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Fortunate One

All is good in the land of The Cheeseheads. Well, let me just say in any state with state government like we have, good is a thinly defined thing. Let's just say for Maria and me one of those God Light openings in the clouds opened up and shone down on us. Maria is taking the position of Executive Director The Paper Discovery Center in Appleton.

Here is the humor in all of this. After over five months of searching, sending resumes, going to interviews and getting nowhere, this week she has multiple offers on the table. She accepted the best offer.

Her reasons for having accepted this offer is that she has an  opportunity to work with the staff and board to get something done, the pay and benefits are where they should be, and the hours are reasonable. As the Trophy Husband, I'm looking at the wardrobe and all the other responsibilities of the arm candy part of the effort.

It is worth noting that I have become involved in the jobs Maria has taken in the past; in particular Historic Milwaukee and to some extent the Charles Allis and Villa Terrace Museums. We are both looking forward to this new situation. Both of us are seeking to bond with this community even closer than we did when we lived here before.

We have taken one more step into citizenship in the Fox Cities. Besides having a library card, and joining Costco, we now have a gym membership. My friend John Brownson and I are committed to working out two mornings a week. I will go with Maria to get in the additional stationary bike time I need to build my stamina.
On my last workout with John, I learned a new approach to working on weight machines or so-called resistance exercise. The concept is called Pyramid performance.
First, what is resistance performance.? It requires that you perform each repetition of an exercise by maintaining resistance in both directions.
Lets look at an arm curl. Lifting weight by grabbing the bar (either on a machine or a free weight) and lifting the weight by pulling it up by bending your arm at the elbow and pulling the weight back toward your chest than returning the weight to the neutral position and resisting the weight in both directions.
I was doing each exercise three by fifteen. (Three sets of fifteen repetitions.) John asked me if wanted to try something different. A Pyramid exercise pattern is what it sounds like.
My arm curls weight of 35# was already set by working with a trainer. To convert my routine to the pyramid, I set fifteen pounds on the machine and did 20 repetitions moved to twenty-five pounds and did 15 repitions, move to thirty-five pounds and performed ten repetitions. To test yourself and to depend on how you feel, you can add weight and try to do as many repetitions as you're able. I did seven reps with forty pounds.
After you've built this pyramid, you go down the scale; 10 more repetitions at 35#, 15 reps at 25#, etc...
I told John that I felt great aft my workout and thanked him for the coaching. The next morning, I was building a voodoo doll that looked as much as it could like John B. and pricking it with pins in all of the places that I hurt from the work out the day before.

So it goes in Camp Jeff in the land of cheese, on the shores of what used to be Lake Maria.

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