You need to be there when your baby's old enough to relate.

Exciting news, I will be holding up a costume in Witness For the Prosecution. In the role of a barrister I will have no lines, but will be filling in for those actors who have day jobs and cannot be present for the student matinees.

Having a costume fitting this morning, which reminds me I am doing a show this summer for which I will also need a costume ... I have a tendency, during shows in which I play a significant role, that I lose weight as the show goes on, things begin to sag from my hips.

It would be nice to get out ahead of that before April. But I'm not even trying.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good
Exercises: yes

Quite a morning, feeling good, practically charging down the track. Moving onto heavier weight levels, I think I am improving. Waking up I couldn't imagine going through with it, now I can't imagine not having done so.

Forgot to weigh myself. Seriously.

The late 90s were truly the last musical renaissance, the last time something new and unusual was being created -- and it was being created out of the detritus of the entire twentieth century. Spooling together big band sounds and psychedelic tech and lounge and world music and it was just crazy. Some of it even got onto the radio. And we all still listened to the radio.

1997 Playlist
Walking On the Sun - Smash Mouth
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five
Sleep On the Left Side - Cornershop
Queen Bee - Taj Mahal
Burning Ground - Van Morrison
How Bizarre - OMC
Missing You - Basement Jaxx

"Smash Mouth" is two words?

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Hold onto me, pretty baby, if you want to fly.

Strange bug bite on the back of my calf. James assures me it's not from a tick, that if it were a tick I'd know, but it round and itchy and weird. A spider? Who knows. Where did I score that? No idea. Monitoring my energy. I think I'm okay.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good!
Exercises: yes

Tour time, throws my schedule off. Was enjoying my work in the gym, using the machines. Just takes a day to feel like you haven't done a thing at all. Got a big show this spring, hoping to have more strength and endurance by then. You have to build up to be able to bread down, do you know what I am saying?

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 180 lbs. (+2.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Such a pleasant morning, weather-wise. It could have been an outdoor run in a cool mist, but I would have missed the machines. Seriously, I am on a machines kick.

There's this one guy, though, on the track. He bugs the hell out of me. There are four lanes, the inside two are for walking, the outside for running. This guy, he's maybe sixty or so. Tall. He's got airpods in, and he is just grooving, with his elbows working high, really lifting up those elbows as he bops along.

But he's in the outside lane. And he's not running. He's not even speed-walking, he's just walking. Mister, I don't care how high your elbows work, you have to lift your knees to run, get the fuck out of my lane.

2007 Playlist
Land of All - Sky Cries Mary
Le Disko - Shiny Toy Guns
I Feel It All - Feist
The Boys - Dragonette
The News - Carbon Silicon
The Moneymaker - Rilo Kiley
Flathead - The Fratellis
Electro Man - Calvin Harris

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Someone will come running.

Has anyone seen my shoes?

Met Chris at the Rec Center for a treacherous run around Forest Hill, the melting snow, standing frigid water, slippery ice. Running there on my own, down unshoveled walks, I was worried about slipping, falling, twisting, doing damage to my back just from the constant adjusting and re-adjusting.

Together, we ran and we walked. Trying to keep on our feet. I managed to make it without my shoes getting too soggy, Chris did not fare as well.

And yet. Running out of doors. What bliss!

Distance: 4.45 miles
Pace: 10:20
Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 43°
Climate: sunny and cool
Pavement: a mess
Mood: not bad

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 178 lbs. (-3.5)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Ok.

2017 Playlist
IDGAF - Dua Lipa
Across the Room  ODESZA ft. Leon Bridges
Drew Barrymore - SZA
You Will Be Found - Ben Platt, Kristolyn Lloyd, Will Roland, Laura Dreyfuss & Original Broadway Cast Of "Dear Evan Hansen"
Always Ascending - Franz Ferdinand
tonite - LCD Soundsystem

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Keep on trucking.

Relaxing into the deep freeze. Yesterday it plunged to about four or five below, not further than that -- but OH! The wind chill.

I have no idea, actually, I went out side for about ninety seconds, total, and for the best of reasons. To have cocktails at Quinatna's Speakeasy (four dollar Old Fashioneds, a one-day, Polar Vortex special!) and the to get Chinese food because that's what the girl wanted for her sixteenth birthday dinner.

Sixteen years. Oh my. It took me a long time to realize the more they age, the more I do. But things are good. Feeling good. Life is good. Right? Isn't it? Even when nature is out there, waiting to rip your face off?

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: all right
Exercises: yes!

Oops. Forgot to eat anything.

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 181.5 lbs. (+2.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Oh! Jesus!

1973 Playlist
Living For the City - Stevie Wonder
Live and Let Die - Paul McCartney & Wings
Skokian - Hot Butter
Keep On Truckin' (Part One) - Eddie Kendricks
Polk Salad Annie (Live) - Elvis Presley
Jungle Boogie  - Kool & the Gang
5.15 - The Who
Cindy Incidentally - The Faces

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My footsteps made me crazy.

Thank you, Pete Shelley.

Can we run? Run in the subzero temperatures? I am grateful for the rec center membership, I have come to terms with the gym. This is what it takes, and I can cope with that. If it means being surrounded by senior walkers, those who remind me of my own limitations, so be it.

I see old people, and I winder ... how much older than I am they? Five years? Ten? Fifteen? That's not very many years. How soon will I be shuffling, bent over and slow? It would appear to be soon.

Or I'm full of shit.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good, actually
Exercises: yes!

Weather has gone crazy. It rained yesterday, then the temperatures dropped and there is ice -- everywhere. It's pretty dangerous. Today temps are supposed to go down considerably, my friends are all freaking out. Does that help?

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 179.5 lbs. (+1.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

And we're back.

1983 Playlist
Telephone Operator - Pete Shelley
Wonderin' - Neil Young & the Shocking Pinks
Young Guns (Go For It!) - Wham!
Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
Cool Places - Sparks
Taxman - Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble
New York New York - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
Prove My Love - Violent Femmes
Don't Change - INXS

This mile, two machines, mile, two machines, mile and out regimen is working out very well. Increasing strength and duration. Keep going! Going into the deep freeze!

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She's got a wall around her nobody can climb.

I have changed three flat tires in the past year, two in the past month. What is up with that? Is that a metaphor?

Also, found a cheap pair of "flight" headphones on eBay. To think I had said goodbye to those forever. Thinking of getting AirPods, someone talk me out of it.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good
Exercises: yes

Good day at the rec center with the girl. She can run fast.

1993 Playlist
Ubiquitous Mister Lovegrove - Dead Can Dance
Hip Hop Hooray - Naughty By Nature
Jump Around - House of Pain
Ordinary World - Duran Duran
Shape of My Heart - Sting
Come To Me - Björk

Cooldown:
My Sister - Juliana Hatfield Three

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 178.5 lbs. (-1.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Amazing. Say what you will about Facebook, I was able to create a campaign for Team Challenge and raised almost four hundred dollars in small donations in a day! Very helpful and greatly appreciated. There were also a few big donations in there, too. We're over a third of the way there!

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Can you show me where it hurts?

The New Year was an opportunity to do new, great things, to flip the script (as the kids used to say) but you know, I was pretty sure that was not actually going to happen. No real change in diet, on sporadic restraint in the sugar department. Exercise is not happening.

But it's early, you know? It's January. There are so many events flying about, so many plans to be made, and now it's cold. Perhaps we can pull it together, exhibit restraint. Because it's all about restraint -- about not doing the other thing, about concentrating on this better thing.

Deleting apps from your phone can be a revelation. It can also be short-lived, if you justify their return. Maintaining focus is a constant struggle. So do it! Enjoy the struggle! There is nothing for you there, it's all out here.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: all right
Exercises: yes

So, the last couple times I have tried a treadmill (at a hotel, at the urging of the boy)I have been unhappy. I have felt uncomfortable. I have felt, in a word, hot. Hot and uncomfortable.

This struck me as strange. Twenty years ago we had a membership at a gym, and I used a treadmill. It's how I got up to speed, in a manner of speaking. Built my strength, endurance, my ability to breathe. I quite around 2004, to run the roads, and never looked back.

Only today, using the track at the rec center, have a realized (duh) what the main difference is. It's air. I thought perhaps I was bored, running place, and that made me more aware of how heated I was getting.

But you get cooled when air is moving past you. Why have I never thought of this before?

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 179.5 lbs. (+2.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

And we're back.

2003 Playlist
Sunrise - Simply Red
Miss Indepedent - Kelly Clarkson
All Things (Just Keep Getting Better) - Widelife ft. Simone Denny
Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service
Keep Me In Your Heart - Warren Zevon
The Way You Move - OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service

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