Note of the Living Deb

I'm sort of in the habit of going for a jog once a week, but lately it's been so warm that I give in after only 20 minutes. I'm just not as macho as I used to be.

(I know, in most of the country, summer is the time when you can finally go running outside. But this afternoon when Robin was thinking about working on his car, he decided to put it off because it was 99 degrees. In May. Is this going to be an extremely long summer?)

I may be joining a gym again soon, and the ones I'm considering do have air-conditioning and treadmills. But treadmills are so boring. Normally I can stand them only when reading a book, which I can do while walking but which I suspect I cannot do while jogging. I can't remember whether I've actually tried before, but I certainly don't read when I jog to the bus stop, though I do read while walking to the bus stop.

So then I got the idea that maybe I could join the 21st century and get one of those new-fangled music devices with earphones. They are lighter than the Sony Walkman of the last century, plus they hold more songs. Robin explained that the iPod Touch costs only a little more than twice as much as an iPod Shuffle. And those come with a million extra functions.

But now I'm wondering whether I would even like such a thing. First of all, the best thing about listening to music is singing along. And that would defeat the whole purpose of having earphones to keep from inflicting one's music on everyone else. Would I like jogging along to music without getting to sing? I don't know. If not, could I find a compromise quiet humming that would be fun enough for me and inaudible enough for my unfortunate treadmill neighbors?

I also often don't like having things in my ears. It's not as bad when I'm not chewing (earplugs at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema are protective but feel weird when I'm eating). I think modern earphones are probably fairly comfortable. But even when you're bouncing up and down? Even in sweaty ears?

So, I have a question for those of you who jog or run: What do you do when the weather's bad (and/or when running indoors)? (Feel free to answer related questions, too, which I should have thought to ask. Or just tell me anything you like.)

While killing time at the public library yesterday, I found Prevention magazine's towel workout in their January 2010 issue. I have tried it and now declare it a good way to get your blood pumping quickly.

It consists of five strength-building exercises that involve using a towel to help you slide around on the floor. I'll warn you that it's not as fun as running and then sliding down the hallway in your socks. It might be as fun has helping Pippi Longstocking mop the floor, though. Here is a brief description.

* lunges - slide into and out of these from a standing position
* squats - do kind of a one-legged squat while sliding your other leg out to the side
* alternating leg extensions - while on your back with your knees up, lift your butt up, then slide one foot away and back.
* planks - start like you're going to do a push up, but put most of your forward weight on one hand while moving your other hand in a circle on the floor.
* mountain climber - while in push-up position, slide one foot at a time up under your hip and back.

They also recommend doing three minutes of cardio between each one, but I won't be doing that.

I tried to find it online but only found the video version of the towel workout. It's better at explaining things, but more annoying than reading the article because it has an ad and because each exercise has its own video. At least you only watch the ad once and the videos will play automatically in order. However, I recommend that when you hear her say "For best results, follow this move with a three-minute cardio burst" click on the next video's "play" button.

I like how the person on the video is totally panting even though she is trying to remain suave and chipper.

I do think the video version differs from the print version in two ways. First, on the lunging exercise, the video says to simplify it by doing only the part where you slide your leg forward, but the print version (and my leg muscles) say that the easier version is to do only the part where you slide your leg backward.

Then on the alternating leg extensions, I thought that on the hard version you were supposed to move both legs at the same time but they were still supposed to alternate. I might just be misremembering this, though. But for me that is both harder than the medium version and easier than the hard version on the video, so check it out if it's at the level you like.

One negative is that it only works on smooth floors, not carpeting or grass. You may be able to do it on carpeting with the right socks (or maybe bare feet that are not at all sticky and sweaty)--I haven't tried that yet. If so, it may be good for hotel use.

I was hoping it would be a quick way to get warm when it's cold inside, but it doesn't quite do that for me.

Which of the following is the best way to exercise in 99-degree weather?

a) Ultimate frisbee (the best aerobic exercise, even though supposedly it's not aerobic) followed by rock climbing (at the right difficulty to finish using up all your muscles in 10 minutes) followed by a little tai chi (for stretching and balance)

b) Exercise involving wind such as roller blading or bicycling

c) Walking in the air conditioning (that's good) in a mall (that's bad) with friends (that's good)

d) Ballroom dancing in the air conditioning and fans with friends

Today, the best answer for me is: d. The a answer is the best exercise except for the 99-degree weather part. Answer b you could live through especially if you had plenty of water and a head covering (and didn't have a wreck). Answer c feels more pleasant to me. But answer d was the best for me today.

I got lots of dances with Robin. Even though only one of my other favorite partners was there, I got a few dances with other acquaintances I liked. I got to dance hustle and samba, which I rarely get to do. I got dances with strangers who knocked my socks off: I got a killer cha cha and several good dances with one guy and a totally awesome crazy foxtrot with another guy leading me in steps I never even imagined before, but they still seemed to work.

I hardly sat through a dance and so my pedometer recorded almost a whole 10,000 steps from the dance alone. Also I got cookies. Really good ones.

I am exactly the type of person who should be riding my bike to work. I actually own a bike. And a helmet. I'm basically in shape and know how to ride a bike. I'm opposed to wasting gas to get somewhere when there's another good way. I work only 3.5 miles from my house. There are routes that aren't that dangerous. I already don't drive to work and the bus system drives me nutso sometimes. I could use more exercise.

However, I never do ride my bike to work. Why is that? I'm not totally sure, but one reason is weather. It's usually too cold or too hot. Or too rainy. And there are no showers (or at least you have to be a member of Rec Sports to be allowed access to the gyms which is where the showers are, and I don't want to blow $308 a year just for that). Another reason is that it's hard to get my bike out of the garage. Another reason is that I like to read on the way to and from work, which I could not do while riding a bike.

Those are some pretty sad excuses. Yet somehow strangely effective.

Bike-to-work day happens every May and was designed just for people like me. Various places are setting up breakfast stations, including my employer. And it's certainly possible to take a sponge bath at work and to change right there in the roomy bathroom stall designed for handicapped folks. So I've often told myself I should at least TRY riding my bike to work on bike-to-work day. For several years now.

I was telling someone this and they informed me that my employer now offers commuter showers even if you aren't a Rec Sports member. That takes care of my biggest excuse (except maybe for the one about not being able to read during the commute).

So, I picked out a specific route: neighborhood streets to a four-lane street to an unused bridge over the freeway (with a no-pedestrian sign but without a no-bicyclist sign) to a street with a good sidewalk to a long street with a good bike lane to some scary narrow streets on campus where at least people do realize they sometimes have to go very slowly to deal with bicyclists and pedestrians.

I decided to scout out the commuter shower and bike rack situation in person. I found where the showers were in the building and practiced getting there from different entrances. Then I created a strategy for getting to the building. The building is currently surrounded on two sides by continuous construction with no bike entrance and only one pedestrian entrance along a time-consuming maze-like path. It's surrounded on the other two sides by connecting buildings with only a single bike entrance off a busy road. Once you get in, there is only one tiny bike rack, hidden behind a row of bushes. I decided to park at a very long bike rack sort of near the entrance to the pedestrian construction entrance, which is between the shower and my office. I'll have a nice cool-down on the way to the shower and a short hike up the hill to my office afterwards. I resolved to get up very dang early in the morning to make sure I'd have time for all this.

**

I did get up somewhat early. Robin got my bike out and made sure the tires were aired. I had no trouble finding my helmet and lock. I remembered to bring clothes and shower stuff and a towel and a hair brush. And I actually rode my bike to work today.

I haven't ridden in years and was a little rickety but not bad. My route was just about how I expected--a little scary but not that bad. Two drivers turning right at corners where I was stopped were unbelievably polite. Several cyclists passed me. The route is basically flat, but being as out of shape for biking as I am, every tiny incline made me pant, even if I'd been able to get up to a pretty good speed before hand. Being a chicken, I didn't go very fast and even braked down some of the hills that didn't have stop signs or red lights at the end of them.

I tried to remember that bike riding is fun. It's not quite because it's too dangerous, but it's wonderfully faster than walking, and even I do feel a pretty nice breeze.

When I got to the guard shed = breakfast station I had planned to visit, no one was there.

Turning down the last road, the one with the bike rack, I got injured. I was holding my gear-changing lever wrong and pinched my finger while changing gears. I didn't break the skin, but now have a blood blister the size and shape (and almost the color) of a doodle bug (aka pill bug aka roly poly). I was typing funny at first, but feel better now.

I parked my bike as planned, 30 minutes after leaving the house. On the way to the gym, I saw another guard station and asked if they really did have goodies for people riding their bikes to work. They did. There was a paper bag containing an information sheet on biking at UT and an apple. Written on the bag was the message, "Please wash apple." There was also an entry form for prizes. Okay, that was a little disappointing.

I got to the gym and the first two showers I tried had no shower head. The third one had a shower head, but none of them had water. That was more than a little disappointing. Fortunately, I was no more sweaty than I usually am when I get to work in the summer, so I just changed my clothes. On my way out of the gym, I heard running water. The lights in the gym are controlled by a motion sensor, so I walked over to the other part of the gym with lights on and found that the showers in that section did have water. Yeesh.

**

Overall, I estimate that on a normal day, I would have to leave the house one hour before I wanted to be at work, so riding a bike currently takes more time than taking a bus, even on the worst days when I have to leave the house 50 minutes before I want to be at work. I would get faster with practice and once the construction is finished, though.

My pedometer, which claims it doesn't work for bike riding, still recorded that I had done some work, which was a good surprise. It was definitely some exercise with several bouts of panting, and my quads did need a nice stretch afterwards.

I was hoping that I would see that riding my bike to work was much better than I feared, but even taking into account that if I ride more often, I will build my muscles and confidence and speed (and learn how to shift gears without smashing my finger), I'm still not thrilled with the idea. So sad.

Now I still have to get my bike back home, or actually to the mall where I am meeting friends. Bleh. Maybe I will ride it home next week.

I made it to this weekend's Wildflower Center's fall plant sale and bought eight plants. I love that sale because they have only native plants and mostly only drought-tolerant plants (some native plants grow near creeks). Also, it's fall, the perfect time to plant things in my part of the world because plants have the whole mild winter to get established and prepare themselves for our harsh summer.

First I got a walnut. Not the usual black walnut that grows 60-80 feet tall, but some other kind with small walnuts that grows only 16-18 feet tall. This is because it sounded a lot easier to grow. Like this one is really going to grow. (The last one I got, planted in a hurry right before we left for our cruise, did not make it.) I would love to be able to harvest walnuts one day. Growing a walnut tree could also be considered a long-term investment in a very nice wood.

I paid for it and carried it to my car. Carrying a five-gallon plant half a mile is decent exercise, which is why I did it.

Then I went back and bought seven smaller plants and carried them back.

Then my seatbelt alarm went off even after I moved the plants around and buckled all the seatbelts in the car, so I had to listen to it all the way home. Next time I got in my car, the alarm was no longer going off. Magic!

Buying eight plants was risky, though. I'm a terrible gardener and can't be trusted with plants. You can tell what a lousy gardener I am when you see what my goals are for new plants:

1) Plant them as soon as possible after buying them. This is half the battle, by which I mean that if I do this, the plant has at least a 50% survival rate.

2) Keep them watered until they are established.

3) Do not accidentally mow them.

I have almost completed step one. The walnut is in the front yard near the street.

One blackfoot daisy is in my moonlight garden (all pale plants near the back door) and the other is between my two red yuccas. I have had really good luck with this plant before even though it likes rocky soil and I have clay soil. It loves the sun and the heat.

The pale yucca, a small grey-green twisted yucca, is in front of the orange-brick planter. The silver pony foot, a light grey ground cover plant, is in front of the living room window, on the other side from the rosemary. Both of these love the sun, and I should mention that I didn't buy a single plant that isn't drought tolerant (at least not to my knowledge). Also, they all are perennials, though the blackfoot daisy is short-lived.

The dwarf Barbados cherry, an evergreen shrub with an edible but supposedly not yummy fruit with possibly lots of Vitamin C (the regular Barbados cherry has lots of vitamin C) and which I heard is good for bonsai, has been added to my row of plants in the front yard and is the mostly likely to be mowed. It grows into interesting shapes and makes lovely small pink crinkly flowers.

I planted the red turk's cap, a good shade flower, under my pine tree.

And that leaves the flame acanthus, a deciduous shrub full of orange flowers loved by butterflies and hummingbirds, which I cheated with and planted in a bigger pot for now.

While I was pulling weeds, something stuck me in the thumb. So today's score is Debbie: 7.5 and yard: 1.

Overall, my yard looks pretty much exactly the same as when I started. (And much worse than it sounds in this entry.) And I am totally used up.

I've been telling myself I need to do more (some) strength training. Today I finally did a little.

Walking home from Target with a bag of Epsom salt and cough syrup I worked several arm muscles:
* biceps - by holding my elbow at my side and lifting the bag up to my shoulder (biceps curls)
* upper back(?) - by lifting the bag up to my shoulder while letting my elbows rise to shoulder height (upright rows?)
* deltoids(?) - by lifting the bag from my shoulder to as high as I could reach (overhead raises?)
* triceps - by lifting the bag behind me with my elbow up in the air (triceps extension)

I sometimes do biceps curls when I'm walking; the others are much less subtle. I don't think I've done the last two while walking before. I'm sure I looked like a complete goofball, but my arms were all nice and rubbery by the time I got home.

Today I walked to Target as an excuse to walk, to get "The Holiday" for $10, and to check out the Christmas cards on clearance.

I did walk, though the whole trip turned out to be only 4,000 steps.

"The Holiday" is on sale for $13+, so I must have been remembering the wrong sale flyer.

I got 25 big red envelopes for $1.25, telling myself that I can make my own cards next year and slide them into these. I also got a bag of miniature peanut butter cups for less than $0.70. And I also found a container of scent-free liquid laundry detergent that will do 38 loads of laundry for $4. So I got four of them.

They were kind of heavy. I thought to myself "I'm building character" as I walked home.

Then, written as if to help me put that into perspective, I found Moving By Bus. 'Maybe "Buy Nothing Day' should be changed to "Move everything you own one block without the use of a motor vehicle, and then see if you really need any more so-called 'bargains'" day.'

Man, that's good.

And I probably don't need the bag of candies, even though it's such an exciting bargain, eh?

I thought up a new strategy for walking more. Whenever I'm having one of those days where I'm sitting around the house all day, I should try to remember to get up and go walk around the block every hour or two.

Not my block, the block across the street from me.*

I measured that block yesterday and it's about 500 steps. It has only ten houses on it, five on each side. So then I decided it would be better to go around that block twice for each break. So far this strategy has allowed me to end with 2200 steps on Sunday rather than 1200 steps. Oops, still nothing to write home about. That's partly because I forgot about my strategy until 11:40 pm and partly because I was mostly sitting around someone else's house yesterday.

There's another bigger block I could try, also not mine, across from where my street ends in a T, which has many more then ten houses on it plus a church.

* I'm not even sure how I would walk around my block. I live on a street that looks like it's going to be a cul de sac, but when you get to the end of it, you can turn right twice, going around a U to get back to the road you started on. At that point, if I turn right and come back to my house, I've gone around that 500-step block.

Let's say I go out the door and turn right (south). When I get to the next street I would turn right (west). That road curves back south. So at the next street I would turn right (west again). That street is straight, so at the next right I'm going north. Then I stay on that road the equivalent of three blocks (because those other streets don't go through) before my next right turn (east). Then another right turn (south) takes me to a t-intersection because that street doesn't go through. So I'd turn left (east), then right (south), then right (west). The next street I get to is parallel to mine. I could turn right and walk around the U or just keep going until I get to my street.

I've decided I need to show up a little earlier at ultimate frisbee and take the time to practice throwing. I don't need a whole 30 minutes of practice--that just hurts my hands. But today my throws were amazingly bad. At least three went nowhere near where I was aiming, and one of those even went behind me! The others went near where I was aiming but either right into the hands of someone on the other team or completely out of reach or, in one case, right to someone's face! Yikes! (He caught it and no one got hurt.)

On the other hand, I made some very, very fun catches. I kept getting open, people kept throwing to me, and I kept catching. I got a one-handed catch, several overhead catches and even one of those long ones I can never judge and end up changing directions while trying to get to them. Very fun. But then it would be time to throw (play scary music here).

I tried doing my old strategy of catching the disk in the end zone so I wouldn't have to throw it, but no one was having any of that. It was all "Go in, Debbie!" "Closer, Debbie!" and "Cut in, Debbie!" not only from my own teammates but even from my guard!

So, it's time to practice throwing before games. It's sad, but I'm really not used to getting to touch the disk this much. Well, it's time to get used to it.

Also, I learned two other things, which should also be obvious. 1) It doesn't make sense to run around making cuts if no one is on me. I should start paying more attention to where my guard is. That's easy when he's right on my tail as usually happens, but when he lets me get away and doesn't even bother getting anywhere near me at all either because he's tired or thinks I'm not a threat or is doing some kind of zone guarding (because he's tired) then I can just stand there yelling about how open I am. 2) It's easier to block a disk before your guy catches it. I should try harder to keep up with the person I'm guarding so I can try to block throws he's trying to catch instead of thinking that I don't have to worry about it because I will be able to get there in time to block the throw. Blocking the throw is scary because so many of these players throw so hard that if I did actually block it, I would get injured. Of course, you can "block" a throw without actually touching it by making the thrower feel intimidated into making a bad throw just to be sure it will get around me. That even may have happened to me several times today. Still it's good to try to block the catch, too.

This group is really great to play with. But I am going to have to learn more skills. Ahem. I mean: And I am going to get to learn more skills.

Picture of the day: Empirical Question's Odd Juxtaposition in honor of some nearby recent unusual weather. "I must say this isn't a combination I have ever seen before. We have the bluebonnets and the Indian paintbrush, but none of the snow."

Semi-serious ultimate is a whole different thing when someone actually throws you the disc occasionally. I missed every single time someone threw to me except for one. The last time the person guarding me actually came up to me afterwards and gave me a one-arm hug around the shoulders and said I had given up too soon on the last one.

I expect to suck at running, keeping up with my man, getting away from my man, and throwing. But I actually can catch sometimes. That's my one sort of good thing. Overhearing this, one of my experienced teammates tried to give me lessons on catching. He explained two things. First, people have been overthrowing me--we still have to learn how fast each other can run. If I can't touch the disc, it's not my fault. However, I did touch and fumble several throws. I even would have caught one, but my guard yanked it out of my hand.

My teammate explained that he's a runner but used to fumble all his catches. And so second, when practicing before/between games, we should practice running to the disc, not just standing there, because catching while running is a whole different skill.

Meanwhile we were throwing back and forth the whole time. And I caught every single one. No, what I need to practice is when people are throwing long to me.

After that I never got open again, so I don't know if I would have caught anything after all these pep talks.

So, the atmosphere is pretty good this time. I still don't think ultimate is as fun as it used to be, but sheenaqotj told me that some of the pick-ups around town are even less serious than this winter league, so I may try them sometimes. This may be my last league, though. Or it may get more fun as we go along.

We ended up with yellow shirts. Brilliantly bright yellow. And apparently there's some kind of throw called a "thumber." So, can you guess our team name?

Minor stalling time here so it doesn't stand out if you're trying to guess, but our team is the yellow thumberines. We should probably be called the yellow moonerines because there are (at least) two mooners on our team. After the first game it was noted that once we mooned them, we started getting a lot more points. And it was decided that we should moon the other team much earlier on in the future.

And our rallying cry seems to be, "We're not that drunk!" I don't know what it is about drinking and ultimate, but they seem to go together, even though I would think that anyone who plays that kind of crazy game would want to maintain healthy habits so they could be in proper shape. One guy was drinking wine throughout the two games. I guess what it is about drinking and ultimate is that young people are attracted to both.

For lunch we got pizza and beer. "I didn't have a very big budget, so I got Lone Star."

And now I am tired and achy. I won't be able to move tomorrow, will I?