The Price of Convenience

This week promises rain every other day. Yesterday was the only truly nice day with ardent sun and little wind. The annoying tiny kamikaze insects attracted to eyes, ears, nostrils and mouths have temporarily dissipated. I'm sure they'll be back, only bigger and hungrier. 

I'm tying my shoelaces this morning when I hear a vaguely familiar voice greet me. It's B, who hasn't been to the gym since the pandemic began. I don't really have much to say to her because while I'm glad she and her hubs are well, I haven't particularly missed her brand of "friendship," which is primarily to talk about herself and then walk off in the middle of a conversation once she gets around to asking about you.

Today I get on elliptical number 2 and Program 3. I feel sluggish, bloated and tired. I'm the opposite of a weekend warrior. Weekends are when I get very little exercise and sit in front of my computer a lot, even on nice days. So, while I don't break 2.9 miles, I do have a decent cardio warmup and pull-ups. Snow Bird beats me to the Stretch Cage for my second round of pull-ups and that's the only excuse I need to clamber onto the StepMill for 10 minutes. From this high perch, I can see B talking to Tank for the entire duration of my second cardio bout. He looks bored but maybe that's how he always looks. 

I've been reading a lot about PFAS in fast food wrappers, and while I don't eat a lot of fast food, I do have the habit of using a paper plate to keep microwaved foods from splattering inside the microwave. I used to use paper towels (apparently perfectly safe as long as you're not nuking so long that the paper catches fire!) but they'd get really soggy and sometimes fall into the food. Should I worry about dioxin in bleached paper products? (I use unbleached coffee filters!) Old-fashion wax paper melts onto the bowls or plates and is difficult to remove so I had to stop buying rolls of that. 

I'm not sure what modern parchment paper is coated with, but it's apparently safe and barely contains any PFAS depending on the brand (Reynolds has 14 ppm while another brand has zero). Most paper plates are coated with plastic and can contain up to 140 ppm of PFAS, so while not nearly as bad as a Burger King wrapper, it's still more than nothing. Still, how much gets imparted into food it's not actually touching, or is contained in the steam by-product? Everywhere I look, there's something to worry about...

Products made from recycled paper products, while seeming virtuous, may in fact be contaminated with stuff like paper receipts (a source of BPAs). Yep, humanity loves to virtue label without actually doing what would be the right thing, because not only would it be difficult and complicated, but it probably wouldn't make an immediate profit. We, as a species, are freakin' doomed.

2 May 2021
Rainy Monday Morn

Precor elliptical #2
Program 3
Time: 30 min + 5 min cd (5698)
Distance: 2.87
Cal: 321
Avg Hr 148, 195-100

HGPU 23.5

Crunches 60
Piriformis/Hip/Pencil Stretch
60 Dead Bugs
Elbow Plank 60s
Quick Child’s Pose
Cat stretch 12x
Fire Hydrants 25 x 2
Bird Dogs 60s x 2
Child’s Pose
Push-Ups 25
Air Squats 25
Mild Mat stretch w 3 Eye Yoga
Band pull-aparts single strand 25

Matrix StepMill (R)
Manual 10 min
Speed 6 (52-57)
Step 532
Floors 33
Calories 78
Heart Rate n/a

HGPU 22