6/28/09:A lot has happened since my last update. My Honeychan went to Japan for the summer. It is nice to still be happy with someone after 25 years. I miss her already. My camera class has been keeping me very busy. I always carry my camera and take a lot of pictures. I took some pictures of my students and printed them out for their graduation. I was so happy to see that everyone liked my pictures. All of my hard work paid off. ESL class photo album. The Gallery album is a prepackaged program for Linux. I got it to work but it takes a lot of manual intervention to get the pictures posted. My ESL class graduated last week. My post on ESL can be found here:ESL thoughts They did so well on the graduation ceremony, I was happy all the next day.
I am back to working out on a limited scale. My weight has finally stabilized. My sports chiropractor is awesome. He has me consuming thousands of calories a day. Two 1,000 calorie shakes per day, bananas, eggs and nuts. I don't usually drink the second shake because that is a whey protien shake and I don't like whey shakes. What is really cool about all of this is the fact that I am able to accept the bad and just be happy with the progress going forward. I don't know where or how I picked up the ability to accept things but I am glad I did. At the moment, Ted has some serious inner peace going on.
Great week for Ted
6/5/09:I am still healing from my injuries but I am coping just fine. I sometimes wish they would just heal and my life could just go back to normal but I realize this is normal.
I am going to get injured and it is up to me to make sure it does not happen again. It is also up to me to heal properly. Back to my great week. It started out with plenty of sleep
and an early jump for Monday morning. I did the P90X core plus the P90 abs. I slammed a ton (~1,000 calories) of protien shake for energy and calories then went to work. My beautiful honeychan made me a great lunch in all of those Japanese style small servings.
I was set on going to yoga, for Mondy night, but I forgot my mat and I do not like covering the loaners with sweat so I went home to spend time with my honeychan (honeychans are nice, everyone should have one). I started my camera class on Tuesday and I had a lot of fun. I learned so much about DSLR fundamentals.
I had to move my English class to Wednesday to accommodate my camera class. The students were so happy to see me, my love quota was filled up instantly There is some serious instant gratification by walking into a room of 26 people and they are all happy to see you.
I like to get close to 8 hours sleep per night but Thursday night only gave me 6. I was dragging a bit after my morning workout. The calorie boost did not help. I went to lunch with a couple of young people
from work today. They were a bit reserved as work lunches are new to them but they were so pleasant to spend time with, my day was made. If you guys read this, high res pictures are coming soon the photo page.
I came home to a nice fish dinner and a lovely family. After dinner we danced to dancehall reggae for a little while. Don't stretch your imagination on a middle aged white guy and middle aged Japanese lady dancing to reggae. We had fun anyway.
Distressing
moment today.
5/29/09: There was a nice
choppy high tide today. While driving home today, I saw a lot
of waves at the beach.
I don't usually get down but for some odd reason, looking at the choppy
water really got to me. My injuries are bothersome but I don't seem to
rest enough for them to heal. Hopefully the longing I felt from looking
at the beautiful choppy sea will help me rest for another week or two.
I love swimming in really choppy water. I keep telling myself to rest
but I don't seem to listen. I am just too hard headed for my own good.
I will ice my leg and rest for the rest of the night.
Holiday
Weekend
5/25/09:
Nice long weekend in Alameda. For those of you waiting for
the pond
care instructions, they are coming soon. The filter has been built but
I keep getting distracted by all of the fun things I can do with my new
camera (Canon Rebel XS, DSLR) and other things.
One distraction, is all of my little injuries that just won't heal. I
presume swimming is out for the summer. If I get lucky, I may be able
to do the September Alcatraz swim. My shoulder is pretty messed up and
it would be best if I can get it to heal using physical therapy. I got
carried away with rehabbing my torn calf muscle and injured it again. I
have done no biking, running or yoga for almost two weeks now. I was
going stir crazy so Michael borrowed some work out routine called P90X
for me to try. It is mostly low impact and a good workout. It is such a
good workout that I will be surprised if I do not order my own copy
within the next two weeks. It is fun to see that I should be totally
down from working out and still managed to find something to keep me
occupied. Another distraction from my pond post is playing
around with all of the pictures I took with new camera. It is really
hard to organize all of those photos. I have a habit of saving a large
majority of my pictures because they are fun to look at later on. I
have plenty of storage so there really is no need to discard them. I
can lose hours just wondering how I can improve a photo. This post has
no real point other than to say I had a great holiday weekend. It is a
lot of fun and very relaxing to spend time with the family with no real
purpose. Usually we have something planned that requires planning,
execution and stress.
Finally
running again
5/1/09: I love
being alive! Life
throws all types of ups and downs at us. It is up to us to
take
them in stride and not stay down. I have had some stress at
work
lately but I seem to have come out of it no worse for the wear.
I
guess stress is just a part of life that we have to deal with.
My
yoga instructor is always talking about balance between our yin and our
yang. I really have no idea what she is talking about but
balance
makes sense. I even managed to relax for the first time last
night. It is funny to think that I can be so happy and I
relax so
little. I guess relaxing is not one of the things that makes
me
happy.
I got out for a run today! My doctor gave me
clearance to run today. I could not believe it. It
was
raining hard but I went out running anyway. So much for the
relaxing I learned yesterday. I went out running in the rain
and
smiled the whole time I was running. I practiced what I
learned
about awareness and that just added to my joy. I could smell
the
flowers in the rain. I few steps later I could smell the dirt
that was settling in for the summer release its aroma with the rain.
I could feel my feet, knees and legs. The time off
from
running did me very good indeed. Now that I can run again, I
will
stick with the yoga because all of this yin and yang is cool.
I
have been on a roll these past few years. I hope all
continues to
stay this well. I have some regrets but I have a lot more
smiles
from the things I did right than frowns from the things I did wrong.
All thing considered, it is good to be Ted from Alameda.