never really fits back into the hole?

Joseph inspected my purchase and said "How did you know?" Huh? "How did you know that the fill valve in my bathroom stopped working? I cut off the water to the toilet using that cut-off valve that you installed in there." Hmmph. I wish I had known. I could have bought 2 fill valves when I was at the store.

But I hadn't yet installed a cut-off valve in my bathroom, so I had to go out to the meter near the street to shut off the water, and then I got started in on the fill valve job. I opend the cold water taps on two sinks and the bathtub, to get the pressure out of the system. I flushed it, with the water off, and then sponged up all the water left in the tank. I got the water line loose (with a pan and a sponge to catch as much of the water as I could that was still in that line. I had opened several of the faucets to try to let all the pressure out of the line, but not all of the water had gone out. Actually, I was pretty happy on that score. I didn't really get much on the floor at all. The next step was to take out the old fill valve. Somehow, the threads below the plastic nut on the bottom of the toilet had gotten stripped, so it was impossible to get that nut to come off. Eventually, I broke the brittle PVC (or some other sort of plastic) fill valve, using my PVC pipe cutter and vice grips and anything else I could think of, until it broke at the right spot and the top and bottom came apart and cleared the hole in the tank.

The next thing was to install the new fill valve, and that went just spiffy. Re-attaching the water line was a bit harder than it should have been, but that went okay too. Everything looked ready for the water to be restored.

I was working by myself, since Joseph had a "court of honor", but I wasn't prepared to go to it, due to the repairs taking longer than I had imagined. So, I went out to the meter, and cut on the water, then "ran like hell" for the bathroom. Shwew! It wasn't leaking or spraying water all over the bathroom. I'd really been scared, since as I got closer I could hear water running and splashing. It was the two sinks and the bathtub. Shwew! Next I chased the cat (Princess) back outside, since she'd followed me in thru the front door, which I'd left open in my haste. I had to adjust it a bit to get it to fill to the line that I wanted it to. Then I just had to clean up around the job, put tools away and such. I cannot find the lid to the purple tub. I've looked "everywhere"!

This incredible debilitating stiffness or soreness just emphasizes to me the reason why I want to be in better shape. An itsy bitsy household repair shouldn't be such a production number. And it should have such uncomfortable repercussions.

How far did I go?

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:53:23 GMT

I was wondering just how far I got during my 35 minutes of cardio yesterday. So, this morning, I went out to "mapmyrun.com" and mapped it. Here's the map's link: http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/ga/cusseta/235969331 . And the answer is 1.99 miles. Pretty close to 2 miles. That's good!

Success of a sort!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:09:24 GMT

My theory seemed to play out well today. I forgot the Ibuprofin an hour before cardio, so I just skipped it. But I did focus on smaller steps, sort of avoiding coming down on my heels, especially my left heel. Essentially, I was able to do the W1D1 right thru. All 8 "running" intervals and consistent walking in the other 25 minutes of the period. So, the running isn't really what I'd call running. It's jogging, maybe, but very "up and down". But, hey! It's better than last week. I'll just take it a day at a time, and try to avoid injury, while getting on the road.

For my evening meal, I'm down to one of the Kielbasa sausage dogs (3 g). My carb range is 30 - 42, so to get the carbs back up into the range, I can have the "carb smart" snacks.

2 keys occur to me: Keep busy and only eat to satisfy physical hunger

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:08:10 GMT

Both today and yesterday, I did well in observing these 2 rules. I kept myself busy doing something with my hands/body. The best thing is an activity that cannot be done while eating. For example, singing, playing the piano or guitar or raking the leaves. Yesterday it was cleaning the house. Today it was various church work. But watching tv, or reading, or studying...all these allow the mouth to be eating. Another key was to attend to my body. Regardless of the time of day, even if it is time for breakfast, lunch or dinner, if the body isn't really hungry, then maybe it doesn't need to be fed.

I read another interesting article on the Internet about shin pain. (I told my wife about that, and she thought that "shin pain" was a Mandarin Chinese word :D ). It said that this can be caused in newbies when their stride is too long, and they come down too much on the heel, rather than more flat. That rapidly stretches the muscle on the front of the shin, which is tight and weaker from lack of training. That can tend to injure that muscle, which results in swelling, that can trigger a type of "compartment syndrome" type of symptom, even when it's just walking, and not chronic at all. So, the advice is to take some "anti-inflamatory" type of pain medication (I'm going to try Ibuprofin) an hour before exercize. Stretch out well. Try to shorten the stride, and keep the torso erect (avoid leaning forward), and then try to come down more flat footed. Something about avoiding the thought of sending the feet out in front of you. More of pushing the ground behind you. Cool down, and stretch out after. Then I can ice the front calves to avoid swelling. There's also some massage things (pretty hard to do to yourself) that can work to stretch the fascia a bit, so the "compartment" can get bigger.

It's cheating isn't it?

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:49:02 GMT

Probably! I got home from work, due to do the cardio, but it is soooo cold outside, and my work out clothes are a bit on the skimpy side. But I hadn't eaten supper, and the calories in the supper are about the same as the calories I'd burn on the cardio. So, eating supper and doing the cardio is the same (calorie deficit-wise) to skipping supper and skipping the cardio.

I was thinking, y'know, with my compartment syndrome legs, maybe it'll be easier after I've lost some more weight. If I can lose some weight just thru calorie restriction, then it'll be easier (and spring is only a few weeks away and it'll warm up too). But I don't plan on skipping cardios for weeks, just tonight due to the unusual cold.

A very busy day at work, and then more after!

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:33:50 GMT

My wife was a sleepy head this morning. So, I made my own breakfast and lunch, and went off to work. It was busy, so I worked thru lunch time, eating lunch a bit after 3 pm. At home, I changed my evening meal a tad. I substituted 2 eggs for 2 sausage dogs. I'm going to see what that does to the totals for the day. The target for the meal is 12 g of carbs, and I think I may be low on that, cuz I think the sausage dogs are 3 g each, while the eggs are just 1 g each. So, I'll just have to put that in my SparkPeople nutrition tracker and see how it comes out. Something has got to change because I haven't been hitting hardly any of my targets, including calories per day, carbs per day, fat grams per day. For protein, I just have a minimum (and I've never been anywhere close to missing that minimum).

After that, I had to go to my church meetings, which lasted until 10. I did a few little strength training things, here and there throughout the day (maybe totaling 10 minutes altogether).

Still just walking--not breathless, but pains in the front ouitside of the calf

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:52:07 GMT

I skipped my cardio just about all last week. But that's a cool thing about life, there's a new day coming and it don't do no good to be too worried about the past. Just keep doing. That which we persist in doing, right?

I am concerned that the pain may be "compartment syndrome", and the fascia won't expand even after continuing walking 3x a week for several weeks. I'm just going to have to try it out and see. If walking can't get easier for me to do, I may need to consult with my doctor, which is a pain of another kind. Walking, especially at the slow pace that I'm maintaining (maybe 3 miles per hour), shouldn't be using up my calfs like this.

Definitely going to be pre-C25K for a bit longer

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:06:23 GMT

Today was the 2nd attempt at W1D1, and again, the left leg was giving me heck. That muscle just needs more conditioning before I'm going to be able to jog for 8 minutes (in discrete 60 sec chunks). But the walking was fine. I feel like I could pretty much walk forever. I'll keep tapping the left toe and so forth, and trying to jog for a bit, and I'm sure, eventually it'll come around. I'm sticking to my diet pretty good. Still have lots of work to do, and that's sucking up some of the enthusiasm. A busy life makes me feel divided.

A day of rest, not a day off....

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:47:30 GMT

I did a bit of strength training, for about 10 minutes today. I want to do more of that, but I have to get going earlier in the morning. Going to bed on time would help that, I'm sure. I've been paying attention more to my left calf, the outside front. Tapping time to the music with the left toe, consciously walking and planting that left heel, and then rolling thru the big toe, that sort of thing. A little bit of balancing up on my heels. Also a bit more stretching in my neck and shoulders. I should have some dumb-bells somewhere, but there's still a lot you can do this way without any equipment.

The Tuesday Saga of the Southpaw

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:50:34 GMT

Having missed yesterday, I'm now having a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday week. So, Tuesday. W1D1, well not exactly that....more of another pre-C25K. The muscle in my left leg got used up too fast. It's the muscle that picks up the toes, allowing one to walk on the heels (if you want to do that) but more importantly, it allows you to land on your heel when striding along. But my little front of the calf muscle said "Aaagh, I'm done" and then just stopped working. I could not come down on my heel with any resistance at all to collapsing the ankle to the flatfooted state. I felt like a horse that somebody had asked "What's one and one?" I had to come down flat-footed on the left side, sort of just slapping that left foot down. I suppose I could have tip-toed thru the last part of the podcast, but I just determined to walk it out. So, I did my 30 minutes, but with only 4 total minutes of running. I still got plenty sweaty.

Since I knew I would be running, I got my gym bag and went to the YMCA (which my company hosts in the basement of our office building--a branch of the Y just for employees who pay their dues). I used the locker room, and the scales, and the shower, and the towel service, but not the treadmills or other weight machines. I started out just fine, but then the left leg problem presented, and I ended up walking the last 15 minutes or so. Now, are you supposed to be able to do the W1D1 on the first day of the week, or only be able to do it by W1D3? I'll just be persistent and keep doing whatever I can do, and just progress to W2 when I'm good and ready.

Too busy at work

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:41:07 GMT

Work dumped on me today. I had to eat my lunch at my desk as I worked, and I didn't get to leave until after 6:30. So, I didn't do my C25K thing today. My plan was for MWF to be my days, but I think letting TRS be my days this week would be better than TWF (missing that recovery day). I've just got to get my head around the concept that I'm not going to permit work (or anything else) to steal my time away from me, to rob me of my chance to be healthy. They can wait an HOUR for me to work out and shower and return.

I joined up at SparkPeople, and I'm traking my diet and exercize information over there. Visit me there at http://my.sparkpeople.com/CHARLEYGARRETT

I need to get a good "before" picture of myself, to set a bench mark, so I can see the comparison a year from now.

First pre-C25K walk using the ullreys podcast

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:07:56 GMT

I had downloaded a podcast for week 1 of C25K from here, so today, after finishing my lunch, I put it on and started walking. I didn't do the running/jogging. I'm still having this pain/stiffness in my left calf, maybe having trouble raising the toes like on that side. I think I need more pre-C25K walking to get my muscles and tendons, especially in that leg ready. But I did do the full 30 minutes, walking faster during the 60 seconds of "running", and then slower during the 90 seconds of recovery. I really liked the podcast telling me when the running and walking cycles started and ended, and the encouraging words "you're doing great" "you can do this" "go for it". I definitely would recommend that for anybody trying to follow the program.

The first day!

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:43:51 GMT

I'm fat. And old. But I have a soul that transcends all that. We're never really stuck with our circumstances, not when the heart is free. So, to put off the chains built out of long-standing habits, I just begin a new day. It is not meet that a man should run faster than he is able, so all things must be done in wisdom and in order. My daughter is a good example for me. Slow and steady, with an eye fixed on the goal.

Recently informed by the bathroom scales that 275# is weighing me down, I need to change that. More significantly, my waist bulges out uncomfortably. Moving is effortfull, and even more significantly, my blood sugar levels are too high to please me. Diet and medication haven't completely brought them in line. The medication could do more, if I would take more of it, but then that makes it easier to retain weight, and harder to lose. The right answer is to lose the weight, by having a more normal activity level.

The "Couch to 5K" plan seems gentle enough to lead me to success without crushing my fragile ambition. Even so, I'm doing a "pre-C25K" whereby I just walk around my company's office building for 30 minutes 3 times a week (Mon, Wed and Friday). So far, 2 times in a row. I was amazed at the effort that it took to keep moving until the end of the 30 minutes. It's better with my MP3 player distracting me. Still, there were aches in my left leg, no breathlessness, but a surprising bit of sweat....just walking!