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5月30日 Boot Camp: CompleteAfter 8 weeks of early mornings, sore legs and tired Jason, we’ve come to the end of this boot camp. We re-assessed yesterday morning. I hadn’t made any improvement on the sit-ups (55 in 2 minutes), the pull-ups (5) and push-ups (35 in one minute) though my 2.2 mile jogging time went down by almost 1 minute (14min 39sec). I’m pretty happy with that. The next boot camp season starts the first week of June and will concentrate more on core strength and upper body fitness so I’m going to sign up for that one. I figure if I’ve come this far then stopping now would be a bit of a waste. Besides, having a group to work with is motivating; people notice when you’re not there whereas if I was doing my own thing then I’d manage to talk myself out of it pretty easily.
It was Memorial Day weekend here and I visited the Folk Life festival at Seattle Centre, saw the Da Vinci code and had the stereo in the Subaru updated with an Alpine unit, new speakers for the driver’s side door and tweeters. I was also sold on the insulating door lining that helps protect against vibration at low Hz. The unit’s iPod ready as soon as Car Toys gets the part in which they assure me is this Friday. It sounds amazing – I’m still getting used to it and actually looking forward to driving just to listen to more music. Yay!
I’ve started group singing lessons for the next 3 weeks as a lead up to a performance at Tulas, the local jazz spot. I’ll be doing three songs and this past Sunday I had my first performance of them in front of the other people in the group. We’ve got a pianist and bassist as accompaniment and the voice is amplified which totally freaked me out. I was so nervous and hot to begin with I struggled to make the tunes come out. We ran through it a few times and I relaxed gradually. Tough stuff – they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger though right? The performance is on the 21st at Tulas and I’ll be roping in some friends for support. Scary but something I’ve been trying to get myself into for a while now. I’ve just kept avoiding it! Despite the sweat and the strain, I think they came across fairly well. I had to keep reading the words from the sheet music and that was very limiting. I need to memorize the lyrics ASAP so that I can start playing around with the delivery some more and get a feeling for how I’d like to interpret it. The songs are “My One and Only Love”, “Let’s Fall in Love” and “Close Your Eyes”. I hadn’t heard “Close Your Eyes” before I learnt it from the sheet with Kelley (singing teacher) playing the piano. It’s a pretty tough tune and has lots of flats/sharps which gives it a jazzy feel but also makes it sound like you’re hitting a bum note sometimes. I had the musos play through it for me with the piano doing the melody so I can use that as a reference. Scary and exciting!! 5月19日 End of the road...I mentioned in the previous blog entry that the Beemer and I have parted company. The final check was written yesterday so no more payments from me to BM financial services America. That’s a good thing. It’s still sad to see it go though. I’ve included some snaps of the trip Andrea and I did down to Oregon as a final drive and also the hand-off that happened the day after we got back (Saturday). I flew to Orlando that night and it was the Sunday morning when I wrote the previous entry. The woman you see with me and the cars is Heidi – the Amazing Autowoman. She has a car buying and selling business that takes the tedium out of dealing with car sales people. She negotiates on your behalf, does the pick and hand-over and makes sure everything goes smoothly for you. I reckon that’s a good service. We stopped in the Starbucks car park to sign the paperwork and then took these snaps as we changed the cars over. Bye-bye Beemer. You can see the Subaru and the Beemer together in a couple of shots.
The trip to Oregon included Hood River for the night and then a stop in Portland for lunch before heading back to Seattle. I enjoyed the drive for the views but I didn’t really find any magical roadways to unleash the power of the car. You can see from the snaps that it’s a stunning view and Hood River was a lovely old township. We stayed in a quaint hotel and took in a movie – Prairie Wind, the concert movie of Neil Young performing the album he recorded just before his brain aneurism surgery.
The presentation went well in Orlando and it felt good to be in front of a crowd again. I’ve got another couple of events happening next week too. Busy, busy. 5月18日 An Update (Finally)Tuckered. Tired. It’s around 8 in the morning Seattle time and 11 am in Orlando which is where I am – sitting in the lobby of the Walt Disney World Swan Hotel. I’m waiting for a room to be made up for me and I’ve been traveling all night to get here. Getting grumpy and a little silly. I caught the red eye flight from Seattle so that I could be here in time for a user group meeting tonight prior to the main event tomorrow – a conference held by one of our magazine partners. The alternative was a 6am flight that would only just get me here in time and I thought it’d be better to leave at 10.20 Saturday night than 6am on the day I had responsibilities. I may have been wrong. I’ll grab a couple of hours when they open the room up for me and I should be right as rain!
It’s been ages since I’ve posted and I’m sure all those people (well at least a couple of people) that were checking back regularly have since abandoned me to youtube.com or watching the trapped miners make their way out. I’ve been pretty busy actually. Shortly after St.Paddys day, Rick and I enrolled into a program at the gym called “Boot Camp”. Its two mornings a week (Monday and Wednesday) for two months with the idea being you get into shape for summer activities. There’s a group of about 20 of us that meets at 7am on one of the basketball courts in the gym and then a drill sergeant comes bounding in to tell us what to do. His names Corey and he’s actually a pretty nice bloke, despite being a little too fanatically fit for my liking. The general flow of the session is this:
Warm up by jogging lightly around the basketball court for 3-4 mins Do lengths of the basketball court lifting knees high, doing lunges, butt kicks (heal to ass) and sideways crab crawling things. Sometimes we do sit-ups and pushups at this point too. Then we hit the streets around work, for a 4 to 7 mile jog, sometimes with activities thrown in at the mid-way point.
It’s not easy; my legs have been in different stages of pain since it all began and I’m really exhausted by the end of Mondays and Wednesdays. But my stamina is improving (or I’m getting more used to being close to death) and strength continues to build in my legs. It doesn’t do much for upper body strength so I’m trying to get in at least one more session at the gym to do muscles. Two would be ideal but I haven’t managed to stick to that. The last 2 weeks are coming up and we’ll get re-assessed to see what improvements we’ve made. I did about 2.2 miles in 15m 31s at the beginning of the course.
Work’s been very busy with another marketing plan coming together and being presented to management and the release of pretty significant technology preview all happening in the space of 3 weeks. Once I get back from Orlando, things should settle down a little and I can finish up the positioning and planning I’ve been doing. Everyone’s very positive about it and I feel I’m contributing more than ever so I’m pleased about that. The apartment block I’m living in is still covered in fire retardant sheeting and scaffolding. It has been since mid-October last year. The windows were actually taken out on the morning of my birthday – nice. I had to jump out of bed and move into the spare room at 7am to try and sleep peacefully until 9.30. Oh yeah – I had a birthday. 33 now. Same age as Jesus when he died! I’ve still got a few more things to check off the list before they string me up. I had a great dinner on the night with Rick, Candy and Sheri – then the following Friday night I had a larger get together with everyone at a little English tavern and then an Irish pub. Good fun. Until Nick started to buy me Irish whiskey, then things went a little – fuzzy. I was assured that I had a good time and behaved myself. There was a bruise on my arm the next day that was a mystery to me though. Some news on the automotive front too – I’ve terminated the lease on the M3 by selling it to another BM dealership. M3 plus insurance was costing too much – in fact I haven’t really been saving and the car cost is the most ridiculous so I decided it was time to go. We had our fun, but I had to admit that sitting in mostly stop/start traffic with 330 bhp sitting idle under the hood was painful to me. It belongs to someone that can take it to track days and really unleash its potential. I had glimpses, but there’s simply nowhere to take it and I’m paranoid about getting a speeding ticket and ruining my insurance rating even more. I picked up a new Subaru Impreza 2.5i sedan yesterday. The two year lease is a steal at $215 per month. I’ll be saving over $500 a month now just from changing over the car! That’s a good thing. The Sube also drove much more like a rear wheel drive and had more power than the similarly priced Honda Civic, Mazda 3 and 2nd hand Mini. When I found that they were having a special on the 2 year leases, I knew I’d found the right car.
Anyway, I’m rambling and I’ve written too much for one post. More to come real soon now that I’ve broken the back of 7 weeks without posting. |
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