cameracarl

I'm trying to find a good cardio exercise (or mix of exercises).

A while back I bought myself a nice elliptical machine (Precor 5.17i - http://www.precor.com/cons/en/efx/517i/ - if you're interested). I used it at first, then had to store it when I moved to Gurnee. I've used it a few times here at the house, and have been trying to use it regularly over the last couple of weeks. Now my knees ache again, and I'm finally ready to part with it.

My issue is that I'm the opposite of pigeon toed. My feet stick out, and I have to turn them a little bit to fit on the elliptical's pedal platforms. That twists my knee a bit, and exercising like that is making them ache. In other words, I'm too big for the thing, and it's forcing me to accommodate it because I don't fit.

BTW, if you're interested in a good deal on an elliptical, there's a free test drive waiting for you here.

I don't want another machine. It's not in the budget, and I'm not sure I can find something that fits me.

I must be able to do the exercise at home. If I have to leave, it's just not going to happen. I've joined gyms in the past, it never works out for me. Besides, for cardio at gyms it's either renting time on machines that don't fit me or it's classes at times I can't make (plus I gave up on pilaties and yoga because they hurt my wrists). If it's something I can "just do" during the day at home, then I've got a good chance of working in to my day regularly.

I'd also like to keep it somewhat low impact. My knees and feet aren't in bad shape, but I'm also not 20 anymore and don't want to go tearing them up too much.

So - at home cardio without buying an expensive machine - any suggestions?

I've now posted every day for a month. I'm not sure if I'd even done 30 posts total before this month.

I've got some plans to do a lot more posting next year, although it will primarily be about hobbies and projects. It won't all be here, and I won't cross post everywhere, but I might note when new stuff is up.

I finished the Lord Of The Rings, which I hadn't read since probably high school. This time around I have a much better understanding of the context. Guess I learned more at BAPA than I realized.

It's certainly a very long book, but things moved along pretty quickly. Tolkien can be very descriptive of how things look, but that doesn't bog down the story. There were a lot of details I'd forgotten, probably I didn't really understand some of them the first time around.

I'm not sure what I want to read next. I heard an interesting radio adaptation (via "old time radio" podcasts) of Asimov's Foundation series. I never liked it before, maybe I just wasn't ready. Unfortunately, I don't think I own it, and I don't really want to buy more books at the moment.

I guess I'll have to just go through the book and see what's there. Chances are pretty good there are a few I never got around the reading. Or maybe I'll go re-read Beowulf. I read it in college, I might understand it more now as well.

We're home from our travels through Indiana and Ohio.

There's an ebook on sale today I might download, but the only conspicuous consumption on today's agenda involves yesterday's leftovers. Yum.

Have a great Thanksgiving Day!

Every day I run across new inspirations for more and more projects and hobbies. I write a lot of them down. Even so, there are so many and they fly past so fast, I'm trying to figure out how to capture and prioritize them better.

Or maybe I should get better at not capturing all these ideas, and put more effort into doing the projects I've already got in mind.

My mom has a small grain mill (about the size of a stand mixer or tall rice cooker), and buys wheat berries at a local (to her) bulk food store. This way she's got real whole wheat flour - even the "whole wheat" flour that we buy in the store isn't truly whole wheat. It's got less stuff removed than white flour, but real -actually whole - whole wheat still has some bits removed that would otherwise go rancid sitting on the shelf.

Comparing prices on what she spends on the grain, it's actually cheaper to go this route as well. Once again it costs less to go with the healthy option. Funny that.

She just does wheat flour, although the mill can apparently handle a variety of other grains as well - corn, quinoa, etc. It's pretty simple, but does provide some control over how fine the grind is, so I could make a fine wheat flour, and then crank out some coarse corn meal.

This is something I'm now increasingly interested in doing. It would help to find a nice bulk foods store in our area where I could pick up the grain, although I'm sure it can be ordered via the internet as well.

We've started thinking about next year's garden already. We had a good start this year, but we didn't harvest and use or preserve as quickly and thoroughly as we should have. And, I'm wondering if we couldn't get that amount of space to produce a lot more food for us next year.

So, we're starting to plot and plan. I'd really like to try the "square foot gardening" technique. What I read about it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

We're well positioned to make an earlier start this year. We've already got a spot worked up in the back yard, so preparing it for next year will be quick. Last year we spent a lot of time early on just busting up the sod. We've also got the mini indoor greenhouse for starting plants.

So now we need to decide what we want, where to put it, and when. If we stagger it all properly, we should have a nice steady supply all of fresh veggies through the summer and full.

I ran the sound board for a couple of masses today. Amazing what you get to hear when you have the unique power to isolate individuals. There are some extremely talented individuals. And some folks to balance things out. On rare occassion, those are the same people.

Sometimes you get something out of left field, although it might even be a completely different field. Had one of those today. It was sort of like listening to two different concerts at once. I was listening to a channel through the board that didn't appear to be related in any way to what everybody else was doing. It was a bit surreal.

Tangentially, there were trumpets as well, they played a couple phrases at one point that were rather short and choppy, plus dissonant. For some reason it reminded me of Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" which I think is one of the best albums ever.