My stage debut

Earlier this week I experienced my first rehearsal for the 17th degree that I am participating in during the Fall reunion of the Valley of Detroit. I have never done any stage acting before and I'm very excited to be jumping in with both feet. It is a small part, only 7 lines, but they are full of big emotions (and hammy overacting on my part)!

I had a really good time during the rehearsal, lots of great brothers are participating and it should make for a good addition to the reunion next month.

Not to give anything away from the degree, but I am playing the role of the vile Antipater. mwhuhahahahaha

Blood sugar and my sedentary ways

Both my blood sugar levels (over 300 which is BAD) and my couch-potato, net-surfing ways need to change drastically or I'm headed for an early grave. Not like, next month or even next year, but Type 2 Diabetes is no joke and will definitely shorten the ol' lifespan. That is without even considering the related health issues associated with carrying around an extra 80lbs or so. So, there will be less of me to love and I'm planning on tracking my progress in public here to keep me from getting too lazy and dropping the whole plan.

I started off walking 20 minutes at a brisk pace 3-4 mornings at the lovely hour of 5am. I did this for a week then upped the duration to 30 minutes and tried to keep the pace up. This went on for two more weeks of very early morning walks. That brings us up to the present week with the big change over to walk/jog.

WOW! does that ever suck! You never realize just how far out of shape you are until you actually have to do something to correct the situation. I once told myself, when I left the USMC, that I wouldn't run another step unless I was being chased. Well, I guess I was wrong.

I did this walk/jog thing for just one time before deciding two things:

1. I needed new shoes - my 2 year old walking/hiking Merrell's were not going to work for this no matter how well they fit and how well suited to walking they may be.
   
2. If I am actually going to be serious about this I need to geek things up and find ways to track my progress and make the commitment more real. I can't do anything without gadgets :)

I took care of both of these issues yesterday by picking up the Nike+ sensor for my iPod Touch and new pair of actual running shoes with the help of the folks at Running Fit in Ann Arbor. This sensor thing is very geeky and very cool (in a geeky way) and just what I needed to track my progress while at the same time satisfying the strange compulsion to involve high-tech toys in everything I do. I had some initial issues getting the sensor and the iPod to agree to play nice together, but once they did I was ready to give them a test this morning.

This is the resulting tracking on the Nike+ web site, which is a free part of the whole sensor thingy:

I won't be winning any road races, but I am getting out there and getting it done, and for now, that is what matters most to me. I'll post more about the whole Nike+ site and tools once I have some more time to mess around with them. 

Here's where I started on this journey:

9/1/2010 - 286lbs and feeling crappy (weight taken at the doc)

I'll have to update once I get some batteries in the scale at home and I can actually track progress from there. I plan on adding some weight training into the program too, but I'm still working on figuring out how to get to the gym with my very limited time available.

Where no one has gone before...

I'm not really one to buy into the whole Mayan 2012 prophecy, or that any sort of end times are upon us. Granted, I think it would be cool to be able to see the northern lights from my back porch. That might just happen if this whole solar maximum thing is for real. Admittedly, the northern lights stretching further south than usual and possibly a blackout (very very slight chance) is about all we are likely to see from the sun's big show. But I do think that there is something to the whole concept of all our eggs in this one blue basket called Earth.

Not that I really expect to see any colony on Mars or even folks walking around on the Moon again in my lifetime, but I do see the logic in what the good ol' Hawkman is laying down here:



Besides, I'm such a huge sci-fi nerd that I just have to think that eventually we will figure out a way to get some folks off this rock.