Catching Up, September 1-15, 2013

The past half-month has been a bit of a blur, but it's been good for the most part.

We spent Labour Day as planned at the trailer in West Virginia. All five of us were there, kent4str, cuyhogarvr and me, along with co-trailer trash Jerry & David. It makes for a crowded trailer and not a great deal of isolated rest, but it was fun nonetheless.

cuyahogarvr and I stayed at the trailer for the rest of Labour Day week. Outside of some moments of stress because of a dead car battery --it had a charge but was just shy of its 7th birthday so it didn't retain enough juice to start the car-- I caught up on some rest and reading. More precisely, I caught up on some self-study, working towards my eventual Cisco network certification later this year. Still, I could have used a few extra days to fully recharge.

Work has been active. Our team has been distracted from large outstanding projects by a surge in daily problems-of-the-moment. Not realizing the wave of minor things would run on for days, we didn't prioritize our tasks properly and it cost us some time, but this week we'll be more aggressive about it: a couple of our team will be dedicated to simply addressing the daily minor things while the rest of us attack the outstanding big projects.

That said, I did get two major projects off my plate and a third nearly completed by this past Friday. I'm confident our team overall will be back in a very good position again with in a week.

Spare time will be at a premium this coming week: the Mainstream class with DC Lambda Squares continues for another two Wednesdays, even as a new Mainstream class for Chesapeake Squares starts this Thursday. I have a club night with Chesapeake Squares this Tuesday, then a six hour calling marathon, Mainstream through Challenge-1, with the Times Squares in New York City this coming Saturday. I also have a board meeting with the Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association Sunday afternoon.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to all of these projects but it will require some heavy lifting for the next two weeks.

Friendly Takeover in Progress

All of our operators are busy with other palace coups and takeovers... please stay on the line for our next available operator.

The Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association (MACA) has been a bit adrift lately. For many years, the same folks have been on the board, and the focus of that board has been limited to running two dances per year and running the Zip Coder magazine. The magazine however has been transferred to a private company so the organization agenda is dramatically reduced. Many of the current board wish to retire from it, and some have begun making noises about winding down the organization.

cuyahogarvr, kent4str and I have other ideas. :-)

The current by-laws include a statement of purpose which clearly outlines several other MACA functions, many of which have been ignored for some time either by benign neglect, lack of interest or lack of human resources to implement them. These include:

• coordinating & promoting Challenge square dancing in the DC-Baltimore area;
  
• assist in establishing a systematic procedure for teaching the Challenge programs, possibly even sponsoring classes;
  
• sponsoring at least one open dance per year;
  
• promote a positive image of Challenge dancing;
  
• foster interaction between Challenge dancers and the rest of the square dance community;
  
• foster cooperation between Challenge callers in the area; and,
  
• promote special events.

In short, we've done the dance-per-year thing pretty well, but the rest of have been left unattended.

We're looking to run for board positions this coming November 2 with our own agenda:

• sponsor at least four dances per year with both local & out-of-town callers;
  
• plan our quarterly dances three years out, with a variety of callers and dance locations;
  
• partner with multi-level clubs, not just Challenge-only clubs;
  
• coordinate with non-MACA clubs to ensure a full booking schedule for travelling callers (and possibly sharing expenses);
  
• sponsor Advanced and Intro-to-C1 sessions at some of our regular events as a feeder to our Challenge program;
  
• modify the mission statement to expand our Baltimore-DC description to truly cover the Mid-Atlantic region;
  
• promote the hell out of MACA and its events with every means at our disposal, including paper flyers, Facebook, Twitter, an updated web site, email, eVite and more.

There are a few other things we'd like to do, but these will do for the first year. With $20k in the bank, the organization has resources to do a lot if we can get the personnel and energy involved and directed into a new action plan.

kent4str will run for a delegate-at-large position while cuyahogarvr and I will run jointly for the vice-president position --the VP does most of the dance planning & coordination. We still need two other people to run for positions which will likely be vacated by retirements: I have a list of people we're approaching for those spots.

This is a mid-range plan covering the next 15 months, but I think we can do good things for the organization. Fresh meat is a good thing from time to time.

Gym Progress, 2013-09-15

I purchased a membership with LA Fitness on July 12, 2013. I had been working out with dumbbells and home exercise equipment periodically for nearly a year prior, but it was time to get serious with a real workout, a dedicated schedule and a plan.

Being a nerd and a project manager, I naturally had to measure & track, well, nearly everything. Today was a self-appointed measurement & check-in date to evaluate progress, timed to conclude my first full week back after a one week hiatus while vacationing at the trailer. Just before going to the trailer, per my workout plan created by theoctothorpe, I did my one-rep maximum, seeing how much weight I could lift if only doing one repetition instead of my usual three sets of twelve.

I'm mightily impressed how much I can lift on the one-rep max. For two of the machines I use regularly, I maxed out their weight stacks but could still push further.

Here's a sampling of progress. There were other exercises of course but I won't bother you with the entire list...

Exercise	Week #1 (lbs)	Week #5 (lbs)	One Rep Max (lbs)
Squats	90	110	190
Leg Press	200	230	Maxed at 480, could prob do 520
Machine Crunches	50	140	Maxed at 200, could prob do 240
Chest Press	80	115	115 175
Standing Cable Pushdowns	40	115.5	187
Low Rows	120	135	165
One Arm Cable Curls	20	35	45

My weight has dropped from 184lbs a month ago to 176lbs today. There hasn't been much change in my weight lately, but I'm hoping that indicates less fat and more muscle. If that's indeed the case, I'm good with it. I did notice last week as I was racking up new servers that hefting them over my head is much easier than it was two months ago. :-)

In the past 45 days, I've lost an inch around my waist & hips and added an inch to my chest. There hasn't been much change in forearms or upper arms. While my BMI holds steady at 26, my percentage body fat has dropped from 22.8% to 20.4%. I'd like to get the percentage fat below 18%, then re-evaluate how much further I'd like to go. I was hoping to see more improvement on the arms, but I suppose I'll just have to push/lift myself a little harder.

Pushing myself harder though has its own drawbacks. While I haven't vomited at the gym since my first exposure in early July in San Francisco, I have come close at least once. The trigger for me appears to be overheating: once I feel the stirrings of nausea, I head immediately to a cold shower and all is well again within 60 seconds. The cooler temperatures of winter may help.

In other gym news...

I really hate equipment that doesn't list both pounds and kilgrams. Nearly everything at my gym does, but there is one set which is metric-only. It's not hard to multiply by 2.2 to get the equivalent pounds, but that's not something I want to spend a lot of time doing in mid-set.

I'm also easily irked by the gym-goers who seem to take pride in dropping the weight stacks hard & frequently. Letting go that quickly & regularly indicates loss of control and/or look-at-me validation issues, neither of which are particularly attractive qualities. Once is OK as one tests one's limits: doing it repeatedly isn't.

Most gym-goers seem to like the Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine --that seems to be when the place is busiest. I prefer 8am Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday so I don't have to wait for equipment. I also noticed this past week there are fewer people there at 6am and 7am than I would have guessed: I thought a large number of folks would work out before going to work, and a larger group immediately after work on their way home. My latter guess has proven accurate, the former not so much. Go figure.

The men at my gym have an interesting perspective on male nudity. Our campground has open changing space and open group showers so I'm many years accustomed to walking around au naturel and showering in the open. I didn't think a gym locker room would be much different: it's a gym locker room after all, and one should expect nudity. These guys however are very uptight. Grown men wrap themselves in a towel before dropping their shorts, or wear their shorts to the shower and only remove them once their shower curtain is closed. When done, they head back to their locker, slip on their clean pants under the towel, then put away the towel. Huh? I feel like assuring them that it's ok to be a little exposed: we're all adults here. I'm fear however that doing so would send most of them instantly into therapy.

( And here's where we go TMI... )

I have a number of weeks remaining on this program before we change things. Lord knows what new tortures theoctothorpe has planned for me... I can hear the "bwahahahah!" already.