Day One - Project 2 (Improve Flexibility)

  To be clear.  It is easier to touch one's toes if one can also see one's toes.

  I spent a lot of today stretching.  I also gained a little measurable data.  When I attempt to touch my toes, my fingers are six inches from the floor (which is improved from the seven I recorded at the beginning of the day).  I think doing the splits is a long way off, but I have and will continue to put myself through some serious awkward pain to test that assumption.   It's 60 inches from left big toe to right big toe.  I have no idea what kind of mathematical operation I could use to tell me how far away doing the splits is, but I bet there's like long division in it.  And variables.  I'm too sore to solve for X right now.

  My kid helped immensely.  She's the kind of delightful sort of sociopath (you know, a three year old) that will grab your thumbs and hang from them without warning you this is coming.  I tried putting that depraved indifference to parental life to use today.  See if she could pull my arms past the comfort zone and drag my hands closer to my feet.  Mostly, she wanted to show me that SHE can touch HER toes.  I went into my whole "Gifted!  My toddler knows what onomatopoeia is!" type spiel, but Mary, who is smarter and more experienced in the bio-metric range of under five capability than me, assures me this is normal.

  I think the stretching was good today, because I don't know if you're in my hemisphere or not, but there's like a metric buttload of snow out there.  Normally, I shovel in a way that always hurts my back (yeah, I know, lift with your legs, but like, shut up, y'know?), but I feel a little better than normal.  Oh yes, project making me....less worse.....already.

  I think tomorrow I will look up information on improving flexibility.  I could have done that today, but I thought it was more important to get into the habit of trying some fun stretching in short periods throughout the day, to train out the instinct to not have fun stretching periods throughout the day.  Also, I had this weird fear that the internet was going to say that fat guys nearing 40 shouldn't be trying to do the splits and touch their toes because they missed their window.  I kind of want to make it true, and someone else's fancy data is just going to slow me down.

  Onward and Downward!

  -Mike