I used to have a well established jogging habit.  I built it up over time until I could jog for forty minutes three times a week and for two hours once a week. 

Then I abruptly stopped.  For years … and all that time I kept ‘thinking’ about starting to exercise again.  I knew I could get back in the habit.  I just lacked the will.  I also started to gain weight - noticeably so.  Thus the title of the post.

Well, I finally am getting going.  For the past four weeks I’ve been going out to exercise in the morning.  My goal has been to ‘exercise’ at least four days of the week and so far I’m maintaining the consistency.  At first ‘exercise’ meant simply getting outside the door and going for a walk around a track. 

The first time I jogged, I just ran for 100 steps.  Then I started counting the minutes that I am jogging.  My main rule was that I had to either maintain or increase the time.  I’ve been able to keep that rule too.

This morning I jogged for fifteen minutes. 

The short-term goal I’m reaching for is to jog for twenty minutes four times a week.  Then I will work on doubling that to forty minutes for four times a week.  Then I will start thinking about running (once a week) for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours …

But really, it’s just a matter of making sure I get out the door four times a week, pushing myself a little bit but not too much - and being patient.  I used to think that I wanted to run a marathon someday.  I’m not sure if that’s a real goal that I want to achieve or not.  Mainly, I just want to have an exercise habit that is consistent enough that it will help me take off the extra pounds.

I don’t expect anything spectacular anytime soon.  But maybe in six months or a year or two years, there will be a noticeable difference.  Maybe I’ll even become a thin man again.

We’ll see.

Koo-koo-ka-choo.

We went to see the Dark Knight movie today.

This is a hard PG-13 film - very intense throughout except for a slight lag at the end. There were some moments in this film when I couldn’t help but wonder if this Joker is the most frightening villain I’ve ever seen in cinema. This is particularly true when he’s focusing his formidable animus on a specific individual. At those moments you aren’t wondering if something bad is going to happen - you’re just wondering WHAT this fiend in the clown make-up is going to do to the person in front of him. He brings a mixture of predictability and unpredictability that is unnerving and fascinating to watch at the same time. As played by Heath Ledger, this freak is completely ruthless and bristling with menace. Without a doubt this is a villain that will do down as a classic for the ages - as memorable and yet completely unique in his person-ality as a Darth Vader or a Hannibal Lecter.

Christian Bale and other actors do a good job of playing their roles - but Heath Ledger steals the show.

WordPress 2.6 has been released with some new features and a bunch of bug fixes. If you’re already using WordPress for your blog, you’ll want to upgrade.

My friend Jonathan Max Wilson has created a new LDS blog aggregator called Nothing Wavering.

This aggregator (or blog portal) provides a number of improvements to what we have seen so far in LDS aggregators - first from a technological point of view and secondly (and perhaps just as importantly) it is non-hierarchical in its design.

He explains his reasons for creating this aggregator in a number of posts which I will link here:

A Critical Look At LDS Blog Portals Part 1: “Never Show Your Face Anywhere in the Bloggernacle Ever Again”

A Critical Look At LDS Blog Portals Part 2: The History of LDS Blog Portals

A Critical Look At LDS Blog Portals Part 3: Technology and Usability

A Critical Look At LDS Blog Portals Part 4: Conclusion

Announcing: NothingWavering.org an LDS Blog Portal for Mainstream, Orthodox Mormons