I began my work out today by walking the 1.1 mile to the campus. Not a bad start to today’s step aerobics!

Today was another beautiful, warm day, and wow did we ever feel it in step class. Sadly they still don’t have the air conditioning turned on in the building, so our best cooling system is a huge fan. Trust me, it doesn’t work as well as you may think. I sweated soooo much that it was dripping off of me like water had been dumped onto my head.

I managed to keep up with the steps better today than I did on Monday, though I still missed a few of the more advanced steps. Anyway, it was better and I kept up with most of it, so I suppose that it was good enough today.

A new step was introduced today as well. How’s this for crazy?

Read the rest of this entry »

I slightly increased my weight work out today. This was accomplished by not reducing the amount of weight that is used on the second repetition for some of the exercises.

Everything was normal aside from that. Everything has two repetitions:

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the best review that I’ve read about Vanguard, and sadly I’m not the one who wrote it. Click here to read it. Now that’s an honest review.

Step Aerobics

Step aerobics started out terrible today. I missed pretty much every step, turn, skip, you name it. I think that about a third of the class went by before I got my brain into it.

The step instructor had us get weights, an exercise ball (“swiss ball“) and Yoga mat before we began, and it wasn’t long after my brain woke up that we put the weights to use.

We typically began using the weights at the end of the class, but the instructor has decided that this was a very bad idea and we shall henceforth begin using them at the start. My arms are now half way toward dead. From “step aerobics” no less!

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lord of The Rings Online, or “LoTRO”, is being produced by Turbine Inc. This is the same company behind Dungeons & Dragons Online (aka “DDO”).

It’s no secret that DDO is not especially popular. It breaks a great many fundamental rules of Dungeons & Dragons and in many people’s opinion it is not a good representation of D&D. I will be straight out about this and say that I am one of the people who have that opinion.

Turbine themselves gave a significant blow to their reputation with an expansion for Asheron’s Call 2. They released the expansion whilst knowing full will that they were going to pull the plug on the entire game, yet they gave no indication that this was going to be the case. As far as I know no refunds were offered. This was very under handed behavior.

Why do I bring all of this up in my post about LoTRO? It’s because I want everyone to know what my bias is. There are a lot of people who either rant or rave about something but their point of view is never fully disclosed. I believe that it’s important to lay all of the cards out on the table.

With all of that said it may be surprising, then, that I don’t have a solely negative point of view of LoTRO. Thus it’s also important to point out that I am not a huge fan of Tolkein’s writing, but I loved the movies and the animated version of The Hobbit.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are three items that are currently broken in my installation of Windows Vista Ultimate. There does not seem to be a way to fix these issues so I am at the mercy of Microsoft eventually fixing this. Some day… hopefully.

These are all issues specific to my machine. I am not saying that these are universal Vista problems. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s frustrating to not have all of my books. Oh, I have all of the books on order – save for one absurdly priced title ($197!) – at my university’s book store. That order was placed several days ago and it has yet to make any progress. So while I wait for them to process the order I make do as best as I can with my notes.

That said, I have my first test score back. The test was in Developmental Psychology and it had a score of about 80%. This is far below what I’m capable of doing (my previous semester was a straight 4.0 GPA), but at least it’s passing. Hopefully I will hear something about those books, and soon!

Perhaps I’ll pay them a visit next Tuesday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Step Aerobics -

Step aerobics went fairly well today. I managed to get most of the steps and I really didn’t care too much about the ones that I did miss, but I did manage to slip once on the step.

It was warmer today than it’s been in a good long time; the weather’s been great these past couple of days.

Unfortunately for step aerobics, however, this means that we got a lot hotter during our work out than we’ve previously experienced. Everyone was hitting the water between aerobic segments, and I managed to soak my shirt with sweat even though I wore my Under Armour today as well.

I love that shirt. It makes working out sooo much more comfortable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today was my first day actually back inside of the step class after missing two sessions due to being sick. Before it began, however, I spent 20 minutes or so in the cardio room on a bike machine to warm my legs up and to get my heart going. I didn’t want to be too sluggish once the actual stepping began.

The step aerobics went well enough. I managed to keep up with most of the steps and that’s what’s most important. If every class period would go so smoothly then I wouldn’t mind Step nearly as much.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s weight training class went well despite having just got over being sick, though I did have to reduce some weights.

Various areas that were worked, going by memory, were:

• Grip (a nifty device where you lift something using your fingers. this works the lower forearm / grip). I do 50 to 55 pounds for this.
• Shoulders, first rep is 70 lbs, second is 60
• abs. I do sit ups by sitting on a raised bench, bracing my feet out in the air in front of me, and sitting up (not quite all of the way). With an without torso twists.
• Thighs (at about 45 pounds) & back of thigh (45 pounds first rep, 35 second rep)
• biceps, both front & back, at whatever weight suits my fancy.
• calfs (I generally lift 35 pounds for the calfs)
• chest… I think. Working the chest muscles is actually a bit more difficult than one would imagine. whatever weight suits my fancy.

I pretty much try to do a full body work out. It takes me a half an hour or so to complete the entire work out.

Weights for every muscle group are in a regular state of flux. This is because I’m doing step aerobics and yoga as well as the weight training, and each class works various muscle groups, at times considerably.

There’s that update for today. I’ll try to remember to keep my Fitness category updated better than I have been, but again, the schedule…

~Steph