| I worked from home this morning. I was expecting a call from a personal trainer (as part of IBM’s free Lifeworks program) at 10:00, but she called at 11:00. Turns out she was on central time.
We had a great chat about my current workout situation. She said that while the 300 crunches I’ve been doing—particularly as often as I’ve been doing them and the fact that I’ve been doing them the same way for about six months now—has served me well (since I told her my lower back pain is virtually non-existent anymore), it’s going to get to the point where either: (1) I’m going to start dreading doing them or (2) my body will start getting “used” to them, and they won’t be as effective as changing them up some would be. |
She suggested some ways to mix them up:
- Do maybe five or ten sets of 20 (instead of 30) and do them much slower, taking a couple of seconds to go back down on each rep.
- Sometimes, do them on the floor on a mat, instead of on the ab cruncher machine.
- Sometimes, do them on a stability ball. That will work different muscles and work on your balance at the same time.
She was real big on varying my routines, which of course I’ve heard is essential in keeping you from getting bored, but which I resist as the strong (Myers-Briggs) J-type that I am.
So, all in all, this was a great chat with impeccable timing, because I have indeed been having way too much negative talk in anticipating my daily workout. Oh yeah, and she also said that I should definitely not feel compelled to go every day.
These things rule! I think the banana flavoring is similar to that of the Banana Now & Laters, which I’m sure is some chemically induced palate pleasure.
LOL! This article, about a taste test on them, refers to them as “artificially bananaed-up lard cookie[s].” No wonder I love them.
I liked this article on 10 Mispronunciations That Make You Sound Stupid. I knew that realtor and nuclear were going to be on it.
I worked from my office this afternoon, and at 7:00, I met my financial advisor, Nathan Grooms, at the Hilton on Page Creek Road near the airport for a financial seminar on “Market Volatility.”
The presentation was supposed to start at 7:30 and from 7:00-7:30 was social time complimented by coffee and pastries. I hate when stuff is foo-foo at the expense of being practical.
This rich, white lady in front of me…
| Digression: Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure everyone there was white, though I’d love to be wrong about that. And I’m quite sure everyone else there had money, as each financial advisor invited four or five of their “best” clients. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just those clients who they thought might be interested in the topic of market volatility. |
So any-hoo, this lady in front of me pours herself a cup of coffee—into a cup with no saucer, a china cup not a mug or anything, and she fills it to about a quarter of an inch from the brim.
Next on the table are the foo-foo condiments for the coffee. There is a bowl of what looks like whipped cream with a spoon in it, a bowl of thick cinnamon sticks, and a bowl of what looks like might be chocolate shavings.
Dame Thang now has a spoon hovering over her already precariously full coffee cup with a big dollop of whipped cream dangling at the end of it, evidently clinging to the spoon for dear life. The coffee cup itself, unbeknownst to the wench, is now hovering over the bowl of cinnamon sticks. She violently shakes the spoon to successfully dislodge the dollop, which proceeds to splash coffee out of her cup and douse about half of the cinnamon sticks below it.
For her final number, she takes one of the soaked cinnamon sticks from the shallow end of the pool now in the bowl, places it carefully in her coffee, sort of leans it on the mound of whipped cream before carefully releasing it, and watches in horror as it promptly drowns into the deep end of her coffee cup—never to be seen again.
Fortunately for me, I drink my coffee black, so I just take two of the little pastries, one being a one-inch by one-inch chocolate cake square, and the other being some three-layered thing with cream between the layers.
Back at the table, I bite into the three-layered thing only to find the pastry part between the cream layers so hard that I can’t possibly bite through them without all of the cream spurting out the sides. A foo-foo fiasco indeed.
The presentation part of the meeting started at 7:20 instead of 7:30, presumably because everyone who was expected had already arrived—not just to draw attention to the speaker and away from the epicurean-struggling guests.
The speaker was Brian, a Senior Vice President with Riversource Investments. He had a rare, yet sexually charged combination of characteristics being an articulate, financially savvy business man, as well as an ex-football player. Not really my type, though.
The agenda of his relatively short talk included three salient points:
- Past and present market volatility
- The futility of market timing [“Market timing may be hazardous to your wealth”]
- The criticality of diversification
I got to bed early this evening, and read several chapters of The Color of Water. Unbeknownst to me, I set my coffeemaker to start a nice, hot, fresh pot of coffee at 8:00 tomorrow night instead of tomorrow morning.