Before & After & Inbetween

Completing your doctorate is good for your career, but sadly not so much for your shape. To correct the physical result of my degree, I started doing body weight exercises regularly since last summer (thirty minutes on four days a week). By now I can sum up the results:

on the plus side:

1. my scale shows approx. 10 kg less (yay!)
2. I can run up the stairs up to the 3rd floor without getting out of breath (never could that before, so - wow!)
3. I actually manage pull-ups instead of "hanging limp like a dead pig"s (double-wow!)
4. my back aches are gone
5. my knee aches are gone (and I haven't stumbled or lost my balance anytime since last Autumn)
6. I've got a posture that (a) tempted my physician to compliments and (b) gets people in the supermarket to stay the step back required not to bump into me, my bags, or the produce I'm examining without me having to growl (wow-yay-finally!)

on the down side:

1. I learned that sore muscles can hurt like hell even when you don't move!
2. because my upper body circumference changed, I have to replace my blouses a size larger (whine for the money)
3. because waist and thigh circumferences changed, I have to replace my trousers a size smaller (whine for the money)
4. I have yet to find the courage to try on the (expensive) graduation suit and see if a good tailor can salvage it!

Overall, a thumbs up. I've finally found exercises that (a) work, (b) require a manageable amount of time, and (c) don't bore me to death. I'm going to continue them. Next target: consecutive pull-ups instead of single ones.

Now that Family Matters is complete, it is time to update the statistics:

Family Matters
word count: 152.156
written in: 4.7 years (from April 2006 to December 2010)

36°
word count: 50.964 (discounting side-stories)
written in: 0.8 years (from August 2005 to April 2006)
word count of the sidestories (as published of December 2010):
Carnival: 1686 (written in June 2006)
Taking Care Of: 1331 (written in October 2005)

Continuing Education Course 3-6-1: Onmyojutsu
word count: 4.542 (written in August 2007)

Total word count of the Decagram (as published in December 2010): 210.679 (discounting unsorted snippets)

All stories (and more) can be found in the story guide on Dreamwidth.

The Oldest Living Things In The World is a blog of a photo-artist Rachel Sussman, who portrays Earth's most senior citizens... plants, coralles, bacteria... in fascinating pictures. Go, explore. Here's a series of her pictures. And yes, there are trees among them, though not quite the Sakura! ;)

A long-time reader, who doesn't want to be given credit, recently went spot-sighting in the area of Tokyo where I made up Seishiro's house to be.
Given that I invented it in 2005 (before Google Streetview!) based on a Falk city map of Tokyo (1:15000), the findings are almost scary...

( see three large images for yourself )