It’s stretching out into a long chain of continuous effort.

The first 106 aren’t so bad.  (Who ever thought I’d be saying those words?) The last set is always the kicker.  Since I wasn’t able to manage the 45 in a straight set, I did what I could, waited 20 seconds, 14 then 20 seconds and the final 11.  I figure it’s better to keep up the momentum somewhat to get to the end than to just stop at the 20.

Why I figure this, I don’t know.  I just do.  *shrug*

151 pushups tonight.  Weee

Just in case I haven’t said it recently, I love that I am doing this.  It makes me feel great.  Wanna try?

I rolled out of bed today and almost immediately began doing pushups.  Week 6 is intimidating to look at.  I still have the mental conditioning that says to me “25 pushups?  In a row? You’re crazy. Shut up.”

Regardless, I began and soon found 25 complete.  45 seconds later. “30 pushups now?  Shut up.”  30 pushups later I was impressed with myself again.  I may be accused of dwelling on the following but….when I started I could only do 8.  I love it.

20 and 15 were a breeze after doing the first two.  Admittedly the last set, a recommended 40 minimum sort of got the better of me.  I managed 30 before having to stop, but not wanting to be beaten by a number in a table I took a 20 second rest and completed another 15 before falling in a heap.

135 pushups before setting foot outside my room.

Now for a quick note that upon thinking about it seems like common sense but nonetheless took me a while to come upon…

Take it slowly.  For some reason and by some strange logic on my brains part I had this funny idea that if I had a lot of pushups to do, doing them rapidly would make me finish quicker and thereby make it easier to accomplish.  Silly brain (Or body?).  Need to run a marathon?  Oh, I’ll sprint, then I’ll be done exerting myself sooner. Thinking about it and spelling it out really makes it seem silly but that is what I found I was doing at times; I don’t really think I realized I was doing it to be honest.

I don’t point it out to insult anyone’s intelligence; I just thought that maybe someone else may keep it in mind when they are doing their pushups and perhaps find they have fallen into the same habit for some inexplicable reason.

Slowing down to a more relaxed pace has helped me immensely!

Good luck to you all.

Attention nerds…You should read this…The Daemon…http://thedaemon.com/daemonsynopsis.html It's awesome. #

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Despite past breaks and being a touch off schedule, I had a good night with the pushups tonight, ending with a good run of 35.

I think I’ll be ok for starting week 6’s program finally.

Ok, after my week off I’m going back for a three-peat of week 5.  Feeling better this week, but I’m in no big rush to move on to the last weeks program.  I want to be comfortable with this one.  But not too comfortable.  Must. Keep. Pushing.

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I was in some sort of school doing a math test.  I was my current age and concentrating very hard.  There was a woman there trying to chat me up and distract me but I told her to be quiet because I didn’t concentrate enough the first time through school so I really wanted to do better this time.

I consider this a good sign.  My subconscious seems to want to get things done and stick them out to the end as much as my conscious mind does.  It can’t imagine it hurts to have your dreams reinforcing your waking goals.

I threw an extra set of 10 on the end of the last 25 because I just wanted to do a few more.

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An example of a temporary implementation on my site is here: http://smooshspace.com/foobar which is just a lift of the code from the site linked above stored in a PHP page on my server.  Then I inserted an iframe into my wordpress theme’s 404.php template.

I would very much like to make this geo-aware, but it’s not working at the moment.  I’ve also considered finding a good canadian source of this data that is easily readable by a php script, but I cannot find any RSS or XML feeds with the data for Canada.

If you are reading from the US, there is a great resource at missingkids.com that has feeds on a state by state basis.

I’m going to keep an eye on any development around this myself and perhaps put my own hat into the ring if I get a chance to do some coding.

The worst part of this is that through all the testing of this today I’ve had to stare at the faces of missing children afternoon.  Very sad. 

If you maintain a site, I think it would be great if you were to jump on the bandwagon and get those faces seen!

A list of Canadian missing children can be found here.

This week is a little bit of an intermission by necessity.  Last week I mentioned that I was sick but muscled through my routine.  That was fine.  Saturday I managed 42 consecutive pushups, a personal best.  Still a bit short of where I would like to be but again, a fantastic improvement from my starting point.

This week however, I’m not sure what’s wrong.

Perhaps I have a caught a bug or something, but I am way off my game this week.  Yesterday for example I attempted some pushups but after only 20 i could physically not do any more.  I was at full exhaustion before I even reached the half way point of what I had accomplished only a few days before.

Given this development, I am sort of taking it easy this week.  I’m not pushup free this week; this week I am doing what I can (50 or 60 a day in total) and will continue with the official program on Monday.  Perhaps a threepeat of week 5.  We’ll see how I feel.

Keep pushing yourselves!

After a rough night of tummy aches and restless sleep for us both I agreed and with some effort pulled my wedding ring from finger to let my baby girl play with it.  That was the last I saw or thought of it until 15 hours later as I was about to drift off into sleep back at home, far from the hotel and our tent of blankets.

I’ve called the hotel and left a message with a  machine in hopes that the cleaning staff or the next residents will find it and set it aside, but my hopes are not high.  It feels so far gone.  I keep checking my email for a voice mail to come through with good news.

A depressing way to cap off the great dad and Lily water park adventure weekend.

Trying to come to terms with the loss of this precious little piece of metal that has been with me for the last 3.5 years has been tough today.  I’m a terribly sentimental person as you know; I’m not ashamed to admit it.  In trying to do so I’ve thought about replacing it it with another.  But it wouldn’t be the same would it?  Wouldn’t it just be a ring?  How could it be a wedding ring without the wedding?

Thinking of the ring my mind flashes to the warm and sunny day of our wedding and how amazing you looked as you put it on my finger.  I was so happy that day, not nervous in the least.  I was marrying the best person I’ve ever in my life met.

I thought of that day in the mall just a couple of months after we started dating when you told me that you would have to nail a wedding ring to my finger so I wouldn’t lose it.  Was that a proposal?  In a way I think it was, even though you tried to backpedal out of the comment.

Then there was the fellow at the jewelery store when we actually were looking for rings who in his thick European accent told us with great certainty “You will buy this ring!”  We didn’t buy his ring, but I’ll always remember that guy and how we laughed after leaving the store.

We did buy wedding bands that day though if my memory serves me correctly.  Yours and mine together at the same store, in the same mall.  It was a good day.

My rings was a bit loose during our honeymoon.  I clenched my hand in a fist for the better part of the week as we ventured into the ocean together.  You being chased and freaked out by the fish.  I’m still not sure why they liked you so much, they must have seen in you what I see in you.

I remember sitting the ring in the cupboard above the sink in our awesome little place on Sunnyside.  Our first real apartment that was just ours.

Flashes of Lily’s tiny little  hands wrapped around the ring.  I looked over at you, exhausted and beautiful in the delivery room. I still smile thinking of it.

Then there was the day I lost my ring the first time.  I was terribly upset and disappointed in myself.  You gave me a hug and rubbed my back as I sulked in bed. (You did the same last night.) I found it in the snowbank the next morning as I made my way to work.  We finally went and got it re-sized shortly after that incident.

All of these memories, all of these moments come to mind when I think about what made that ring a wedding band instead of just a small piece of shiny metal.  Then, it occurs to me.  The ring is not really the important part is it?  It’s the memories. And further to that, while it was a common part of nearly every memory, it was a small and in retrospect an insignificant part of the memories.  The really precious part of them all was and is you. I haven’t lost you.  In fact losing the ring gave me opportunity to actively pour over all of these memories and smile, thinking of you.

As long as I have you, I could have an onion ring on my finger and the moments would be every bit as amazing because it’s you in the starring role.

I still want my ring back, but after a lot of thought today I now know that it is ultimately replaceable. You on the other hand are unique, wonderful and irreplaceable .  As long as I have you, everything else is fine.

Love you.

UPDATE:

Shortly after posting this, I got the voice mail I was waiting for.  They found the ring in the lobby and it will be shipped out tomorrow.  Thank you to the staff of the Great Wolf Lodge.  You folks are amazing.