My left pinky hurts. A lot.

I've been spending a lot of time working on a project with Mike Gull the last two days. The project involves, unsurprisingly, a lot of programming. And, since I program in emacs, I've been using a lot of control characters during my editing of files.

Control-x this and Control-s that, and Control-x e this other, followed by Control-x k. Bah. So many control characters!

I think I strained the finger last night when I edited 250+ files with an insert buffer (Control-x g a (that would be buffer a, I'm inserting)), move down a few lines (Control-n a bunch of times), another insert buffer (Control-x g b (that would be the buffer b being used there)), followed by a delete line (Control-k to delete to the end of the line, another Control-k to delete the empty line after it), Control-e to end of a bunch of lines, Control-a to go back to the beginning, Control-f I don't know how many times to move forward a character or two, Control-x Control-s to save the file and finally a Control-x k enter to close the file (or rather, kill the buffer) and stare at the next one.

That, 250 times.

No wonder my left pinky hurts.

My garden is a wreck. In so many ways.

I had to cut down my 12' tall sunflower with the 16" seeded head because the friendly neighborhood mice (they could have been rats) decided it was a tasty, tasty treat.

This whole time, I thought it was the racoon that lived down the street (at Mike and Kate's new place. The same one that chased me as I walked around the block. Yeah, that one. But it wasn't. It was mice. They ran along the back fence at night, driving the dogs CRAZY. They'd run into the garden, where the dogs weren't supposed to go, driving them CRAZY. It was a bad situation getting worse.

So, pfft! Down came the lovely sunflowers. I think I'm going to try again in the front yard with those. They are so cool, especially when you use mutant seeds and get double heads, double leaves and gi-normous heads. Whoo!

And then there's the tomatoes. If you don't pluck the suckers off tomatoes vines (suckers are new branches that grow between two other branches), you end up with A LOT of tomato vines. The whole thing bunches up into this tight mess of tomatoes, so that even the dogs can't get through. Blessing, or curse? We have a LOT of tomatoes. More than I can eat, more than Kris and Chris and Warren and Kyle and Mark and I can eat. Lots.

Did I mention the zucchini? I think I did. I have one okay plant, and one killer, poisonous, horrible, awful, BITTER plant. Did I mention the zuccini?

I managed to eat three strawberries over the last month. Annie has gotten the rest. She's also decided to CRAP right in the middle of the three plants, just to mark her territory. I have to fight with the dogs for food from my garden.

The undesirable trees around the garden (the palm tree, the sticky purple-flowering bush, the shrubs I cut down last year) are all taking off and encroaching on the garden. A couple of them are also harboring mice. Ick. Mice.

And then there's the bugs. I have Japanese beetles in my garden. I have earwigs. I had a lot of snails until Kyle cleaned them out of the yard by gathering them up every night for two weeks and throwing them in the trash. Note: the first night, he managed about 8 pounds of snails, followed by 4 pounds, then 2, then successively fewer, until there were no snails in my garden. Ole! Kyle's my hero.

But I still have earwigs and Japanese beetles. Did I mention their grubs? The most DISGUSTING grub EVER. I almost threw up when I saw my first one.

My Italian basil has all flowered. The sweet basil hasn't though. That, I guess is a good thing. The yellow and red pepper plants have been beating up by the dogs running by them that they're on their last stalks. Stupid dogs.

So, the garden is a wreck. A disaster.

I managed a handful of raspberries today, though. Damn, those were tasty. No wonder the dogs like to eat them before I get to them. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Omigod.

I just realized that the ABC rhythym is the same as the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Actually, I didn't realize. I had to be told it.

Omigod. I am so clueless.

Yay! Lisa joined us! She's signed up for the class, so we'll be seeing her twice a week. Whoo!

Today's workout focused on arms. Not in a workout sense, but in a movement sense: quick arms propelling quick feet. I was also working on moving my arms forward and backward, and not across my chest.

I also asked G about intensity level. Should I be going all out, all the time, or should I try to pace myself. G was actually surprised. He thought I was already going all out. Essentially, he was reducing the recovery time each time, to adjust for our improved performance. Whoops. My bad.

I started early with my ladders, with G giving me direct feedback about moving my arms. I tend to chicken-wing my arms, keeping them away from my body and often crossing my chest when they come forward. It really helped to have G give immediate feedback.

• LR RL LR RL
• twisting from the outside: L foot on the right side, twist to put R foot inside, L outside left side, R next to L, twist to put L foot inside, R outside right side, L next to R, etc.
• Outside L-in
• Outside, R-in
• Outside, R, outside, L, outside, together
• Ali shuffle
• probably more

We started off with the I of pain and square drill. Kris and Lisa worked the I-of-pain, while I worked the square drill. My first time was about 11.6, with the subsequent three being about 10.5. I think I cheated a little on those three. The last one was 10.9, which was around the time all my runs should have been. Not cheating on that one.

We switched, and I ran the I-of-pain, while Kris and Lisa ran the square drill. I ran the I-of-pain as hard as I could. I needed longer than the 30 second rest. My legs felt spent at the end of the drill.

Next, we had the equivalent of running ice-skaters. Instead of side-to-side ice skaters, we shuffled forward. We were working on quick feet. It was a little difficult for me, more so I think for Lisa. Kris, with his fast feet, had no problem. The cones were about 3 feet apart, width-wise, and 2 feet forward-wise. The goal was to shuffle through the cones, around the outside, facing forward. Shuffling forward. We ran 5+ of these runs. We then faced sideways, instead of forward, and quick-feet ran around the cones. We went through this way a good number of times, too. It was difficult to get the arms moving quickly and correctly in synch.

The star-shuffle came next. It was a small circle: only one step between the middle cone and the outside cone. It made, once again, for quick feet and fast arms. We couldn't get a full shuffle in, so we had to move quickly. We went counterclockwise twice, then clockwise twice.

Kris offered a suggestion to G to modify the exercise. Instead of shuffling from cone to cone, G walked around the circle, adjusting his distance from the center cone. We shuffled from the center cone to G, as he walked around the circle.

Wall ball came next. Kris and Lisa started out playing wall ball against each other with the 8# ball. They threw from their hips, playing twice for a minute each round. G and I played next, with the 6#. When it came time to play throwing overhead, using abs, of course, G had Lisa play wall ball with me, instead, with the lighter ball. 8# was 2# too heavy.

Abs, of course, were last. The first set was a three exercise round: ab pull downs with the weight machine, bicycles, and big ball balance (where we balanced in a plank position with elbows and forearms on the ball, then back up, with just hands on the ball, butt in the air). We each rotated through the three exercises. Next were cross-over V-ups, similar to Lisa's cross-over bicycles from the workout she developed for us. There was another few ab exercises.

The last ab exercise was 6" leg holds, for only 30 seconds. No problem.