When Cardio Day Means Easy Day

This summer the rains have brought absolutely no relief from the heat, and certainly not the humidity. My son tells me that being outside feels like walking through warm soup. He's got that right. It's extra hard on the senior pup. He's much happier inside with the a/c, except when he's hot on the trail of a feral feline. This morning we came face-to-face with a regular my son has named "Dave." We're pretty sure "Dave" has an owner since he appears well-fed and groomed. But he's collarless, and out all day and night. A dead gray mouse in the road with a splash of crimson means the cats have been playing. There's more than one roaming about and we sometimes hear angry hisses and growling. The dog is happy to lay down on his bed with his nose pressed up against the storm door where he has but to barely lift an eyelid to gaze down the driveway.

I let my son sleep in while I start laundry and dishes, and wipe down the dog. Even with a pee-wrap, he's still messy and smelly. And the wrap itself has to be rinsed clean of old urine before being tossed in the washer. The dog's not interested in his breakfast this morning. Hopefully his appetite will improve after we've left for the gym. I put a dose of CBD oil on some toasted ciabatta yesterday after I saw that the pup had finally eaten his breakfast. He seems to like the fishy krill oil smell. Afterwards, he slept quite soundly in front of the door all night. That might be from the lavender essence it contains. Normally he paces around the house for a bit. I ordered some CBD from the online source my friend uses. I'm a bit concerned that the dosing chart is different online than what she showed me. But she's using it for her ailing cat. I'm fairly certain that the small amount I'm giving my pup is fairly harmless. And if it relieves his discomfort, well great!

My son is happy that Fridays are cardio days, because he finds them less taxing. I tell him we'll do the machines we haven't been on in a while.

Meanwhile, my left hand aches because it's swollen between the thumb and pointer. I suspect an insect bite, but I don't really find any wounds. I have lots of tiny itchy bites from gnats, mosquitoes and no-seeums, but they never swell like this. The last time I remembered a bite like this, it was a fly who bit the back of my hand as I was standing on the commuter train platform, reading a newspaper. My whole hand swelled like a makeshift balloon made from a rubber glove. After 3 days, I had to go to the doctor who gave me antibiotics and that worked. I hate flies, especially biting ones!

We do the cross-trainer for 20 minutes, then the Step Mill. Finally, we're on the Expresso Bikes. I play the Dragon Island game but my son selects a regular course. He doesn't like the difficulty pedaling up the hillside to chase the dragons. I tell him he doesn't have to pedal uphill. He can just stay on the paths, but there's no fun in that. I find the regular courses boring. I don't want to constantly shift gears and focus on steering around curves, or other cyclists. I'd rather chase floating coins and dragons and occasionally pick up a treasure box worth 5,000 points. Coins are only worth 250 points, and dragons vary, depending on what color. White coins let you chase a Silver dragon, worth 1500 points. Green coins let you chase a green dragon worth 750 points. There are also blue and red coins, and dragons. Today I manage to find 3 treasure boxes, but I slipped into the water chasing a red dragon and lost 1,000 points which I then made up by running down 4 coins with only 36 seconds left in the game. I have a lot of fun doing this.

Afterwards, we stretch and then do our pull ups. My son tries HGPUs and says they feel easier. I agree, and explain to him how the change in grip position affects the forearms and elbows. They're easier, but my son reverts back to regular pull ups for his last set. It's totally fine. Maybe he'll develop some killer forearms? My swollen hand doesn't really seem to impede my grip on the Stretch Cage so I'm happy about that. Cognizant of my tendency to keep my arms extremely bent, I drop a little more on the extension so that I can look up and see the cage top bars. Counting aloud helps with breathing. I'm so spent that my I mark my very last rep of the very last set as a 1/2. My son tells me that I can just do another 1/2 rep and call it a day. What a wise guy!

We do push ups and core in the class room. We're both tired and spend more time chatting than usual. While I'm taking a few selfies, my son decides to bounce on one of the balls in the rack, as if it was a Hoppy Ball. By this time, the swelling in my hand has subsided quite a bit. It's not quite normal yet, but it doesn't hurt as much. Hopefully it'll be totally gone by tomorrow.

The Hillywood Show released their new Supernatural 2 parody, and it's done extremely well, with cameos from all the major characters from the actual show. That's soooo impressive. But I'm afraid I don't like it as much as their original Supernatural parody, which brilliantly spoofs Taylor Swift's Shake It Off. This second version sings the Ghost Buster's theme song to Winchester. You know where to put the emphasis! I'd share the clip here, but they've nicely asked that no one copy their work to any social media, so I won't. But I will give a link to their YouTube page here for you to check it out. If you're a fan and have followed the show, the pizza delivery scene is priceless! For non-fans, this won't make a whole lot of sense, except as it loosely follows the Ghost Busters script. And yes, I enjoyed both the original, and the recent remake.

Cardio Friday

screengrab from Hillywood Show Supernatural Parody 2

20 x-trainer
Level 1 Manual
Miles 2.15
Calories 157

20 StepMill
Speed 3 for 7min, 5 for 13 min
Floors 54
871 Total Steps
Calories 132
AHR 121

20 Expresso Bike
Dragon Island
Points 132,550
Miles 3.19
Calories 65

HGPU 15, 15, 15, 14.5 (59.5)
M pull ups 10, 8, HGPU 10, 5 (33)

Walking Lunges 32
M 26

Push Ups 60
M 30

Side Planks 2 x 60s
Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Bicycles 50
Crunches 30/20

Stretch