Well, if you look at the timestamp on this post you’ll see that I’m writing this at 3:29am on Friday morning. I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that God is preparing me for fatherhood. Let me recap my previous nights for you:
Wednesday night / Thursday morning: I wake up at 4:30am to find out that my wife has apparently conclusively determined that her body can’t handle jalepenos while she’s pregnant. I stay up with her in between puking sessions and then take a quick “cat nap” before I have to wake up at 5:30am for Ironman.
Thursday night / Friday morning: My dog Chloe decides that it is playtime at 3:00am by parading around our room in hopes that we’ll get out of bed. When that doesn’t work she resorts to making this high-pitch whining noise which I’m not even sure how she makes. I’ve now determined this to be one of the few noises MORE annoying than my alarm clock. Impressive. When that backfires on her and we lock her in her crate she responds by throwing up inside and outside of it. We then get up and take her out to go to the bathroom because evidently she is on some time schedule that we aren’t keeping up with.
And the encouraging thing about all this? People keep telling me that I have till mid-november to enjoy my sleep. So until then, here’s to preparation.
Thanks to my friend John, I found an amazing website where you can see what your yearbook picture would look like for any given year. Here is what I’d look like through the decades…
Click here to try it yourself and enjoy!
So I read an article in the Arizona Republic today about air-guitar competitions. Yes, you read that right. Air guitar. What are they playing? The air. And boy are they excited about it.
I saw this on TV awhile back and thought it was a joke. Now I realize I’ve been missing out on an entire industry of rock. Have we become this bored and over-saturated as a culture that we’ve turned to this for entertainment? As one contestant boldly proclaimed: “It’s what America needs right now.” Really?
What goes into air guitar competitions? I’m glad you asked. According to the article:
There definitely is technique involved. Judges, who openly down real beer during the competitions, look for stage presence, energy and authenticity. They also look for “airness.”
Authenticity and airness are a complicated formula. They look to see that competitors actually play the song. They look at wardrobe, which often includes fringed sleeves, tight pants and sunglasses. They look at shtick.
They interviewed a guy named Julian Vican about his aspirations of air-guitar-greatness. He recently competed in a contest where “A shirtless man dressed as a Viking ripped air and ripped off his plaid kilt to reveal a fur thong. He got points for the surprise factor.” Julian said this about his prep for the events:
“It’s kind of fun,” he said of the goofy nature of air guitar. “It’s like, ‘What am I getting nervous about?’ I don’t actually have to play the song.”
Brilliant. Now there is a competition worth watching. Hats off to our ever evolving culture of entertainment. If this is what America needs right now then we are in worse shape than I ever imagined.
Each of us have to wrestle with our own concepts of exercise. Like most people, I have tried to stay in some type of shape using the common ways. And I haven’t done a good job. So I’ve recently come to the conclusion that a gym membership is not a realistic idea for me to maintain even though I’ve had one for about a year now. (By the time you get into workout clothes, drive there, workout on the machines you want and wait patiently while others are using them, drive back home, change and shower…you’ve used up a whole evening – yes, you could do this in the morning time but I don’t like mornings). So I’ve done some soul searching and tried to figure out what I could actually maintain realistically with my schedule. In case you haven’t heard, ministry isn’t exactly a 9 to 5 job.
I started looking into home gyms and noticed that the Bowflex systems aren’t quite the eye-sore that other units are. And you don’t have to carry around and store a bunch of heavy weights. I began to realize that their 20 minute workout routines are actually doable with my schedule. The only problem is that they are ridiculously expensive!
And then it dawned on me, I could take advantage of how we all are when it comes to exercise and buy a used system from someone who came to the same realization about their Bowflex that I came to about my gym membership. So I got Michelle hunting on Craigslist.
We were able to find a couple that practically has stock in Bowflex. The one we found was bought about a year ago and hardly used at all. The guy told me that his wife had a previous model and then wanted to upgrade so they bought this one, then she “didn’t like the way it felt” so they were selling it to buy another one (brand new). So if you’re doing the math, that is like 3 brand new systems in about 3 years. These are the type of people I was looking for.
Kudos to Jared for signing up for the adventure with me to go get it. We found ourselves in one of the most awkward situations of my life as a result, but that is a story I will save for a sermon illustration. All in all, we were able to buy a Bowflex for a fraction of the price it was a year ago and now I’m on a journey to make it a part of my lifestyle. So feel free to ask me how I’m doing with it so that I get some extra accountability!
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