My Run

This was a quick run at the end of a workout. I had pushed myself pretty hard and fast on the calisthenics, so I just did my minimum run.

Used Watch

I used my new watch yesterday. It occurred to me that if I just run the stop watch all day, then it will count my calories all day for me too.
It was a little bit disconcerting actually. I did eat breakfast before school. And I did work out, but at the end of the workout, I had only burned about 400 calories and I thought something like, "Well, if that's all I burn in a medium type workout, then I must not be using as many calories per day as I thought. I'm only going to burn around 2200 kcal today."
So in the early afternoon when I was getting hungry and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I checked my watch and it said I had burned over 1600 calories already. I hadn't even done anything since breakfast! I thought something like "Man! I'm gunna die if I don't hurry up and eat something. I can't believe how many calories it takes just to continue living while I do nothing."
Fortunately, I had some Cliff bars and a Lara bar in my backpack, so I didn't die. I wished that I had a bottle of water in there too, because then I could have not-died in better style, but the empty bottle I had was starting to get a little gross, so I didn't want to fill it again.
I continued to not do anything active the rest of the day and I lived like I normally do with the exception of wearing my watch and the chest band. I also wore it to bed. It's amazing how many calories I burn while I sleep.
The watch also tells me continuously what my heart rate is. That was interesting because I thought I should have a heart rate of around 65 all day except when I exert myself. It turns out that 65 is only good for a resting and really doing nothing heart rate. An awake and moving around doing nothing heart rate for me is closer to 90. Before bed, while I read my scriptures etc I checked my watch a few times and my heart rate dropped below 50 sometimes.
So my calorie reading this morning was 3300 kcal. !!!!!!1 My metabolism is higher than I thought. I don't know how I cram that many calories into me every day. I also don't have any idea how many calories are in most foods, so I don't really have that much frame of reference to justify my surprise.

New Watch

A couple weeks ago I thought I had lost my watch and needed another one. So I started looking up watches on the internet, and I found one with a heart rate monitor within my price range. I thought it might be similar to Tamara's body bugg, but it's not. What it does do is monitor my heart rate. So I've been wearing it today under my shirt. In the picture it looks like I'm wearing it outside my shirt, but that's only because you wouldn't be able to see it otherwise. I actually wear it underneath where it can have contact with my skin.
If I start the stop watch while I run, then it will record my heart rate, so at the end I can see what my average heart rate was and max and min. It can also be set to a target heart rate and sound an alarm when I go to high or too low. So it doesn't tell me how many calories I've burned all day and graph it for me, but it does tell me how many I've burned total during the time that the stopwatch goes.

New Nail

Last Friday, my nail was getting rougher and more annoying, and making me worry that it was going to rip and cause big problems. So after my workout at 24hr Fitness, being across the street from the mall, I decided to get my nail fixed. I had to really look around to find their nail salon, which was packed. there must have been 20 or 30 people in this small room doing manicures and all kinds of stuff. I only wanted to get 1 nail fixed, so they were a little confused, but they had me sit down with some guy and asked him to do it for me.
I guess he's only used to making long beautiful fake nails, because that's what he put on me and I only wanted to get my nail filled in a little. I'm thinking functional/safety, not beauty, so I told him I want it short like my other nails. He did file it down a bit, but he filed the sides too and the shape was all funny. He only charged me $3 so I tipped him $2 and got out of there before he could do any more to me. When I got home, I got my nail clippers out and cut it short like the rest of my nails.
Now you can only tell that I have a fake nail if you look really close and know what to look for. It doesn't catch on my clothes anymore and I can even scratch my head or do whatever I usually do with nails like normal now.
Unfortunately, even with my nail fixed, I still do guy things with my hands and lose skin in the process (see lower left corner of picture.) I'm just too male to have beautiful hands for the wedding pictures. If it ends up mattering, I do have the GIMPfu (read: photoshop skills) to edit problems out of the picture.

First Flight

Directly after I finished my Calculus III final, I picked up Tamara and went to the airport. I had never seen the airport parking lots so full, but that's mostly because I don't fly often I imagine. We had to park way over in the far east parking towers, to which place I had never been before. Then we rode the shuttle over to the terminals. I had done that before, but not in Phoenix. We had thought we were in a hurry, but when we got close to our terminal, we could see that the plane wasn't even there yet, so we had some lunch and visited while we waited. It was nice having Tamara there to wait with me and fly with me.
In Denver there was a subway to ride from the terminal to the main airport building, where Mom and Dad were waiting right where we come out.
Tamara and I stopped for the picture, so we wouldn't be blurry, but no one else around seemed to care if they were blurry. Maybe they just didn't realize that what Mom was holding was a camera. They didn't even smile.
We also got a picture in the car, but the lighting wasn't quite as good.

Finals Death

In this picture I am dying of finals. Tamara's computer is in front of me (she's using mine.) My phone and calculator are off to the side, and I'm taking notes - from my notes. I don't normally keep a roll of toilet paper on my bed, but I have a terrible cold and I don't want to drip on my notes. The afghan behind me was made by Grandma Mickey. It looks like I have a really big piece of paper in my lap, but really that's because I use a piece of dry-erase board as my lap desk.
I turned the thermostat all the way down to 80 degrees so that I could stress out about my homework without over-heating. When I'm happy, I normally keep it at 84 degrees, but intense frustration makes me hot.
It's almost bedtime. Hooray. I might get up at 3 in the morning to study some more. or I might sleep in really late until 6. That's what I did this morning. I don't use my time as well when I sleep in so late though, so we'll see.

Scars

I heard a mathematician on one of my podcasts explain how scars form. Apparently, normal skin has fibers going every which way randomly like a great net in 3D that the cells fit into. A scar consists of the same fibers and cells mostly, but with the fibers all lined up straight instead of random. Well, he did say that he was oversimplifying things and I'm telling it from memory, but it made sense to me at the time. I thought I would post a picture of one of my great scars, but as it turns out, almost all of my scars are so faded that I wouldn't be able to get a good picture. I guess my skin can't even stay in orderly straight lines. Randomity is in the nature of my flesh, but maybe it's only skin deep.
The best scar I could find was on my left hand and it doesn't even have a fun story. I wanted to take a picture of the scar on my knee, but it's almost all gone. I got it by walking too close to a sharp tree. The scar used to be crescent shaped pointing forward. A few months later it was still crescent shaped, but pointing the other way somehow. >sigh< The more scars I get the fewer I have.