We were probably about five and eight years old, my younger brother and I… maybe a bit older.  It was summer.  We were wearing Durango-style motorcycle boots, as we often did.  You know, the kind with the metal rings on the side held in place by three straps, one that goes to the sole, one that goes around the front, and one that goes around the back of your heel?  They were brown leather and almost resembled cowboy boots except they had squared toes and a lower heel.  Oddly enough, I believe we were also wearing shorts and tank tops, the both of us.  This wasn’t an infrequent style of dress for us.  We hadn’t yet begun to develop into the attentive slaves to fashion we have become in our adulthood.

I don’t remember the argument, but I know we were yelling at each other.  We were leaving the Farm King store, a regular stop on Saturday shopping at the time, and heading toward our mom’s lime green 1973 Ford Pinto.  I stopped and turned toward my brother, face to face, and said something.  I don’t remember what I said, but I know it pissed him off.  I can still picture the slow-motion image of that boot swinging up from the ground, propelled by a skinny white leg.  I stabbing pain took over my whole core.  I stumbled backward and started to cry, partly because I needed to cry and partly to get our mom’s attention so that my brother could be punished for his heinous wrongdoing.

He didn’t get punished, but mom did yell at him quite a bit and tell him he should never kick anyone in the balls because he could “really hurt them permanently.“  I briefly wondered if my own nuts might be hurt permanently, but dismissed it.  I was more bothered that my brother didn’t get slapped or grounded or something.  The whole trip home I held and guarded my nuts and stewed that my brother had basically gotten away with it.  In retrospect, I probably deserved it.
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Photo purchased from 123rf.com

I realized so much of our year has gone by while updating my “pushupometer” in the sidebar of this blog.  I’m at a total of 703 pushups for the year.  That averages out to 19 a day, although the total for today was 37, but you know that already if you’ve read my previous post regarding this.

The pushup thing and my pledge to make a video every day on my secondary YouTube channel, NotChristopherMast, the one I use  for blogs, are the two resolutions I’ve stuck to best.  I’ve indeed made a video every day (with varying quality).  I’ve indeed increased my pushups every day.  It’s inspiring.

I’ve also logged all my non-commute cycling miles, but the number is as yet unimpressive.  I did manage a ride Saturday, with a bit of excitement, and I’m heading out on an organized ride in Napa County this coming Saturday, so that goal should see some progress too.

Hopefully, this will be “my year.”  We shall see…

It’ll be available on iTunes and the whole of the “digital music for sale” internet spectrum, but I’ll also produce 100 physical CDs that’ll be hand-autographed in case I become hugely famous sometime long after I’m dead so your grandchildren can argue about who gets the profits from the estate auction.

On a side note, I have some more songs that’ll get released in digital download under a different title to be determined.  These songs will be completely different from the usual… shooting for a retro-80s loop feel there.  Not even sure if I’ll bother with the whole iTunes thing for that.

So… sometime around April or May look for “There Will Be Cake” by yours truly.

So, I’m still going to do one more pushup every day, but I’m breaking them into sets.  I’m shooting for sets of 20 plus finishing up the odd ones in the last set, so when I get to 54 I’ll have two sets of 20 and a set of 14.  Between sets I’m going to rest very minimally (just enough time to get blood back in my arms so that I don’t fall on my nose).  I’m still going to do all the pushups in one session, not spreading them out throughout the day.

We’ll see how it goes…  hopefully on the last day of the year I’m doing 18 sets of 20 and a set of six to finish!

Yeah, the video didn’t embed exactly correct, but you can still watch it here… but I recommend going to the TED site and watching it there, then reading more.

One idea I had was to do pushups in increasing amounts according to what day of the year I’m on. January 1st, I did one pushup. I did two the next day, then three, then four yesterday, and five today. I’m not sure how long I’ll last but I’m going to give it a shot. By summer I’ll either be really good at pushups or laughing at what a stupid idea this was.