Illinois Breakdown

Snow
So, we had a decent snow on New Year's Eve. Let me clarify. As a Central Texican, the precipitation proved satisfactory. A couple inches dropped on us from above, a couple inches that would disrupt life in Austin for a few days. Impassable roads, closed schools, government services deferred, days off from work. Here in Illinois, life finds a way. Businesses remain open, commuters commute, grocery stores don't even blink. If this much snow fell in Austin, citizens would crouch behind shuttered windows amid boxes of candles and batteries and canned food, praying to their liberal gods for respite. Here, people drive to Target and casually peruse Merona wear.

In Austin, the snow has melted after two days because the temperature leap frogs back into the 80s. Our New Year's snow remains. While it's been dry, the temperatures haven't crept above freezing. The mid-day sun melts as much as it can (snow reflects 90% of sunlight), but that snowmelt freezes again at night. The city keeps the roads clear and our apartment complex has its own mini snow plow and our faithful apartment staff keeps the sidewalks and stairs well sprinkled with sand or salt or whatever they use.

You get to see something they don't show you in the movies and you certainly don't see in Austin. Almost two weeks out from our snow storm, the sidewalks are covered with miniature sand dunes that you crunch across on your trek to your car or front steps. The grains cheerfully follow you inside and make new homes in your carpet. In corners of parking lots and along roadways, you see dirty snow, these frozen piles of gray-black sludge. I've heard I'm to avoid yellow snow, but the gray-black dirty snow looks far more nefarious.

My Icicle
Well, it wasn't my icicle, per se (Latin for "in itself"), but I developed a certain attachment to it. On the other side of my parking lot, the snow melting from a car refroze into an icicle hanging from the right rear bumper. It grew over the two weeks as more snow melted and developed into a thick ice pillar connecting the bumper to the pavement. I wondered how long the owner could go without leaving the complex. One must eat, after all. I wondered if he or she had frozen to death in his or her apartment and the swelling ice cylinder was the only evidence that something was terribly amiss. Mostly, though, I wondered how long the frozen shaft would last before it collapsed. I passed the car every time I went to the next building to run a load of laundry. For two weeks I passed it, marveling at its resilience. Until yesterday. I went to move a load of shirts from the washer to the dryer. The sky wasn't overcast, but it wasn't particularly sunny. It was a still day, very little wind. As I neared the ice pillar, it shattered and collapsed. Like the Wonderful One Hoss Shay, one moment it existed, robust and full of splendor, the next it fractured into hundreds of constituent parts. Vaporized. Defunct. Kaput.

iPhone
I succumbed. I became that which I have long loathed. An owner of an Apple product. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Apple products, only people who own Apple products. Also, I don't particularly approve of mock turtle necks. Like Malcolm McLaren before him, Steve Jobs found a world languishing in darkness and left it irrevocably changed. If you don't believe me, take a look at Windows 8. That said, while I appreciate the revolution, I don't particularly want to listen to the Sex Pistols or download apps. Yet, here I am. Like the trudge of our solar system around the galactic hub, like the green leaves of summer turning to autumn fire, like waiting for my wife to get ready in the morning, the change happened slowly.

Maybe I'm cheap, but I always opt for the free phone upgrade they offer when you sign a new contract. I don't believe I should have to pay a lot of money for a phone. The first rule of Technology Club is technology always gets cheaper. In 1980, you had to pay around $800 for a VCR (that's over $2K in Today Dollars). Today you can pay $80 for a decent Blu-Ray that can connect to the internet (that's 30 bucks in 1980 Dollars). Your average cell phone has a computer more powerful than the one that got Neil Armstrong to the moon. Which is black, by the way, it only looks white because, like snow, moon dust reflects almost all sunlight.

I want to stand on the shoulders of giants. I want a cheap phone.

My last flip phone gave up the ghost one day as I thumbed it open to make a call. It didn't evaporate like the One Hoss Shay. It cracked in half with a groan like the '72 McGovern campaign. I was left with two useless halves of a thing. Imagine the US Congress trying to negotiate a budget. Now imagine they are a phone. I replaced it with a non-smart touch-screen phone, the touch screen of which was poorly designed. Functionality slowly waned. I couldn't send texts. So I jumped into the Sarlacc feet first.

Activating this mini-computer proved a daunting task indeed. The QSG provided with my new product said to go to att.com to activate my new phone. Att.com said, no, no, silly, this is an Apple Product, you can only activate it by syncing to iTunes. Apple.com said we'll let you download iTunes, but first you must create an Apple ID and set up a profile. Also, we need your credit card number. Also, we want your first born. Aine and I planned to have a girl first, so that decision wasn't very difficult. I did everything they asked. I slew the Nemean Lion. I made bricks without straw. I cut down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring. Still, my phone refused to activate. My day ended with a long phone call to my friends at AT&T. After many automated messages, much pushing of buttons and entering information into my touch tone phone, I finally reached a kind lady who flipped a switch on her end and activated my phone. I love technology.

Now, when I'm stuck in a situation where I have to wait idly without a book or a magazine, for instance, when I'm sitting in one of those plush chairs they place outside women's dressing rooms, I can read the New York Times or the Economist or check the weather. Bully for me. Also, I can text again.

P90X
We officially started the program today with Chest & Back and Ab Ripper X.

Day 1. 89 to go.

I'm not going to belabor the P90X thing or give regular updates. You can find a few thousand blogs out there of folks describing their travails with the program, uploading videos of themselves doing the exercises, and showing pictures of their flab receding. If you want details, go to one of their blogs.

We spent a month acclimating to the workout routine and the diet plan. We became comfortable with each workout. With the exception of the Christmas holiday, we worked the diet into our schedules. Christmas was a caloric disaster. I blame my mother. Every year she insists on making Hello Dollies and I feel a deep throb of failure if I end the holiday without eating them all. Leave no Dolly behind. Hoo-ah.

It's true. We averaged about 3,000 calories a day over Christmas in marathon consumption binges that would have given John Candy pause. I'm not proud. But I'm not going to apologize either.

None of the workouts are that difficult (with the exception of plyometrics and yoga), they're just long, averaging from an hour to an hour and half. Needless to say, we have to get up early. So early, in fact, Crankles and Piglet refuse to get out of bed. Until the very end, when it suddenly seems a good idea to try to lick the sweat off the face of someone trying to stretch his or her hamstrings. Go figure.

I do have reservations about the diet plan, which looks like it was slapped together by a five year old on Benadryl, but I'll address that in a later post.

That's All
Aine just got out of the shower. Which means in around an hour, she'll be ready to leave the house and we'll drive to the mall where I plan to spend the rest of my day sitting in a plush chair reading the New York Times.