The Burrow

The good news is, I have more sensation in my leg.  This enables me to find and engage those pesky adductors and abductors and hamstrings and quads as I progress from throwing my leg forward to the beginning imitations of an actual step.  That step ought to include a deeper fold in my hip than I'm capable of right now, and several more degrees of flexion and extension, and space between my ribcage and my iliac crest.... but I fear I am venturing farther into too much information, especially for those of you who are reading this over your morning coffee. The bad news is, I have more sensation in my leg.  This enables me to notice the grating of my arthritic hip bones and reconstructions as the tendons and ligaments and muscles announce their presence with authority. It's a cacophony of clicks and creaks and squeaks.... not all of them from the hip.  I admit to hollering aloud, to groaning, even to the occasional Oh, dear God .  I'm not sure why I thought that t...

There were some strange people at the gym on Sunday. The Amster and I can usually count on welcoming smiles from the regulars as we lift and grunt and sweat and lift again. We've been at it together for almost two years, now, and it just keeps getting better. Not that we keep getting better. Like everyone else who's ever exercised on a regular basis, occasionally we have been derailed by life. But we're still having fun, with her Army mojo and me quoting Arnold between sets. Most gyms have a demographic - 20-somethings on the prowl gyms, women who want to show their exercising selves only to other women gyms, 50+ retired Yuppies and their much younger trainers' gyms, serious 'roid gyms. Our gym defies categorization. Tattoos are everywhere, and TBG and I were taken aback at first. Body art's not our thing (just ask my nieces) and we were about ready to dismiss the wearers. That is, until TBG watched the most heavily decorated young man gently and kindly ...

I was watching a pick-up basketball game while doing my push-ups at the gym. 6 guys in their 20's, none of them particularly buff, all wearing shirts. So, I wondered, how do they know who their teammates are? Quickly recognizing the color of your side's jersey, looking for shirts or skins, these are pieces of information which I've always imagined to be critical while playing a team sport. Hmmmm. I was doing 4 sets of 15, so there was lots of time to watch. And as I watched, I realized that they didn't need to recognize their teammates. They weren't passing. They weren't playing defense, except against the ball. It was run-and-gun, look-at-me shooting. Not basketball. I've followed college basketball since the 1970's - it was either learn it or lose TBG to the NCAA for the semester. I came to love the flow and the pulse of the game. There were only 5 players to keep track of and I knew them not only by number but by their faces and their physi...