I’m a flabby mess.
It’s time I do something about this. I’m going to lose 10 pounds, goshdarnit, and I’m to do it the old-fashioned way; by blogging about it! Well, not solely by blogging about it. Frankly, I don’t type fast enough to get much of a workout. No, I will in fact be stuck going the dreaded diet and exercise route.
I’ve made some other attempts to clean up my act recently, but to this point, my efforts haven’t exactly been well-executed. For example, my gym membership began June 1st. and It took me until July 14th to actually use the thing (thanks heavy employer gym subsidies!). Yeah, I think I’m going to have to do better than that.
However, enough is enough, and as of this week I’m making a real effort to pick up my game. I’ve managed to make it to my gym’s pool twice, and I’m hoping to make my sets a several-time-a-week occurrence. I already bike to work and swing dance plenty, but integrating a little bit more deliberate exercise into my routine—and laying off the employer-provided free snacks—should help me focus on achieving my goal.
Well, that’s the hope anyway. As someone who’s managed to lose 50 pounds before, you’d think I ought to be able to manage a modest 10 pretty handily. But then again, I’ve said I was going to do this more than a few times before. I guess I’m hoping that in telling you about it, I’ll be shamed into having enough motivation to actually complete the task.
If you see me on the street, feel free to tell me how chubby I look today. I’ll take all the motivational help I can get.
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Lee
Tagged: Diet, Health, Life | 3 Comments »
I know this was almost two weeks ago, but the process of actually getting these things output to an HTML table is at least moderately arduous and so I didn’t get the chance to post it until today.
If you can’t tell by the track listings, I’m a huge Ellington fan. Nearly half the songs are by Ellington or his sidemen. I guess it may look weird in print, but I tend to go in phases like this, and my opinion is that as long as the crowd’s happy, I’m happy. I’ve never really subscribed to the philosophy that being a good swing dance DJ requires the ability to source incredibly obscure tracks from artists that even most swing DJs have heard. Rather, I think that the key traits are attention to the energy of the room and… well, frankly, taste.
On that count, I guess I’ll leave it to you to decide (below the jump).
Read more…
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Lee
Tagged: Dance, Music, playlist | No Comments »
It turns out that getting a blog back into shape after a two-year hiatus requires a little bit of patchwork. I’m busily fixing broken links, updating my blogroll, updating old pages, etc. so I sincerely apologize for anything and everything that is annoyingly broken over the next week or two.
In the meantime, consider the latest breaking news coverage.
Posted on July 14th, 2008 by Lee
Tagged: Blogging | No Comments »
Why? Why, cute girl walking down the street by my office, must you be wearing such a cute top with Crocs?
After the Great Escalator Shoe-Munching Scandal of 2007, I thought we were rid of you. Like rogue guerilla rebels, I thought the offending shoes would be purged from the cities, be relegated to hillside bunkers, and would eventually be left to die and rot in their caves. I thought that any remaining Croc-wearing luddites would soon lose enough toes to get the picture and send their Crocs back to the mall kiosk from whence they came.
I was wrong.
If, in this day in age, even cute girls can wear Crocs, what shame is left for our society? For years, decades, centuries we have looked to the attractive women of the world guide us away from all sorts of terrible ideas. Just when we we as American people were about to go off the deep end, attractive women would take charge and save us from our own excesses with some inexplicable logic about the new Fall season. Can we really trust these people now?
For shame!
Photo 
by Netream
Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Lee
Tagged: | No Comments »
The last (and only previous) time I did laser tag, I couldn’t have been more than 14. The setup was in the back room of a roller skating rink, somewhere deep in suburban New Hampshire, hundreds of miles from home. I was there with a few relatives, my siblings, and all the awkwardness that my chubby adolescent frame could muster.
In the car ride on the way there, laser tag seemed like a great idea. The anticipation of getting both a laser tag ticket and a skate rental even made the long line at the entrance seem a little shorter. I strapped on my plastic vest, powered up my laser gun, and stepped into the darkness, ready to do battle.
The rush of disappointment was swift and thorough. The arena couldn’t have been much larger than my DC apartment, and without sufficient obstacles or hiding places, the game got old quickly. What’s worse, I sucked. Maybe I wasn’t exactly the big bumbling county bumpkin of a target for snarky suburban children that I recall, but the low lighting and the fog machine surely couldn’t obscure the fact that this wasn’t a place for me. By the end of the game, I was more than ready to strap my skates back on and get back to the regularly scheduled mindless activities. And let’s face it, anytime that rolling repeated ovals around a room in which you know three people seems more appealing than the activity at hand, you’re not exactly likely to return.
Clearly my friend Jason lived a less awkward childhood than mine. What else would possess a grown man to invite all his friends for a game of birthday-related laser tag? I had a few hesitations, but I could sense that maybe this time would be better than the last. So last Saturday, I dutifully headed out into the Falls Church hinterlands to do battle.
Frankly, laser tag was awesome. Instead of being a walking target for the little kiddies, I owned them. And since they weren’t my kids, and their parents had already committed the cardinal sin of living in NoVa, I needed have no qualms about reveling in it. The space was huge, with plenty of obstacles, and I actually managed to be a pretty solid player. Plus, frankly, it’s much more fun to trash talk your 25-year-old friends than your teenager cousins that you only see once a year.
Will any amount of laser-aided destruction atone for my awkward childhood? In a word, no. But will I enthusiastically attend our next laser tag outing? Yes, and I will bring my game face and my sense of entitlement. Be ready.
Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Lee
Tagged: Fun, Life | No Comments »
