In no particular order:

• Much to my own amazement, since my decision not to drink alcohol because it’s interfering with my exercise plan, I have not in fact had any alcohol. There was one night I actually wanted to have a cocktail, but we didn’t have a lot of time and I did have to work out the next day, so I passed. Saying no to margaritas at La Fiesta is pretty goshdarned hard, though. They make a very tasty, and very deadly, margarita.

• I know I need to post some pix of My! Amazing! Transformation!â„¢. I need to get batteries for my camera. How lame of an excuse is that? And yet: oh so true.

• My guilty pleasure these days: SecretTweet. I have no idea if these are real or not, but unless they start mentioning space aliens or something, they could be. This is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate my own life more.

• Movies we’ve seen recently:
  • Sin Nombre: I don’t know the provenance behind this movie. I was looking for something to see and I used the Rotten Tomatoes score to come up with one. It’s a film in Spanish with subtitles about a family trying to get to US from Honduras, and a boy who’s part of a violent, territorial Mexican gang, how they meet, and what happens. The simplicity of the storylines and the tightness of the focus on the story I think shows it’s clearly a first film by a young writer/director, but he’s a very talented writer/director who is interested in issues that have no easy and clean solutions.

  • Adventureland: It’s a very sweet look at summer 1987 after a kid graduates from college before he starts grad school. I’m kind of disturbed that 1987 = historical flick though. I liked it, but it was a small movie. I’m also kind of tired of movies in which everyone’s shared experience is one that I have nothing in common with. At least it’s not as bad as when I watch a high school movie and might as well be watching an artifact from a lost African culture for all I have in common with it.

  • Sunshine Cleaning: An interesting indie film that suffered from one too few passes on the script. Yes, the scriptwriter is saying this. There was some really good material in here, but it needed…I don’t know. Some kind of oomph. And less randomness.

  • I Love You Man: Paul Rudd is every girl’s fantasy boyfriend—the fantasy boyfriend you could bring home to mother. (You save the other fantasy boyfriend for…well…you know.) It was definitely an enjoyable flick, and I remember very, very little about it, other than they didn’t do the obvious (and so overdone) thing of having Rudd’s character end up in a fracas with another woman, leading his girlfriend to draw the wrong conclusions! which I was definitely expecting.

  • Monsters vs. Aliens: Jesus, does Pixar make it look easy, and then everyone else makes it look so hard. I don’t even remember that much about MvA, other than I was impressed that Hugh Laurie can do yet another accent that isn’t his normal voice. Such a great title though. Man, such a great title.

• There are simply no words to describe how much “Lost” has rocked since they, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, decided to “let the freak flag fly.” You know none of the actors signed up to be part of a sci-fi/ancient Egyptians/ghosts/assassins/time travel/comedy/romance/action/adventure spectacular, and you know just as hard that the writers/creators could give a flying fuck what the actors signed up for. They have an end date! They don’t have to spin this out forever! Let’s ROCK this town!

• Darin says the official “Lost” podcast by Damon and Carleton is Teh Awesum, so you should listen to that. (I have zero time to listen to anything, I’m finding, so I have not added it to any of my iPods, but I laugh like a hyena when Darin recounts the latest one.)

• And, as always: Actors, there are no small parts, only small actors. Michael Emerson signed for two or maybe three episodes. And he took over the entire damn series. You can do it, folks.

• I thought “The Unusuals,” a new cop show on ABC, was going to be about a precinct of detectives in NYC who have very strange, minor superpowers. I like my idea for the show much better than theirs: It turns out to be a very boring police procedural about a bunch of cops Who Are Quirky. We took it off the list of stuff to be recorded during the first half hour.

• I was mostly satisfied by the “Battlestar Galactica” finale—so long as they ended without Galactica, say, plunging into a nearby sun with everyone on board I was going to be okay. (The show was so dark for the last half season I honestly didn’t know what they were going to do.) As Ted Tally says, you have to give your audience a little glimmer of hope at the end. Just a tad. I think the BSG guys didn’t have as tight a grip on their stuff as the Lost guys do, but there was still so much wonderful stuff in there over 4 years I don’t care. (For example: if you’re going to start every episode with the statement that the Cylons have a plan, get a kilo of cocaine, lock all the writers in a room for the weekend, and figure out that damn plan before you go Season 2, okay? Remember that for next time.)

I went out with a friend last night to celebrate her birthday. Her birthday is actually March 17—one year we went to the big CB Hannegan’s St. Patrick’s Day bash, but in general March 17 is a day you want to avoid going out, if possible. (The technical term, in the original Gaelic, is “Amateur Hour.”)

Generally I have two or three drinks a week—on date night, and Saturday night. I have cocktails (I’m particularly fond of the French martini), because a year or so ago I decided, “You know what? I don’t like dry red wine, even if I don’t have the allergic reaction. I don’t even want to drink dry white wines. Sweet whites are all right, but if I’m at sweet whites, I might as well head on over to cocktails.” I had my drinks at Alexander’s Steakhouse the other night—

(Apropos of nothing: if you go to Alexander’s, don’t bother with the steak. Seriously. Their fish and seafood dishes, all of them small plates, are so much better than any of the straightforward steak things that getting anything other than that is pointless. FYI.)

—then last night I had two margaritas with my friend (who drank considerably more). I drank at least 4 times as much water as I did margaritas, and I was still a little buzzed at the end of the evening. Then I had trouble getting to sleep (as I usually do after drinking), and I woke up early (as I often do). I went running, and while the run went well, I felt logy and dehydrated doing it.

I’m supposed to be training for a marathon. I can’t do a lot of running feeling logy and dehydrated. I’m currently exercising six to seven days a week, I’m always doing something, I can’t spend too much time like this.

So today, as I was chugging yet another pint of water, I thought: “That’s it then: No more alcohol. No more drinking until the marathon.”

Doing this marathon is clearly that important to me. It was kind of a surprise when it hit me. I like having a cocktail once in a while, but I can’t afford it any more.

When I give up chocolate, you’ll know I’m really hardcore.

As I keep tweeting about, I’ve been clothes shopping recently. While nothing explains the recent fetish for expensive high heels, the need for clothes is easy: nothing that I owned in August still fits me. That is because since August I have worked my ass off to lose 30 pounds. I was wearing size 12 (which was getting a little tight), and now I’m wearing mostly size 6 or 8.

Although I did pick up a size 4 skirt from J. Crew yesterday. I think J. Crew is my new best friend. I am so happy they’re opening a store in my town.

(Anthropologie hates me. It wants me to wear size 10. I’m not going to shop there for a few more pounds.)

I refuse to say simply “I lost weight.” Sorry, it didn’t just slip off somehow. I have worked very, very hard on this. I write down everything I eat and I work out 5 to 6 days a week: 3 days of weights, 2-3 days of aerobic exercise. I’m entering the penultimate hard part now—the last 10 pounds.

The ultimate hard part, of course, is maintenance. As everyone on 3fatchicks.com says, you treat maintenance exactly like you do losing weight, except you don’t get the fun of seeing the scale move. So I’m going to write down what I eat and what I weigh and do some kind of exercise every day from here on out.

Better than having to buy another wardrobe in double-digit sizes, that’s for sure.

Since August I have lost 2-3 minutes per mile off of my running time, which is one of the greatest incentives I’ve ever had to keep going with my exercise program. I want to lose that next 10-15 pounds to see if I can’t get another minute off. One of my big goals this year to run a single 8:00 mile. Doing more than one would be totally amazing. And may even be doable.

Sometime last summer—I can’t remember exactly when—I said, “This is not my body.” It wasn’t a mean thought or something I was using to castigate myself. It was like waking up and realizing I was in someone else’s body. For most of my twenties I was a 6 or 8. Then I went to grad school, gained weight, did the liquid diet, and went back to being a 6 or 8, which I was until I had Sophia. It took a long time after having Sophia to understand that I really, really, really was a size 12 and I needed to go shop on the Large rack rather than the Medium rack.

I looked back at the last time I lost weight, two years ago, when I thought it was due to the thyroid medications I’d started taking. I honestly didn’t think I had much to do with the weight loss at that time. What I discovered when I looked back at my records (I’m, shall we say, rather particular about keeping copious workout records) was that I hadn’t lost weight nearly as fast as I thought I had. I’d had the memory that it had just come off crazy fast, but in fact, it hadn’t. What else had I been doing two years ago? I was lifting weights all the time.

Hmmm. “I could do that again,” I thought.

I started in August, after the vacations and going to Chicago for my father-in-law’s birthday party. And I discovered pretty quickly that I couldn’t jump right into weights, at least not to the same degree I had before, because of my shoulder surgery in April. My favorite weightlifting exercise is doing squats, and I could barely raise my left arm to touch my fingertips to the bar, let alone grasp the bar for balance. I had to do the bar alone, with no weights on it, because it was all I could handle. The squat rack bar is 45 pounds but still.

After a couple of months, I had my hard firmly grasped on the bar, and I had 90 extra pounds on there. So in addition to improving my muscles, my arm was getting better in a hurry.

Weightlifting: best shoulder recovery tool EVER.

My original weights program, as it was a few years ago, was Body For Life. I’m not a huge proponent of BFL, mostly because it’s so heavy on the cult experience, as well as the supplements marketing, and I’m not a joiner by nature. But the program—do 5 sets for one body part, followed by a different exercise for the same body part—really is an excellent way to build up endurance and work those muscles. (Get the book from the library.) After several months of doing weights on my own I had improved my endurance and ability somewhat:

				8/4					11/20
Squats		0, 5, 7.5				60, 70, 80
Leg Curls		25, 30, 35				50, 55, 60
Chest			8, 10, 12				60, 65, 70
Lats			15, 20, 22.5			75, 80, 85

I hired a Personal Trainer at Club Swanky. It’s expensive, but he is in fact kicking my ass.

(Actually, those squat numbers are somewhat misleading: after trying to do the squat rack for a week, I finally gave up and moved to the squat machine for a couple of months. After I felt strong enough to give it another try, I returned to the squat rack.)

I also kept up the running with my buds, even though I was often lagging far behind them. (One time I remember quite clearly getting dusted by them, stopping, and turning around to go home, because there was no way in hell I’d be able to keep up with them.) At the end of October I realized something had really changed, when we did the Silicon Valley Half Marathon. I realize now that probably what happened to me was the first and only time I’ve experienced “the runner’s high.” But that feeling of being able to go! go! go! was quite intoxicating. “Oooo,” I thought, “I wanna do this a lot.”

I’ve never had a run like that since, but I keep on trying. 3fatchicks has a “1000 miles in 2009″ challenge, and I did 77 in January. If the weather were a little warmer, I’d definitely be doing more.

I really like wearing single digit pants. I want to wear more of them. At lower digits.

Of course, I had to learn about low-rise and mid-rise jeans, courtesy of my running bud Nina. I missed that whole development in jeans and was still wearing my high-rise “mom jeans.” Which I’ve always worn because I have such a long damn waist. However, now that I have moved into Gap Long and Lean jeans, I now understand a)people’s obsession with muffin top and b)the need for a belt. Because these things do not stay up without help. (At least, not with my figure they don’t.)

For those of you who might also have missed this development in jeans technology, please to consult “Are you wearing mom jeans?” for your edification.

An unbelievable amount of time ago, my friend Marilee said, “Hey, our little running club should do the Silicon Valley Half Marathon.” She ran the marathon last year, and Rob and Nina showed up to run half of it with her (unofficially, just for support). This year, since we haven’t been running nearly as much, she thought maybe the half might be more doable. One at a time we all signed up with her.

Well, um, okay.

This did not inspire us to run as much as it should have—man, have we slacked off from the hardcore bunch we were a couple of years ago. But a few Sundays ago Rob and I managed 10 miles and felt pretty good about it. And I’ve been working out 5-6 days a week for the past 2 months—lifting weights 3 days a week, doing cardio (usually running) 2-3 days—so I figured I wouldn’t kill myself. We all filled our iPods with the appropriate Podrunner mixes and headed out early this morning.

A while ago—probably back when I subscribed to Sports Illustrated and read things like The Year’s Best Sports Writing—I remember reading a story in which the writer recounts a run he had where a huge hulking Swede or German or Russian or something came up behind him and said, “We go faster, yes?” Because runners are crazy that way, the writer’s pace increased, trying to keep up with this guy. Periodically the Swede would say, “We go faster, yes?” And once again the writer would go faster, trying to keep up with this guy.

Today? Today, I was the Swede.

I have no idea how this happened. It certainly was not evident in any of the recent runs we’ve done together. A few weeks ago Rob and Nina completely dusted me on our usual morning run, to the point where I turned around early and went home, because I could not keep up with them. But today, for whatever reason, I kept going faster. I kept at a constant speed, instead of grossly slacking off like I usually do. In fact, I kept wanting to go faster, but my friends were like, Uh…Diane…slow it down.

Mind you, my idea of a temperate pace is probably somewhat slower than yours. Several people finished the marathon before my friends and I finished the half. But today my general speed was easily two minutes faster than my normal speed, and it would have been faster had I not kept slowing down to match everyone else’s speed. I didn’t once want to slow down, or walk, or feel like I was straining my legs at all.

This is definitely the most serious evidence I’ve had yet that my exercise regime has changed my body. Yes, there are the smaller jeans, but the feeling that I could, in fact, run at about 10 minute miles (I TOLD YOU I AM SLOW) with no ill effects was amazing.

Man, I can’t wait to get to the gym tomorrow.

Except I’m doing lower body weights tomorrow. Oh, THAT’S going to be fun.

Got an unusual comment from Christina the other day:

You were a joy to read… before twitter. Now, not so much. Seriously, have you not better things to say?

Well, the Twitter is basically a way to have something to say, frankly. I suppose everyone who’d be interested in my tweets have probably added me to their own Twitter lists, so I could probably stop posting them here. (I’m DianePatterson on Twitter, btw, in case you’re looking for me.)

But to answer your question: at the moment I haven’t found a particular raison d’être for this blog. Many of the things I’d like to talk about really aren’t fair for me to talk about much (for instance: my kids—yeah, I know, I win some kind of Mom-points for finally figuring that out) and others are just…well…

I stopped lifting weights last year because, well, my arm was hurting. Then I started the process of finding out just what was wrong with my arm and then deciding what to do about it. What I decided to do was have surgery, so I did. Part of the process of recovery was doing physical therapy, in which I stretched and held up my arm and experienced the joy of having someone bend my arm in all sorts of unnatural ways. Unnatural, that is, until I looked at my other arm, which could do all of those wonderful things without assistance.

A month or so ago the physical therapy place (located in Club Swanky) called and said, “Oh hey, our bad, but…your insurance doesn’t cover PT with us. Wanna pay retail?” I said, “Heh, no.” I could go through the process of finding another PT place (and then finding some place to put the kids while I did that, or only doing it in the middle of the day, or…). Or I could do it on my own.

Anyone who knows me knows which one I chose.

So I decided: “Self, you’re going to have to go into the gym anyhow, it’s time to get back to lifting weights.” And so I have. I’m doing weights three days a week, and if I miss a day of running with the buds I get in there and get on the elliptical for 30 minutes of sprints.

And once again I discover, like it’s the very first goddamn time (only it’s the thousandth), that I freakin’ love using weights. Cardio I could live without: I have trouble breathing and I’m slow even at my fastest. But weights? I’m thinking of going to four days a week, I love doing these so much. I’m checking out the personal trainers as they work out with other people, not just because the personal trainers are hot (many of them are), but because I want to know which ones like working out with weights as a big part of the routine.

I never see female personal trainers in the heavy-duty free weights/squat cage/Smith machine area. Just sayin’.

My question is: Why do I ever stop working out? I’m not even going to say that it’s because my arm hurt so bad last year, because I could have continued. Do I have a mental block when it comes to exercise, that exercise is for other people or something?

I feel better when I lift. I look better when I lift. While I can’t do any shoulder exercises yet, my arm is already 10 times better than it was when I started two weeks ago. (Doing squats in the squat cage is a challenge, mostly because lifting my left arm to grip the bar is a trial. But that’s already easier than it was the first time I tried it.)

Anyone know Dan Peterson? He was the personal trainer I used when I was at Apple. He was excellent. He was wonderful. If you have his phone number, drop me a line.