GoWearFit + Battlestar + some tennis + my lack of sleep = babbling

So I’ve have the GoWearFit for a little over a month.  Although I am not outwardly attempting to do anything fancy with my workouts or diet, I am learning a lot about how my body burns calories, my sleep efficiency, and where and when I am active during my otherwise sedentary day.  I used the “report” generator on the website to create a monthly analysis.  That was really informative.  The most interesting thing is seeing how my sleep patterns vary.  I’m not that efficient at sleep.  It is really something to see your actual sleep time blocked out.  There is an interesting shift that happens with my sleep around 2 a.m.  I go from burning 1.2 cal/min to 1.7.  That must be because of increased brain activity during my REM cycle – I would guess.  If I work out in the morning then I can burn more calories by just doing what I normally do.  Also, by eating breakfast, I keep my average cal/min higher throughout the morning than if I don’t eat anything when I get going in the morning.  Lastly, all the running around I do with the team after school seems to wear off rather quickly.  Honestly, this is a great tool and the only complaint I have is that website is really, really slow.  It is not supported by Mozilla, which is what I use for everything, so I have to use Explorer.  Maybe it is that or the Java that is slow, but it takes forever to get from screen to screen, upload, and then view the results.  It could also be that the site is just overwhelmed too.  Nonetheless, it is totally worth it and I’m more than impressed!

It snowed last night and this morning.  The weather looks pretty bad for tennis this week.  I’m taking another Sunday off since I am completely burned out on work.  I still have over 100 research papers to grade.  I do a few here and there throughout the day.  I just need to bear down and do it.  Making locker tags is so much more fun.  I also ordered the boys bag tags.  We shall see how that turns out.  I’m really enjoying the boys team more than the girls.  The boys work out harder, don’t complain about running and lifting, and get really pumped when they win games.  The girls are fun in a different way.  They get into the “sister” stuff more: getting little gifts, taking pictures, and dressing up.  I’m making the guys dress up for home matches.  They either love or hate it.  There are a few guys that know they look good and strut around a little taller and prouder.  The boys that like to blend in, because they are self-conscious, seem to squirm a little as they walk the halls in a nice button down shirt and dress pants.  It is good practice for them though.  They have come a long way in just a little while.

Okay, a few random thoughts then I’m out.  I had a very vivid dream the other night where I was holding the hand of some guy that I knew loved me – it is a dream.  It felt so real and I realized how nice it was to have that personal contact.  It made me realize how starved so many of us are for something so simple and reassuring as that.  The PLANET EARTH series should be mandatory viewing for hish school students.  Kids need to appreciate the world that they are a part of – and they need to feel a part of it, not disconnected because of their technological dependencies and instantaneous lifestyles.  Kids should also have to do some sort of coursework which requires community service: spending time with the elderly, cleaning up roadsides, visiting kids with disabilities.  The types of kids who already do this are not the kids who would most benefit the most from doing it.  I can think of a handful of my students I would love to send on a PeaceCorps kind of excursion.  I wish that I could just take them to Uganda or Peru or Nepal myself.  I cried watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.  I love how brilliantly they wove all the stories together at the end.  I kind of saw it coming based on what I know about hominid evolution.  I was sad that Starbuck never go to tell Lee that she loved him and vice versa.  Instead, she vanished and proved that she was indeed an angel walking among her people.  She was not afraid of death, rather she was afraid of being forgotten.  That is my fear too – must be why I write.  The characters of Divine Six and Divine Balter were very cleverly inserted into our modern world to provide an interesting commentary on “all this happened before and all this will happen again.”  The cyclical nature of the universe as a whole is represented with this concept.  I think about plate tectonics.  With the exception of The Himalayas, our mountains are eroding.  Eventually new ones will be made and then those too will erode.  It is amazing to consider that the gorgeous white sands of Florida are the quart which has been polished from the erosion of the Appalachian Mountains, which were once greater than the Rockies.  I totally dig mountains – so I live in the flatlands.  I should have been a Geo scientist.  I just wish I had more time and money so that I could travel and then write amazing stories about nature.

So, now that I’ve rambled….which is completely due to my whacked out sleep schedule…I apologize, I will wrap this up by saying the R.A. has been bad.  I’m not dwelling on it.  I’m so stiff and sore though.  I think it is all the major weather stuff (bringing me back to the assertion that our climate is infact shifting and our storm systems have become more dynamic in order to balance the greater swings from homeostasis).  The pressure change directly impacts joints.  With low pressure systems there is less compresion on the joint so it can swell more easily.  Okay, Planet Earth is showing the snow leopard.  Gorgeous – simply gorgeous creature!  Maybe I’ll grade some more – eventually.  I want to do more Eco-teaching with literature and critical thinking on these kinds of things.