Monthly Archives: November 2005

RSS – It’s hard to talk about

My attempts to explain the wonder and power of RSS were mostly for naught today. I think my audience felt a combination of confusion and not caring. I tried to launch into the benefits of RSS before I made sure that everyone understood what it is.

This is not the first time that I have attempted to explain RSS and met with failure. Therefore, I’ve written up a page to which I can point people when they want to understand RSS. That page is here.

If you have a moment, especially if you don’t know what RSS is, or don’t understand how it works, please read that page and comment here or send me an email with your observations, things that confused you, things that you still wonder, and I’ll try to improve the page. Feel free to tell your friends!

Today’s stats. I am still drinking water before bed, so I’m going to tack an extra glass on to what I’ve had so far:

Sleep Water Exercise Coffee Alcohol
07:30 h 2.060 L 17:50 min 1 1/4 cup(s) 1 drink(s)

I’m running a little faster now. It’s cold out there in the morning! I need to get some running pants, because the shorts aren’t really cutting it anymore. Also, I think I need at least 8:30 h of sleep. I was yawning hard all day. Blah.

My Bicep Insertions Hurt

Several years ago I did some cadaver work as part of my undergraduate degree. It gave me new insight into things my body does, things I feel, how things work (or don’t). I learned that the places where muscles attach to your bone are called insertions. I think one end is the origin, and the other is the insertion? I can’t remember for sure.

Technically, the muscle doesn’t attach right to the bone. There’s some fascia in-between. I would imagine that if your muscle rips free of its insertion point, it would probably peel the fascia off of the bone along the way. The area between the bone and the fascia would fill with blood, and the end result would be something of a mess. That fascia is part of the bone healing process. When a bone breaks, the fascia in the area fills with blood, it congeals, goes through some phases of regeneration, and in the end you get new bone. Would you get some bone in-between if the fascia were ripped off at the insertion point?

You might wonder what inspired this train of thought. In an effort to regain my upper body strength from the days when I was swimming three to four times a week, I’ve been doing some calisthenics every morning. Using the weights I found abandoned in the basement of the building, I’ve started doing some bicep curls. I can feel the inerstions (or origins?) of the biceps on my forearms, and they feel a little stressed. Amanda suggested that I give it a rest until they feel better, and now that I think about it, I’m inclined to agree. I don’t want the above scenario to take place, certainly.

The days that you see a small number, like two or three minutes, under Exercise in the stats, I’ve only done calisthenics. When I run, I only put my 2-mile run time, but don’t include the calisthenics. In the interest of holding some sort of consistent measuring practice, I’m going to stop counting the calisthenics and such, and only post my run time. The calisthenics are neither aerobic in nature, nor really time-related. Therefore, any time that you see posted henceforth should be aerobic exercise of some kind. Days with 00:00 posted I will still have done the push-ups and so on.

And here are the stats for today:

Sleep Water Exercise Coffee Alcohol
09:30 h 1.470 L 00:00 min 1/2 cup(s) 1 drink(s)

This little stats project has made me much more conscious of my coffee drinking. I think I’m on my way to kicking the habit, or at least reducing it. I’m not actually sure that I want to stop using caffeine (yes using — it sounds so dirty, doesn’t it?). It seems like a little bit to start the day is enough. I’m getting half-cups and so on by brewing quarter-caffeinated coffee. I blend store-bought half-caff with decaf and, voila! Quarter-caff.

I’m going to read a bit more of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle and then it’s off to bedfordshire with me.

Shop shop

I did some more clothing shopping today, I think my new, replacement wardrobe is nearly complete. I still need a new leather jacket, though. It’s starting to get a bit nippy here at times!

I’m very sleepy for some reason. I don’t know why, I got enough sleep last night. Maybe it was the fact that I had too much coffee today. It could be that I lagged behind on my water consumption. It was only half a liter until about an hour ago. I’m going to do a bit of reading, then crash.

Here are the numbers for the day:

Sleep Water Exercise Coffee Alcohol
08:00 h 1.960 L 05:00 min 2 cup(s) 2 drink(s)

I took a break from running, but added some curls to my morning work-out routine. Tomorrow must be more… quality.