# For What Its Worth



## oldognewtrick (Mar 13, 2010)

Turned 59 end of feb and I really havent felt "good" for the last, well.. while. So I thought, with the peir pressure of a few friends, to get a physical. I haven't had a physical since 2000. Never sick, why see the DR. After all the proding, poking, envading and drawing of bodily fluids, looks like all I really needed was a little more excerise. Bad colestoral, HIGH. Good colestoral low, Doc says 30-45 min a day cardio excerise. Spousal unit thinks a membership in a gym is perfect B'day present.* Well kiss my southern fried grits why do I want a danged gym membership*...fast forward 3 weeks, after spending 1 hour a day on the tread mill I feel better than I have in a few. Started light lifting to tone. Wifes been going with me and we are looking at friuts for snacks instead of the half bag of double stuff Oreos in the middle of the nite.

So, what does this have to do with Home Improvement? Well, why take care of our house if we don't take care of our selves, we have to be around to care for our loved ones. If you, as I, haven't made an effort to get checked up lately, then I urge you to go see the Dr.

1 thing I've learned in life.. getting old isn't for sissys.


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## Wuzzat? (Mar 14, 2010)

No problem: you've got 22 years to sort this all out.
Actuarial Life Table
assuming your
Calculate your BMI - Standard BMI Calculator
is reasonable.

Since Nov. of 2006 I've worked out.  
My strength has increased 1%/week but I have to do more cardio, such that I would burn about as much as I would in twelve rounds of boxing.  I did the rope skipping thing but my feet objected so now I'm on the elliptical machine.  Currently, 2 hrs/session, 15x per month, weights plus cardio.

On the cholesterol, I couldn't tolerate Lipitor or Zocor so now I'm going to try Niaspan.  
In Germany my lipid levels would not be of concern, so I have to wonder how much of this 'health risk' is driven by $.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 14, 2010)

I wish I had a nickle for every exercise machine or home gym that's sitting in someone's basement or closet or garage collecting dust.

     In order to STAY healthy, you have to find an exercise you ENJOY doing.  You're never going to keep up an excercise program you dread.

     Why don't you buy a pair of bicycles so that you and your wife can go on bike rides to a distant park or coffee shop every Saturday morning?  Why not buy a single bag of golf clubs and learn to golf together on Sundays?

     Both walking and bike riding are excellent exercises because they use the largest muscles in your body, which burn the most fat when exercised, and yet that exercise seems easy because you're using your biggest muscles to do all the work.  

     Believe it or not, riding a bike burns more calories than peddling the same amount on a stationary bicycle.  The reason why is because there are hundreds of small muscles in your body that are continuously changing your body's position to maintain balance on a real bicycle.  You're not aware of it happening because those small muscles are co-ordinated by your spine, not your brain.  Your brain simply tells your spine to balance your body on the bicycle, and it happens.  Your brain then concerns itself with the more difficult problems, like steering and deciding how to get where you're wanting to go.

     Similarily, you burn a lot more calories riding a horse than you do sitting in a chair.  You're not aware that your spine is continually maintaining your body's upright position while riding a horse.  All the muscles that do that don't do any work when you're sitting in a chair.

     Drop into your local second hand sports shop and get a pair of tennis rackets and learn how to return a tennis ball together.  (You'll find that as your health improves, your play will become more active and aggressive too.)

     So, the message here is to do things you like to do.  All of them will be healthier for you than laying on the couch watching TV.


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 14, 2010)

Nestor, you make good points, thats why we are going to a gym. No investment in machines that sit in the basement and get cloths hung on them. On the tread mills they have TV's connected to cable and we just got back from the gym and watched the 1st period of Blackhawk-Capitals Hockey. I also like using the weights and gave up my golf addiction some 20 years ago. In fact I just gave away my last set of clubs to my son-in-law. 

My bride just came over and told me that "although I B---- while we are there I feel so much better when we get home." Guess we are both getting benefit of my B'day present. Side benefit is watching all the really hot females bouncing around. Ahhh to be 20 years old again....


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 14, 2010)

Oldog/Newtrick:

     Personally, I think you should explain to your wife that fitness comes from being active doing the things you like to do, not from pumping iron.  (Unless, of course, you really like pumping iron.)  Gardening is something my mother likes to do, and that keeps her active planting flowers (and pulling them up in the fall) at my two sister's houses and the planter in my building.

     Buy a metal detector kit online, build it, and scour your local beaches!  The long walks on soft sand is great exercise, and you don't even know you're doing it.  Fly a kite at your local park.  Even the walking you do to retrieve the kite when it goes down and the little bit of running you do to get it back up is more than you'd do at home watching TV.  (And you'll be amazed at how many 10 year olds will come to help with the running part.)  Buy a bike rack for your car and ride around your local park on Sundays (cuz bikes really shouldn't be in busy traffic).  Go out in a canoe!  (You get a lot of "balance" exercise in a canoe, and paddling is great exercise.)

     Once your gym membership is over, just do things you enjoy doing and you'll find almost all of them are great exercise too.

     You've got a wife/dance partner.  Join a square dance troup.  Here in Winnipeg, where the cold winter puts a damper on most outdoor activities in winter, both ballroom dancing and bowling are very popular.  Join a bowling league, or find out where the local dance schools and dance instructors are.  Almost all of them will teach ballroom dancing because all other forms of dance originates from formal dance instruction in the classical ballroom dances.

     Go hunting.  Just make sure that it involves a lot of walking.

     It's the sitting around watching TV that kills you.  Just finding new and interesting things to do is what keeps you active and your mind and body healthy.

     Learn to juggle.  Discover yoga.  Become one with Tai Chi.


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 14, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Oldog/Newtrick:
> 
> Personally, I think you should explain to your wife that fitness comes from being active
> 
> ...


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 14, 2010)

No, I wasn't telling her to "go fly a kite".

I'm just thinking that if you look in your Yellow Pages under "Associations", "Clubs" and "Organizations", you'll find all kinds of different activities that people get involved in.  It's true that most of them aren't going to build muscle mass like attendance at a gym will, but most of them will keep you active in one way or another.  Just find something you like that keeps you physically active, and you've got cholesterol licked.

When I was growing up, my dad was actively involved in our local church, and he got a fair bit of exercise just setting up the local church hall every Saturday afternoon for Bingo and then manning the concession booth to sell coffee, chocolate bars and soft drinks during the Bingo.  Or, walking around and checking cards whenever anyone called "Bingo".  Then, the following Sunday morning, him and a half dozen other men would take everything from bingo down and set up a corner of the hall for the kid's Sunday school.  To him, it was mostly a social group where he could help out the church, but it was also a lot of physical activity.

Anyhow, you understand my point.  Good health begins by getting out of the house, not necessarily by going to a gym.


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## TxBuilder (Mar 15, 2010)

oldog/newtrick said:


> Nestor_Kelebay said:
> 
> 
> > Oldog/Newtrick:
> ...


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 15, 2010)

TxBuilder said:


> oldog/newtrick said:
> 
> 
> > Lesson learned I hope?
> ...


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## TxBuilder (Mar 16, 2010)

Impressive.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 16, 2010)

Oldog/Newtrick:  I thought you were pushing the benefits of pumping iron.

I've always felt that the best exercise is the one you stick with.  Golf is really just a walk in the park, but if people stick with it, it does them much more good than chalking up miles on a treadmill for a few weeks, and then bannishing the treadmill to a closet in the basement.

I'm not sure that there are more cancers than there were several decades ago.  I'm half convinced that the tools for finding cancers have gotten so much better that we're just finding more and more smaller and smaller cancers in people.  For all we know, tiny cancerous growths and tumors may be completely normal in people.  We just don't have the history to know whether tiny cancers grow or die of their own accord.  All we really know is that we're better able to find smaller and smaller cancers nowadays.


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## Wuzzat? (Mar 16, 2010)

You could be governor of CA; I think Ahhhnnold is gettin' tired of the job.


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 16, 2010)

Wuzzat? said:


> You could be governor of CA; I think Ahhhnnold is gettin' tired of the job.



Naw, I'll stick around here and make fun of Inspector Gadget when he wears funny hats.  I dont want to move to Cali


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## inspectorD (Mar 16, 2010)

Do you have any idea what those steroids are gonna do to your little black bag??
Geez, a guy wears one comfortable hat ,which reminds me.. I need to find my green hat for tommorrow.


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## Wuzzat? (Mar 16, 2010)

That picture is a fake, right?  If not, I doubt that the guy can move.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 17, 2010)

You think that guy is ripped?  You ain't seen nuthin.

Check out this Holstein!







In a bare knuckle fight with your pretty boy, my money would be on the Holstein.


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 17, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> In a bare knuckle fight with your pretty boy, my money would be on the Holstein.



You guys can bare nuckle all ya want, I'll vote for the pretty thing in the skirt.


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## TxBuilder (Mar 17, 2010)

I was at the State Fair this weekend and they were showing some the most massive steers I have ever seen. Impressive those show steers. Normal ones don't get nearly that size.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 17, 2010)

Yeah, most of them would be smaller than Bodacious:






Bodacious ended the career of several bull riders on the rodeo circuit.  One time he kicked and raised a rider up in the air and then shot his head back hard to smash all the bones in the rider's face.  Bull riders started wearing hockey helmets to protect their face and heads after that.






Bullriding has to be the most dangerous (and probably dumbest) sport.  "Here kid, go climb up on that ton of muscle, jab him in the ribs real hard and if he doesn't kill you, we'll pay you $10,000."

http://www.sharkonline.org/?P=0000000439


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## TxBuilder (Mar 17, 2010)

I like it. "Here's a hard chunk of rubber now run out there on that frozen lake and thwack it with this stick and try not to let the other guys punch you in the mouth or stab you with their skates, just to knock it into a net on the other side of the lake." Everything sounds stupid when you put it that way.
"Just force a contraction of your diaphragm in order to fill your lungs with air,you're doing it, so that you can continue to live." See.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 17, 2010)

I don't like watching people risk their lives to win money any more than I like watching them eat bugs on TV to win money in a reality TV show.

I tend to cheer for the bull, as long as he's not killing or crippling anyone at the time.


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## TxBuilder (Mar 18, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> I don't like watching people risk their lives to win money any more than I like watching them eat bugs on TV to win money in a reality TV show.
> 
> I tend to cheer for the bull, as long as he's not killing or crippling anyone at the time.



I agree to an extent but not to fall back to much on my childhood but I grew up with it and have always had an affinity for the rodeo. Are there Rodeos in Canada?


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 18, 2010)

Oh, yeah.  There are there rodeos in Canada.

Calgary, Alberta is home to the biggest rodeo (or one of the biggest) in the world.  People from all over North America come to Calgary for the Calgary Stampede.

Calgary Stampede - July 9-18, 2010. Calgary, Alberta, Canada

I lived in Calgary for 6 years, and the Calgary Stampede isn't JUST a rodeo.  It's a combination of all kinds of stuff happening in the city at the same time.  There's the rodeo events, an agricultural fair, there's all kinds of rides in the fairground, there are fireworks displays going on every night, there's square dancing and western dancing competitions, there's basically something for everyone, but the center piece of it all is the rodeo.

Even the small town of Morris, Manitoba has a rodeo every year:
http://www.manitobastampede.ca/
That's where I first saw live bull riding...
(and decide it was 70% insanity and 30% sport.)


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## TxBuilder (Mar 18, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Oh, yeah.  There are there rodeos in Canada.
> 
> Calgary, Alberta is home to the biggest rodeo (or one of the biggest) in the world.  People from all over North America come to Calgary for the Calgary Stampede.
> 
> ...




It's the same thing here in Texas. When the rodeo is in town you know it. Non stop advertising. The Texas state fair is something I think the entire world has heard of with Big Tex and all.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 19, 2010)

Sorry.  Just as you probably never heard of the rodeo in Morris, Manitoba, I never heard of "Big Tex" until now.

But, with that belt buckle, he sure looks like he would come from Texas.  It'd sure be an embarassment if he was actually from Philadelphia.


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## TxBuilder (Mar 19, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Sorry.  Just as you probably never heard of the rodeo in Morris, Manitoba, I never heard of "Big Tex" until now.
> 
> But, with that belt buckle, he sure looks like he would come from Texas.  It'd sure be an embarassment if he was actually from Philadelphia.



He may be. We have a lot of non natives in Texas. We are a great state to move to. No state tax. Companies Flock here. Employees follow.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 19, 2010)

Well, I guess that would work fine in Texas.  You have a beautiful climate.  You have less government regulation in your state buraucracy and business rules.  You have a larger population and are closer to large population centers, like California, Florida and Mexico.

Here in Manitoba, there is little we can do to attract very much business.  We have a cold climate with essentially no geographic attractions (except a large cold lake about 50 miles away), we aren't close to any large population centers (except maybe Minneapolis).  About the only thing we have going for us is that we're located in the geographic center of the continent, but when you consider that 99 percent of the population of the continent lives south of us, we're in the middle of nowhere, really.  We have LOTS of untapped hydroelectric potential (that means producing electricity from waterfalls), but so does Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and other places.

We here in Manitoba are hoping that global warming will help us in the climate department, and that our northern shore (on Hudson Bay) will maybe become ice-free year-round so that Churchill, Manitoba could become a grain exporting port (once again).

PS:  About 20 years ago there was a big squabble in the Winnipeg and Manitoba governments as to whether or not to throw in public money to help build a Convention Center in Winnipeg.  Someobody said that the reason there aren't any conventions in Winnipeg was because we didn't have a world class convention center.  So, when our federal government offered to foot part of the bill, we ended up spending 6 million dollars on a world class convention center.  And, now it sits empty most of the time, except when they rent the place for nothing so that someone can make some money off of it.

People still hold their conventions in Las Vegas, Honolulu, Atlantic City and Miami.  I guess they just don't know that Winnipeg has a convention center.


Someone said that the reason why more people don't come out to see the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is because we need a new Opera House.

Winnipeg Convention Centre
Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet > Home


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## TxBuilder (Mar 22, 2010)

LOL. Cold is cold, not to much fun about it. I think you guys would have a higher population if it weren't so cold. Funny that people think attractions are what people want when in reality it's just warmth.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Mar 22, 2010)

So do you often go to Dallas for the state fair?


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