Home Articles posted by ekkarn (Page 28)

Exercising Reboot with a Surprising Soundtrack for EK!

I think it’s beyond time for an update.  Just because I have not been posting, doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. This week in fact I have been very busy. Tuesday we took our daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Marcus to the Newark Airport. They are taking a trip to Portugal, where Marcus’ grandparents live. They will be staying with them for a few days and then they will be sightseeing for the remainder of their nine-day trip.   So while the farthest I’ve ever been from home is Florida, Elizabeth has been to England and Ireland and now to Portugal. Anyway a typical 3.5 hour trip to Newark and back took 5.5 thanks to a horrible t-storm while I was driving on the NJ Turnpike and then a traffic jam getting back on the NJ Turnpike. Yesterday we babysat Zoe, while our daughter-in-law took Logan to the Paediatrician for his 7 month checkup. The little chunky guy weighed in at 22 lbs!
EK Starts Exercising Again…..
At the beginning of the week, I decided that it was time to start exercising  again so that I can start running again. I stopped running in the beginning of June. I had some funky twinges in my left knee and I decided to rest it for a few days. Well, a few days turned into a few weeks. During that time, I also stopped doing any extended cardio exercising. The only thing I continued to do was my morning yoga. This last Saturday (July 14th) I did a 30 minute cardio workout and felt pretty good. I followed that with a 3.30 walk/jog on Sunday. Because I felt pretty good after those two workouts, I decided to go full steam ahead this week. The result has been a great week of exercising! Every day, including Monday a Target work day, I have had at least one 30-50 minute cardio workout that burned 300-500 calories. The routine that I have been doing includes: some dance-cardio (or in my case some movement cardio), a set of Kundalini yoga, kettle bell and bands. Yesterday, I also added a 30 minute plus walk! Two out of the four days (Sunday-Wednesday) I surpassed my steps goal of 14,300 steps. One of the days I didn’t make my goal was Tuesday, which was the day I was in the car from five and a half hours!  Anyway the bottom line is that I think I am doing well as far as exercising goes
……With A Surprising Soundtrack
The soundtrack  for the dance-cardio portion of my morning workouts has been music from the late 50s and early 60s. I think I’ve chosen some classic tunes that really get my old body moving! What do you think?? I have some thoughts about the pop music of the 60s versus today’s pop music that I’m going to share in a future post! But until then get moving!! Guess you can say that I am and was sweating wit the “oldies”!

New CDs From the Princeton Record Exchange – Yeah!

Testifyin" - One of my Treasures from Princeton Record Exchange

While we were raising four kids my wife and I rarely spent money on ourselves. So when it came time that two oldest boys started to buy CDs,  I was thrilled when we found Tunes Used CD store in Marlton,N.J. At the time they had bins and bins of  cheap used CDs. Thanks to the fact that my taste was slightly different than their typical clientele my CD collection skyrocketed. I found albums from a ton of Americana artists that I couldn’t find anywhere else, at prices I could afford!! Texas music artists like: Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jack Ingram and Pat Green along with Americana musicians like Jack Williams and Chris Knight. Read More

DNA and Ancestry Answer a Family’s Question

Dna Matches add to my fan chart

Genealogical research has never been easier. With the plethora of information available on-line at Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org, you can start to build a family tree in hours instead of years. Then, when you add in inexpensive   DNA testing, you can uncover long-buried family secrets or answer family questions that cross generations. Read More

A New Challenge : The 14-Day Short Post Challenge

Short Post Challenge write posts using a 15 minute timer
Can the 14-Day Short Post Challenge Get Me Posting?
I am having a dreadful time trying to make myself sit down and write posts. Right now the way my life is going sitting down for an hour plus to write a post just ain’t happening. There are too many things that I want to do instead. So maybe I should quit blogging altogether. But blogging has helped create the life that I am leading now. As a result of blogging, I read more now then I have ever read in my life. I also listen to more music at least different genres. Blogging has also kept me running, doing yoga and trying to get younger. So with all those positives that have happened as a result of blogging, I don’t want to quit blogging. What I have decided to do instead is trying to write shorter posts. Over the last several months I have realized that I get through books a lot quicker and get other things done when I set a fifteen minute timer and read. Then after the fifteen minutes is up I go and do other things for a while. All this is leading up to my next challenge. It will be a 14-Day (because it is a test run) Short Post Writing Challenge. The main challenge is to write short 300-400 word posts in 15 minutes. Then come back and edit, spell check and add media and post it, also within a fifteen minute time period. If I am successful, maybe my posting can increase to two posts written and posted per  day, ha! Hmm, I’m close to wrapping up this post and I’m not at 300 words yet……
Recapping….
Rather than ending this blog I have decided to make my blog posts shorter. To aid in making this transition, I am going to try to limit the time I have to write a post to 15 minutes and  then 15 minutes to edit and finalize the post. Finally, I am creating a 14-day Short Post Challenge. to try to make this happen! Wish me luck!

The Human Division -The Worlds of the Old Man’s War Series – John Scalzi

The Worlds of  Old Man’s War Series – John Scalzi

So the other day I finished the first book in my Other World’s Reading Challenge. The world that I visited or should I say “revisited” was the world that John Scalzi has created in his “Old Man’s War” series. The book that I read was The Human Division. It is book five in the series. Read More

Time Enough For Blogging???

Zoe makes blogging harder but I wouldn't trade her for blogging
Can I Find Time in My Day to Blogging?  How Do They Do It?
So I need to find a way to get my blogging Mojo back again! Oh, wait there’s a book for that on my Kindle. It’s title is 31 Days to Finding Your  Blogging Mojo. Do you think reading it again will help?  Did I ever have a blogging mojo to lose?  Over the last few months, I’ve started several posts, stopped and never finished them. I know that it’s mostly in the evening I’m either trying to finish a post or sometimes even starting a post. If it’s the latter, then I’m trying to finish the post even later in the night.  That is not a good thing for me. I do my best thinking and writing early in the day. When I was working, I would try to do whatever writing I had to do in the morning, then I would do the outside physical work in the afternoon. Now how can I battle ending up writing and posting late in the day. To do that let’s look at how I spend my weekdays. My Monday through Friday schedule typically is as follows:
My Typical Weekday Morning Schedule 
Monday & Friday Target at 7 am until 12.45 pm Tuesday –  Wednesday – Thursday either Babysit  Zoe and Logan together from 11:30 or 12:30 until 5:15 – 5:45 or Zoe alone,  picking her up at school at 10:30 and then babysitting her until her dad gets home at 5:15+/- I do about 30 minutes of yoga each morning. On Tuesday and Thursday for the last month ( this week excluded) I have been running. Running usually takes up more than an hour, when you include prep time, running, cooling down and showering. So the combination of yoga, meditation and running takes over two hours, typically,  from 7:15 to 9:30. Then there’s breakfast to make,etc. If I couple all of the above together and add in the fact that I also need time to read the books that I write about, as well as, listen to the music I plan to write about,  then the result is the time I have to write during the morning hours shrinks more and more!! Ouch! So my question is: How do people do it??? Should I just try to write five posts on the weekends to be posted on various days of the week? Or should I get up every morning at 5 and write between 5 and 7?? Alternatively I could just say:  I’m old, nobody reads my stuff anyway, I should just quit blogging?? That last idea seems to be  becoming reality,  as I have less and less desire to post! Help! Of course then if the options are sitting home alone staring at a computer writing a post or staring at this little guy or being with Zoe as I am in the featured image, I think I’ll take the latter all the time!!!