Permalink

You and me and the title makes three

2004 MINI Cooper S

I had my first MINI Cooper S from 2004 – 2008, but traded it in once I started to have some air conditioning issues, which may or may not have been related to other electrical issues (which may or may not have been the result of hitting a raccoon 6 months before trading it in). 4 years old, 80K+ miles, various issues, a big dent in the front from the raccoon, a keyed scratch down the passenger side, and I still got half of what I originally paid for it.

2008 MINI Cooper S

My second MINI was a 2008 MINI Cooper S. I had this one for only about a year and a half before the dealership contacted me about paying top dollar on used MINIs – 125% of trade-in value. At first I didn’t know why I’d want to bother trading it in when the car was barely a year and a half old, but then I did the math: trade-in value was enough to pay off my car loan, pay off a credit card, and still have enough for a down payment on a new MINI (with better finance terms, I might add).

2010 MINI Cooper S

My current MINI is a 2010 MINI Cooper S with the same options as the 2008 model, except with a better stereo, and a different style of stripes down the front and rear of the car so I can tell it apart from the 2008 model in pictures. This picture is from before they installed the stripes.

On Friday I mailed in my last two car payments and requested my car’s title. Third car I’ve paid off in ten years!

I read today that a casino emailed promotions to compulsive gamblers, and in unrelated news I found this in my email inbox:

2015 MINI of Annapolis promotion

I can quit any time I want.

Yesterday I went to the gym because I thought I had a personal training session. Either it was yesterday and my trainer thought it was supposed to be today, or it was for today and I thought it was supposed to be yesterday, but either way there was some confusion. (I’m glad that if it was supposed to be today that I showed up a day early and not a day late!) So, I worked out on my own: 5 mile run, rowed 3 kilometers, and pedaled on a cycle for 10 miles.

I remembered too that with today being Veterans Day that it’s been one year since I first tried yoga. Well, the first time I tried it and knew what was going on; I had once previously attended a pay-what-you-can yoga class and had no idea what I was doing and just tried to imitate the other participants. I took my first class a year ago at Yoga District (figuring since I had the day off for Veterans Day that I wouldn’t have to worry about packing a gym bag to take to work or worrying about getting from work to the studio in time, etc.) and enjoyed it. Which reminds me, I have a credit on my account for a class that I need to use.

Permalink

Mr. Apollo

Had my first personal training session today. When I signed up for my new gym (conveniently located next to my office) I figured that I might as well sign up for personal training sessions right then because otherwise I’d keep putting it off and putting it off. The gym just opened up about a month ago, and I made my first trip there last week and scheduled my first session for today.

Usually when I go to a gym to exercise I pretty much stick to cardio, being a runner and all. Treadmills, maybe a stationary bicycle, perhaps the rowing machine if I want to do some upper-body work, but that’s usually about it. My main goal with the personal training is to work on upper-body and core strength. (I started practicing yoga about a year ago for core strength as well and have really been enjoying that.)

I arrived early (what with it being right next to my office there’s no excuse for me not to go or be late) and killed time on one of the stationary bicycles. Ended up riding that for about 9 miles over 30 minutes. Then when it came time for the personal training session first we had an evaluation (age, weight, determining percentage of body fat, etc.) and then a few exercises: step up and down for three minutes then a check of the pulse, do some squats to check form. Then some suspension exercises, followed by some push-ups, then more suspension exercises, and more push-ups, and more suspension exercises.

Anyway, I might have overexerted myself. My arms felt like jelly during the second set of push-ups. What can I say? My arms don’t exactly compare with arm wrestling champ Matthias Schlitte’s left arm, let alone his right.

I felt lightheaded and had to sit down. After a bit of sitting, we walked back to the training desk (if I’m being kind: “I had to be helped”; if I’m being honest: as embarrassing as it is to admit, I started to black out and walked into a wall. Too much info?). Not exactly how I hoped my first training session would go! It’s always a bit weird doing something for the first time and not really knowing your limits.

Next session is in two days.

Permalink

Secret Heart (radio edit)

After blogging on here for the past two months, one thing that I’ve come to miss from the days when I used to write on LiveJournal is knowing exactly who has the potential to read a given entry, being able to lock down a particular post so only certain logged-in people can read it. I didn’t actually know back in the old LiveJournal days whether someone might have been reading a particular post unless they happened to comment on it but just knowing that persons A, B, and C could read it, and persons X, Y, Z likely couldn’t definitely helped tailor my writing for a particular audience.

Sometimes there are some things where you just want to write them out and get them out of your mind or off your chest but I’ve always felt like writing things without an audience is a bit of a pointless exercise. Sure, there’s the option to password-protect a post so you have to know the password to see it, but I don’t know who’s reading this site, and you kind of need to know who’s out there in order to give them the password. Even then, how many of those people would even be bothered to put in the password to read the rare password-protected entry?