Early Saturday morning

* I woke up earlier than normal for a Saturday and decided to just get up. (I slept better than I normally do, perhaps because....)

* The new exercise dvd came. It's called Dance X Fitness and I tried it out yesterday afternoon. It's quite a workout:

- I'm not in as good shape as I thought, it made me seriously winded and I'm a little sore this morning.
- The workout is just about 50 minutes long, which is a good length - not too short that you have to do it twice if you have greater fitness needs, but not so long it would be hard to fit in in a day
- I liked it pretty well. It's fairly low-impact, though if you had real knee problems, you might want to modify a few of the moves
- It helps that the guy who does the video seems to have a sense of humor about it. He smiles through the whole workout. And he refers to the different moves by slightly silly names ("Light bulb! Light bulb!" for a move where you're sort of twisting your arms over your head, like changing a light bulb). At one point he referred to the "window washing" arm move as "wax on, wax off!" and I actually laughed. (You are on your feet the entire time, either marching in place, or side stepping, or something). The man who leads it is either African or West Indian; he has a very slight accent but he is not hard to understand.
- It's harder than I thought to do the twist for an extended period of time - he said he liked the move because it works "your core" (I assume that means abdominals and back, and my abdominals definitely need work).
- the other move I couldn't do the full time of what what he called "trotting," which is essentially like that weird Gagnam-style move (you can probably visualize it now). It's really hard on the calf muscles and also the quadriceps.
- He seems very big on working "the core" and also the quadriceps. Which are probably muscle groups the skiier doesn't work as well. 
- He also includes a good cool-down period of stretches and moves designed to relax the muscles you just spend 45 minutes stressing.

However, I could see doing the video on a regular basis. There's nothing awful about it, the music isn't dumb or intrusive, and the guy's attitude makes it a lot easier to do.

IF I ever hear back from the cross-country ski place and get my new skiier, maybe I will do that a couple days a week but do this video the other days. It's easy enough to do first thing in the morning. And it definitely is a good workout, it got my heart rate up fast and kept it up.

Maybe if I keep working "my core" I will get a more-hourglassy figure back. I used to have a more extreme hip to waist differential but I've lost that a little with age, and I'd like to get a narrower waist back. And anyway, having strong abdominal muscles means your back is less likely to hurt.

So, I would recommend it. Maybe if you're super-fit, you'd find it not that hard. Or if you have a hard time marching or doing small jumps or other kinds of on-your-feet moves for 50 minutes, it might not be for you. (Or if you have real balance problems - in a couple points of the cool-down, you are standing on one foot, and at that point I had to grab on to the side of the piano for a little support.)

****

I wound up not going to JoAnn's. For one thing, it's harder to get to both sides of 69/75 right there at the moment - they're rebuilding one of the bridges.

Also, when I went to the bookstore, they had what I mainly would have wanted from JoAnn's: the new Simply Knitting was in.

AND Knit Now. I haven't seen Knit Now there in a LONG time. They must only get it in intermittently. And I bought a crochet magazine that had several very cute patterns for tree ornaments (including four little birds - this was a US magazine, so they were birds we have - a cardinal, a titmouse, a goldfinch, and a bluebird).


AND: there is a new Jane Austen Knits out! I didn't even know they were doing one of these this year. So I got it. There are several pairs of socks I'd like to make and a shrug-type garment I might want to make.


I also got a few "special" Christmas cards for friends: I have a few friends I exchange cards with where we used to exchange gifts, but at some point decided just to do cards, but I like to find special cards. So I got the neat "pop up" cards to send to them.

I also got my silly cards at Target. On CPAAG, we do a silly card exchange at the holidays (not everyone on there celebrates Christmas, so often we just send silly cards. If I get someone I KNOW celebrates Christmas I might send her one of my regular Christmas cards, but usually I just get the funny "thinking of you" cards).  Target has a pretty good selection of silly cards, so I got a bunch there.

That actually went a long way toward cheering me up after some of the difficult/sad things from the past week. (I also bought some packages of silly stickers; I like to include a sheet of stickers in the cards.)

The card exchanges have some of the same elements of the old Secret Santa exchanges that we used to do when I was in grad school (which I enjoyed immensely and kind of miss now). That's why I enjoy them.

I also ran to Brookshires. Their stuff IS more expensive, but a lot of their stuff is better-quality and it's nice to have cheerful checkout people rather than slightly surly ones.