Books (for HotWings)
 

Wings - we have one like that here. He's 9 1/4. You've had some great suggestions already. What can I say? First of all, I read almost all of the books he does. Not really for suitability, more to have shared experiences we can laugh about and discuss. (Eg from this morning, 'Do you remember when Amos started that ...ing up the wall competition?' 'Terrible!' That's from the Boyhood of Burglar Bill by Allan Ahlberg.) I/we've just finished Hoot (Carl Hiaasen) which Lydia mentioned, from the library. I've read it before as I like Hiaasen's adult books and wanted to see if Hoot would be OK. It was this summer for this 9 year-old but wouldn't have been last summer.

New books are all very well but old books can be even better! I'm about as old as Mel and I/we have just read a few Jack Londons here. The Call of the Wild and White Fang. And we came across The White Silence in a charity shop which I didn't read but DS thought wasn't up to scratch. They add enormously to experience. Just reading Helen Cresswell's 1970s books about the Bagthorpe family (truly terrible family - puts our home life into perspective!). Philip Pullman's books for younger readers (The New Cut Gang books with Sharkey Bob in them - he eats anything and everything, you've got to be careful with him about.) Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna is wonderful.

Brings me on to charity shops. I buy mountains of books there. With a quick clean they are fine. There is a lot of rubbish but there are also some real finds. Wonderful books which I thought I'd never see again.

We live in a house with tottering piles of books, newspapers and magazines everywhere so there is always reading material. Cheryl's point about getting a stack of books from the library with no pressure to read them is right on target. They may be for the wrong age-group or 'reading age', they may be for girls or for adults but they may have something in them which captures the imagination or provides one piece of information to fit into a puzzle. And, here at least, you don't have to read the whole book, cover to cover. Flicking through is something which mature readers do, all the time.

Libraries. We all have library cards. DS has a limit of 30 on his card, upgraded by the librarians when they saw the way things were going. They recommend books, we request books. And because we live in a rural area we are always travelling around to different places, and we call into the nearest library for a poke about (they are in a network and we can use our cards in all of them, and return to all of them).

A series? What about the Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence? It went down very, very well here. Or the Grk books by Joshua Doder. I think Pat has bought them for her library so she will know how they are going down with a N American readership.

Good luck with it! It's such fun. :)

Silence (and a few chortles) from the room next door. He's reading Asterix and the Normans by Goscinny and Uderzo. Comic book full of hilarious puns, bits of information and ridiculous carryings-on. Bliss for all of us.

Back later. I'd like to talk about planning food but I've run out of time for the moment. :wave:

Good morning everybody!
I feel so good this morning - I slept almost 10 hours (well, I was up for about an hour in the middle of the night) - what a luxury. Nothing appears to be hurting, at least to too much - I am still alive!

Cheryl, I am definitely doing the Filthy Fifty this afternoon - although I may have to modify it somewhat. First, I have to cut the grass - we expect another 2 days of torrential rains - then P90X Chest & Back - and Filthy Fifty later.

Alena

Well, if you're doing it, I'm doing it! We've got a B-day workout coming up tomorrow at our gym, no idea what that is going to be, but hopefully I'll be able to walk on Tuesday. :rofl:

I'm NOT doing the filthy fifty! I did dirty 30 a week and a half ago. Nuf said. Tomorrow is heavy leg day for me...

Last night we went to a Thai restaurant with my father, aunt and step mother, and I had...bean sprouts and cabbage. I ordered salmon wrapped in grape leaves and grilled, no sauce. I specifically asked the waiter if there was any salt or sugar added to the salmon (very Thai) and he said no. One bite was way more than enough and I could barely force myself to swallow it. Dh was sick all night from his curry. Lovely.

Today is rest day, and so far I've vacuumed the upstairs, started a load of laundry and written my shopping list :rofl:

Have a good one!

In honor of the Tomato, I did 50 pushups in the middle of my run/walk today.

so 110 pushups/60 pullups

PS Happy Birthday, oh red one!! Hope it was a great day!!

Mel, you're dead to me now! :snooty:

I did the Hillbilly Home Gym Filthy Fifty, as close to Rx'd as it gets around here, and it only took me about 12 hours! Okay, 42 minutes and 13 seconds, whatever! The good news is, I did NOT get a cramped up hip/leg on the burpees! woot! :carrot: The bad news is, I tripped over the toolbox on the box jump, and scraped the bejeepers out of my left shin...there was blood and everything! Well, skin is for sissies! (like Mel! :rofl:)

:hb: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALENA! :woo: :bday2you: :woo:

Next year, you're turning 21 again, just FYI! :faint:

Well, it was a GREAT birthday, I have to say.
I did the P90X Chest and Back (which is pretty much nothing but 55 minutes of push ups and pull ups). Then 16 minutes of Ab Ripper (it comes right after the Chest / Back on the same DVD). The Ab Ripper is really tough. Lots of gruntin'!!

I gave myself some time to recover and when there were no more classes I did my own version of the Filthy Fifty (not the same as Mel prescribed, but was already have dead and Mel bailed out completely so no comments from the peanut gallery ....:p)
50 box jumps (although not 24" high)
50 floor wipes
50 weighted lunges
50 kettlebell swings
50 medicine ball russian twists
and I had enough.

Cheryl, sorry to hear about your scraped leg! hope it doesn't hurt too much.

We have had the most terrible weather. Stepping outside feels like falling into a pot of warm soup. Two of the most terrible thunderstorms yesterday, with torrential downpours and winds so strng that trees were bending almost at 90 degrees. I am not scared very often but I truly was last night. We had gazilion of power outages all day and in the evening when I wanted to post an update they were about 2 minutes apart.... not worth trying.
More of same weather today and then it should hopefully improve.

Ack! I see I have lost all credibility here! Congratulations to those who did some version of the Filthy Fifty. I PROMISE I will do it this week, but today is heavy legs and I'm not skipping it!

Alena- Welcome to the Fountain of Youth Club! Glad you had a great birthday :)

I'm sore from Saturday's workout and Sunday's garden hacking between the thunderstorms workout :rofl: Eating wasn't good, but I think I sweated all the carbs out woring outside for several hours in tropical jungle conditions. I also now have poison ivy :( I think I did 50 buckets of weeds....does that count?

Have a good one,

Mel

Aw, Mel, you know I was only messing with you, since the Filthy 50 was your idea...you're still the boss of me! :D

Alena, your version sounds worse than mine...50 floor wipes would have killed me. My leg is fine, it just got scraped when I kicked the box over...I like the tractor tires at the gym better, because they don't hurt when you miss. Anyway, you are definitely the boss of me, doing all that P90X then all the 50 rep stuff!

I've got to run, try and get to the gym early so I can practice some of the bazillion things on my "needs improvement" list. I'll catch you peeps later! Oh! Almost forgot...the scale was nice this morning: 164.8! :carrot:

Alena - happy yesterday was your birthday! I didn't make it by here yesterday to say that! Sorry!

I'm doing some version of the 50 today - I was wiped out dead yesterday, so held it off for today. I'm not sure what all to do yet - I don't have a box to jump on... Hmm...

Hi to everyone else!

Cheryl,
But who says I am not deader than the dead today? I am sore in places I didn't even know I had.

By the way, congrats on the weight. So now I am officially trailing behind you. LOL
But I have a teeny weiny improvement to report - got body analysis done at the naturopath clinic at lunch today and I lost a pound of fat (ok, that's embarassingly little to admit) and gained a pound of LBM. I'll take that! My BF% shifted from 21.3% to 20.5% (although the reading from the gym gizmo will be higher). But the naturopath swears hers is a very precise gadget that is used at cancer clinics (as apparently they need to track how quickly a cancer patient loses LBM).

At work, we get a pound of chocolate covered almonds for our birthday each year. So I picked mine up at the reception today, and handed them over to a young colleague (a single mom) who has two little kidlets at home.
Now, there was a left over frozen cake from Dairy Queen at the servery - I risked my life for one of the last slices which I brought to a coworker with whom I share a workstation (he was on the phone). I don't eat Dairy Queen.:p
Then somebody was handing Ferrero chocolate candy. I said "No, thanks". That's 3 times in one day. Ok, but I do admit I did have French fries with my birthday dinner on Saturday night. :o

Shannon, I had to get creative, too. I found a toolbox in the garage that was 20" or so, and used that. I used a dumbbell for the swings, the apple tree for my pull-up bar to do the jumping PUs and knees to elbows. For wallball, I didn't have anything good, or any dumbbell weights left, so I just used a basketball, but doing thrusters (squat to push-press) with DBs is a typical sub for the wallball (but it's still hard even with just a basketball, just FYI). You could also just pick some exercises and do 50 reps each...anything fifty times is gonna kick your butt! Have fun with it!

So, at my gym today, guess what was in the Birthday workout? Yes, my worst nightmare after the previous two days: push press, wallball, knees to elbows! Somebody just SHOOT me! :lol3:

Here's what we did today:
Run 360 meters
14 Pull-ups
Run 360
14 Lawn Mowers (reps each side, 35# men/25# women)
Run 360
14 Push Press (135# men/95# women)
Run 360
14 Twisted Wallball (20#/14#, stand sideways to the target, squat, stand and twist to hit the target with the ball, 14 each side)
Run 360
14 Knees to Elbows (hanging from pull-up bar, knees touch elbows or just raise knees as high as you can)

My time was 24:23, pretty slow, but I went as heavy as I could on all the weights: Rx'd weights for lawn mowers and wallball, 75# for push press, pink band for pull-ups (tried to get some unassisted PUs, but couldn't do it today). My KTEs were close, but not quite Rx'd.

After the WOD was over, I stuck around and helped out with the CFkids class, spotting for the smaller munchkins on the pull-up bar during their workout, then helped my trainer roll all the strongman stones over to their new location in the gym... he's doing some rearranging, to try and make room for a bigger kiddie playland, since we've got a lot of toddlers and babies in the mornings, that need a safe place to hang out while the big peeps do the workout.

Yesterday, since I was home all day, I caught up on a lot of laundry, got the dishes done, and gave the kitchen, laundry room, bathroom and front room a good vacuuming/dusting. Today I plan to mop the hard floors and vacuum the bedrooms. It was getting a bit too Addams Family (cobwebs and dust) here, so I'm trying to catch up on my housework! The van has sprung a new leak, too, so I need to look in the repair manual to see what it is leaking, exactly. Cars are not my thing, but that's what the Haines manual is for, right? ;)

ETA: Alena, we were posting at the same time. I was wondering if you'd be able to move today, after all that yesterday! :hug: Congrats on the new BF%! :carrot: That's a great Bday present, right there!

Thanks Cheryl! I had thought to substitute what you described as thrusters for the push press, as I don't have a barbell. Hmm... now I have to think some more...