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For about six or seven years, the salwar kameez was my most common “office” garment.

I still love them. They’re pretty, modest¹, as comfortable as pajamas (oh wait, pyjami suit… <grin>), easy to make, easy to care for if you choose the right fabrics, and always look neat and pulled together.

During those six or seven years, I was working as an administrative assistant. When they were commented on, it was usually positive², other than once during October of 2001 when a female employee who grew up in India asked me if I wasn’t afraid to wear salwar suits.

I started working for myself coming on to a year ago. I only work away from my writin’ chair four or five days a month these days. I really can work in my underwear most days. But obviously when I’m teaching classes, I need to dress a little more nicely.

I’ve noticed a pattern. On the days when I wear a salwar suit to teach in, at least one member of the class (more often than not, it’s a male), gets really sharp and challenging in a way that doesn’t happen when I’m wearing more Western clothing. Do I think there’s a subconscious idea foreigner=ignorant going on there? Yeah. Maybe even a(n) (un)healthy dose of resentment of India vis a vis employment in computer fields. Probably there’s even a fair whack of the submissive stereotype associated with the garment, so they wanna play the dominance game³.

On the one hand there’s this idea “Challenge ignorance! Wear what you want and let ’em deal!”

Not sayin’ it’s not a valid idea. It is. But I also think it’s not a good idea to get in an ass-kicking contest with a porcupine. While I was reared that America’s strength is in its hybrid vigor, that is not a popular idea across the board these days. I’m not in that class to teach the virtues of multiculturalism. I’m in the class to teach ’em how to use MS Office applications! I get about three minutes to convince ’em that they should listen to me as a teacher. Then, either I have to deal with someone who has decided to play “Stump the Teacher” or they just waste their time playing Solitaire all day. I don’t want to take the time to have a fight with anyone’s subconsciousness under the circumstances.

I want them to accept me subconsciously as a professional, then I can be as much of a galloping eccentric as I want, and it’s just an entertaining way to teach the class.

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¹I know, I know, a preference for dressing modestly seems strange in a poly woman.
²and tended to amuse the Desi portion of the local population mightily, what with my light hair and blue eyes.
³My tactic there is to ask questions at intervals that I’m pretty sure that they can answer but most of the class can’t, then celebrate their genius. Three repetitions is usually enough to shut ’em up.

Ya! I’m allowed to watch Dr. Who today.

I made a deal with myself that I’m only allowed to watch an episode of Dr. Who on days I work out. This is to keep me from being a lazy butt — at least until the episodes wear out. Must bribe myself with something else when that happens.

My son and I went to the pool together this afternoon. He swam a 50 with me, for which I am proud of him. I recall when I was learning to swim. 50 yards was kinda tough.

When we were walking home from the pool, the heavens opened. My goodness. Rain just poured from the sky. My son wasn’t too keen, wanting to get under shelter. I asked him if they’d kicked him out of the Kid Club or something. He asked why.

So I explained that when I was a child, my brother and I would beg to be allowed to go outside and play in the rain in the summertime. We couldn’t often. You don’t get a lot of rain in the summer in Central Virginia¹, and when it did rain, it was usually a thunderstorm. No playing outside allowed.

But oh when it wasn’t a thunderstorm, how wonderful it was to play outside in the warm rain, sloshing along pavement barefoot, or skidding across soggy grass. (Or plugging up a drainpipe to fill a ditch to make a natural wading pool until one of our fathers caught us at it!)

It really felt nice to get drenched, kick off my sandals and walk home barefoot — glowing warm from a workout and soaked to the skin.

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¹Fredericksburg was not Northern Virginia when I was growing up for all that it’s a suburb of Washington, DC now

I was quite lazy today.  Swam a 900 and called it good.

I focused a lot on bilateral breathing during the workout.  It’s making me not look forward to the laps I swim using the crawl so much, but I’m gritting my teeth through it.  In a couple of months, I’ll be back to being smooth and fluid again.

Retraining my body from one thing to another is something I’ve encountered a lot in my life.  The first time was the transition from dancer to martial artist.   You ballet dancers out there, imagine that instead of extending the leg with a pointed toe, you have to pull your toes back so that the first body part presented is the ball of the foot?  Why yes, I’ve broken toes kicking before.  Why do you ask?

The next time I had to rebehave was when I switched from Isshin-ryu karate to Kyokushin.   See, in Isshin-ryu, a straight punch is delivered with the fist vertical and the thumb on top.  It’s fast, and yes, you can break a board with it.  In almost any other style of karate in the world, a straight punch  starts with the  fist  (made with the thumb folded across the fingers) knuckles to the floor at the hip, and the delivered with a twist bringing the knuckles up as you strike the target.  I still revert to the vertical punch when I practice, but can keep it together enough to do a proper kata in those style that do not habitually use the vertical punch.

I suppose that if you’re drawn to activities that are highly technical, that you just kind of have to get used to the fact you’ll have to retrain your body from time to time.

I just had a tomato sandwich.  Why yes, I was thinking of Harriet the Spy.

Then I got to thinking about all the books I really enjoyed as a kid and the Ramona books started fluttering through my mind.

About a year ago I went to Portland, Oregon to visit some friends.  I never mentioned it to anyone, but in the back of my mind, I was always kind of peeping at the crowds and looking for Ramona Quimby.  I don’t think the Portland I saw with the Voodoo Doughnuts and was the Portland Beverly Cleary was portraying. (Though Powell’s, on the other hand…)

I always had this idea that when Ramona grew up and became an architect (I always felt like she’d be an architect when she grew up) that she’d run across Henry Huggins and actually start dating him.   And he’d propose to her.  And he’d do so with an earthworm ring.

Personnel at my gym are required to be certified as with CPR and the automated defibrillator.

Man, things have changed since I took this course when I was 14 or so.  The AED was not a common piece of first aid equipment and the CPR procedure has changed quite a bit.   Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, ferinstance, you were supposed to do 4 compressions to 2 breaths.  The ratio is now 30 to 2 on adults.

The equipment is different, too.  Does anyone remember those Annie dolls?  Creepy as they are, you now practice  on a bald torso, which is creepier and use a mask.  I was an idiot and forgot to buy myself the glove and mask kit I’m suppose to carry now.  I wasn’t told going in, but if you take the course, you’re suppose to render aid if needed, even when you’re not on the job.   I mean, God, who wouldn’t!  But they make a big deal of that now.

Glad to have the info, of course, but golly I hope I’ll never need it.

I have to say I don’t much like the dolls they have now, as they don’t have a feedback mechanism to make sure you’ve got the respiration right.  The old Annie dolls did.  I can only suppose they’re ruinously expensive.

Because this is important information:

A 1973 Lite Brite has approximately 3.6 DPI.

This was actually researched for a professional reason for someone who lives in my house.

Yes, we’re nerds.

When you’re trying to make a habit of something, it’s often a good idea to have some simple way of targeting what’s a good minimum for you having fulfilled the requirements of the activity.

I was thinking about it this week because I’d been on vacation visiting my parents. My parents do have a pretty nice home gym, with a really nice stationary bike, a pretty complete weight set and a couple of other bits of equipment (including a television for relieving cardio boredom).

I only used it twice in the three full days I was there and was trying to decide how much “counted” for exercise. We did spend all day one day touring historic sites and did a whole bunch of walking — the day I didn’t wind up using the gym.

Because of 12 hours of sitting on a train, I came home to more joint pain than I’ve experienced in some years¹.  I actually blew off my Saturday weight session yesterday.  I chose to go ahead, take some painkillers and do my normal Sunday walk today and found that getting the blood flowing was helpful and made me feel better.

Which is where “minimum compliance” comes in.  Many people really do, no kidding, have mobility issues, pain issues and what have you.  Now for me, I don’t like to do without my workouts because if I do, I just plain don’t feel very good.  But, do I ever hurt too much to do a planned activity?  Hell yes!

I’ve decided that for me, my own minimum compliance will be quite small — 14 minutes of activity that’s strenuous enough to get me sweaty.  I picked that because if all I have in me is 14 minutes, I’ll likely be doing a Shovelglove workout.   I’m not really strong enough to go much longer, and that’s the “official” workout anyway).  But if that’s all I have in me, that’s okay.  It’s enough.

Now my usual workout is more like 30-50 minutes, depending on what I’m doing.  But I think that for me, having some small minimum that’ll “count” as having worked out will be helpful in the workout habit building.

I’m not beating myself up for blowing off yesterday, mind.  But habit is powerful, and I think it’s important.  I notice I’m very bad at maintaining habits when traveling and I’m looking for good, workable intelligent solutions for that.

However, I’ve improved.  Instead of allowing the change in schedule to throw me much, I was able to jump back into my proper routine fairly quickly.  There have been times when being thrown off schedule for a week meant another week to get back into my groove.  Reducing that to one day is a definite improvement.

¹Memo to me: If you ever take that long of a train ride again, remember that walking the length of the train every hour will help prevent that!

Calf raises	85	3	11
Stiff-legged deadlifts	85	3	11
Squats	85	3	11
Bench Press	65	3	11
Lat Pulldown	80	3	11
Seated Row	70	3	12
Inverted Situps	body	3	10

Today was challenging without feeling scary or icky. That’s good. But it was challenging!

I saw a pic of a woman I used to work with who got into weights in a big way. She was unfit, then got real fit. In the pic she looks like she’s squatting about 215 lbs. That’s about twice her body weight. At a guess. Might not be quite that, as obviously she is really strong, and muscle is dense. She’s just not bulked out, ya know?

Does the fact she can squat so much more than I do make me feel like a wimp? Eh… Sorta, but not exactly. I have a pretty clear idea of what she went through to get where she is. It’s more like, “That’ll be me in a couple of years!”

There was a woman using the lifting platform to work out with the Bosu ball and a medicine ball today at the gym.  They’re good for balance work.   In sober truth, I really oughta add some of that sort of work to my fitness routine, but I’m concentrating on lifting at the moment.  You can stand on the blue portion while doing all sorts of exercises or turn it over and use it as a balance board.  My PT was encouraging me to get one after my surgery.  I remember thinking (before I started the workout) that I’ve studied ballet and martial arts and such for decades.   I didn’t need that.

Heh. Yeah, I kinda did.  My balance ain’t all that.

I’ll be more likely to use the one at the gym if I start doing it.  These things cost close to a hundred bucks and if I’m gonna spend a c-note on exercise equipment, it’s gonna be a bench.

I’ve seen people do squats on these things.   I do not yet have the guts.

I want a Kronk of my very own. Where does one find one? Of course, there are often days I feel like Yzma-kitty, so maybe that ain’t so hot after all.