Experiments in Life » Life in General

Five Fingers: Day 2

Jonathan Creekmore — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:17:20 +0000

Well, I was not necessarily planning on doing one of these updates every day, but today was a different experience wearing the Vibrams Five Fingers than yesterday was. First off, while my feet were still sore, it was not nearly as bad as yesterday was. Second, I began to feel the calf tightness about halfway through my walk this morning, instead of not noticing it until driving to work. On the whole, I think feeling that calf tightness earlier is a good sign, because that means I am changing how I walk while wearing the shoes and exercising muscles that I have not exercised a lot in the past.

From a subject point, it is interesting to be able to feel the ground underneath my feet while I am walking. Granted, that is a much nicer thing when I am walking on grass or asphalt than on concrete, but it is still an interesting sensation.

Sourdough

Jonathan Creekmore — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 01:01:54 +0000

I do not know if it was reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals or In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, but recently I got it in my head that I wanted to learn how to bake bread. So, I did a little research on the web and found a site describing how to bake sourdough. So far, it is not going too badly. After a couple of weeks preparing my starter and trying to get a free day on the weekend to work on it, I finally was able to attempt my first loaf of sourdough bread on Sunday.

It was not too bad. I mean, it was definitely kind of flat and dense — I realize that I did not let it rise nearly long enough — but it definitely had the flavor of sourdough. Next week, I think I will focus more on patience and try to give it more time to rise. Hopefully, getting started on it before 8:30am will help with the patience bit.

Five Fingers: Day 1

Jonathan Creekmore — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:57:57 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned that I was trying out a pair of Vibram Five Fingers for exercising. I wanted to give my first impressions of the shoes. First off, the clerk where I bought the shoes highly recommended them, but she did warn me that it would take a bit of time to get used to them and to only wear them for short periods of time in the beginning. Boy, was she right! I spent 20–30 minutes walking this morning in them and my feet hurt, mainly due to blisters. I did not realize how much I would need to toughen my feet up, since I walk around the house barefoot all the time. So, it will take me a bit of time to get my feet built up to the point that they do not get sore after a bit of walking. On the plus side, while driving in to work this morning, I felt a bit of a burn in my calf muscles when I was pressing in the clutch to shift gears. That burn was new, so I guess the Vibrams are working my calf muscles in a way that they have not been worked before — which is exactly what they are meant to do!

So, blisters aside, my first impressions of the Five Fingers is mainly positive. I am looking forward to toughening up enough that they do not hurt my feet and will continue updating with my progress.

Some Exercise: Redux

Jonathan Creekmore — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:33:54 +0000

I am still working on getting a bit of exercise in, but it has been difficult lately. I decided that the best time for me to work out is first thing in the morning — it is just too hot to try and work out any other time. If I can make it out of bed at 6am, I have plenty of time to workout, shower, eat and get to work between 7:30am and 8am. Getting up is the hard part, though. I have gotten some medicine tweaked lately and it is driving my sleep schedule all wonky again. I am laying in bed between 10pm and midnight, mostly tossing and turning before I fall asleep. Then, back to my old habits, I am waking up between 2–3am and I toss and turn for an hour or two. It is very frustrating, but I am talking to my doctor about it this week and will see if I cannot get it straightened out.

However, once I am up and going, I can usually get in 30 minutes of walking. I would like to work my way up to running for 30 minutes, but my knees hurt so much that I just cannot go very far. I know getting some weight off will help with that, but I am trying something different now to see if I can jump-start the process. This weekend, I purchased a pair of Vibram Five Fingers Sprint, easily the ugliest pair of shoes I have ever owned. However, the theory is that the shoes cause the impact to be absorbed by your calves like nature intended, instead of in the joints like tennis shoes cause. I wore them around a bit tonight; tomorrow morning will be first morning of exercise in them.

Some Exercise

Jonathan Creekmore — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:37:52 +0000

This week, I decided it was time to get back into exercising. However, with my exercise equipment in the garage, it has been hard for me to get motivated to go out there and do it. I really did not want to get up any earlier and try to exercise because that has never really worked out well for me. Also, without my exercise bike inside, I felt like I was spending half my night in the garage when I tried to exercise after Emily went to bed. So, I think I have found something that works well for me — now, I am trying to work out first thing after I get home from work. Usually, I get off of work between 4pm and 4:30pm and would come home and read or something for 30-60 minutes before I started cooking dinner. Instead, I am making the attempt to get out and ride my exercise bike and lift weights on alternating days.

Ironically, today on the Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin ran a short video about getting some exercise as one of the keys to happiness. That make sense to me. Getting some exercise is better than getting no exercise. Plus, any amount of exercise is going to release endorphins and wear me out somewhat, which will help me sleep better (also fulfilling her video from last week).

Well-Spent Weekend

Jonathan Creekmore — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:05:45 +0000

Read this week’s Newsweek, got a good start on this month’s Money, finished a book on home-schooling your child in a classical education (not planning on it, but it was an interesting read), got back into my exercise routine (100 pushups today, yay!) after being sick all last week, and got in a lot of good father-daughter time today. All in all, a pretty good weekend.

Playing at the Park

Jonathan Creekmore — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:53:20 +0000

Today, we went to the park to play and celebrate one of the nicer days of the year. As you can see, Emily is playing hard.

On another positive note, Em is doing very well with potty training. We have not had any accidents in a couple of weeks and she woke up dry this morning!

Reading Brown Bear to Baby

Jonathan Creekmore — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:48:01 +0000

This morning, Emily decided to read a story to Baby. She picked her favorite story from when she was one: “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? “. If you are not familiar with the book, it is very rhythmic, repeating “Color Animal, Color Animal, what do you see? I see a next-color next-animal looking at me” over and over again, with each new color and animal chaining into the next one. We read the book so often when she was younger, so she was able to pretty much recite the story to her Baby. Periodically, she would forget which animal came next, so she would check to see if anyone was looking and then sneak a peek, very quickly, at the animal on the next page. Then she would continue on like nothing happened. It was too cute.

Pigtails

Jonathan Creekmore — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:21:33 +0000

Emily’s hair is finally long enough for some pigtails!

Thoughts on “Poltergeist”

Jonathan Creekmore — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:00:34 +0000

On Halloween, I have a bit of a tradition: I like to watch a horror movie that night. The choice for this year was Poltergeist. I have seen Poltergeist many times over the years, starting from about the time I was ten. However, this was the first time I watched the movie since Emily has been born and the movie affected me differently. Every other time I have watched Poltergeist, I have identified with the little boy in the movie. A lot of really scary things happen to the little boy:

He almost gets eaten by a tree,
He sees lots of scary things occur, such as flying objects, ghosts, flashing lights, etc., and
He gets accosted by one of the scariest, freakiest, clown toys that I have seen in a movie (Yes, I had a bit of an issue with clowns when I was younger, why do you ask?).

This identification with the little boy occurred well into my twenties. This is a horror movie — scary stuff happens, so you should be scared of it. This view of Poltergeist was different for me, though. Now, I have a two year old little girl of my own and I found that I identified with the parents in the movie much more than any of the other characters and that made the movie much more frightening to me than it ever really was in the past. Why? Well, let us examine what the parents go through in the movie.

First, their little boy almost gets eaten by a tree and, although the father is pulling and pulling, he really can do very little to stop it from happening. Next, they go back into the house and their little girl is missing. They search and they search, but to no avail — Carol Anne is nowhere to be found. Oh my God! She might be in the swimming pool. THE SWIMMING POOL! The abject terror that is evident on the parents’ faces as they are searching for her is bone-chilling. Then, they discover that Carol Anne has been taken by the TV people. They can hear her over the static of the TV, they hear the fear in her little voice, but they cannot get to her — they cannot comfort her. Through the rest of the movie, the parents take all of the other strange goings-on in stride — they can deal with anything that the house can throw at them so long as they can get Carol Anne back. Finally, the parents manage to get their daughter back, only to have the spirits try to take her again. Once again, that feeling of powerlessness is overwhelming.

Poltergeist is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Now, I can watch it and gain a sense of dread that I did not have before. It is like a completely new movie to me.