It's going to take me hours to get to sleep. (Project CXC, Day IX)

The first day of fall, so far as anyone should be concerned, and I didn't work out until nearly 8 p.m.

We can't both go work out together, Sweetie and I, anymore, because we can't right now trust Mr F to the daycare at the club.  They're a good bunch of people there, but it wouldn't feel right, Mr F being all swaddled up in bandages and his winter hat (to keep him from picking at the bandages) and wandering around the playroom, with all those other kids and, like, three women there to keep him from trouble.

So we don't all go together to the club like we used on Saturdays, which is just as well because Mr F always expects to go swimming on Saturdays, anyway, and if we take him to the club he's going to think he's getting to go in the pool, but he can't swim for at least six weeks after his surgery, and who knows why that is?

Seriously: they told us after we left the hospital that he couldn't swim for six weeks, so we assumed that meant "couldn't get his head wet," but then when we had to take him back this past Monday because his head swelled up again -- it turned out to be just "normal" swelling; it would be nice if the doctors would give you some idea what to expect but they don't, so when you wake up your son on a Monday morning and his head is all swollen again you panic and call the doctors and end up sitting around the children's hospital again while they examine him and pronounce the swelling normal -- and when we got done with that exam they asked whether we had washed his hair, and when we said we hadn't, because, you know, can't get it wet, they said we should wash his head, gently, so now we can wash his hair but he can't swim.

Mr F knew it was Saturday, too, and about 11 a.m. while Sweetie was at the club working out and I was cleaning the boys' room, he went and changed into his Angry Birds swimtrunks and came into the room, looking expectant.  I changed him out of them and explained that he can't swim until October 1, and he moped for a while.

(Later on, he put on his swimtrunks again.  I think he was hoping he could trick us into going swimming: "Oh, he's got his trunks on.  We'd better get to the pool, quick.")

So I was going to go work out after Sweetie, but we had to give Middle Daughter a ride home from work tonight because, and I'll quote, here, "Something something something boyfriend car", that being all I got out of the official explanation.  I pointed out to Sweetie that it doesn't take two of us to sit in the car and drive Middle home, so if she took the boys and did the chaufferation, I'd go work out then, and that's how I ended up at the health club, reading (and Tweeting about) James Joyce's Ulysses, and wondering why all seven of the televisions had to be tuned to the Alabama-Michigan game.

Also: I worked out yesterday, too -- my running workout, and I made it up the hill and didn't walk at all, in just 19 minutes, so now when I next run I'll be extending the route.  I'm gonna beat this thing yet (this thing being my flabby body.)

Today's workout:  Biking, level FIVE because I upped it because I AM THE MAN, I think maybe I am a little hopped up on endorphins, 40:00.
Latest weight; 253.
Song that I felt made a nice,  poignant, CB-heavy counterpoint to Ulysses:

Convoy, C.W. McCall.

All this time, I thought the song was by Kris Kristofferson.  For thirty yearsish I've thought that.  Now I find out it's C.W. McCall.  Who's he?  I feel as though the entire world has betrayed me and my whole life has been a lie.  But it's probably just the endorphins wearing off.  Here's a picture of Mr Bunches' new orrery toy that he got today, lined up into a syzygy. 

An orrery,  in case you didn't watch The Dark Crystal when you were younger, is "is a mechanical device that illustrates the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System in a heliocentric model."

And now you know.

"I feel sad for everyone living that hasn't read this."

SO I WROTE A BOOK, and that book is called The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imagine, and this is what writer/illustrator/holder of the Blutonian Death Egg Rusty Webb had to say about it:

 * * * * * *

Stephen King called, he wants his talent back.

 I've been a fan of Briane Pagel for some time, I loved Eclipse and The After - calling them both works of a master - but this collection of short stories might be...

get ready... ...

take a breath...

 The greatest short story collection in the history of the world!

I mean it. I swear I do. Nobody, and I mean NO-BODY has ever found a way to craft something this powerful and cram it into four short stories the way the author has with this.

I'll go ahead and say it now: I feel sad for everyone living that hasn't read this. Their lives are all missing something wonderful that they could have just by reading. This is the reason that people who don't speak English need to learn it - so they can read Pagel in the original language. I thank Briane Pagel. Truly, these stories are things I'll be referencing 20 years from now at dinner parties (Hopefully, I'll be attending them on the moon by then) and I'll be educating future generations of readers about how awesome it was to discover these stories before anyone else did.

* * * * * * * * *

*Sniff.  You had me at "greatest short story collection in the history of the world."

If you want to buy The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imagine, you can:

get it for $0.99 as an ebook here,

or get an actual hard copy of the book for just $10 here.

And let me take the time to also insist that you:

(A) Pay a visit to Rusty at his blog, The Blutonian Death Egg, here; he's hilarious and good at art and a lot of other things I'm not, and

(B) Buy Rusty's book!  It's called A Dead God's Wrath, and it too is just $0.99 and is awesomely incredible.

Sweetie's always right, except when I'm right.

A couple of quotes from Sweetie that I've been saving up for a rainy day.

"If either one of us loses something, it's definitely you."  Sweetie said this one day when I was looking around for something and couldn't find it and was 100% sure that Sweetie had put it somewhere where I didn't want it to be put.

Here's what happens in our house:  I will need to find something.  I will ask Sweetie for help.  She will say "Here's the thing..." and then remind me that if I put things where they belong, I wouldn't lose them.

But here's the real thing: Who can keep track of where things go?  I've got enough going on in my life what with working and sleeping and working out and wondering if there's any pizza still leftover that I can have for breakfast (there is! YAY!) without also having to remember where things always have to go.

Just consider, say, my car keys.  When I get out of the car, I've got them in my hand.  So I come up the stairs to go into the house and from there, I may go one of any number of places.

Some days, I come in and I'm able to go into the kitchen, where there is a chalkboard with a ledge on which Sweetie keeps her keys, and I could put my keys there except (A) there is no place to set down the other stuff I'm carrying, like my coffee cup and iPod, so I don't pause there, and (B) the ledge is right near the garbage and I'm always worried that my keys will fall into the garbage and I will have to find them by going through the garbage one morning before work.

Nobody ever wants to go through the garbage to find something, especially because we always think the thing is in the garbage but it never is, is it?  It never is, making it all the worse that you have coffee grounds and spaghetti sauce and whatever that juice is that somehow spontaneously forms in the garbage.

What is that juice?  When I throw the garbage into the can, it is dry.  When I bag it and take it out to the garage, it is dry.  But when I have to go rip open the bag at 7 a.m. while I'm wearing my suit to see if my keys are in the garbage (they're not; they're in my coat pocket but I don't know that yet) the garbage is wet with some kind of juice that I always imagine is some sort of poisonous Ebola acid and I cannot possibly wash my hands enough that day.

Sweetie doesn't worry that her keys will end up in the garbage, but, then, Sweetie never lost her keys for an entire week once only to find them in the water reservoir of the coffee pot, with no idea how they got there but with an uncomfortable notion forming that all week long somebody had been drinking coffee brewed around a set of keys and following on that notion came the notion that I was probably dying of key poisoning which is possibly a thing.

So I don't put the keys there, I put them in the basket, which is the equivalent of a junk drawer only we cleverly put all our junk in a stack on our counter, because that seemed better at the time and now I can't change the system.

The basket sits off to the edge of the counter, by the coffee, and currently has old magazines, mail, a bunch of bandages for rewrapping Mr F's head, lots of other stuff including a book that you can record yourself reading the story which my Dad gave to the boys for Christmas and which we are still pretending we will someday sit down and record, and sometimes my keys.

That's all assuming that I don't have to go straight upstairs, in which case my keys end up on my dresser (maybe?) where I have a little box for them, or into the living room where my keys will get set down by my Kindle near the computer, and so on.

Sometimes I come in through the garage and then there are even more places to set the keys.

So you see my point: There's no one right place to put stuff, and I win.

I would have more of a leg to stand on with this argument if yesterday I hadn't lost the little admission cards for our health club.

"Just so you know, it's a standing ask."  This was Sweetie talking to Middle, who works at one of her jobs as an assistant manager at a diner near us, a diner that is famous for its pies and cakes.  Middle gets free cake there, and she stopped by one day after work, but did not bring Sweetie cake.

Sweetie loves cake.

In order in her life, I estimate that the things Sweetie loves are:

1.  Her kids.
2.  Cake.
3.  Oxygen.
4.  Me (most days)
5.  Me (a few days when I have not lived up to expectations)
6.  Cake, again.  

So when Sweetie complained to Middle that she'd just come from the diner but didn't bring cake with her, Middle said:

"You didn't ask."

To which Sweetie pointed out that she's always asking.

Also: I think cake might be tied with at least some of the kids.

It's getting a bit political in here. (Project CXC, Day VII)

Today was a biking day again.  It went pretty fast, mostly because I spent a lot of the time posting to Twitter a series of #paulryansbigideas.

And although I should probably put this on my political blog, I have to, have to, point out what really really makes me mad.

Ryan and Romney have made a calculated decision that obfuscation, lying, and flat-out ignoring the truth and reasonable requests will not come back to haunt them at all.

Romney will not release his taxes because then he can make any claims he wants, and when people claim otherwise, Romney will say "that's just speculation" and dismiss the allegations. 

Ryan and Romney get credit for being "serious" about the debt and the budget, but ignore that Ryan helped destroy the (not very good in the first place) budget deal last year, and neither will give specifics about how they would balance the budget without raising taxes -- and when they suggest closing "tax loopholes," neither will tell what tax loopholes they will close.

And now, Ryan has just loaded up his speech with a bunch of demonstrable falsehoods, lies that he has already been called on.

People will say "oh, we expect politicians to lie," but that's a dodge: we shouldn't, and when a politician lies you should never vote for him again, but I might be the only person who thinks so because when the Huffington Post interviewed one Ryan listener after the speech and pointed out that his claims, including a claim that Obama promised to save a GM plant that had actually closed in December 2008, before Obama took office, that person, confronted with the fact that her hero had just lied in a nationally-televised speech, shrugged.

Biking didn't get me worked up.  Getting angry at a country that hasn't got even the foggiest concept of the truth anymore did.

Today's workout: Biking, level 4, 25:00.
Latest Weight: 253.
Today's song that actually came on when I was biking and reminded me that most of our country's problems were caused by electing an admittedly incompetent puppet who presided over 8 of the worst years in our country's history:

When The President Talks To God, Bright Eyes.

Gravity really likes me, but I think I'd prefer to just be friends. (Project CXC, Day VII)

Swimming today.

And weigh-in today.

I weighed 253.

Again.

*sigh*

I was even feeling pretty skinny this morning, and thinking that weigh-in might work out pretty well.

I don't know if I put on a bit of weight during the week Mr F was having all his problems and I didn't work out; I've heard that you can lose your conditioning in as little as a week, which is kind of funny because I don't think I was conditioned, in the first place, but also if that's the case then what about how I've worked out for the past week already?  What about that, universe?

I just need to know who to sue.

Anyway, for the past few days I've added another little bit to this exercise program.  I really really really don't want to diet or strictly count calories or anything, so I'm hoping this will help: I've cut out snacking after 8 p.m.

What I used to do was I'd eat dinner, and not have dessert at dinner time, because after the boys go to bed I like to take a few minutes to relax and read or watch TV and I'd usually have a snack then -- nothing large, but still, a snack.

I've also heard, though, that you're not supposed to eat before bed, so I decided: no more eating after 8 p.m.  At all. 

And so far I've stuck to that, and my reward is gaining a pound.

Knock it off, gravity.  I've about had it up to here with you.

Today's workout:  Swimming, long pool, 34 laps, 23:30.
Latest Weight: 253. pleh.
 Today's song that I was humming as I swam and then I realized that it talks about gravity which was probably why it popped into my head:  Down To Earth, Peter Gabriel:

 
 
While I was humming that, I was also thinking of Dory from Finding Nemo, and she inspired me to (A): just keep swimming,

And also to start a new series on The Best Of Everything, which you should check out: POP CULTURE WORKOUTS!

Next time, I will make him NOT write things.

Mr Bunches, the other day, took exception to my singing the theme song from Phineas & Ferb, a song I was singing because I was proud that I had finally learned all the lyrics.

Usually, he just says "Please, don't sing," but this time he decided to be more aggressive, and punched me.

In his defense, I don't think he meant to actually punch me.  But either way, we can't tolerate that and so he had to write out a lesson:

It says "I WILL NOT PUNCH," and it kind of backfired because Mr Bunches likes spelling and writing, so I don't think he knew he was being punished.

I'd like a tattoo that says "Pleasantly Inscrutable!" (Project CXC: Day V)

I had an idea for a SCIENCE! project this morning while I was biking.  I'm not going to say what it is, but it's easily the match of my last SCIENCE! project. 

That's all for today.  I mean, how much can you say about riding an exercycle at 5:45 a.m.?  Probably lots, but not today.

Today's exercise: Biking, 25:00.
Latest Weight: 252.
Today's song that isn't the song I was going to put up but I couldn't find a video for that one so I went with Love Astronaut by Murder Mystery, it's pleasantly inscrutable:

Project CXC: Day IV

This is the Project 190 Reboot; the daily exercises were interrupted by this, but I began working out against last Thursday and so I'm on Day IV (the Roman numerals show it's a reboot, not a sequel.)

For a while today, along the path towards the hill at the end, I had an honor guard of rabbits.  It was foggy this morning, barely able to see a couple hundred yards ahead of me, and about every 10 feet there was a small rabbit (probably not the same one each time, but maybe?) on the left of the path.  As I neared it each time, the rabbit would duck into the underbrush.  But the last of the rabbits -- or the last time the same rabbit came out -- jogged with me for a bit, going about five feet ahead of me, and then stopping, and then continuing, doing that for thirty feet or so.

He was like my spirit guide.

I'm only running every fourth day now, the same course, but I haven't been able to run the entire thing since that day I had to stop.  So I've let myself walk a bit of it, but each time I cut down on the walk.  Today, I walked only 90 steps; next time it'll be 80 steps, and so on.

And I read an article that said working out 30 minutes a day is better than working out for an entire hour, which made me first think Hey! I'm right! and then think Aww, man!.

HEY, I'M RIGHT: Working out 30 minutes every day is the way to go!

AWW, MAN:  Participants lost on average, 8 pounds in 3 months.

Today's workout:  Running, 21:57.
Latest weight: 252
Today's song that was playing while Thumper showed me the ways of the meadow:  Over The Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: