Too durn hot

You know, when the temperature is reaching (almost) record-setting levels is not really the best time to be resuming an exercise program. Particularly when there is no fan or A/C in my office. It reached 102 F today, which is pretty hot for Minneapolis. They expect it to stay above 90 for eight days or so. It's still 92 F at 10:20 p.m.

But I did okay, doing a Sharon Mann light weight-lifting/interval cardio workout, 30 minutes. It's a fun and quite unique program because it incorporates balance challenges into the weightlifting, and it has a really cool exercise I've never seen on any other workout tape or DVD, which manages to target the obliques with weights. That you don't see very often! You stand on one leg and raise the other to the side (abductor engaged). You lift two weights from your hip that is abducting up in a diagonal motion over the opposite shoulder, over your head, as if you're raising an ax. Then open and lower the two weights from over your head to your hip level and cross them in a figure eight motion in front of your body as you squat and switch your weight to the other leg. Then you engage the abductor in the (newly) non-supporting leg, and repeat on the other side. The balance challenge makes it really difficult, and it targets the obliques amazingly well. And I did a 20 minute free Yoga podcast. Free Yogamazing classes at iTunes, oh joy. I felt the stiffness from Thursday's more strenuous weights workout, which I expected; the second day afterwards is always the worst.

Although I cannot be totally smug. Yes, I did work out, and yes, I did eat sensible, healthy meals with lots of vegetables.

But I did succumb to the last of the avocado ice cream tonight. Mmm.

Rob was working today. I took Delia to get her hair trimmed, and then we went to get her annual birthday portrait done. We've had the good luck to be working with an excellent photographer who has been doing our family since the girls were babies; he works at our local Proex. He has always done such good work, and it was, as usual, a very good shoot. I like his eye; he suggested a color for the background which wouldn't have occurred to me, and it worked really well. I'll get the pictures next week, and I'll update Delia's icon. She really is looking stunningly pretty these days.

Hot. Everyone on line is complaining about it tonight. Rob got the window A/C installed in our bedroom just in time, bless him.

I do believe I am going to go down and snabble a Luigi's Italian lemon ice from the freezer. The very best way to beat a heat wave.

What do you like to do to keep cool?

Coming to Lumos?

Are you planning to come to Lumos? If you are and you'd like to meet me and/or Rob, leave me a comment. We are not staying at the hotel, but we plan to arrive early and leave late every day. We will be in Vegas Wednesday through the following Monday (longer than I would like, but we are going there to support the HPEF board of directors--Rob's a member, and I'm an advisory). I will be delivering a paper of my own 1:30 - 1:55 p.m. on Saturday ("A Shining Silver Thread: Memory and Identity in the Harry Potter Novels"), and I'll serve as the moderator on the HP/Tolkien panel ("On Hobbits and Wizards: Comparing the Magical Realms of Middle-Earth and Hogwarts") from 4:00 - 4:50. Dammit, blpurdom, that one is scheduled opposite your paper. And opposite Steve Vander Ark's presentation, too.

My christmas cactus

Here's my meme: drop me a comment telling me about a little thing in your life, so little and perhaps innocuous that you've never mentioned it before in any post you've ever done, but it's been there for years, or at least as long as you've been keeping a Livejournal.

I've been a more or less enthusiastic (if somewhat ignorant) gardener for years. But I have less luck with house plants. I've managed to kill everyone I've ever had, except for one.

My Christmas cactus is twenty-four years old. I got it as a Secret Santa gift from a coworker back in 1982. Which, when you think about it, is pretty amazing, isn't it?

The problem with house plants, of course, is that eventually I always forget to water them for long stretches of time. I've had ivies that I've kept alive for a good long time, for up to a couple years at a time, but if you forget too long, they will croak. The only one I really felt bad about was the ivy that I had sprouted off the ivy in my wedding bouquet. I felt really guilty when I lost that one.

But I can't kill the Christmas cactus. I think there have been times I have forgotten it for as long as a month, and the soil is like concrete. Sometimes the leaves can get a little shriveled. Occasionally, I will re-pot it (about once every year and a half, but my usual practice is to neglect it shamefully.

It always forgives me, though, and it lives.

It has gradually gotten bigger over the years, very slowly. It still is not too big for the oval table inherited from my great-grandfather, where it has been sitting for the last fifteen years or so.

It blooms (if all goes well) around Christmas and again around Easter. You need to lower the temperature at night to encourage the plant to bloom. I never am organized enough to move it to a cooler room, but it is against a window, and since it gets cold in Minnesota, it will suddenly start developing buds in December. On one side only, the side against the window where the ever-so-slight draft cools the air. When it is blooming, I turn it around so that the dark pink flowers face the room.