If you’re wondering where I was this weekend, I was husbanding my strength by taking some time off. This is the time in the semester when everything comes pouring in — we’re past the halfway point, students have enough information to know where their grade stands, and some are panicking. The first midterms are well over, but another exam is looming on the horizon. We’re soon going to be handling spring term registration, and students have already been coming by my office for academic advising. The administrative duties are gathering — I’ve got two major evening committee meetings coming up this week, our review of our colleagues for tenure and promotion, which is no fun at all. Yay, meetings all day long followed by meetings in the evening!
Only about 6 weeks of the accelerating chaos to go. I can make it.
I’m also committing myself to getting some daily exercise, because I can tell my decrepitude is also increasing, and I have to start getting ready now for next summer’s spider season. Waiting until the last minute to try and get back in shape is always disastrous and leads to something breaking.
As someone who is the same age, I can’t say enough about daily exercise. While I have the luxury of living where I do, in coastal CA, for long daily walks, I also have a DeskCycle (there are other brands, of course). I’m using it now as I type. There are no excuses when you can sit and read or write AND get aerobic exercise.
Try it.
(I also tap dance, among other things, but don’t think that’s for most).
I had read recently about desk sitting exercise that focuses on your soleus impacting metabolism. Walking is probably much better overall.
The long walks are going to become increasingly difficult as winter descends. Also, my “work” schedule, which doesn’t involve any physical work, is demanding more of my time.
We do have an exercise machine in the living room, facing the TV. I may have to resort to that, sacrificing some IQ points for meatier muscles.
So glad you are O.K. and posting again. We were concerned.
For decades I have wished I could make a highly practical bicycle-like exercise machine that used an alternator as resistance and also charged a battery (shades of E.G.Robinson in Soylent Green). I wish one were commercially available.
— Stay healthy, given your voracious intellect, your I. Q. will never suffer.
I am glad you are OK and taking some time off.
Ever since we lost Ed Brayton I have become super-sensitive to people disappearing, even just för a day or two.