Club One

Dear Family and Friends,
It is official, I've just come from my first full workout at the gym and it is a real workout. Different muscle groups are tingling as I write, not complaining yet but certainly awake and on notice.
Milan has me set up to do 8 different workouts with each machine totally dedicated to just one muscle group, one pulls, one pushes, they work my upper body, my legs, my core. She carefully laid out the settings for each machine, the starting weight, the number of reps etc. On some of the machines I can tell that I'll be able to increase the weight quickly while others are just about all I can do, yet none really hurt, they just make the muscles burn and strain. I did three sets of everything except the big ball which she uses for me to do crunches. Now that one is pretty interesting, you have to stay balanced and then do the crunch while being balanced.
My entire time there was about an hour and people around me were helpful when I had question or two. But mostly I could figure out what I was doing and I just worked at keeping my heart rate up.
I may not have mentioned it but when I weighted this morning I was down 6 pounds from my highest point a few weeks ago. That in itself is a huge boost in morale and offers hope for the future. In retrospect how I used this Wednesday evening at the club was much more helpful than the grief group has been lately and my coughing did not offend anyone at the club since you have so much space between machines and people and I hardly coughed anyway.
Ken and I walked this morning and it was cool out. Our walk went well with reasonable effort. Then I had steel cut oats, one piece of wheat toast with peanut butter. Over the oats I put fiber and the little seeds, can't think of their name right now. I use soy milk now and only a tiny bit of it.
Shortly after breakfast I left for Oakland where I saw a very strange house. You start with this very old house in the Oakland hills near Mills College and Highway 13. It sits on a downsloping site which extends down into a running creek. At some point someone has added an addition to the back of the house which extends off the basement. As I walked under it I could not believe that the flimsy support system of a few boards and beams would hold anything up. At first the kid inside would not let me in even though I was there on appointment. Finally he relented and I entered a world of the stuff of young people, incense burning by an open window, unmade beds, guitars and mostly stuff. There was one room he would not let me into saying it was filled with personal stuff! OK, wonder what that was about. The most memorable things about the whole house was that it was not level. Everywhere it was slanted. When I started training with Howard and Dolly Vogel a long time ago they told me that one should carry a large marble or steel ball to drop on the floor, if it rolled then the house was not level, not good. Well a steel ball would have gained enough speed to crash through the western wall the house was not unlevel. No wonder a contractor who recently inspected the house said that perhaps the best thing would be to tear the house down and build a new one in its place. So how does one come up with a value for such a property? Well very carefully. The bank that holds the note thinks it is worth $350,000 for sure and based on the comps I saw and the condition of this old house I think $225,000 to $250,000 max. We will see what develops. Anyway properties like this sure keep my job interesting.
When I was finally able to leave this are of Oakland I set the GPS for Bird Road in Tracy. I'm doing a construction inspection for Wells Fargo bank as the house progresses so they can release more funds from the loan. The house is amazing and today non English speaking tile installers were everywhere doing a splendid job with huge 18" tile. What a nice place this will be when completed in a few weeks. Authentic Spanish design throughout with heavy beam ceilings, fancy interior texture to the walls, solid stained doors about 10 feet tall, beautiful cabinets throughout and a very interesting design.
After leaving the job site with some trash wood in the trunk of the bug for morning fires I drove to Sylvia's. She has located a thick book with hundreds of recipes for making bread in machines. She gave me the hard to find ingredients for several different types of bread I can make once my copy of the book arrives at the Library. No one has a heart like Sylvia. I really doubt she could be mean even if she wanted to, she was just born to build, care, diagnosis, help and support. What a incredible woman!
From her house I next drove to Stockton where I shot two more comparables for an appraisal I have yet to complete this evening, yikes! I had dinner with the girls at Strings and then hit the club. When I filled today with diesel I discovered to my delight that the last tank yielded an amazing 46 miles per gallon. Mind you that is with 207,000 on the motor. Like Sylvia says the Lord has been very good to me in many many ways.
So good night from here,
love to all

tim