Feeling Good

I am getting older...

Today is my birthday, and nobody realizes it is. I like it that way.

I feel weird telling people it's my birthday, so I don't. Regardless I have received a number of e-mails, IMs, and eCards today, 90% of which are from people that have never met me. They probably only know it's my birthday because MySpace, or some other site told them. I do appreciate the well wishes.

The guys generally couldn't give a damn (for the most part). I know the guys I work with would probably have bought me lunch, but I don't like it when anyone makes a big deal over me. Maybe its my social anxiety.

Birthdays don't really bring me happiness. They haven't for many years.

On a good note...


I mentioned back in September that I have been working out. At that point I had been going to the gym in our building for a little over a month. Jason at work, who is also a friend, really motivates me. There are days that I can't go down to the gym in our building because of meetings and such. He definitely doesn't hound me about it, but he reminds me to get my ass down there.

This gym is quite nice. It isn't huge, but it has a lot of really good equipment. One room is full of weight lifting equipment, and the other has treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, etc. I mostly do the weight machines, but 1 or 2 days a week I'll get in some time on a bike.

I think I have only missed one work day of working out in the past 3 weeks. I am at the point where it feels good to get exercise everyday. This is totally foreign to me. I've never been much into this. I think the last time I got into any regular amount of physical exertion was when I was in college and my roommate and I played racquetball a couple times a week.

A few weeks ago Jason put up a challenge to me and the other guys in my department that have been working out. The challenge is that we need to lift the full stack of weights on one machine. We only had to lift it once. We get to choose which machine. We had through December to work up the strength to do it.

I have pretty strong legs. I was pretty sure I could already do one lift of the stack on the leg press, I was already doing full sets of 8 reps at close to the full stack. So Monday I proved I could do it. I think that is equivalent to about 220 pounds. I then decided to try this on the rest of the leg machines. I was successful on all 3. Somehow I felt this wasn't a good test for me since my legs have always been pretty strong.

I knew that the bench press machine was something I could not do a few months ago. My boss, who doesn't look very big came down to ask me something while we were down there. I think he also wanted to check out the gym. He sat down in his Dockers and dress shirt, and easily lifted the 200 pounds on that machine. The whole stack. My jaw dropped. After he left I sat down and tried. I couldn't even budge it. I felt puny.

When Jason made the challenge I had it in the back of my head that the bench press was one that I was not going to be able to do. I worked on it every other day, and although I was able to lift a lot more I didn't think I could do it.

Today it was just me and Jason. I was feeling good, except for my left shoulder I have to baby a little because of an ATV injury from about 7 years ago. I made some comment about the bench being my nemesis the other day. He told me I was full of shit, and that he thought I could lift the whole thing.

I got on the bench this morning. I was lifting a few plates less than the max (goal) to see how it felt. "POP" went my right shoulder. What the hell was with that? I set it back down and walked away. My shoulder didn't hurt, it just freaked me out a little. I did a few other machines and it felt fine.

I psyched myself up to give it another try. I told Jason what I was doing. He came over to encourage me. I decided to just jump to the max and give it a shot. He kept telling me it was easy. I did it!!! One clean rep of 200 pounds. It seemed a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Hurray for me! I am older and stronger than I have ever been.