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Protest sign

- From my Aunt Nancy

Sunday Gary and I went to an art exhibit and the Santa Monica Pier called Ashes and Snow. It was a bunch of sepia tone photos and three videos of wild animals arranged with indiginous humans in various poses. It was supposed to be very artsy, but it just seemed contrived and pretenious to me. You can see a sampling of some of the photos here.

GaryMoo

Passover Weekend 06

I took a couple days off this week for Passover. I helped my Mom set up and clean up our family seder Wednesday. Unfortunately some regulars couldn't make it to Passover at the Parkhursts. Arlan and David, who have moved to Israel, my grandparents, who don't like to drive at night anymore, and my brother, who reportedly wasn't feeling well and said he had to go to class early the next day - they were all sorelyl missed. But there were quiet a few new folks and with the food they brought, made this year's seder the tastiest yet.

Thursday we went family friends for another seder. And even though my grandparents were unable to come down Wednesday, Friday my Mom and I drove up to Santa Barbara to visit them. So far my days off have been well spent. Happy Passover!

“For all the exercise I do, I should be pencil thin!”

Myth: The more you exercise, the more fat you lose.

Often, the more you exercise, the hungrier you get and:

* the more you eat, or
* the more your believe you “deserve” to eat, or
* the more you want to eat as a reward for having both gotten to the gym and survived the exercise session.

But if you spend 60 minutes in a spin class and burn off 600 calories, only to reward yourself with twelve Oreos (600 calories), you quickly wipe out your weight loss efforts in less than 3 minutes.

-- From an excellent article on why exercising alot might not actually help with weight loss. Ah, the story of my life, and I do love those oreos.

Sunday Tri

Sunday I raced my first triathlon of the season in the LA Championship series sprint triathlon. I was nervous about it, mostly because the weather has been particularly cold, and I don't use a wetsuit. It was also a bit jarring that I had to get up super early on the first day after the daylight savings change.

Despite not getting as much sleep as I'd like the night before, the race went pretty well. The lake was quite cold, at 60 degrees, but I'm proud I swam it without a wetsuit. My time was slower than last year, 1:41:45 as compared to 1:37:29, but not too bad. And I got that wonderful natural high after finishing a race. Here's a picture of me on the run.

I plan to do the whole LA championship series this year, three races, a month apart, gradually increasing in distance. They give prizes for each race and for the three combined races in each category three deep. Since I'm along way off from winning a prize in my age group category, I registered in the "Athena" category. In my opinion, it is a bogus category. The only requirement to be an Athena is weighing more than 140 pounds, regardless of height or age. But I'm more likely to get a prize that way, so why not? My next triathlon in the series is April 29.