Off the request line.

I owe someone a little something from a few posts ago, so this one's for you, Jacket.
That's my muscle, fools. I've been working on it.

I'm just over a year into my Going to The Gym to Get Ripped Initiative and I've hit a bit of a plateau. I worked with a trainer for my first month and a half; this was as much as I could afford (it is a swank, swank gym that I can only attend through the miracle of My Big Corporate Employer's health care plan subsidy). I'd been doing that plan--with results, no doubt--but I was starting to feel like I wasn't making more progress. So I took a preview class for a little something they call BURN. Which burns, by the way. The miniclass was 30 minutes and I was sweating like a sweaty pig--I can only guess that in the full hour class I would have been in a pile of sweaty soreness on the floor. But I felt great afterwards and, just like the trainer predicted, I find that my body is craving the increased heart rate, the sweat, and the deep breaths that I get from the cardio portion as well as the soreness and wrung out feeling from the weight work. So I've been picking up the literal pace of my workout. This fast walk/jog/run/jog/walk/run/jog/run/walk flies in the face of my prior attitude to moving at anything other than a swift walk. I have even been known to express the sentiment that I don't even run to catch a bus, if I'm late for work. But I do now, because damn if it don't feel fine.

Success; failure

This is embarrassing.

I know I put it out there like I'm some sort of kitchen demigod, at least, but I must tell you, some days it just does not come together. Tonight was one of those...days.

In the last few years, my facility in the kitchen has progressed such that I rarely fall flat on my damned face, cooking-wise. In the past, major failures have been the fault of the cookbook; the repeat offender was so consistently disappointing that we threw it away after the Nth consecutive disaster (celery soup...seriously? Seriously). But anything that goes awry now is pretty much all my fault.

I was getting fancy with some risotto this evening, and through a series of steps that I'd prefer did not enter the public record, I produced pretty much the same effect as if I'd made up a pan of Campbell's Tomato soup, cranked in a little pepper, and then made risotto in that. *shudder* It felt like the Methodist church potluck version* of some bastard risotto: "Creamy Rice Casserole with Cheese." Oh, the cheese--another in a string of shameful missteps. My laziness often allows some really excellent improvisation, if I come up short of an ingredient list, but in this case, I'll just say that Monterrey Jack cheese DOES NOT belong in risotto, even under duress. Even if you're, like, camping, do not sub in this cheese if you value your personal definition of risotto--it will so harm the definitional integrity of the concept of "risotto" that the eventual, inevitable result will be that you find yourself whipping up some "risotto" for an evening dinner party by thwumping a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom, a can of skim milk, one diced white onion, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, and a jar of mushrooms (drained) into your slo-cooker in the morning, cranking that puppy to "low," and heading off to work, whistling that delightful theme from the André Riu special that aired on the PBS last night**.

In short, this dinner sits at the top of a very slippery slope. The planovers will only remind me of my failure, so I am abandoning them to my partner, who did not find dinner nearly as offensive as I did.

+ + +

As for my success: it's been just over a year since I joined the gym and I am still going. This is major, as you may recall. My results are result-y, which is good because I went in with only one explicit goal: get ripped. I'm pretty ripped, I gotta say, and it's less difficult to haul ass up the hill on my bike. I have gained and lost no weight at all, which is interesting but not at all important to me. I find, however, that it is harder to keep pushing myself to do more, to max the envelope, as it were, without the encouragement of a trainer. I had one for about eight weeks when I started and I'm thinking about signing up for a few more sessions now that I have a little more experience and focus, routine-wise. Not that my liiiiifting isn't awwwesome, dude. So go me, go gym, go triceps!

And a second success: the following represents the final payment of one of my student loans, so take THAT, University Accounting Services!

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* I must assure you that I love and respect the Methodist church's tradition of the potluck, and if you do not believe me, ask me for my Tuna Noodle Casserole recipe.
** I have only one beef with violinist André Riu: WGBH plays the stuffing out of his insufferably bland, occasionally absurd concerts during pledge drive week(s), causing me to miss things like Masterpiece Theatre or, worse, Nova. This prompts me to only half jokingly call him "that André Riu fucker." Special message to Mr. Riu: Sorry! I know it's not your fault; I should be calling them "those WGBH fuckers," but that does not trip as lightly off the tongue.

On a wedding

I am lucky to have the kinds of friends who, when they get married, prompt one to think, that's it. That's why marriage is desirable, that's why it is wrong to keep anyone from marrying, that's why anyone wants to do this at all--because is can be this good, this filled with love, this riotous, this unifying, this affirming.

So DS and KP got married out here in Bostonland over the holiday weekend and it was grand. And when we were all dancing after the service and after the dinner, we realized that the reason that everyone gets all cuh-RAY-zy dancey-pants at weddings is that they've spent many minutes, maybe hours, being unable to leap off the bridesmaid line, past the groomsmen, and tackle the beloved bride and groom in a big, stuffing-busting hug. So we shake it loose, we drink it up and sweat it all out for a few hours on a lie-flat dance floor so we can do something with the hot heart energy that's been building up because we weren't free to hold them, because we aren't all together anymore, because there is so much that we don't get to do with and say to each other everyday anymore. We have to find a way to have years of love and dancing in one night, and this happens at weddings because that's when adults can go on vacations together like big squalling masses of undergrads again, stay in hotels, drink champagne straight from the bottle, play dress-up, stay up late, eat cake, meet families, jump on beds, and carve out one or two nights from Our Big Kid Lives to celebrate our friends, their families, their love, and then the family we all make together.

Not to get all sentimental or anything. Cheers to the DS-KP union; couldn't have happened to a better pair of people.

Return

I had a safe, predictable series of flights on Friday and am back home, more or less. I'm not quite done with my mental vacation, but tomorrow's shocking return to the office will jolt me back to reality.

I hope to have travelogues for you this week, but a few projects need my attention this week, not the least of which is laundry from my trip. I packed (and dressed) like a backpacker; consequently, when I got home I smelled and looked a little like a backpacker.

If you're interested in my many, many photos, please visit my Flickr stream here; I don't want to clog the blog, you dig?