New Year's Resolution?

I know you haven't heard from me lately. I've been very busy. I mentioned on Face Book that I got an elliptical exercise machine and got it carried down into my basement myself. It was 226 pounds and a challenge. Well, the challenges have continued over the past week or so, not counting holidays. The elliptical arrived 5 days early, so I had to get the room ready before I started assembling it. The room I intended to use had been dubbed "the yarn room" when I first moved in, and my previous dogs slept in there. It's a nice room and woefully underutilized. When I got down to the carpet, however, I realized it was worse than I thought, so I used my brother's carpet cleaner. I didn't do a perfect job, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was.

Once it was cleaned, I started putting the thing together. I was determined to do it by myself. I read reviews on Amazon.com that said one person couldn't put it together by themselves. My stubborn streak said, "Bullshit!" There were instances in which I wished I had 3 hands, but I'd quit for a while and think about how I could manage to do what I needed to do creatively. At one point I used yarn to hold up a portion of plastic in order to put screws in below it.

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I've done enough exercising in my time to know that if I'm going to use it, I need to entertain my mind while I'm working my body, so I got myself a little TV and a VCR. Boy! they are unbelievably cheap these days. The shelves were there when I bought the house, and I'm really happy they were put in well. I decided exercising would be a great time to re-watch Battlestar Galactica.

Today, I finished the assembly process. I hope I work out as much and sweat as much using the machine as I did putting it together. I think it's good to know how it works and goes together. If anything happens, I'll know where and what the problem is. I'm not going to get any more of a workout on it today, but I will be starting out the New Year with good intentions. I think as long as my knees hold out, I'll be ok. So you can expect to read about lighter meals here in Lorad's Kitchen, at least for a while.