A bunch of pictures from my camera phone

Camera Phone - sounds like something from "Get Smart".

Pictures of my latest foster dog, Aurora. She is a lab mix. Weighs about 40 pounds.

Some ugly figurines for sale at a garage sale. What I love about the camera phone is that I can just take a picture then mock the item without buying the item. The rest of the items at this garage sale were quite nice and tasteful. Somebody probably bought one figurine as a joke, then someone else saw it and assumed that these people like this stuff so they bought more figurines like this as a gift. That's why I never have certain items laying around in plain sight in my house.

More pictures of Edgar, the parakeet. He comes out of the cage on his own and allows himself to perch on a shoulder.

I have a scan of the post card on my desk in one of my blog entries. It is a church in Oklahoma City - the church of the future.

This is Isaac, a former foster dog of mine. He still needs a forever home. You can read more about him at http://www.woodstocktexas.org. He loves to stare at the small animals at Petco - hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, ferrets. He will stand in one place and stare for 30 minutes or more. The guinea pigs are his favorite.

I've always wanted to do a series called, "Damn, your house is ugly!" Attending garage sales allows me to see a lot of badly designed houses. This style I dubbed The Flintstones meet The Brady Bunch

The house next door sporting the same Flintbrady style.

Some furniture the Flintbradys were selling. The fabric on these chairs really brighten up a room - several rooms, even rooms in other houses.

I actually ate this. I cooked it in the microwave, put it in my mouth, chewed it and swallowed. It did not taste bad. It is Gardenburger's version of a McRib, without the bun. It looked pretty much the same when it left my body.

Furniture and Functional Fitness

My new office furniture arrived and I put it together with some help from student workers. My new computer and components are not in place yet, so I've hooked up my current computer. Just the monitor, keyboard, mouse and Ethernet. No sound or printing. I wanted enough to do some work. All my stuff is still piled up in my office. I will start putting it up this afternoon.

I'm way behind on my scanning but I have 17 days worth of cartoons ready to go.

I subscribe to a number of health and fitness e-newsletters. Four of them often refer to "functional fitness" without really defining it. They do say that their exercise programs make you functionally fit as opposed to the false fitness involved in weight lifting and long distance cardio. I find the exercises they recommend useful and quite effective, especially when other gym users hoard equipment. I also lift weights and run long distances in training for a specific race. When not training for a race I do shorter bursts of running with an emphasis on speed. I would like to be able to maintain a 10:00 minute/ mile pace very comfortably for a marathon.

I find some of the statements that these exercise gurus make about marathon running a bit annoying but the statements are just opinions. Really, it is more of an attitude that they don't enjoy marathon running but if you do that's fine. None of them recommend it as a way to get fit. I wouldn't recommend marathon running as a means of becoming fit. I took it up to test my limits and found that I enjoyed doing it. I limit myself to one or two marathons a year. I had to do other things in order to get fit enough to take on the challenge. Fitness is a side effect.

Back to "functional fitness". I've decided to define it as the ability to do something outside one's normal routine; for example, assemble and move furniture, and still have the ability to do one's regular exercise routine without injury. I moved, lifted and assembled furniture then was able to do my circuit on Tuesday and run over 2 miles on Wednesday. I'm not tired or sore.

Hopefully, I can have my new computer in place today. That will make it easier to arrange the rest of my office.