redbird | A visit to Schenectady (Reply)

cattitude and I went to visit his parents over the weekend. A relatively quick overnight trip: up Saturday morning and back Sunday evening, so one night away and no time off from work. But we didn't get home until bedtime last night (we stopped at a diner near Penn Station for supper rather than deal with that when we got home), in part because we spent an hour and a half on the Schenectady railroad platform waiting for a delayed train. It's a risk you take with the Adirondack, but the other trains weren't at anything like convenient times.

Mostly we sat around and talked; there were chunks where I listened to Cattitude's parents telling him news about his relatives, or asking "do you remember thus-and-such" and them reminiscing, along with conversation about birds and accents and such.

It hadn't occurred to Cattitude to warn his parents that I can't eat spicy food, I think because they didn't used to cook that sort of thing. In this case, I discovered about three minutes too late that his mother was planning Mexican pot roast for dinner. Everyone was willing to change plans, and his father went out and got a chicken to roast, but pot roast would I think have been better, if flavored with something other than chili powder, and the chicken meant an extra trip to the supermarket by someone who isn't enjoying driving right now because of vision problems (which should be dealt with quite soon, we hope). On the other hand, Cattitude's mother started cooking the roast for Sunday dinner before we left, and he watched and took notes, so there may be a pot roast in my relatively near future.

On the more cheerful side, they plied us with lots of flavors of ice cream and sorbet, including a very nice black cherry sorbet.

When I was talking about not being able to eat spicy stuff anymore, it transpired that either we'd forgotten to tell his mother about my gall bladder surgery, or she'd forgotten about it in the three years since. This is what happens when you don't see people very often, I guess.

Sunday morning we drove to the neighborhood Cattitude and his family lived in when he was little (I think he was five when they left Schenectady), to see what he remembered (not very much), and his mother pointed out assorted things from her childhood. It was a nice outing, with a stop to look at the Mohawk River, but it added more time in the car to a weekend that already involved a lot of travel time. Cattitude's father also spent a bunch of time showing him old family photos and such, while his mother and I talked, including about her worry about the amount of his-side-of-the-family papers and heirlooms they have in boxes. Cattitude has made it clear that, all else aside, we simply don't have space to have this passed along to us in the future.

Today I went to the gym after work; a fairly ordinary workout, but reasonably satisfying. Also, I overheard one of the trainers talking a couple of pictures of one of the people she was working with; this suggests I might be able to get Emilie to do the same for me, to replace my now-very-old workout userpic. I've been assuming photography was against gym rules and didn't ask, but they might be more willing to trust their own staff using my camera than a fellow gym member or guest doing so.

Cardio, 12 minutes (heart rate display broken)
Rolled out IT band etc.
Hamstring bridge, 4 sets of 9
Ab work on large ball, 3 sets of 10
Squats, 2 sets of 15
Calf raises, 2 sets of 15
[3 of each on Thursday was too much; my knees aren't currently sure two of each wasn't.]

Psoas exercise, 3 with each leg (with the form right, not arching my back)
Some balancing standing on foam roller; it was much easier when not looking in the mirror, but at the blank wall.
Biceps curls sitting on a bench, 10 pounds each hand, 20, 15
Lat pulldown on balance platform, 35 pounds, 12; 40 pounds, 2 sets of 12
Back exercise on balance platform, 20 pounds, 3 sets or 12
Triceps exercise on balance platform, 20 pounds, 2 (or was it 3?) sets of 12
Stretches