Music and Madness with ET
Had a great band practice last night with Paul, and our still as yet un-named band. Paul has had the bouzouki for two weeks now and is nearly a master at it, it sounds SO good with the violin. It's like a mandolin but with out the annoying plinky bits of the mando. It's rich and , mellow and we are having great fun figuring out what we will do with it. ( we know, at least Malena and I do, that he will be playing it on the next LaM cd )
We will have it on at least a few songs this weekend. Oh, yes, by the way, for those of you in the Twin Cities or nearby, Paul and I will be playing this Friday and Saturday at Charlie's in Stillwater again, from 7:30 to 11:30. And yes, we will be doing the Unicorn Song AND Bob Seger, as requested two weeks ago. ( if the people who requested them show up and do so again , hee-hee ) If Malena was with us, we would do Danny Boy happily, if she would sing it. She has the voice for it, and turns it into a thing of joy and beauty , instead of one of the most requested and Oh-god-not-again songs an Irish Pub Band has to play.
( My Bedlam Band charges BIG bucks to do it )
I had forgotten , this past year, how much I loved working out, and how much joy comes from doing so. Only two days into it, and already I notice a difference. Not in weight or appearance, but in the way I feel. I have more energy, I am happier, my body feels better, I feel TALLER if you can believe it. Like there is more light and space around me, even here in the dark of winter.
I had my first session with my new EVIL Trainer yesterday, ( ET we can call her ) we did "legs" and "abs" . I also had my first experience trying to walk downstairs this morning with legs that could hardly move , they were SO sore . Today I did a yoga session and discovered how stiff and un-limber I had become, not to mention weak as a kitten . After both I did cardio on Strange Ellip machines where I felt like I was running on air. For the first 3 minutes. The next 17 were like running thru a swamp of doom. We did measurements, body fat and weight. The were enlightening and eye-opening. Not in a good way.
And I don't care.
I don't care what they ARE. I can't wait to see what they are going to BE. I can't do anything about now, but I can change six weeks from now. In my body, my mind, my music. I won't be sitting there wishing once again, I had DONE something.
I feel great.
I feel like I can do anything.
And might at any moment.
Love and Happiness,
Lorraine
posted by Anonymous @ 5:46 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
I look forward to hearing Paul and his bouzouki on the next LaM cd!
Yay for the benefits of exercise. I hate the agony but I love the results. I even love being sore afterwards, knowing I'm doing well.
I have no doubt that you currently look better than I in a corset, to say nothing of how much more corset-licious you'll be at Balticon.
I killed my back over the long weekend doing DDR three hours a day. It's too fun. I went to Costco and hung upside down on one of those traction board things and it helped immensely. Plus I feel taller. I may have to buy the bullet and buy one.
L, looking forward to hearing the combo sound, your description makes it sound very intriguing. I am very curious I know, but I was wondering about this "Unicorn Song", where is it from, what type of song is it, etc?
The end of your post is very inspiring. I have always ascribed to your previously mentioned opinion that you don't need a club or trainer to lose weight, that it may be as easily obtained from simple outdoor exercise and a healthy lifestyle, and I have always shied away from Gyms... but lately, I have been thinking of giving it a try... this blog is very motivational and I am really glad to have found such a positive influence... so I just wanted to send out my thanks to all of you.
by the way...Dan, that truly sounds like a great way to exercise. I wish I had a playstation.
"I have more energy, I am happier, my body feels better, I feel TALLER.." Yes, it's strange, isn't it? If I've been exercising properly, sometimes I feel like a super-being even though I don't look any different from before I exercised. And I'm probably capable of less because of the aforementioned soreness problem...
Inspired by you guys, I am getting hardcore too - ran for longer than usual yesterday, then did some leg work. And I'm not even that sore today, just aware of my muscles, which is good.
It took me ages to get the hang of the elliptical x-trainer too - music helps a lot, although you may find yourself beginning to evaluate songs purely on how good the beat is for x-training to. Which is not good at all!
My daughter received DDR for Christmas and it is great fun and a great workout. Thanks for mentioning the other dance site Dan, we never heard of it and can't wait to ck it out. I hope to join a gym in a couple years, the nicest one around here is a 45 min. drive and that kind of time is nonexistant right now. I rely on exercise dvds from collage.com (great site, well organized and has every kind of exercise video imaginable, plus ratings as to difficulty) I don't mind working out at home, but I never seem to work out as hard at home as at a gym. Congrats to all taking better care of ourselves!
Rubius :: If you have a computer, you can play DDR on the cheap. StepMania is a free, open source DDR clone for Windows, Mac, and Linux. All you need is a dance mat to hook up to your computer. I bought two playstation dance mats ($5 each from geeks.com) and a dual PS-to-USB adapter ($15) and was ready to DDR for $40 after shipping costs. I already had a projector so I could display it 8 feet wide in the basement but I have friends who play it on their computer monitors without trouble.
I finally pried the LaM cd out of my cd player and popped Folk Underground in this morning and was surprised to hear a song I'd never heard before and another song that sounded totally different. Is my CD magic? Is this some new technology where layers peel away to reveal additional versions? Or maybe I'm going a little mad. ^_^
All I've done so far is stop buying sodas (mainly diet) to keep at the house. This means I'm drinking more water, and iced tea is cheaper than sodas as well as having less caffeine. A small step, but a needed one.
Back in 1997, I had an incident that made me decide to actually start using the exercise bike we had. I started at 10 minutes at a time, and thought I was dying, then in within a couple of months I had worked up to 45 minutes twice a day. I got lots of books read while I was cycling because the time really dragged if I did nothing but watch the clock, or TV. Reading, I could enter the world of the book and the time would fly. Why did I stop? Lots of reasons/excuses that don't bear repeating here. :) Now I do belly dancing once a week. Haven't lost any weight, but my obliques do look better.
Ms. Fab :: You can run StepMania on an mod-chipped Xbox, which will use any USB dance pad.
StepMania has a Mac version, though, so if you're willing to dance in front of your Mac monitor (or your Mac has a tv-out so you can display it on a larger TV) then you're good to go. What model Mac do you have?
Lorraine, Thanks for the Unicorn Song info. When you wrote about it it rung a strange bell in my head... I think I have been looking for that song for a long time.... and wow, I didn't know you were a mac-person... my job uses macs so I have had to learn a lot of mac quickly since apparently I am the IT dept for my company.
Dan, Thank you so much for the info. I have never actually tried DDR but I always thought it looked super fun... I have a feeling that upon trying it I will prove to myself how impossibly uncoordinated I am. It still sounds like a GREAT excersize idea but I think I am going to have to have a conversation with the girl who lives in the appt below mine to clear a good dance time with her schedule (so I don't drive her nuts).
Lor(-to the-)raine :: The iMac G5, the one that's like a big monitor you plug your keyboard and mouse in to? Or the iBook laptop?
West Virginia has installed DDR in 157 middle school to help fight obesity:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/01/25/us_schools_fight_flab_with_dance_game.html
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