virtualberta

A rash of birthdays recently: happy birthday to my beloved brother, Galen, and also Maria and Bonnie!

My weekend in a nutshell: Our company had our weiya (year-end party) last Friday at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Although I didn't win anything in the drawing, I did get a nice meal out of it. Although I'm not a big fan of this old-fashioned American-style food, where all the vegetables are drowning in cheese and cream. But I am a big fan of American dessert, and I quite enjoyed their warm apple crumb tart--which ended up lasting me three days (and which I shared with a colleague of mine). Saturday I went to my roommate's brother's wedding. On Sunday, I listened to my acupuncturist's admonitions and slept in for the first time in months, and then had brunch with friends. The conversation, as usual, was excellent.

Writing of awesomeness, my trainer is the best! Today at lunch I did ab work, continuing some of the exercises I learned last Thursday. One is where I'm in the sit-up position with my arms over my head, holding on to a 4-pound medicine ball. As I sit-up, I throw the ball to my trainer, who is standing about a yard in front of me, who throws the ball back as I lie back down. Lots of fun and you can really feel it. Another execise I did last week was to stand in a static lunge position, arms overhead holding the medicine ball (yes, it apepars again). As I lunge down, one of my arms takes the ball and passes it to my other arm on the other side, and I rise as the other arm lifts the ball overhead. Very cool. Sheng-hong, my trainer, made it even harder by having my front leg rest on a balance mat, which is an inflatable pad that adds a little bit of instability, so that I train my core that much more.

I always feel so much better after working out a lunch. Too bad my dealings with banks here weren't as pleasant, but I'll save that rant for later.