x-files

Splendid news. A couple days ago I discovered that we actually get the SciFi channel. Call me "Mr. Observant." Anyhow, the splendid news is that every few days this channel shows reruns of "X-Files." So now I can DVR "X-files" and get my conspiracy theory/paranormal/"the truth is out there" fix every now and then.

On a related note, I'm also recommending my readers try tuning into this late night talk show called "Coast to Coast" sometime.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

Not that I'm a regular listener by any stretch of the imagination--I think I heard a part of the show one time while driving home from New Jersey in the middle of the night many years ago. So "the truth is out there" but apparently so are the crazies.

It was this article that got me intrigued.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/coast-to-coast

in praise of pull-ups

Pull-ups are hard. Some varieties are easier than others, of course. Reverse grip chin-ups are, for me, easier than wide grip or close grip overhand pull-ups. Corn-cob pull-ups are brutal (pull up, chin to the left, chin to the right, chin away from bar, and then back down again).

But I like them because they're hard and because after I have done six or eight sets of them I can tell I've done something good for my body.

A professional physical trainer once told me that if you could only do two strength exercises, pull-ups would be one of them.

Squats would be the other.

I can't say anything in praise of squats.

Tonight at 9 p.m.

Man vs. Wild Urban Survivor TV-PG, CC In a special edition of Man vs Wild, Bear Grylls finds himself in a new kind of jungle -- a concrete jungle. Bear uses the same wilderness survival techniques to stay alive in a city post-disaster.

in praise of acai berry juice

So I wake up in the morning and I drink a cup of 1/2 water 1/2 acai berry juice. Eight ounces of this stuff has 1000% (that's right, 10 times what you need) of your daily value of vitamin B12 and 200% of your daily value of Vitamin C--this among other things. Supposedly this stuff is loaded with antioxidants. Who knows. All I know is that I feel energized within a few minutes of drinking the stuff and hopping on the bike.

Here's the downside of waking up each day, drinking a big cup of watered down acai berry juice, and then riding a bike for a half hour. Riding a bike in the morning makes me very thirsty, so I drink a lot of water while and after I ride the bike--which is healthy, yes, but drinking that much makes me pee a lot. A lot.

Like, I went to the bathroom four times between 7:30 a.m. and the start of my class at 9:00 a.m. In fact, I went to the bathroom at Syd's daycare after I dropped her off around 8:25. I went to my classroom to log on to the computer and double check if the song I wanted to play would work from that computer, and by the time I finished that little test run and started to walk to my office I had to go again. After a few minutes in my office, I headed back to the classroom. On that walk I felt the urge again. Fortunately, this rate of bathroom visits does not continue throughout the day.

And so I would like to give a shout out to acai berry juice, a morning bike ride, and a lot of water. Flush the system, loosen up the creaky joints, crank up the metabolism, and energize my aging body.

some days are better than others

Playing basketball at 40, some days are better than others. And probably that's not even true. It's not that some days are better than others, but that some days I have brief stretches where I feel that all is right with my game. Not whole days, just brief, fleeting, moments. These moments are fewer and farther between, but they still happen on occasion.

Today I had a few moments on the court where I felt I could do no wrong. The moment passes, but while your in it--at 40--you relish it more than you once did. No one watches; no one cheers anymore. And yet, somehow, I find these moments--at 40--even more satisfying than moments I had in jam packed gyms at 18 or 21.

I keep playing basketball for moments when it all comes together--feathery light on my feet, a step-and-a-half faster than the game, my thrown-together team, the ball, and I as one.

I ride a stationary bike for half an hour every morning right after I get out of bed to make it more likely that moments like these can continue happen. I go to the gym by myself for 45 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday, to see if I can manufacture moments like these. I do more pull-ups, and push-ups, and crunches, and arm curls, and so on and so forth (they call it "P90X"--maybe you've seen the infomercial, too) then I've ever done in my life, to prepare my body for moments like these.

Is this pathetic?

I don't care. Live a moment or two like these and you won't care if anyone thinks its pathetic. Instead, all you'll know to do is thank God you're alive and well enough to cherish them.