wednesday weigh in

Now, before I dive in to how I've done with my fitness challenge this past week, it is extremely important to note that I am not doing this to lose weight. Although, losing weight will be a nice side effect of getting in to shape, I am not busting my chops once a week every few days for the sole purpose of dropping a dress size.

Provided I ever wore dresses.

No. I'm doing this fitness challenge because it is really important for me to slow the aging process. I believe that if I am in better physical health, I will live longer and I will feel healthier both physically and emotionally, during the time I am here walking the earth. I also believe that if I find an activity that I enjoy doing - I will continue to do it and a toned physique will follow. And because I cannot keep anything a secret, I feel compelled to admit that I just took a quick break to go get another slice of Joe-Joe cheesecake.

Who was it that told me about the awesome Joe-Joe cheesecake for $1.99 at Trader Joe's?

Yeah, you. You are in BIG trouble.

It's very good cheesecake and although not the best I've ever had, for $1.99 I'm amazed that it doesn't taste like dirt. Unfortunately, Charlie threw the box out, so I don't know if a serving size is half or the the whole cheesecake.

I had planned to workout again, tonight but instead, we met up with one of our old neighbors, Ron. When we bought our home in 1997, Ron had just bought the house across the street. We met one day in front of the mailbox and within a matter of weeks, we were BFF.

Ron has a degree in electrical engineering, a law degree, and an MBA with an emphasis in computer technology. He made a fortune in California real estate because when he bought his first house, a big five-bedroom, he lived in one room and rented the other four rooms out. His tenants paid his mortgage and after a few years, once he had built some equity, he rented out that house >> used his equity to buy another big five-bedroom house and then moved his tenants to his next place. And so it went to approximately six or seven houses around San Diego County.

For a while Ron worked as an Internet Technology guru ... and then he worked as an attorney ... and then he picked up various teaching jobs at Junior Colleges all over San Diego. And on the side, in between renting out houses and holding down a career, he had an assortment of bubble gum machines that he stocked and managed.

In 2003 Ron married a wonderful woman, Raj, from India, that he had met at one of the JC's where he taught. In 2006, he sold all of his properties, pocketed a very tidy profit and bought a small plot of land with a 30-year old prefabricated house in another rapidly growing area of southern California. They set about planting a vegetable garden and purchasing livestock. These days, they are raising three beautiful little boys and living almost entirely off the land. Ron works as a part-time teacher for spending money. They have absolutely no debt.

At 39-years old, Ron is an inspiration. Not only because of the hard work and planning it took to get where he is now, but because if you give him a gallon of milk, he can sit down and polish off an entire tray of O'Henry bars all by himself.

I have stories on top of stories that I could tell about our friendship with Ron. But I'll have to save them for some other time because I have three loads of laundry to fold and put away.

Ron and Raj were due to be at our house at 4:00 this afternoon. At 3:59, Raj called to tell me that they hadn't even left their house and it would take them at least two and a half hours to get to our house with the traffic. I communicated the change in plans with Charlie and we adjusted our itinerary for the evening. Instead of having dinner at the house, we were moving our party to our local community pool and having a BBQ.

The only running that I managed to accomplish today was running home to grab more beer and Charlie's acoustic guitar so he and Ron could have a jamfest poolside. Their strumming and our voices ... belting out everything from CCR to Led Zeppelin to Yes to John Denver ... filled the neighborhood. The evening was spent eating hot dogs, savoring homemade salsa from Ron's garden, chasing after children, and laughing more than we've laughed in a long time.


Total calories burned?

A lot.

But probably not more than half a Trader Joe's cheesecake.

*****

The race is in four days and Charlie is really concerned over what he is going to wear.

I'm planning to wear my bathing suit and throw on a pair of bike shorts for the ride and run. Charlie was planning to wear his bicycle shorts for the whole thing, until he considered that the bike seat pad would swell up like a diaper when he was in the ocean.

When I suggested that he wear a Speedo bathing suit for the swim and then just slip his shorts on over that for the ride and run, he looked at me and said incredulously, "You're kidding? You think I'm going to wear a banana hammock in the triathlon in front of a few thousand people? What, are you insane?!"

Tomorrow, my husband has informed me we're going shopping.