Party On

Nothing new to report from the pool. But holy crap!!! I love this video.

Happy Grandparent's Day

I’m not sure if you knew it, but today is Grandparent’s Day in the US. Did you have the fun grandparents and the serious ones? I did.

The grandma I share a first name with was the one that bought me clothes for my birthday. She was also the first OCD that I know of in the family. Since my parents both worked two jobs, she baby sat for us a lot. I cut her a lot of slack looking back because we were brats.



The other grandma, my mom’s mom, bought me toys and she got it that dolls were wasted on me. She bought me toy guns. Unfortunately, she had an unhealthy lifestyle—she drank too much beer and smoked 2 packs a day and ate a typical southern diet of fried everything. She died when she was 51.

My grandfathers were both fun. My grandpa Tom took me to Cubs’ games and bought me my first baseball mitt. He also told the best stories about growing up in Al Capone’s Chicago. He lived on a street that had a corner known as “Assassin’s Corner” because on any given Friday night, a car would careen around a corner, slow down a little, and then a body would be dumped out.


My grandpa Cal rolled his own cigarettes. Every shirt he owned had holes in the front from hastily rolled cigarettes. He didn’t get gray hair until he was well into his 80’s.

[Fun grandpa Cal giving me beer while potty training.
I think it helped]

My grandparents are gone, but I hope if you still have some you call them today and tell them Happy Grandparent’s Day.

[originally posted on LezBang]

Butch Overboard IV: Practice makes perfectly boring

Question: So Rusty, how’s the teaching yourself to “swim” going?

Short answer: I’m teaching myself the Crawl stroke in a 25 yard lap pool that’s only 4.5 feet deep. At least the “Oh, god, oh god, I’m gonna die” part of the ordeal is gone. In fact, “just stand up” is my favorite survival technique ever.

Longer answer: It’s slow going. I’m still learning to exhale underwater. There is a series of online videos that have been very helpful* and I can visualize what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s just not happening yet. I have until December 13th (the date of the Tinsel Triathlon).

The Plan
I’ve been working under the theory that if I just practice exhaling enough times, I’ll get it. My plan was to stay in the water a minimum of ½ hour two days a week and practice exhaling under water. When I could do that I’d move on to perfecting the kick and stroke. (Both of which are easy for me compared to that breathing thing.)

Good theory — Poor execution. This is about as much fun as learning multiplication tables. Both are useful skills that will eventually be combined with other useful skills so that you can do fun stuff, but on its own — not fun. Rote learning sucks ass no matter what you’re trying to learn. I’ve been finding ways to get through the ½ hour in less productive ways, “Hey I wonder how long I can tread water?” Treading water is important, but it’s not my focus right now. I want to focus on breathing.

Change of plan. Instead of giving myself a time limit of 1/2 hour, I gave myself a task limit. As soon as I make the length of the pool and back 10 times I can get out of the pool. This works much better; I've stopped screwing around with time sucks. Do 10 and get out.

And Also
The 10 and get out approach works great once I get to the pool; unfortunately it's too easy for me to find excuses not to go. This morning I dragged myself to the pool and knew I had to figure out a way to make it more fun. I finished my workout and noticed a water aerobics class about to start. What the hell. It looked like a small class and my mom swears by water aerobics. After her back surgery, her insurance company stopped paying for her physical therapy (f'tards) so she supplemented on her own with water aerobics and it worked wonders for her.

Lesson Learned
That.Was.Fun. We worked with weights and ran in the pool and did all sorts of things that didn’t involve swimming.

I had so much to think about that I forgot how much I hated the water. I got my cross training in (bonus) and figured out a way to look forward to getting in the pool (another bonus). I added two water aerobics classes to my training regimen. But I still have to “swim” laps first.

*The online swimming series is good, but it says nothing about exhaling through your nose. It's not all that obvious to everyone. Just sayin.