Category: Photography

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For an athlete, being explosive is good. You can jump higher, run faster, hit harder, and (the point of this post) thrust a sword more quickly. Sadly, I’m perhaps the least explosive person around. This is very frustrating when it comes to sword fighting, because my thrusts aren’t quick enough to hit my opponent, whereas their thrusts are quick enough to hit me, before I can parry them.

I can obviously compensate in various ways. I can try and be very deceptive, and then launch an attack that is so surprising my opponent can’t react. I can get very good at parrying, so I can stop an attack with a very small movement that doesn’t have to be so quick. I’m working on these things.

But one other thing I can do is work on explosiveness.

This will have other advantages too. Explosiveness (roughly the same thing as power) is an aspect of muscular strength that disappears early as one ages, and it’s very useful. Just being strong is great, if you want to lift something heavy, but power (or explosiveness) is what you need if you catch your toe, and then want to get your foot out in front of you before you fall down.

I’m going to have to do some research on training for explosiveness, but one exercise that I already know that I can start training right away will be to throw my slam ball. Some people do that facing a wall, so they can catch it and throw it again. But I think I’ll throw it, and then spring forward as fast as possible to pick it up and throw it again, so I can train both explosive arm strength and explosive leg strength.

Me holding an orange slamball above my head, about to slam it down
Another slamball exercise to improve power and explosiveness—the classic slamball slam

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Two things I’m allergic to are ragweed pollen (which is at its annual peak right about now), and household dust (which has been at a peak this morning, because I’ve been decluttering, dusting, and vacuuming in the living room).

Although wearing a mask is an obvious move to minimize getting household dust in my nose when I’m doing housework, I usually don’t think of it until my nose is all snuffly. Today though, I remembered. And it worked great! No snuffling at all!

A selfie taken while I'm wearing a KF-94 mask

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A large statue of a woman with fruit and grain standing in a public square

I have long been a big fan of allegorical figures, such as these two outside the Chicago Board of Trade.

My education in such things was slightly deficient. I mean, every educated person ought to be able to look at such a figure and identify it by the signifiers, the way nearly everybody can recognize Liberty and Justice. These two are only slightly more obscure, so I was able to identify them. (Especially in context—they are particularly appropriate for the Chicago Board of Trade, where commodities are traded.)

A large statue of a woman with a gear and an anchor standing in a public square
Industry, with a gear, anvil, and an anchor
A large statue of a woman with fruit and grain standing in a public square
Agriculture, with a cornucopia of fruit and corn and with sheaves of wheat

There are many more that I can’t reliably recognize—Fame, Victory, Hope, Time, etc. I’ve looked from time to time to find a nice compact reference with pictures and descriptions, and haven’t found exactly what I was looking for.

In any case, it was fun to see these two, just across the street from the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, where we had gone to visit the Money Museum—about which I hope to write a post soon.

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We scheduled this trip to be here for the opening of the tapestry exhibit that includes work by Jackie’s teacher. We were completely unaware that Lollapalooza would be here this weekend as well.

Lollapolooza sign behind a barricade

I must say though, I’ve really enjoyed the sidewalk views of girls barely wearing party dresses and glitter. Particularly amusing are the girls unaccustomed to wearing such short skirts and shorts—detectable because they keep trying to tug the garment down, in a vain effort to cover their butt.

Five stars. Would attend again.

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Jackie and I are in Chicago for the weekend, staying in the Palmer House. We came to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit at an art center in the West Loop, put on by the American Tapestry Association. The exhibit includes a piece by one of Jackie’s teachers, So Jackie particularly wanted to see it.

Jackie looking at a tapestry showing a woman with a dinosaur
Jackie looking at a different tapestry, this one showing a woman with a dinosaur

After a period where I was being a bit casual about them, for the past few months I’ve been doing pretty well at getting my workouts in, and I didn’t want to let that go, so I went to the fitness center here at the Palmer House. It’s pretty good!

I cranked through a slightly reduced version of my usual morning exercises, then went to the main room of the fitness center for the workout proper. They had an adequate set of kettlebells, so I did two exercises with those:

  • With a 35 lb (16 kg) kettlebell I did 10 x 20 swings emom
  • With a 20 lb (9 kg) kettlebell I did 4 x 5/5 clean&press reverse ladder

Then I found a barbell and loaded it up with a pair of 45 lb plates and did 2 x 5 deadlifts. I’m super out-of-practice with deadlifts, and would not have wanted to do more weight or more reps, but that much was okay.

Having done the tapestry thing, we’re looking to do some other Chicago stuff. Probably the Art Institute. Maybe one of the boat tours where they talk about the architecture. Maybe the Field Museum. Maybe something else! We’ll just see.