development corrupts

I've learned more techniques in hooping, other than the basic hoop around and around and around the body, plus I'm no longer dropping the hoop (and catching it against my shin/ankle) as much, so I'm much less bruised :D

Spent Saturday afternoon hooping with enthusiasts. So many things that they made look easy were hard, but so much fuuuun. I think I've found something I can love: simple enough to do for someone without grace or physical strength, but with enough depth that it's possible to just keep learning more and more tricks even after picking up the basics.

The fact that the people I met seem to be a pretty laid-back bunch is okay too. Nooooo shaming or strong focus on exercise leading to weight loss or anything that I'm trying to avoid from home. I mean yeah it's moving around and some people will lose weight by doing it, but that gets a nod as a side effect. Meanwhile most of the focus is on the actual mechanics of movement and how fascinating it is. I am enjoying it a lot.

Now I just need to find a clear space at home where I won't break things, and I'm all set for practice ;-)

Having the hoop twirl around your waist is reasonably easy and unlikely to break anything. It's things like the hoop moving around your hands, and passing it around, that's hard. Like this!



Now that guy is good so it looks easy, but the weight distribution of the hoop is awkward when just held. I lack the wrist / arm / bicep(!!!) strength to look anywhere near that good *rueful*. but I'll get there :DDDDD Somewhere there. In the approximate area of.

And have fun trying :)

Went dancing again today!

Today was hiphop abs, zumba, and ballroom. As usual, I still suck at moving around. And as usual, that just makes the whole experience that much more awesome.

We were supposed to do street dance, but it got rescheduled so I missed it. Sad.

This is the sweatiest I've ever been :D Hopefully I haven't stiffened up by tomorrow, because I want to try the Saturday classes again.


At the end of the class, as I was changing clothes and preparing to head out, someone offered to buy my hat off my head, because she'd been looking for something like that for ages.

I am tempted to sell it to her! I feel like it would look gorgeous on her. I just don't know if it's okay/how much to offer *G*

(I am really charmed by the fact that she was so enthusiastic about it ahahahha. She's a teenager though so, man, I'm not going to ask for much or anything. But still, really charmed. And fighting the urge to go "no I can't sell it because I'm no good at this DON'T YOU SEE)

I am trying the Cough Couch to 5k again (Cough is accurate given how much I have been sneezing lately). I don't want to devote time to daily exercise but committing to thrice a week sounds doable -- or so I tell myself.

Last time, I scheduled my runs in the afternoons, timing it to just before sunset. The problem with this was that I'd lose track of time if I got caught up in what I was doing, or I couldn't afford to pull myself away when I was coding or talking to someone, so that attempt faded away by the third week.

This time, I promised myself I'd do it as soon as I woke up (and had a little breakfast, maybe triaged email, but not yet coded). Problem: I wake up at almost noon. Problem with running at noon: everything.

By the end of the run, I knew where every single shade tree was in our neighborhood.

Thank you shade trees!

Oh dear, foxfirefey is seducing me over to the Python side.

Anyway, busy evening tonight. Planned to do some kickboxing, but forgot my gloves (DAMNIT). I do at least have my sneakers on so I can do other stuff. Then it's home, and if I'm not zonked out by the exercise, I shall code, and if I am zonked out, then I shall zonk.

My plan: it is simple. Nothing can foil it!

Bought a punching bag!

I kinda felt frustrated and idea-less, so I punched the punching bag around a bit until my frustration was gone and my mind was empty. Then on the way home, I figured out the framework for my talk while half in a stupor from tiredness (which means it's either going to be good, or going to be really really bad :-D)


I should be doing the slides, but my eyes are closing on me. Ah well, it's simple enough I could probably go without slides if I don't make it in time (I hope this is not necessary, though!)

But for tonight, rest is more important. Mmmm, rest.

Tonight, I finished the last two of the bugs which had been hanging around in my queue, taunting me for weeks. This means that of the seventeen bugs assigned to me, fourteen have patches which are now awaiting review, one (mood themes) is a placeholder where I'm taking no action at the moment, one is awaiting discussion or a final decision so I can either patch or resolve WONTFIX, and only one is actually awaiting investigation/patch -- and that last one I just picked up tonight.

Bugzilla has no reason to whine at me anymore. Except for how I signed up for Zilla to email me my outstanding bugs every Saturday. Feel so light!

Hmm, I should pick up something new soon.

Also, also, I'm finally making some headway into my backlog at work -- enough so that I had energy after work to spare to go to gym (making up a bit of what I owe to my body).

I just finished the Mizuno run. 2 hours and 3 minutes, much longer than my previous time. Though we got there late, so maybe subtract some ten to fifteen minutes from my official time? In which case it was not so bad.

The run was pretty much a disaster of uncoordination. No water for 5k runners, no water for 10k runners, no water for 15k runners. There was some water, but only enough for the frontrunners. Those of us in the middle and rear of the pack could only look at the empty ice chests and hopefully and dream of liquids, which was worse than having no water at all.

I felt a distinct pang of pity for the volunteers manning the booths. I mean it was not their fault that the race coordinators had not prepared well enough, but they were there, and an easy target of frustration from a couple of thousand thirsty, cranky runners. Poor guys.

I now know I can run ten kilometers without water, but it is not something I wanted to find out this way :)

After we passed the halfway point, we ran alongside scummy canal water, and I was so desperate for liquids that I began fantasizing about stopping, scooping up a handful to my mouth, and taking a sip. I didn't actually do it, but I really *really* wanted to.

The distance markers were also placed misleadingly. When I saw the 10k marker, my heart jumped, but it turned out that it was marking the 9k point, and the beginning of the final tenth kilometer, which flouted traditional understanding and just plain didn't make sense.

I am tired and cranky with disappointment. It promised to be a good run, since it was a big brand sponsor, but the lack of proper organization meant that I had nothing to protect my from thirst and heat. On the plus side, I think that I may have spent a longer period (than in my first attempt at a 10k run) jogging in the first half before I ran out of steam and started alternating between a jog and a walk. However, the heat (and to be fair my being unfit) quickly sapped my energy, and because there was no water, I had no way to replenish it. Grr. I can't compare my performance in this run to my last one because everything went wrong here, so I cannot tell whether I am getting better or worse :(

Well, I finished another 10k, though, when I would have sworn just last month that I would not have finished five. And these days, I finish five quite... Not easily, but not too painfully, either. That is something at least ;)

PS. Given the name of the brand, it was such a disappointment that there was no water. Such a disappointment.

PPS. The contented lethargy that settles in after a run has just hit me. I am too sleepily content to be cranky any more. I will probably nap the day away. And then I will try to get into shape again starting tomorrow. I may not run much until summer is over (it's getting pretty hot. Even stone walls in the shade in the early morning are disappointingly warm - found out when I leaned against them earlier today, hoping they would leach some of the heat from my body). So i may not run much, but I would like to be ready for the next time.

PPPS. Nagy, darling, we were not able to coordinate our run. Maybe we can hunt around for a nice gentle 5k run instead, so we can stop before the morning gets too hot?

PPPPS. So sleepy but happy. Maybe it was a good run after all.

I ran my first 10k run today! My legs may not work tomorrow, but I ran 10k!

More "walked, jogged, and tottered" than "ran", but I don't care. I finished it! I signed up for the 5k, but it turns out my application didn't make it in time. One of my sister's friends, however, who signed up for the 10k didn't show up, so I got her race pack instead.

I took a very long time to do it -- a bit more than an hour and a half, maybe an hour and forty minutes, whereas everyone else I was with finished before an hour twenty, but ahhaha, 10k.

I initially decided I'd stop after 5k, because that's what I'd originally signed up for, but then I thought to myself that since I was already there, I might as well try for 7.5k... and then after I finished 7.5, I only had one lap to go, so I might as well finish it.

Silly fu. Silly, silly fu. I'll regret it tomorrow, but it was an amazing feeling to step through the finish line.

My new shoes are definitely much better than my old ones. Better cushioning, and although my feet were sore after the race, it was more an ache which started after I'd run more than 5k, rather than the stabbing pain that I experienced less than 2k into the first one. I limped a bit after the run, but my feet felt healed after sitting down for a while, which was not the case before.

Afterwards, I went out with my sister's friends to eat breakfast (tapa at D... Da... Dra...something). Stopped by the bazaar briefly, and then went to my grandpa's place for lunch (alimasag and fresh shrimp!). Oddly enough, I didn't feel as sleepy as I did after my first run. Nevertheless, I lay down to take a quick nap, which extended itself to about six hours. Oops :-D

The run itself was interesting. Pinay In Action, an all women's run in celebration of Women's Day. In practice, there were quite a lot of guys who joined the run, but they weren't eligible for any prizes.

Overall, an interesting day. We'll see whether I still think it was worth it when I wake up tomorrow.

Mm, heading to bed early tonight as I have to wake up early tomorrow in preparation for joining a 5km run.

I suspect I'll alternate between "walking" and "walking more slowly" :-)