Happy New Year!

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted here, and since then Christmas and New Year's have come and gone. I've been buying myself some Christmas presents after the holiday as well, as there are always things I know I need but forget to ask for. As with so many people after the holidays, I have a New Year's resolution that has something to do with fitness, though I really don't need to lose much of any weight. I have been doing cardio workouts regularly for the last few years on my recumbent exercise bike in the basement, and that has been all I need to keep fit. I have these little ten pound weights that a do a couple simple exercises with for a few minutes as I warm up on the bike, but they don't do much for me, so I made a little trip to Target on my way home from work yesterday to get something bigger to increase my upper body strength.

So I walked into Target and was immediately lost. I hadn't been to that Target in a couple years, and apparently they are going the "Super Wal-Mart" route with the food and all of that. I asked an employee with the biggest "bush" haircut I've seen in years, where the sporting goods department was now. It was on the other side of the store, so off I went. I got to the weights and found I had a few options. I could get a set of two adjustable dumbells for $85, but I really only needed one, and they only adjusted up to 25 pounds. I just bought a 25 pound dumbbell for $22 instead. I went home to try it out and tried a few simple exercises. It was difficult to do a lot of reps with it, but that was the point, and I plan to "grow into it"!

On another topic, will the world busybodies please leave Madonna alone??? For those that have not heard about this story, she adopted a baby from Malawi, and suddenly a few human rights organizations and foreign aid groups are in an uproar because they say that she used her celebrity to bypass the system. They make a lot of bizarre claims. First of all, they say it was easier for her because she is rich. OK, what is not easier to do when you're rich in the world? Even if she did use money to grease the wheels, (and there is no indication that she did), many Americans don't understand that about 4/5 or more of all of the countries in the world work entirely and only like this. The government of Malawi says it was legal, and the US government also has had nothing negative to say on the matter, though I'm not sure if they have any interest. The poor father had two of his kids die of malaria already! What do you think this kid's chances are if he's put back in the orphanage? A couple months ago when this came out, he had a lot of pressure put on him by aid groups (NGOs etc.), and others that thought the baby should stay in Malawi. They kept telling the Dad to make all of these comments about how he didn't know he was giving him up permanently and he wants to see him or whatever. Then once he went into hiding to get away from all of this attention, he said people keep telling him to say things. Leave the man alone! Others that may be interested in adopting from there may not now just because of all of the hassle they are giving Madonna.