Sporty Dennis

When it comes to feeling healthy, I think I have turned my life around.

I've become more sporty; I go for a run every other day and do sit-ups, push-ups and power training the days I'm not running.

I eat more healthy stuff; still not up to 4 pieces of fruit every day but at least I have a balanced diet; I eat cheese on bread, lean ham, grapes or apple as a snack, pasta, fish, almost no potatoes anymore, etc. One thing, 'though; I'm hooked on ice cream. It's taking on a form of addiction; not just any plain flavor of ice cream, but the Ben & Jerry's ones. They have unstoppable combinations ; Strawberry cheese cake (strawberry ice cream with chunks of graham cracker crust mixed through it); Cake batter (Yellow cake batter ice cream with swirls of chocolate vanilla fudge); Pistachio with caramel cookie chunks; and so on.

It's just too good to pass when you're roaming the grocery store. Boy, am I going to miss my B&J ice cream when I get back to Belgium !

We went to the batting cages yesterday. That's where you swing a bat at balls being warped from a machine. You can pick either softballs (the bigger ones) or baseballs (the tiny weeny ones) and you can also pick the speed the machine will throw them at you; soft pitch - 40 MPH or 50 MPH.

There were a few people practicing in the cages, wearing no helmets or protective gear whatsoever, and all I could see were warning signs that said : Bat at your own risk - wear protective gear - we will not scrape you of the floor..

OK, I made that last one up.

So we went in without protective gear - hey, we didn't want to come off as pussies - and hit our first (soft)ball. Aki of course had some practice already and swung the bat vigorously, hitting almost every ball.

My first try was a - well maybe not a complete - disaster. But I was improving with every round. By the third round of hitting softballs at 40 MPH, I wanted to try swinging for baseballs at 40 MPH. What a difference ! There was a I think 12 year old kid standing two cages next to us, whacking baseballs as if it were flies, and I barely hit three out of 10 or something. I guess it does take some practice.

The last round of soft balls at 50 MPH were rather painful for the wrists. The first 3 swings felt more like I was just barely stopping the balls with my bat, rather than hitting them in to the field (aka cage). But by the 4th ball, I felt unbeatable. I kicked some softball ass.

Feeling all pumped up, we went to a giant sports store to look for sport outfits and stuff. In the end, Aki almost bought two folding chairs she can use at festivals, and I bought a Nike T-shirt that says "Cornell Lacrosse" even though I don't play Lacrosse. I guess we're not that big of sports fans after all. :)

Since we were out shopping near the mall, I picked up the last items I wanted before moving back to B; two pair of really cool pajama pants, some underwear (2 for 10 bucks), and some t-shirts. Old Navy had a bunch of shirts on sale and since it was Sunday a lot of the normal sizes (which are Small and Medium) were already gone. Some times I was lucky to find one small or medium sized shirt tucked away (or hiding from greedy human fingers) behind a stack of very lonely ugly shirts. I grabbed whatever I could and headed for the fitting rooms with about 6 or 7 shirts. One of them I bought. 3.99. What a sale. The rest of them was too small, too big, made me look like a wrinkled garbage bag or a bag of potatoes.

I better keep up that work out schedule..