Tuesday, November 04, 2008

update 2: atrophy's a bitch

so i have been getting hate mail about my blog and my lack of updates. well, perhaps hate mail is a bit strong, but i have had some disgruntled readers. (how do i know? i was told so both in person and on email.) yeah, so what if i have seen my readership plummet. what's your point? maybe i want it that way. that someecard says it all. i crack under pressure to be in a good mood and amusing. leave me alone. i have been very busy lately between work, doing laundry, sitting around feeling sorry myself, cleaning, listening to the 96.5FM "love songs after dark" jingle, and entertaining illusions of grandeur. but now it is november, so i guess i should get back in the swing of things.

i always say my blog is for strangers, as none of my in-person friends actually read my senseless babble. or so i thought. but then monday i got a call from my dear friend from college who i hadn't spoken with in way too long, maybe two years. in that conversation of catching up with what has happened in the past 2 years, the addition of biking into my life has been a major change worth, i suppose, some warrant? so i brought it up, to which he replies: "yes! this is the only thing i know about you because i read your blog sometimes. actually, i don't really understand anything you are writing about...but i like the pictures." .... i like the pictures too! but i like pictures and text in general. that probably dates back to my middle school comic book obsession with "the new mutants." if you are moderately well versed in marvel comics, they would be the predecessors to x-force, basically teenage x-men who are just getting their powers and don't know how to control them and have all these awkward adolescence moments... but i digress back to my friend who was actually reading blog..... i got kinda sad that my real human friend was trying to keep up with my life and didn't understand anything because of my bike jargon. sorry gabe! i guess the people who get my blog are people who think of me as "the bridget jones of the velodrome" (which i discovered someone referred to me as, while looking at a link that was coming to my blog) -- which is really pretty amusing in real-time, given my rant about bridget jones to my real life friends a couple years ago....past beth wouldn't be very happy with present beth's image. but what can you do. i would have much preferred a reference to illyana rasputin, but she was kind of deranged, although she was always my favorite new mutant character.

well, that was quite a digression from the title of this post: atrophy is a bitch.

i know the real reason people read here is to keep up to date on my quad measurements, which i have been slacking on posting. so, here is a review.
sept 25- 63cm
oct 2- 63cm

then i stopped biking.

oct 9- 63cm
oct 16- 61.75cm
oct 23- 61.50cm
oct 30- 60.5cm
can you believe that shit?

so i went to the gym saturday to try and correct this embarrassment and i realized what a weak ass i am. it is really kind of pathetic. now i am again shuffling along like an old lady and people at work keep giving me funny looks. the only good thing is, because my steps are so tiny, my pedometer count has been through the roof because it takes me twice as many steps to get anywhere.

you know what else? my jeans are fitting again. let me say this: MICHAEL BALL YOU DROPPED THE F*ING BALL! (PUN INTENDED!) my keirin cut jeans will likely never be made by rock & republic...and even if his nice PR guy sean contacts me again, my quads are back in the range of normal folks and probably don't need special jeans any longer.

13 comments:

WarrenG said...

Somebody needs a donut, and another pound of fake cheese.

A few hundred grunts on the leg machines and your numbers will have Michiko back onto normal cycles.

Anonymous said...

if that your ass in those jeans, stay away from the gym! your "quads" look good from back here.
sexist pig

Holly R said...

Umm, your pictures scared me.
I'm going to have nightmares tonight.
I should quantify that it was the cartoon pics that scared me, not the jeans pic.
If I could semi-quote a character from Bridget Jones in describing how Michal dropped the Ball: "Did he ever effing write you back about the effing jeans idea you effing clued him in about? Then eff him. His effing loss!"
I should probably not have any more wine tonight.
Welcome back to the blogosphere. :o)

place_holder said...

now that measurements are back on, i am talking to you, again.

oct 9- 63cm
oct 16- 61.75cm
oct 23- 61.50cm
oct 30- 60.5cm

the rate of atrophy is out of whack between Oct 16 and 23. is that when your quads were bloated during pms?

beth bikes! said...

yes, m-coco, major pms that week. (but you already knew that.)

Garrett Lau said...

FWIW, the jeans that I was wearing at RTWC #2 last month were too tight around the thighs a year ago.

Holly, if you think the cover of THE NEW MUTANTS #11 is scary, you should see the issues drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz, who took over at #18. Here's #26:
http://lsh.0catch.com/sienk/img/nmut26.jpg

Google his images to see even more disturbing pictures.

Anonymous said...

Atrophy???

Damn. I thought you a said "A trophy!", I thought there was hardware on your mantlepiece.

beth bikes! said...

garrett-
bill sienkiewicz is absolutely AMAZING! he made some of the most beautiful cover art and designs. that issue you reference, i recall was really cool...cause it was when professor x's son (which i don't think we knew at the time) was in scotland with moria and it was all these subconscious journey's in his schizophrenic mind. there were some really cool 2 page lay-outs. he is so amazingly talented. (now i can't wait to go home for christmas and pull these out of the attic)
when i was doing this post yesterday, i was thinking about bill sienkiewicz and wondered what he was up to... and apparently he did all the character sketches for the batman dark night movie.

Garrett Lau said...

Thanks for the update on Sienkiewicz. I was so into him around 1990 that I bought everything I could find from him, and I even helped to compile this checklist:
http://lsh.0catch.com/sienk/
(You can block the popups.)

I don't remember NEW MUTANTS #26, but I'll re-read it now that you mentioned it. I just re-read #18 last night.

Kevin Collier said...

Ilyana Rasputin? Never read about her, but I'm going to guess she's Colossus's sister. Dude was my favorite.

The Flandrian said...

I'm really sorry. I think it was me that called you "the Bridget Jones of the velodrome" -- no offence intended, just a reference to the way you recorded and published vital statistics. But quad size rather than calories and alcohol consumed.

I'm just jealous that yours are bigger than mine.

Ilyana Rasputin? She was in the Russian women's pursuit team, right?

Garrett Lau said...

Hers are bigger than most women's.... Hey, what are we talking about? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....

If the NM collection isn't w/Mom, I might have them. Don't think so though.

Good Stuff.

And if you love NM, read Kid Dynamo by Connie Hirsch. Yeah, it's got Mary Sue syndrome, but it's pretty good. :)