Oh, my aching back!

Ok, so sometimes I am a little dumb. Surprising, I know. But sometimes my mind just doesn't seem to think things through and make the logical connection that should exist.

This past Saturday I decided to sign up for the 10:30 spin class at my gym. I recently purchased some cycling shoes, and somehow that makes it a little more fun to go to class. Twice a week just may not cut it anymore -- not now that I have some cool new shoes to use. I got to the gym about 20 minutes early, so I decided to do some ab work. Bathing suit season is just around the corner, and I have exactly 6 weeks to get my body made in to something that won't be completely embarrassing to display on the beach. Gotta utilize my time, you know.

Anyway, so there's this little 'thing' by the door to the spin room, and I decide to use it. I go get a 10lb plate so I can really make my abs work, and I go for it. I think, '4 reps of 25 should do it.' An even 100. Sounds good. I pound them out. Surprisingly (at least to me at the time), my abs didn't feel a THING. Weird. I went to spin, sweat a lot, and went home feeling good about myself.

Later that evening, my back was feeling a bit sore. That seemed odd. It wasn't like I was doing some heavy lifting or moving furniture around that day. By Sunday, I could really feel it. Then it dawns on me... The 'thing' I used was something like this:

Except unlike the guy pictured, I was over-extending when I brought my body up. So my back was arched before I lowered my torso back down. That guy in the picture is a wimp. Isn't even holding extra weight! Psha. Oh, and by the way... that doesn't work out your abs!! It obviously works out your back!! Me=idiot. Monday was just torture. I could barely move. It is amazing how many things you do every day that involves using your back. Um, EVERYTHING! I feel it when I walk. I feel it when I sit down. When I try to put on my socks. When I slightly bend at the sink to wash my hands. It's like you can't do anything without your back! I have a new sympathy for those with chronic back pain. I must have popped at least 6 extra-strength Bayers and 20 Ibuprofens yesterday. I'm not exaggerating. And still I could feel the pain.

Who knew my back was out of shape? It's just another area to tone up for the up-coming Memorial Day beach trip. I can do this............ Just gotta go purchase some more meds.

A quick pre-Italia post

I have been procrastinating publishing a post about my trip to Italy because I want to be sure that I encompass as much of it's greatness as is possible, and I know that it will take some time and some major effort to try to portray it all in just words and pictures. There are so many little side-stories and funny moments. It is a daunting task (in my eyes) for me to try to write about it all. So there's my disclaimer on this entry so I don't feel guilty about revealing the tiniest little something that ties back to our time in Italy...

It is true that more often than not, if you drop a piece of bread with butter, it will fall butter-side down. Bagel & cream cheese? Yup; the cream cheese glues your freshly-spread bagel to the floor. Cupcake with frosting? Now you have an excuse to cry.

But does this phenomenon also apply to bookmarks?? Shouldn't both sides of the bookmark weigh the same and thus give it a fair 50/50 chance of landing on one particular side? After all, it's just a piece of thick paper. Let me answer this question for myself. Yes, this same theory above seems to apply to bookmarks. At least my bookmark. And just like the way you feel when you drop the bread, bagel or cupcake and see that again, they have all landed on the opposite side that you would wish, so does this dropped bookmark of mine bring out feelings of distress.

When my friends and I were in Florence, we stayed in a hostel that was just down the road from the piazza that displayed Michelangelo's David. Now there is a replica of the marble statue in the piazza, and the original is in a museum. After admiring the replica, I didn't really have a strong desire to pay money to get inside the museum to see the original. Merrilee, however, was eager to see the work of art, as well as other amazing works of art by more art-geniuses, so she went inside. Kristen and I decided to try to find an internet cafe in the mean time, but we were distracted by the guards at the museum entrance, who very openly flirted with us. I had an Italian-English dictionary, so we flipped through to find the right words to say and played charades a lot. Of course the 2 men were in competition for our attention, so the insults were flying between them. The easiest-to-pick-up insult was one of them comparing the other guy's "man-parts" to David's; very small. "Not a real man". This got a good laugh out of everyone, and it became the on-going joke between us throughout the rest of our Italy trip. We saw boxers that depicted the section of David's body on what you might imagine should have been on the inside of those boxers. I mean, the guy's crotch was everywhere. Like 16-year-old teenage boys, us girls had a good laugh making reference to the size (or lack) of this David warrior's manhood.

Fast-forward to our plane ride back to the states... I open my book after not doing any reading the entire week, to find a new bookmark placed in the pages. What is this, I wonder? It is none other than David's family jewels in bookmark-form, staring me in the face. I laugh out loud and go to find the girls who are across the 2 aisles from me. Turns out Merrilee snuck it in my book back in Florence. Sneaky girl! Well, as I think it is so funny, I have kept using it as my bookmark. I read a lot, so it has been stuck in many a book since. However, part of my reading time is on my commute to and from work. This gets tricky, as I don't necessarily want other people to see what is on my bookmark when I open my book. So I always strategically place my bookmark so that the back of it shows when I first open my book. The back is decorated with black and white sunflowers and has information of the artwork that is on the opposite side. Very non-offending.

There have been about 3 times in the last 4 months that I have accidentally dropped my bookmark in public. PANIC!! As I un-gracefully try to catch it mid-air, I think, "Please don't land genitalia-side-up!" But of course, it always does. WHY? Why would my bookmark do that? Why hasn't it ever landed with the innocent sunflowers showing? And I know as I hurriedly stoop to pick it up, I have made more of a scene scrambling to catch it mid-air and dropping to the ground so fast you would think there was gun fire, than if I had just casually let it fall and non-chalantly bent to get it. Now there are twice as many people that are looking at me and my fallen bookmark, and pretty sure my face is bright red. I can't bear to look any of them in the eye. I vow from then on to hold extra-tight to my little man David bookmark, but inevitably, I will drop it again. And I will bet my woman-parts that it will land man-hood-side up.

Just Kidding! Not! Psyche! Just Joshin' ya! I Kid! Just Joking!

It is no lie. I love to laugh! In honor of April Fool's Day and all those who love to play jokes and make people laugh, I am dedicating this post to things I think are funny.

So there is this website that my brother-in-law introduced me to; woot.com. Every day they have a new item on sale, usually in the electronic genre. Some are great deals, some are ridiculous. It is one of the sites I check everyday. One day I came across this item of the day and it made me laugh. The descriptions they give are hilarious!

I'm reading this book right now called The Know-It-All; One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. It's about a guy that takes on the task to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. He writes about his quest in brilliant humor. I'm only on letter H in the book, so I'm sure there are many more funny moments to experience. But here are a few that have stood out so far and have actually made me laugh out loud:

Fahrenheit, Daniel

My anger toward 18-century German physicist Daniel Fahrenheit is all out of proportion. ... He spent most of his life in the Netherlands, where he invented the mercury thermometer in 1714, which is fine. I don't begrudge him that. I do, however, find his temperature scale completely absurd. For zero on his scale, Fahrenheit chose the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture. For 30, he chose the freezing point of water, and 90 was supposed to be the human's normal body temperature. There's so much wrong with that, I'm not sure where to start. First of all, Fahrenheit bungled the measurements. As I've been forced to remember all my life, the freezing point of water is actually 32 degrees and body temperature is 98.6. So he's an inaccurate moron. Second of all, why choose 30 for the freezing point of water in the first place? What's wrong with starting it at zero? Oh, that's right. He's reserved zero for the temperature of an equal mixture of ice and salt. Huh? Where'd he come up with that one? How about an equal mixture of ice and tomato juice? Or how about one-third ice and two-thirds baking soda, with a dash of paprika? I'm astounded by the inertia of bad ideas. Now, three hundred years later, we're stuck with Fahrenheit's ill-thought-out, badly executed system. It makes my blood boil, which happens at about 100.1 degrees Celsius.

There's another entry about when he's taking a speed-reading course, and everybody brings their books to class. One classmate brought his copy of Maxim magazine, in which the author presumes it is because the dude wants to do "something else" faster. (I won't actually write the word). Made me laugh out loud on the Metro this morning, though.

This one is for all you Utahns:

Glottal Stop

In phonetics, this is a momentary stoppage of the airstream, caused by closing the glottis. When those with Brooklyn and Cockney (and Utah!) accents pronounce "bottle" as bah-ul, they are using the glottal stop . There's a cruel little irony here--those who use the glottal stop can't even pronounce it correctly. They say "glah-ul stop." I wonder if the people who named the glottal stop did this on purpose, the scamps.

Can any of you Utahns say Mountain? Really. Say it. "Mow-un" doesn't count. :) Here's one more for good measure. This book is seriously a great read! It's very entertaining..

Infix

The Britannica was discussing grammar, and mentioned something called an "infix," which is a cousin of the suffix and the prefix, except that it occurs inside a word. The Britannica stated that the infix occurs in Greek and Tagalog, but not in English. I somehow summoned up from my college linguistics course the fact that there is, actually, one infix in the English language: "effing" (I'm not going to write the real word). As in "in-effing-credible," or "un-effing-believable," or Bri-effing-tannica." It may not be polite English, but it still counts, at least according to my liberal college professor.

Ok, so enough of quotes from this book. It's funny, though, and it puts me in a good mood in the morning, which means a great deal. I am not a morning person, nor am I super-happy to be awake before 10AM.

Some other things that make me laugh/I think are funny:

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  Seeing people slip and fall down (as long as they are not old people)




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  The Brits. Seriously! They have the best sense of humor. I always get one-upped by them.




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  Seeing people trip. (this kind of goes along with the first one, but it's so funny to be walking down the road and see people trip on their own feet, but turn around and look behind them to be sure they didn't just trip over a sandbag or something)




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  My nieces and nephews. Why are they so funny? They always crack me up. I have been in tears many times because they have caused me to laugh so hard.


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  The rest of my hilarious family




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  The time I tripped up the stairs in the Pentagon because I was running and taking the steps 2 at a time. I should know that my little short legs can't handle that! I also did that in High School. I wonder if I have learned my lesson?




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  When my dad laughs so hard that he sounds like a fire engine




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  Countless times when in Italy traveling around. But I'll save those for my Italia post.




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  When I smashed the chocolate orange ("whack and unwrap!) on the dashboard of our van and cracked open both the chocolate orange and the dash.




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  When Merrilee and I were in Harry Potter mode all weekend at the beach. "Accio cute boy!" "Alohamora my heart!"



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  My roommates!!


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  Smart Cars. I cannot help but laugh out loud whenever I see them! They seem like little cartoon cars. Are there REAL people inside those things?


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  Brian Reagan. He cracks me up


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  Segways!! Nobody looks cool on a segway. One day I will sign up for a segway tour and wear bermuda shorts with argyle knee socks and a wool sweater. Oh, and I'll be sure not to forget my helmet.

I will have to add to this list. I may update this post from time to time with new additions. It will be a fun list to keep. And to end this grand April Fool's Day, I leave you with this fabulous product: The Shrinter (this deserves a nod to Todd)

at our dinner in florence

me, my uncle harry and cousin melanie. It's root beer