My butt cheeks hurt.  My ankles and knees feel sore.  But it means I'm alive!!!

Yesterday's training session included:

• Leg Press & Calf Raises (machine with head towards the floor): 4 sets of 10, first two at 90 lbs and then last two at 180 lbs  (first time)
• Leg Extension (machine): 4 sets of 12, 55 lbs (first time)
• Leg Press & Calf Raises (machine with horizontal body that moves): 4 sets of 12, progressive weight - 100, 140 + 5, 180 + 10, 200 + 10 (first time ever)
• Lunges, 50 lbs across the carpeted area and back (first time with 50)
• Abs, I think 100, various sets of 20
• Push ups: 2 sets of 10, then 1 set of 8 after he showed me to focus my shoulder blades coming together so that my arm doesn't turn out -- which made it much harder.

I've been training with Luke regularly now, twice a week for the last 5 months.  And since August, I've been at the gym 6 days a week as much as possible.  FINALLY, I feel the weight change.  The grey REI convertible pants and the wide-leg Old Navy pin-stripe trousers are loose in the waist and just a tiny, tiny bit looser in the thigh than usual.  Yay!!

Comic relief:  Luke was following me closely during the lunges (50 is the heaviest I've done so far) and he was cheering me on with "come on, get it, get it.  bikini body, bikini body!"

I learned yesterday that Vu has only met one of our grandparents,bà nội, dad's mom. This was very interesting to me. I've always feelt a little sorry for myself that I never knew any of my grandparents and now it seems Vu isn't too far from that. I am still jealous though, that he remembers bits and pieces of life in Vietname with all of our family and I have absolutely none.

I went through old photos of my Vietnam trip in 2004 with dad. We visited his parents grave and took photos, if I'm reading the headstones correctly it seems that ông nội died in 1947, when dad was only 6 years old, and they don't know the exact day he was born.  And bà nội died in 1988, so she surely knew of me.  I remember dad's shrine with her picture on it, so I just always assumed she died a long time ago, whatever that means. But now that I think of it, I remember Chi Quyen saying how everyone was so excited to hear about my birth because I was a girl. I will need to discuss this more with mom and dad.

Here is a shrine of both ông bà nội at a relative's house,


And here are their headstones:

I realize that not everyone has an acute sense of direction.  But I feel that people should have a general knowledge of where North and South are.  Especially if you drive a car since all the freeways have directional designations.

Over the last week, there have been an influx of people who need directions to our office.  I'm happy to give them, it's actually a little hard to find.  But I hate when someone says "do I turn right or left" without first telling me what street they are on and what direction they are headed.  All I can say is "you turn east, which means right if you're north, or left if you're going south."

"I don't know where I am" they say.

I can't help you, if you can't help yourself.

I've only experienced a 2 or 3 pound weight loss since I started exercising regularly (May 2011).  My eating habits have been the culprit, I like food way too much.  But I definitely feel different in my clothes.  I don't fit all my "skinny" clothes yet, but I do fit into Phuong's "big" pants that are a size FOUR!!!  Put your hands in the air!

 Don't you hate it when you have to wake up in the middle of the night to use the toilet and you can't find the end of the toilet paper.  I felt like a cat just swatting at the roll but the paper wasn't unraveling.