Senator Ron Menor won’t be back in the State Senate next year. I was surprised, but not surprised by that result. I mean Menor was arrested earlier this year for drunk driving and I think he would have been okay, except that instead of keeping his mouth shut and apologizing for his behavior, he had to make some cockamanie statement that he was driving eradically because of a foot injury and because he was only wearing 1 contact lens. That was such a stupid thing to say.
Josh Green also beat out his rival and will be joining the State Senate next year. I wonder how this is going to effect commitee assignments next session. Green is currently the chair of the House health committee and is also a physician. The current Senate health chair is David Ige and he’s an engineer by trade.
The Honolulu Mayor’s race is also heading to a runoff. I was disappointed that Panos Prevedourous didn’t do better. The guy reminded me of the dad inMy Big Fat Greek Wedding.
I really hadn’t done much this past week. I was just so tired this week, most nights I would come home, relax a little and then pass out for 5 or 6 hours. Of course those really long “naps” completely messed up my sleep schedule.
I also never made it to the gym this week, but I did break out my Turbo Jam DVD’s instead. Oooh yea. I had forgotten how much fun they are! I did the 20 minute workout on Wednesday and then decided to just go for it and did Cardio Party Mix 2 on Thursday. I was surprised I could make it through the whole thing! Yay! Okay, I was pretty tired by the end, but I did it! I just did Cardio Party 1 tonight. I still don’t know why some people gave CP1 some bad reviews. I think it’s a great workout. Maybe it’s because it’s not as advanced as the other cardio parties?
I am also anxiously awaiting my Iron Core DVD’s from Amazon. I picked up a kettlebell several months ago, but since I am not sure how to actually use it, it’s been sitting on my floor waiting to be utilized for more than a couple of swings.
I am not sure what I am going to do Sunday. I guess I should clean my house or something. It’s a mess!
I just found out about this tonight and pre-ordered it from Amazon. I hope it isn’t too advanced for me, but it looks like a heck of a lot of fun. I wonder if they’ll make a DDR game that will work with this pad?
edit – I actually cancelled my order. I decided that it would be too hard on my knees at this point in my life. Sigh, maybe someday soon though.
Also, word on the street is that Beachbody coaches will have it available around October 10, 2008 and openly available to the public around the 15th. Of course, this is always subject to change. There is still no word on how much the package might cost.
A lot of people have been wondering about the music in these workouts and someone grabbed this off of a Beachbody chat with Chalene a few weeks ago:
“ALL THE CARDIO WORKOUTS HAVE GREAT MUSIC. THE CARDIO WORKOUTS ARE TOTALLY ATHLETIC DRILL BOOTCAMP STYLE INTERVALS. THE STRENGTH WOROUTS HAVE THIS VERY COOL, POWERFUL, BUT SUBTLE MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND, BUT IT’S BARELY NOTICED. IT TRIED EVERY TYPE OF MUSIC IN MY TEST GROUP, BUT THE WAY I GOT PEOPLE TO REALLY FOCUS ON FORM AND NOT KEEPING UP WITH A BEAT, WAS JUST YOLY…TRUST ME…I’M THE MUSIC GIRL. YOU JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. I KNOW .. I KNOW. BUT YOU’LL SEE!”
So far this week, work has been blah. I’m swamped as usual and I will admit it now, I can not keep up with the workload. There is just so much crap to do and everything is considered to be a priority, so I have no idea where my actual priorities are. Well, I mean, I can kind of tell based on the kind of work I am giving, but it is still pretty annoying.
I am so glad that Monday was a holiday, but it also meant that I had one less day in the week to try to get some work done.
Hmm, listening to music on my new laptop is kind of sucky. I am now the proud owner of an HP dv9925 laptop and well, whenever I listen to music, I constantly hear static coming out of the speakers. I think the same thing happened when I used headphones too, so I am pretty sure it’s some kind of sound card hardware/software issue. It shouldn’t be a RAM issue since I have 4 freaking GB’s of RAM. I guess I should look for an updated driver or something. It’s just annoying though. I downloaded some kick ass classical music the other night and I had such a hard time listening to it because of all of the scratchiness. Grrr.
I am also slacking on my next fitness challenge. It was supposed to start September 1st, but I was so busy with my blog issues, I neglected to work out that day. Doh. I did go to the beach on Tuesday though and I actually swam that day too. A buddy of mine has started a 15 minute freestyle challenge where my buddy is going to try to freestyle for 15 minutes straight. I wasn’t going to do that challenge since I don’t get the chance to go swimming all that often. Tuesday we set a couple of build up goals where we would swim for say, 1 minute straight. My buddy did it and then I tried it and I swam and then just kept swimming. It was great. I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it, but I swam half way between the 2 lifeguard stands near Magic Island non-stop! Yay!
Of course my shoulders were a little sore, but it was cool. I really love swimming. I am almost tempted to take swimming lessons again to learn better techniques, but I doubt I would follow through on that right now. Of all the strokes out there, I never really learned how to do the butterfly. I just loved watching swimming during the Olympics. I am kind of modifying my freestyle technique because of how the swimmers swam during the games. Heeheee. I just really need to build up my endurance and shoulder/back strength though.
I did finally hit the gym again tonight and just sat on the bike for 40 minutes tonight. I was and still am pretty tired, and I should go to sleep, but I kind of wanted to listen to this Gulag Orkestaralbum by Beirut I just downloaded. I love the Amazon mp3 store. They have album deals of the day where you can download an album for a ridiculously discounted price. The Gular Orkestar album is only $1.99 today. Heck, how you can go wrong for $2? I downloaded a pretty good album by Itzak Perlman the other day for 99 cents! Ooh yea. I can afford those kinds of prices! That is one really sucky thing about iTunes. I mean sure, they have a couple of free songs, but when I used it, albums seemed to have costed the same as a regular CD – which did not make any sense to me. I mean, you can usually download an mp3 album for quite a bit less than a regular CD at Amazon.
Anyways, since I didn’t quite start my fitness challenge on the day I was supposed to, I think I might delay the start date and instead of Election Day as my end date, I think it is going to end on Thanksgiving instead. That way I can call it my Thanksgiving Throwdown challenge. I just couldn’t think of something to name my challenge if it ended on Election Day except Election Day Extravaganza and that didn’t quite make sense to me.
My goal is to do 45 20 minute cardio workouts, 15 hours of strength training, 1500 crunches and hopefully 15 yoga sessions. Let’s see if I can do it.
Yup. So, I started working out again a couple of weeks ago after a 6 month hiatus. I am just working out at home again though, since I am so not ready to hit the gym yet.
I thought I would take it slow, so I finally opened up these Leslie Sansone DVD’s I picked up from QVC a few months ago. They have a special on her newest system- “Walk Slim” - at a pretty reasonable price. I am starting out with her 2 mile walk and while the “choreography” isn’t all that special, she does use intervals, which makes it a little more interesting.
What I also found highly amusing was that one of the background exercisers totally looks like either a biker dude or a retired professional wrestler.
I don’t know if this was intentional, but the camera guy was visible in quite a few shots throughout the DVD. Also, a personal gripe, if you are going to use a black background, the people in the video should not be wearing all black or black pants.
Woot! 80′s high impact! (aka boosted walking aka Leslie’s version of interval training)
Sweaty Moobs.
Since most of the walking videos I use are only about 30 minutes in length, I’ve been adding on various strength training and yoga videos as well. I haven’t done screen caps of all of them because I am lazy and because I wish my captures were a little clearer than they turn out to be.
I am really loving the kundalini yoga videos from Ravi and Ana. As I think I mentioned before, I suppose it was about time that I actually tried a kundalini video – especially since it’s been my freaking net handle for something like 10 years now. Go me!
I did most of the Kundalini Yoga For Beginners and Beyond this past week and I must say, I do feel so much better after it’s over. I don’t know what it is, but it really is a great mood lifter. One really nice feature of this DVD and I believe all of the other Ravi and Ana DVD’s, is that they now include a “matrix” menu. What does that mean? It means you can design your own work out and make it as long or as short as you want! YAY!
Here’s a screen shot of the “matrix” menu.
A lot of times Ana looks like she’s about to crack up – which I find hilarious.
Some Spinal Series movements.
The washing machine.
Um, this is from the 5 Tibetans, which I have not done yet, because I am just not that flexible yet.
I also whipped out my 3T:Totally Tubular Turbo this past week too. I think I’ve reviewed it in the past, but here are some screen shots from it. It’s a “strength” training DVD that came out with Chalene’s last Turbo Jam set a couple of years ago. I like it mostly because it uses a resistance tube and there just aren’t that many DVD’s that use them. Plus, the tube came with the set when I ordered it. Yeeehaw!
As a side note, there are rumors on the internets that Chalene is going to be coming out with a series of strength training DVD’s later this year called “Chalean Extreme.” From what I have read, I believe it’s going to be a series of about 12 DVD’s – kind of like P90X – but made with Chalene’s brand of funkiness. I don’t think there has been any word on the price point yet, but from what I’ve read, it sounds like you will need some pretty heavy weights to get the most benefit. While it sounds pretty neat and all, I still don’t understand why Beachbody wanted her to make a strength series instead of more Turbo Jam videos, since cardio really is her strong point.
Anyways, on to the screen shots!
Chalene doing her introduction. As you can see on the bottom, the workout is a little over 30 minutes long.
This set looks really, really familiar. I think it has been used a couple of different workout videos I own, but I am not sure which ones yet. I think it has been used in a least 1 Kathy Smith video and a couple of Crunch fitness videos.
This is Mindy. Mindy likes to ham it up for the camera, but at least she was a little more reserved in this one. It’s kind of annoying actually.
You might have recognized Holly from the original Turbo Jam videos – except she’s dyed her hair platinum blonde. I like her better with darker hair.
Hurray for Anna Rita! She’s my favorite!
One thing that’s nice about this video is that they do give you variations in case you don’t have the tubing.
Ugggh, killer (for me) planks at the end of the video. I can do planks okay, but add in the knee and I am dying.
Wow, this post is turning out a lot longer than I expected it to be. Anyways, I am trying to be consistent with my workouts and am striving for an hour a day, 5 days a week. I am hoping to focus more on cardio than weights for a few weeks and then start kicking butt!
