Yoga update

Just a quick note, as I have an appointment at 11am and it's a quarter to, now.

The yoga I'm doing is not Hatha yoga at all. It's yoga for strength, based on the work of Ana Forrest in California. I don't know her at all, but this is what I've garnered from going to yoga two to three times a week since my original post on the subject.

It's a real workout, put it that way.

Latest reads

I should admit that I'm reading the Harry Potter books again from the beginning, as I threatened I might, a few days ago. I started number three last night, and am having a great time going over the old stuff. I can't believe it's really six years since I read this one! It's good to go back in part because one gets to remember hints about the later part of the story. Piece together all the parts of the jigsaw. And of course it's a good way to get more Harry while waiting for the next one to come out, and the film of number four at Christmas. I saw a preview the other day and it looks good, even if Ron does have weird hippy hair.

I've also been reading a fair bit of health related non fiction. I picked up Patricia Cornwell's latest paperback, Trace, when someone gave it to me for free. I read the first paragraph and threw the book to the floor. Ugh. I just can't stomach the terrible writing anymore.

I've saving the more recent Ayelet Waldman mysteries for the plane journey and my holiday in the UK next month. I think I have three to catch up with and one of them is still in hardback, but that's fine. I know of two other people I can share it with after I get to enjoy it!

Goodness Me

Well, then. I'm sorry to have been away so long, but I am living between computers at the moment. I am writing now from my Fella's Linux OS in the basement, but even it cuts off my net connection every ten minutes or so that it deems I haven't been active (i.e. I'm composing a post and not loading another web page).

Last Monday night, the boy named R came to read with me. We got on swimmingly. He read to me, I read to him, he read to me, I read to him, he read to me. Selections included George's Marvelous Medicine and the first in the Magic Tree House series. R read three chapters of the latter to me, and I hope to knock out the rest of that book before I leave for the UK in mid-September. After that, I'll have him read the rest of the series (!) to me.

I admit that I didn't go to Cliveden Park this evening because Clyde went away on business, taking his keys to the House with him. Although frankly I'm not keen on driving in that part of Philadelphia alone anyhow. So I didn't go tonight. I feel guilty because there was really no way for me to tell the kids we weren't coming, except not to go...

We've been harvesting lots and lots of tomatoes, and yesterday I dug up four rows of potatoes. I have photos, but it's a drag having to fiddle about with two computers to load them up while I'm down here, so I'll hold off for a few more days. The good news on this front is that I will be buying a new computer in the next few days. A NEW computer! Wow, such extravagance. I'm very excited.

There's an interesting story in The Independent today about the medicine Vioxx. The company that manufactured the drug is one of the local big companies in our neighbourhood. We've been hearing a lot about Vioxx in recent months. As a matter of fact, when we lived back in California, a doctor gave me some samples to help combat back pain. After reading all the small print I decided against taking the pills, and now I'm rather glad I didn't.

Monday Monday

The Monday at the beginning of this week was worse than last week. No kids showed up at all - for math or reading. We gave them an hour - an hour in which I read half of Bunnicula - and then we drove home. I think the lack of kids is probably because it's August, and that night it was also stormy with lightning and rain showers. When school starts, they'll be back! With homework, I expect.

Bunnicula is fantasticly funny. I think it will be one of the books we give our soon to be seven year old niece for her birthday. Apparently she went all the way through Hooked On Phonics and is now "a reader", at least by her Dad's standards - though he is not a reader. I still can't always believe I married into a family of people who (mostly) don't read for pleasure. Which is why it's my goal to give the nieces lots and lots of books to use as jumping off points. Unfortunately six-nearly-seven loves Barbie above and beyond all else. Their house is full of pink plastic. So, if she's now "a reader", I need to foster that notion.

However I did note that he was reading a considerably longer chapter book to her - one about dogs by Bill Wallace - and I know that she loves all things Rabbits. I'm looking into the Animal Ark series, because so far that I'm up to date she wants to be a vet when she grows up. Pony Pals might be closer to her reading level but of course it's just about horses.

I also plan to look for some nice copies of the classic childrens books, something she can cherish. That way I can also ensure that I don't buy duplicates of books I've already given in the past.

By the by, Esme Codell's book, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading has lists and lists and lists of suggestions for children who like individual animals, or individual hobbies, et cetera. Niece loves rabbbits, and there's a list of ten or twelve books that feature rabbits. Which is great because other than Peter Rabbit and that Eric Rohmann book that won the Caldecott recently, I don't think I could have though of many off the top of my head.

Computer Hassles

Bleah. I've been having a nightmare of a time with my internet browsers. They crash and crash and crash. I think the computer is on it's last legs. So, if I don't post for a few days, that's why.

Harry Potter Hang Over

I'm bereft. I finished the last Harry Potter book this afternoon. I had tried to read it sparingly, so I wasn't done with it too quickly, but I still finished it. And now I don't know what to read. A house full of books, and nothing appeals to me.

I'm not going into spoilers because there's bound to be someone out there who hasn't read it yet but wants to.

I feel like I do when I get to the end of a Buffy DVD marathon: "Time to go back to the beginning." But I know the ending will come all over again. You see, I'm coming off books five and six, so 1100+ pages of Potter and friends in ten days.

What to do, what to do....

Yoga

I went to a yoga class on Friday afternoon. It was the first one in five years, so I was out of practice, to put it mildly. It was regular old Hatha yoga, I think. Fairly gentle by yoga enthusiast standpoints, but still moderately intense for someone out of shape. I enjoyed the class a great deal. I was one of only three students, which meant the teacher had time to come around and help us with our postures and poses where necessary. I felt fatigued and at the same time, happy, at the end of the hour.

It wasn't until evening that I felt the results kicking in. I slept like a log. On getting up yesterday, I felt like someone had given all those muscles I'd forgotten about a good hard poke with a sharp stick. I'm still stiff today, in part because of our activities in the garden yesterday.

I purchased a month's worth of unlimited classes for $69, which seems like a great deal (first timer's only, of course), which means I can take up to seven classes a week if I want. I'll probably take more like four or five. Some of them are twice a day with a few hours between. I can go hang out at the garden in between times as the studio is quite near the garden, and neither are very close to our house.

I have not exercised today. Unless watching four episodes of Dead Like Me on DVD counts.

Does an hour of yoga count towards cardio, do you think? It was sweaty work.

Garden Update

I'm exhausted. Yesterday we worked in the garden for four hours in temperatures upwards of 86 degrees. We kicked ass, watering the plants with 38 gallons of water we brought from home. I keep a rain barrel (water butt) outside the back door and have been filling up plastic gallon jugs everytime I collect them from the friend who buys them (full of milk). So after filling them and saving the excess water from the barrel, we took all the water over to the kitchen garden yesterday. And then carted a wheel barrow full of water jugs up and down to the garden two or three times. While I did this, Clyde set about installing the wooden stake-trellises we had made at home beforehand (here's some we made earlier). We banged the stakes into the earth and then tied the tomato and pepper plants to them. The plants we had staked previously had fallen over from the weight of the leaves.

It looks as though we will have a good crop of both peppers and tomatoes, but will have to wait a little while. Neither group has turned red yet. Lots of green fruit. Speaking of which, I harvested our first three cucumbers on Friday night.

Exercise much?

One of the books I'm reading as part of my coursework is The Energy Balance Diet, by Joshua Rosenthal. Rosenthal is the founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, so my assumption is that this is a fairly important text in the coursework.

Reading chapter five this afternoon - I haven't read the whole thing in once piece - our warm up call homework has usually asked us to read a particular chapter at a time, but not necessarily in order. The point which was made about that is that sometimes you only "get" what is being said when you read a solitary chapter at a time. Thus, last month it was chapter five, this month, chapters nine and ten. Anyway, today - chapter five - I stopped dead in my sitting-in-an-armchair-tracks when I read the following:

"Moderate exercise has been shown again and again to produce remarkable health benefits. The Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec. 18, 1991) reported a study that showed that a leisurely walk at three miles per hour can significantly reduce a women's risk of heart attack. One of the ways it does this, scientists have found, is by increasing HDL levels, the cholesterol that protects you from heart attack and stroke.

But even less than 30 minutes, four to five times a week, can produce a benefit. Women who walked for just an hour a week had half the risk of suffering a heart attack as women who did not walk at all, according to Harvard University's Women's Health Study. "

Rosenthal goes on to describe a study of 13,000 people which takes place over an eight year time frame, in which the subjects are divided into five groups, depending on their rate of exercise. The greatest difference between the groups is the one between the first group, who are sedentary, and the second group, who walk for 30 minutes three to four times a week. The difference between these two groups is larger than the differences between the second group and the third, fourth and fifth groups - who range from people who exercise four to five times a week on up to athletes and marathon runners. The difference between the first and second groups is illustrated with the point that the people walking 30 minutes, three to four times a week cut their chances of suffering a heart attack or cancer in half, over the couch potatoes in group one.

He also reports that the study, also published in the Journal of the American Health Association, states "that cancer rates differed dramatically among the five groups. The men who didn't exercise had 4 times more incidences of cancer than those who were physically fit. Women who were sedentary had 16 times the cancer rate than those who were physically fit."

***

Makes me glad I walked a mile on my treadmill this morning.

Isn't it amazing that people can tell you stuff all your life and you don't hear it until you're ready?

First Beans

This is the sum of our first harvest of beans. I've been picking them as they were ready, because it seems like the green beans are especially enticing to some of our bird (I assume) population. The yellow ones, not so much. Actually, mostly whoever it is eats the leaves and not the beans themselves, or at least, not yet. I try to beat them to it by harvesting as the crop is ripe. Anyway, I picked these and we ate them lightly steamed with basil dressed chicken pieces one evening last week.

Yum.

August 1st

At the beginning of August, nobody came. Two students for maths (T & R), and no one for reading. Which ended up suiting me fine, as I was only 150 pages from the end of Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, and I ended up reading almost to the end of the book in the two and a half hours I sat in the air conditioned room in a squashy armchair.

I imagine people were taking holidays and getting over the end of Summer Camp. I know the most important thing that I can do is show up when I say I will, so that the kids begin to understand that I'm an adult they can rely upon. Hopefully in time, more people will show up for reading. I assume things will pick up when school starts, as the children will likely have homework.

In the meanwhile, I'll get a fair bit of reading done!

I finished my re-read of HP5 late last night - I saved it until the dinner was done, the husband was in bed, the dishes were washed, etc. and I could curl up in my chair and finish that book, while the next one sat on the table nearby, waiting. I think I read about a page and a half of the new one before finally calling it a night.