1.26.2010

going Gi jane...

Hey all,
Well, today I went to Iron horse park and did the 2.8 mile vita course...lol.
It has sit ups and pullups and a cargo net climb...
so everything went well but the hang ups pull-ups.
I was determined to try everything, even if I suspected I couldn't.
So there I was on the corner of polio and anthrax streets (who names these streets) and I jump up to grab the bar in a feeble futile attempt to hoist my still porky, but shrinking *ss into the air.
Who should trot by, but two rather diminutive damsels giggling at me their own private joke.
I'm not paranoid.
So, I  gasped, shlumped and flumped ran up over the big hill and down the other side where the cargo net awaited me. Assuming I was alone...I climbed up, swaying to and fro, flung my leg over the bar at the top and gave a triumphant ahhhh ahhh....as I struggled not to fall off...plus i am scared conquering my fear of heights.
So I hear clip clop clip clop...and look up just in time to see the look of amusement admiration on the face of a passing jogger.
I heaved myself down the other side...with undue haste dignity.
And finished my walk /Jog.

Guys, 80 lbs ago, that hill wasn't run up (however much I heaved and hoed after stopping...I still ran up it), those little situp and pull up things were not attempted, and that cargo net was given nary a passing glance. I remember three months ago I went up to that cargo net, and shook it...watched it sway...and grabbed on and put up a foot and thought...no way in heck.
This time, I put my feet on and climbed...I used my left arm to anchor me on the bar, while my right hand held on  to the bar to swivel over the top and down the other side.
That is huge.
huge for me.
I feel capable. More so every day I get leaner and healthier.  This victory happens one choice at a time.
One pound, one day at a time.

Okay, so I was reading this blog.
And she was talking about reading books and how reading 6 of these books was the average.
so i  copied the list and will mark with an x, all the books I have read.
Here goes.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee x (my all time favorite ever)
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x (own it)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy tried and tried and tried...it's boring.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen X (another favorite)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne X (one of my favorites)
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving X
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (I should)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad x (depressing tale of colonialism in africa...)
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams X
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo X


I've read fifty two...that being said, I like to read.
Interesting what they thought was 'worth reading'....I don't think I would have put davinci code in there before selected poets or some others...but what do I know.
lol.
Well, hope all is well with you guys.
talk to you later,
Your reading and net climbing blogger,
Chris

20 comments:

paulawannacracker said...

Wow, that's a pretty impressive reading list and yo've read pretty much most of them. That's great Chris. I haven't read in awhile because I proof so much that my eyes just hurt.

Anwyas, great job on the climbing, I'm scared of heights. Can you believe I've never climbed a tree? Every time I read your blog I'm just amazed.

Amber said...

Cargo net and pull ups...way to go! I doubt I'd amke it over the net without falling on my butt.

That's a lot of books! I have read a few but not near as many as you!

I guess my interests in books are else where.

Pikes Peak her you come..

amber

Linda Pressman said...

Chris, I'm loving your new x-out feature. I'll have to try it tonight! It's pretty funny. And I agree on the gratitude about the fitness. Today I was in the middle of my 3rd of 6 Jazzercise classes for the week thinking, for one amazed second, that I used to go to class (10 years ago) and couldn't make it through one hour. I huffed and puffed, turned red, rested, etc. Now, I'm little miss front row. Who would have thought that underneath the fat was muscles? Awesome.

Retta said...

If you like books on tape while exercising, they make one you can get at most libraries for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I LOVED listening the The Three Musketeers that way.
Loretta
=^..^=

Dani @ PFL said...

I really loved the His Dark Materials trilogy. I have odd some pretty random taste in books, though.

Miz said...

hmmm this may be the list that finally gets me to join audible.com

people rave about audio books while working out or walking/running.

never tried it...

Jodie said...

I always think you are like GI Jane!! My dad, (who served in Vietnam) told me that was the worst part of Boot Camp- the Pull Ups! He said he hated with and struggled with them!

You are well read. That is a good thing! I am trying to be more so.

karen@fitnessjourney said...

That place you went for your GI Jane workout sounds really cool. I wish I had a place like that to go-even if passersby giggled at my lame attempts.

I am so impressed that you've read so many of those books. I saw that post and had only read 15. Do you have a favorite book?

Boozy Tooth said...

Oh Chris.... when I see folks out trying to get fit, whether they are walking, jogging, biking or fill in the blank, I am so proud. I know what it takes. I know the pain. The discouragement. The get up and try it again even though you don't know if you can endure it. And then - the day comes that you realize it doesn't hurt anymore. It's positively energizing. Freeing. It feels good!

So when those svelties pass you and you think maybe they are passing judgement - maybe in reality, they are smiling and sending you strength and solidarity. Support. Good vibes.

Oh, yannow, there will always be those who don't get it and prefer to make a joke at someone else's expense - but I would wager a bet that many of them may have started out where WE started out and maybe - just maybe - they understand.

You keep climbing Chris.

Leslie said...

I'd only read 12 - pretty pathetic, I agree that some were on there that weren't exactly classics! And I've read a bunch of fantastic stuff that didn't make their list.

Great going with your work outs. Get strong so you're not a soft old lady like me!

Melissa said...

When I read the title, I envisioned you with a buzz cut for a minute. lol

WOW! I'm impressed. You were rocking it out. Now I'm wanting to find a cargo thingie!!!

As for the books, I'm average I guess. lol

Unknown said...

Great job on that course! whoohoo! GI JANE! :)

My BF reads books from the list of 1001 books to read before you die. They have a book with all of these books in them too- which he has and checks off each book he reads one. He is my lil geek. lol :)

SeattleRunnerGirl said...

How cool to have a course like that near your home! I'll have to see if we have something similar here. It'd be really fun to do it now and then every 20 pounds or so. Keep up the great work!

antgirl said...

Woot woooot on slaying the workout course and heralding out your victory.

I read many of those. I liked War & Peace. :)

Christine Jeske said...

Woot! Another notch in the bed post ((haha, I mean victory post)) for the Chris Mafia!!!! Congrats on the workout course. I love discovering I can do things and fit places I never used to be able to! ♥

South Beach Steve said...

What a victory with the net, and it won't be long until you are crankin' out the pull ups!

Unknown said...

Wow, I'm impressed with your workout. Those nets aren't that easy to master. I for one would fall right off.
You Rock Chris!

outdoor.mom said...

i like books too. most of the time, i don't let myself read though because i can't put them down :-) good job on your fittness endeavors!

MB said...

I'm very impressed with your net climbing and reading experience.

I'd love to find out what the criteria was for these particular books to get on this list.

Hanlie said...

You are hardcore!

I read 24 of those. I agree with you about Dan Brown - not a great author at all. The classics aren't really my thing...