It hasn't been a day filled with wonderful things...

Okay, don't panic. This isn't going to be an overly negative post. As a matter of fact, today did have it's wonderful moments. But a few minutes ago, Cheryl said she was sorry I wasn't feeling well, and I said, "It's not that I'm not feeling well. It just hasn't been a day filled with wonderful things."

Let's backtrack. I went to my tae kwon do workout this morning and forgot my water bottle. "No problem," thought I, since I left my good insulated water bottle at the school several weeks ago. I'll just get that back and use it today. Well, it turns out my instructor didn't know who's it was and threw it away. Um, I gotta say, this was not some old ratty water bottle. Cheryl bought it for me this Christmas for biking. It's, to me anyway, very expensive looking. So, I was shocked that anyone would just toss it. It didn't put me in a good mood.

Today, my instructor decided to put us through a more advanced pushup workout, involving holding stressed positions for ten to fifteen seconds at a time. I've been breezing through the pushups lately, so I figured I was up to something more advanced. Well, I was too busy straining to do a lot of looking around, but I think he dropped everyone else in the class except me. Then we got to partner up for abdominals (leg raises) and my partner, Mike, was in a sadistic mood. The instructor announced that if your feet hit the floor, you get to go an additional fifteen seconds. Well, my feet didn't hit the floor, although my partner didn't make it easy. Then it was his turn. But I was relatively nice to him.

Then we sparred. I fought three people, and the third one is an orange belt that doesn't seem to know any control. I might add that he's in his fifties, so you'd think I could handle him. Well, less than a minute into the round, he brushed my eye and my contact slipped out of place. Suddenly, I couldn't see him. I put my hands up to tell him to stop, but he came in swinging anyway. Somehow, I managed to avoid getting clocked while I yelled at him to stop. I got my vision back and we resumed the round. I decided to stay away from him. This seemed to just make him more determined to hit me. I threw some flurries at him, got his hands out of position and backfisted him in the side of the head, twice. Most fighters, when you show you can hit them, will back off and be more cautious. But he kept coming after me. And literally two seconds before the bell, he hit me in the stomach so hard that my diaphragm spasmed and, without any air, my vision tunnelled in and I went down on my knees to keep from falling. So, there I was, the second degree blackbelt, on the ground with the whole school gathered around me, waiting for my breathing to resume. It was not a good moment. Strangely enough, I'm not bruised where he hit me, but I have an injury on my left side in a place I don't remember getting hit. It's sore enough that it I had to change my workout tonight. I hope it's not going to hold me back. Time will tell.

So, on the way home, I stopped at the bicycle shop and bought a new water bottle to replace the one that got thrown away, and I stopped at Sports Authority to buy a new pocket knife to replace the one that got confiscated at a concert I went to last night ( as if I would ever use a two inch swiss army knife to defend myself). I got home just in time to save a squirrel that fell in our swimming pool. For ten years, I've been fishing drowned animals out of that pool (usually one or two a year). This is the first time I've ever managed to save one. So I felt pretty good about that.

So, today is upper body workout day, but I really just wanted to go lay out in the sun. I decided to do my workout later and indulge myself a little (and give myself some time to recover from the tae kwon do insanity). I decided to wear my posing suit, which is, if you can believe it, even skimpier than my speedo (it's what bodybuilders wear in competition, I bought it on a whim). No, there are no pictures and don't expect to see any anytime soon. Anyway, I wore it because it doesn't leave any tan lines anywhere that is going to show in anything that I will allow myself to be photographed in.

That brings up the other good news. Cheryl got the camera back from the shop, so we are going to do our photo shoot after all. I have to arrange to get the lights from the camera shop and I might have one piece to get from the hardware store to put our backdrop up. We're going to see if we can do the shoot on Monday.

Anyway, I did my workout and pushed pretty hard to get those tens. I extended some of my final sets to fourteen reps if I was feeling able. I've been plateaued on some of my lifts lately, so I'm trying to shake things up a little. I couldn't do some of my abdominal work because of my injury. Abs are my primary goal in this challenge, so I was a little annoyed about that, The good news is that I won't be back in martial arts class for two weeks, so I might have a chance to recover.

So that was my wonderful day. I plan to do some updates to the web site tonight, adding body fat data for the last couple of weeks. A friend of mine emailed me today to say he liked our web site, was impressed with Body for Life and wondered if I wanted to join him on a two day 150 mile bike ride this Fall. So add that to the list of things I'm working towards.

Okay, I guess there were some wonderful things today. But I'm leaving the title unchanged because I like it.