Counting Down From 100

Apropos to the height of summer (when you're most likely to find yourself outdoors without a shirt on) I had been looking for a new exercise program that I could get into without killing myself, and/or incurring the cost of a gym membership.

I was ready to despair and start pricing out exactly how many years of debt I would accrue by signing up with various local gyms, until I ran across this lovely website, One Hundred Push Ups. It completes me in every exercisable way possible.

1. Takes almost no time whatsoever
   
2. Can be done in the privacy of your own bedroom
3. Is simple to do
4. Has measurable results that are quick and easily recognizable
5. Did I mention that it takes practically no time at all?

It's not a program designed to do much of anything really, except get you good at doing push ups, and in the meantime give you a nice upper body. And hot damn, it really works. I'm all the way into week 5, and may actually reach the expressed goal of 100 consecutive push ups in a single round. Which is absolutely insane, considering when I started I could only do about 31 before collapsing into a sweaty heap.

It has the benefits of exercising without, y'know, actually exercising longer than 10 minutes every other day. Which is pretty sweet. And it's gotten me to the point where I feel like I can move on to a full-on exercise program without potentially dying halfway through.

I completely forget what the point of this post was at this point, so I guess this is just a shill post: Go exercise. And if you're like me and don't want to, just do this thing. It's easy and awesome.

(Side note: still not going outdoors without my shirt on, though. People around The Village are way too attractive. Bums me out. Also, still wildly pale as they haven't fixed the pool in my complex yet. Maybe next summer.)

Write What You Know

Man, I had this whole thing planned out, where I could write an entry that would combine two stories that I wanted to tell into one, and it would be interesting and compelling. (yeah, right, but let's let me have my delusion how 'bout?)

Instead I'm going to whine about health care for a little while and then call it a day.

Because sweet damn, I have the most ungodly headache going on, and it's been like this for 36 hours straight. My allergies have apparently taken to just lying in wait for 3-4 month periods, before deciding to mount a full on hostile takeover of my entire body for a quick, if utterly crushing, 3 or 4 day allergy-fest. I don't think I've had a single sinus related headache since February, and now suddenly I can't even get a bright light in my peripheral vision, for the fear that it will send me off on an epic sneezing adventure that will continue until my body quite literally shuts down from the spikes of pain between my eyes (This happened twice yesterday. Why my office has such blinding lights is complete beyond me).

Now normally, I would just go to the doctor for an allergy shot, as I used to find a $55 expense a completely reasonable trade off for the ability to become a functional member of society again. But due to the restructuring of my employment, I'm now on an individual health care plan. Which is a very cute way of saying that I have absolutely no coverage for anything that is not a life threatening hospital visit.

So what used to be $55 is now more like $347, and that's assuming it's just an allergy attack and not actually a sinus infection, the thought of which I immediately banish. Lab costs are a thing invented by the devil to sap both my will to live and any potential that I had of actually getting to buy a new bed before the end of the year.

But anyways, on to the real whining!

Why, in God's name, is it so expensive to see a doctor? Or more helpfully, why is it impossible to get regular health coverage as a singular person that doesn't cost more than $500 a month? It's not like I'm a health risk. I go to the doctor approximately twice a year, and both times it's for this allergy shot. The only hospital visit I've ever had was 2 years ago (the whole epic trial that was my little finger's battle with sharp dishes). There's no one out there who's willing to take on that little liability for less than $6,144 (the reigning champ for lowest HMO bid I got from 11 different insurance companies)?

My mind, it boggles. Or it would boggle, if it could do anything but throb wildly with pain.

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Ugh. But we shall think positive thoughts. Maybe tomorrow this will have all resolved itself and we can get back to the original plan of this totally being my month.

A Primitive Lifestyle

About 5 weeks ago, I came home after work and really wanted some cookies. Because I am incredibly handy around the kitchen like that, I set out to whip up a batch from scratch. And by scratch, I mean I added an egg to the Betty Crocker pre-made cookie mix and then spooned the results on to a cookie sheet. I tossed the sheet into the oven and set the timer for 13 minutes, practically drooling in anticipation.

When the alarm (finally) went off, I shook myself out of my cookie-lustful stupor, wiped my chin, and wandered back into the kitchen, expecting shortly to be able to stuff my mouth full of warm chocolaty goodness. Except upon inspection the cookie dough was in the exact same condition as when I put it in the oven.

"Fool!" I thought. "In your haste you forgot to preheat the oven. Now you will have to wait another 15 minutes before you can gorge yourself." I was very sad.

Until I looked over and realized that I had set the oven, it just wasn't getting hot.

This sounds way less ominous than it should, but right at this second you should hear the soundtrack that accompanies my life rise in dreadful anticipation of a horrible reveal.

Because while it may look like just a lack of cookie-making power one night, this one event was the foreshadowing of oh so much doom to come.

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We fast-forward to today, where I am still unable to cook anything. Because the city has shut off our gas. And by the current rate of things, they plan on never turning it back on.

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I feel like I already discussed my problem from a couple of months ago, where my hot water heater kept abruptly refusing to heat any water. Most commonly whenever I was actually in the shower, mid-way through the chorus of George Michael's Faith. But just in case I haven't - the boiler for my condo complex kept repeatedly failing over the course of several weeks. After (futilely) replacing the heating coils multiple times, the HOA board realized that it was actually a problem with the natural gas line going to the boiler. They put an above ground gas line directly to the heater while the real line was fixed, and everything seemed peachy.

That was until the moment 5 weeks ago when the gas line repair company came in and did the test to check the new line. Which indicated that there were at least two, possibly as many as four, huge gas leaks in the overall existing system in our complex, not just the one going to the water heater. And huge is sort of an understatement - according to one workman, had one of these leaks actually ignited it could have easily taken out our entire block.

My faith in urban safety now completely undermined, the city shut down the gas and has been systematically replacing the whole setup. Which apparently takes the entire length and breadth of time itself, as we are now approaching day 40 without the hint of gas. Do you know what sort of primitive lifestyle one must lead if you have a gas range stove with no gas to power it? Lemme tell you, it is not pretty.

Mostly it involves foraging in the wild (read: eating fast food for every meal), or subjecting yourself to eating radioactive matter (anything zapped in the microwave for extended periods of time). I have easily gained 10 pounds of weight, mostly in the form of french fries, which have directly applied themselves to line my torso, or in tiny microwaved hamburgers, which I feel go straight to my thighs.

Had I expected this little gas siege to last the rest of time, I might have sped up the plan that I put into motion over this weekend: buying an electric skillet to offset this new, even more wildly unhealthy lifestyle that has been thrust upon me. Unfortunately, my taste in skillets runs very cheap, as I'm already poor from the never ending eating out and the surprising expense of pre-made microwavable meals. So the skillet I ended up purchasing tends to only heat things in a very specific manner. Namely: Poorly, most kindly described as 'wildly uneven.'

Thus, to the two other food options we add a third: preservative-laden fast food, radioactive frozen meals, and alternatingly raw and burnt self-prepared delicacies. And not even I will buy the idea that something half raw and half totally blackened actually averages out to properly cooked. I'm a forager, not an idiot.

So still, we are left eating basically hand to mouth, wandering the streets looking for food made by others, all the while wondering if someday they will ever give us back the power to sustain ourselves on our own. And if so, will that day will arrive before I reach the weight of a killer whale, can no longer move under my own power, and approach all problems from the couch while wielding a reaching broom?

The answer most definitely seems to be no, but I lie in wait nonetheless - my pre-made cookie mix at the ready, an egg sitting in the refrigerator, under glass affixed with the words "Break in case of emergency. Or the ability to bake cookies," next to a tiny little hammer.

Someday, my friends, someday.

In Which I Triumph Over Double Cheeseburgers and Technology

Yearly Blood Test - Completed
# of Previous Diseases - 0
# of New Diseases - 0
Previous Cholesterol Score - 310
New Cholesterol Score - 162!

If there was a show call Biggest Cholesterol Loser, I would totally be winning right now.

So can I finally go back to eating McDonalds twice a week?
What do you mean I have to continue the diet to keep the cholesterol where it is?!

Y'all, I am so tired of fat-free milk and no red meat, you have no idea.

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I swore to myself that I wouldn't turn this into an old man blog. But I love this picture with reckless abandon:

(Jason and Julia, the tiniest niece in the world)

Does it worry anyone else that my cheekbone juts out enough in that picture that it looks like I might have a tumor? Or that my skin is so oily you can almost see the reflection of the camera in my pores?

Just me? Okay.

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So, as I alluded to in my last entry, I got home this weekend and decided to rearrange my room.

Or to be way more long-winded about it (naturally), I got home and found the wireless Internet to be in complete disarray. After my normal tinkering did a whole lot of nothing, I decided to finally break down and spring for a new router and wireless card. Preferably ones that were made after the year 2000, in opposition to the coconut-radio/squirrel-powered system I had running right then.

At Best Buy, I was told by the (bastard) helpful salesman that the new router he handed me would not only be faster and have a longer range, it would totally be plug-and-play with our current system, as it was the same brand, just an upgraded model.

Yeah - that was a (fucking) lie of the highest order. I'm not even remotely kidding. The two systems were so far apart that just booting up the new router to accept signals meant rigging up an elaborate system of hardwired Ethernet cords that stretched the length of the house, setting up about four different trip-wire type booby traps at various doorways. And that installing the controlling drivers for the card and router somehow disabled my DVD drive.

And that once I got that fixed, and the router was up and running, it turned out that "backwards compatible" didn't so much mean that it would work with older standards of wireless. Instead it meant that you could configure the router to run the old standard or the new standard. Not both. So since I had a new wireless card and Frank had an old one, only one of us would be getting to use the Internet at any given time.

And on top of that, my "faster, wider-range connection" was actually running at 35% of the strength of my old coconut/squirrel connection. Plus, did I mention that for the router to set up a wireless connection with a computer, the computer had to first be physically connected to the router? Is that not the most insane thing you've ever heard?

But whatever. After, literally, 4 hours of brute force hacking away at the network, rather than A) go all Sophie's Choice between Frank's and my Internet, or B) destroy the new non-working devices with an axe (my favorite option), we decide for secret option C) take back the $200+ system and go buy a $30 length of Ethernet cable and just hardwire both of our rooms to the Internet.

This process took all of 5 minutes to set up, used the old reliable router, and the only drawback was one long cord that ran the length of the living room and hallway, along the wall. I will take the decorating hit to save my sanity. And new direct connections mean delicious Internet with absolutely no waiting, signal loss, or devious neighbors sucking my bandwidth dry like hungry mosquitoes at a 4th of July picnic.

Anyways, the result of this (horrifyingly boring) story is that running the line into my bedroom was much easier if my desk was on the opposite wall from my normal room configuration. And being the obliging person that I am (along with my deep-seated compulsion to rearrange furniture all the time - thanks dad!) I did a full reorg of the room.

I think the result is an even better layout than the original one, and I loved the original. It makes the room look bigger and draws your eye immediately to my fancy bookshelf, rather than my unmade bed like before. Plus this time there's no awkward wasted section of the room - one that I had previously filled with a single trash can and an unplugged standing lamp.

The only downside to the new setup comes in my morning routine. Before, I used to roll out of bed to my left, hit the alarm, and then walk to the shower, all in one fluid motion. Now I have to hit the alarm first, and then roll out to the right, and walk around the bed to the shower. Because if I forget and do it the old way, I get a facefull of wall. And I apparently roll out of bed really forcefully.

Because, OW.

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Behold all my triumphs and despair, you's guys.