Noteworthy

Today makes just over three weeks that I've been doing the bike, every single morning. I am not doing anything remarkable from the perspective of those people you see on the street in their custom-fit racing togs and ultra-lightweight bikes, but for me, it's pretty amazing. I find myself (almost) effortlessly getting up between 4:45 (any earlier, and I go back to sleep) and 5:30, trudging downstairs, turning on the VCR (this morning it was Top Gun; the last few days its been The American President), and pedaling for sixteen minutes. That's a psychological barrier; the timer on the bike is a series of LEDs, sixteen of them, so 'naturally' thats an exercise increment. I contemplated going longer or harder, this morning, and I picked harder -- intensity four instead of three. Again, this is nothing remarkable, but for me, yes, somewhat. In fact, I am now at the point where, when I finally have to skip a day, maybe because I am staying at a motel that does not have an exercise bike (let alone a recumbent one), I think its going to irritate me. I want to start thinking about what to do in that case so that I don't lose the momentum. I know myself well enough that I can't afford to cut myself slack unless there really was no other choice. And since I am not an exerciser, the idea of 'well, just walk five miles' or ' just do thiry minutes of (fill in the blank)' doesn't appeal to me.

I am getting a prescription for a mild tranquilizer from the local doc. I don't know what it is; she told me, but after I rattled off what SSRI stood for, she apparently thought that I'd know the chemical name for what she was writing up, and I totally don't. I do know that its very mild -- she said its nowhere near as strong as Valium, which sounded right to me. She asked if I felt tense, and I said yes, somewhat; then she asked if I felt depressed, and I said 'not from a clinical perspective'. I have taken this kind of drug once before, and remember thinking 'gee, this stuff isn't working' before realizing much later that I hadn't felt tense for a while. I didn't feel giddy, which was what I expected (cheerful all the time). I think thats what Valium does. Anyway, I pick it up today, in time for the first phase of the dental surgery, which occurs on Monday.

I'm glad that we sold the car so easily. It feels a little odd not to have it -- I saw an electric blue Regal the other day, and thought hey, there's my wife -- but it was the right thing to do. And we sold my company stock, too. I don't really think it'll go up (though I hear that the prevailing opinion of those bloodless ghouls on Wall Street is that firing thousand is a wonderful idea, lets bid up the stock), but it doesn't matter. It was more a psychological separation. I shall not miss this company.... much.