August 31, 2006
Sedentary life (of a sort) returned this week with the start of school. This semester, I'm studying Sanskrit, taught in a closet-sized room that fits exactly one large desk and 14 student desks in two rows. Fortunately for me, the teacher worked as an Electrical Engineer at Westinghouse for 20 years and, in addition to the ancient script, speaks Engineerese. You know, when a person sprinkles "gradient" and "parse" into conversational speech--my sort of people. Though, I do feel badly for the others in the class who major in Classics and Religion.
If you want to know why I'm taking Sanskrit, I can only provide the following picture of a Sanskrit quotation from my textbook:
If you don't love alphabets and scripts, I can't really explain any further.
Outside of Sanskrit class, I should report that I'm mostly sore muscles after falling into a new exercise routine. Other than the yoga class Leah and I are taking, exercise this week involves "anatomical adaptation" or basically going through the motions of exercise, with a fraction of the weight or effort. As weeks pass, the weights and exercise become heavier and more difficult, respectively. This is based on a synthesized recommendation from several of the library's finest books--clearly, authored by obsequious high school gym coaches. (Seriously, do all of these books have to include lame motivational speeches?) So far, my "workout" includes: picking up a couple of heavy weights to determine, for each exercises, my "one-rep max", which is used to calculate the weights for my new "sets and reps"; practicing saying, "sets and reps" without giggling; biking easily for 15 minutes, just long enough to make my butt hurt; slowly surveying the running route I plan to use; and splashing in the pool for 20 minutes. In other words, I've been relatively lazy this week and the meager effort I did put forth made me hurt.
Routine will pause this long weekend, while we drive east, visit friends, Zach and Corey, and continue to Danvers, Mass. to celebrate my Uncle Alan and his fiancee Ellen's nuptials.