Gymnastique

Today, I went in for Round Two of gym work. I must admit that my upper body was really sore from Day One of the gym return, but it had settled down by today. I started off with 22 minutes of cycling to warm up, then did some easy stretching. After that, it was time to get down to business. Once again, I was indulging in iPod tunes, which made the day go by much easier.

I got back to doing full sets of all the core stuff, and added in a couple of things I skipped on Tuesday (back raises and obliques). I still am short of the number of reps that I was doing back in May and June, but that will work itself out over the next couple of weeks.

For the legs, I added back the 4-way hip machine, but the machine was a different model than they used to have, so the weight was a little light today. No worries. I'll get that all dialed in by next week. Legs felt just fine, so I was happy about that.

Upper body stuff was entertaining as usual, and I eased the weight up on bench press by 5 pounds. I was done with the entire adventure in a relatively efficient 1 hour and 50 minutes, including cycle warmup, and I did full sets of everything on my usual list.

Katrina

I have a lot of family in Mississippi, and it seems that all of them found safe havens during the storm. My brother-in-law (my brother's wife's brother) is working on his Ph.D in psychology in Gulfport/Biloxi, but he moved up to Jackson last weekend to stay with family, with just some clothes, his guitar and his laptop computer. His apartment near the beach is totally destroyed, so what he has with him is all he's got. Fortunately, most of his PhD work is on his computer, but his books and papers are all gone now. He's thankful for his life, though.

My brother and sister-in-law live in Vicksburg, and they are still without power even now. They got phone service back yesterday, and they have running water and natural gas, so they are better off than most. Strangely enough, they even have cable, although he doesn't have power to watch it. A neighbor has their power back on, and David has an extension cord running from their house to his, powering an upstairs window A/C unit and their refrigerator. David reports that except for some tension in the city over gasoline shortages, Vicksburg seems to be more or less back to normal. He reports that winds in Vicksburg, some 150 miles from the coast, were a steady 70 mph during the height of Katrina's visit through the northern part of the state.

My uncle's daughter even gave birth to a girl on Monday, as the storm closed in on Jackson, where they live. The girl is destined to be called Katrina, but her name is MacKenzie.

Keep all the victims of Katrina in your thoughts and prayers. Even though help is arriving in force daily, it's going to be a very very long time until life shifts away from survival mode along the coast. I know New Orleans is under water, and the situation is dire there, but Mississippi actually took the most brutal aspect of the storm. There's a lot of folks with nowhere to go.