My Ongoing Struggle with Doubt Concerning Planking's Benefits

This is going to be quite a short post, for I have just finished making a post in my private blog, and now it is already past 6:30 p.m.

I even forgot to finish an exercise session that I truncated toward 10:00 a.m. this morning ─ basically, it was only half done at very best. And now I feel it to be too late ─ I haven't the motivation.

I also seem to have lost the motivation to get beyond nine minutes in planking. For two days now, that is where I have given up (well, I actually hold out for a few seconds longer than that). 

I blame that damned video I posted about recently wherein a muscular young fellow denounced the generally proclaimed benefits of planking, and he refuted as many of those avowed benefits as he could think of.

Until then, I had just recently managed to plank for 12 minutes on at least four or five recent days, and it was beginning to appear that this new record for me might now be my latest regular planking target.

However, following watching that video, I just can't seem to find the resolve to suffer that long any more ─ I am too discouraged.

What is the point ─ if that fellow is actually correct and the proclaimed benefits of planking are all misconceived or misguided?

I cannot shake the doubt that he instilled within me.

If you did not see that earlier post of mine, this is the video I speak of: The TRUTH About Planks (IT’S UGLY!). It was posted to YouTube a little over five months ago.

I even located an article from 2015 contending much the same thing ─ see TheInertia.com (Don’t Be a Planker: Why I Stopped Giving Clients the Plank). 

Most of the commenters to that article certainly disagreed, but the YouTubers tended to be more accepting.

And now it is approaching 7:30 p.m. ─ I must stop for today.

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Am I Losing Interest in Planking? │ Hoping for an Early Saturday Evening to Bed

It is possible that I have performed my last 12-minute plank ─ it was accomplished in the small hours of Thursday well ere the dawn of day. 

I actually held out for considerably longer ─ my cellphone's stopwatch read something like 12 minutes and 11.38 seconds by the time I stopped it while I was still in the plank position, but there were a few additional seconds tagged on because I was already in the plank position when I first activated the stopwatch.

And of course, in order to stop the counter, I had to log back into my cellphone while holding the plank, for the screen goes dark after something like five minutes. 

I attempted a plank after 6:00 p.m. this evening for the first time since the 12-minute plank, but I had no resolve to suffer through to try and match 12 minutes. I gave up a few seconds past eight minutes.

"The thrill is gone," I fear.

It has not helped that I am haunted by the video I recently profiled a post or two back wherein a fit and muscular chap contended that planks do not bestow any of the benefits that proponents of planks claim.

He dissected those claims and offered his refutation of each.

And now I cannot shirk the notion that I am wasting my time trying to become proficient at performing the exercise. 

Perhaps if I had risen in the wee hours of last night, I might have found the necessary reserves and desire. However, my younger brother held onto consciousness last evening after he was home from wherever he had been drinking, so I sat up with him and operated our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch up some episodes of three of the T.V. series we follow. 

It was after 1:00 a.m. by the time I was to bed, and by then I had drank two cans of the strong (8% alcohol) beer that I keep in stock.

This morning when I rose shortly after 7:00 a.m., I felt hungover. I put in some work on the post I have in progress at one of my six hosted websites; and then around 9:30 a.m. or soon thereafter I returned to bed for some further sleep.  

I was next up just after 11:00 a.m., feeling better.

Still, after some early afternoon exercising out in the backyard toolshed, and then my day's first meal, I sought yet another deep nap.

It certainly does feel chilly now ─ Summer is definitely gone. Thursday night and yesterday were distinctly uncomfortable for me due to a breeze that brought that chill right into the house (we have five upstairs windows that are open to varying degrees).

By the way, my wife showed up quite early last evening and was home for some time. First she did some cooking for us; and then she took an extended nap. 

She had not gotten home until after 5:00 a.m. that morning, and then had to get up shortly after 10:00 a.m. to quickly ready herself and hustle off on her drive to work at her friend's Thai restaurant ─ my wife's usual start is 11:00 a.m. 

She looked worn right out when she left here that morning, and was not at all communicative. However, our marriage is such that this is typical of her. 

For her to have come home early last evening meant that she had taken a short day, for she was here well before the restaurant normally closes.

She tends to spend her weekends somewhere in Vancouver, so she will not be back home until at least sometime tomorrow. 

Sometimes she even goes directly to work from Vancouver on Mondays without even showing up here on Sunday, and will then not make an appearance at home until late Monday evening or even the wee a.m. hours of Tuesday.

In addition to having a gambling problem ─ there is a casino right close by where she works ─ she also cannot turn down an invitation to party, no matter how tired she feels. Her "friends" seem to be everything to her.

Back in Thailand, she never had any friends who were well off. 

So now she has become addicted to the distinction and status she feels she has with the various Thai, Laos, and other gals she has come to know here in Canada ─ women who would never have been friends with the poor village tomboy that my wife was back in Thailand when I met her over there in January 2003. 

Since finally coming here to Canada to join me in May 2006 (we married in 2005), she gradually Westernized under the sundry partying influences she came to know over here; and went from the cautious, simple young woman I had known and loved in Thailand, to a virtual spendthrift and status-seeker.

But I do not wish to continue this lamentable discussion.

Right now it is 8:00 p.m., and I want to have some supper and be all set to get to bed if my brother shows up even a minute past 9:00 p.m.

I have 9:00 p.m. as his deadline. I do not like sitting up late ─ I prefer getting to bed by 10:00 p.m. at latest so that I can rise early in the a.m.

If he is out drinking until 9:00 p.m., he will most likely be too intoxicated for me to easily tolerate. And even when he is home by 8:00 p.m. ─ or even ahead of 7:00 p.m. ─ the odds are still excellent that he will pass out minutes after he sits down to watch a show with me. 

Sometimes on Saturday evenings, however, he will come home with his girlfriend Bev. Only then would I be lenient and present myself if his homecoming is after 9:00 p.m.

On those occasions, we almost always watch a movie.  

So I do not yet know what to expect ─ I just want to be all prepared for an early evening if he is not yet here by 9:00 p.m. 

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Effusive Thanks to Form History Control (II) │ The Beef and Milk Bacteria That May Cause Rheumatoid Arthritis and Other Autoimmune Disease in Vulnerable People

This latter afternoon I was all set to save the draft of today's content assignment for the post I am developing at one of my six hosted websites, when I noticed something amiss.

My posts in those websites in recent months can be as many as 30,000 (or more) words, and each day's content can amount to as many as 2,000 words.

My process involves having the main draft that will eventually be the post I will publish; and a second draft that I work in ─ this is where I place the current day's content before finalizing it all to ensure everything is just right for adding onto the main or master draft.

I copy the data from the working draft post, and then add it to the bottom of the larger draft that will eventually get published.

Well, today just before I added the latest mass of content, I noticed that the larger draft ended with a block of data that ought not to have have been there ─ it was data for an AliExpress advertisement.

Now, yes ─ I do have an AliExpress affiliate account.

But the advertisement had no business being just where it was. Normally, there are one or two such ads buried within each day's new supply of content ─ the ads never appear at the very end of the content.

So I studied the master draft, and eventually discovered what had gone awry. It seems that  yesterday, instead of adding that day's content to the master draft, I had stupidly only added that AliExpress advertisement data.

You see, when I complete a new day's content assignment, I then add the one or two AliExpress ads to that temporary draft that I had been putting together.

Somehow yesterday, when I was supposed to have copied that day's new batch of finished content after inserting the AliExpress ad into the day's work, the 'copy & paste' maneuver that I thought I had performed...failed; and I then only pasted that single AliExpress ad into the master draft without noticing. 

I saved the master draft, and then I deleted everything from the temporary draft and saved that emptiness, too, so that it would be a fresh blank slate for me to work in today.

In other words, apart from that saved AliExpress ad I had pasted by itself into the master draft, I had deleted all of that day's hours of work.

And now here it was, a full day later. I had even done a restart of my computer last night before going to bed.

When I realized all of this late this afternoon, I was understandably agitated and wroth with myself and the Universe.

And then I thought to see if my Mozilla addon Form History Control (Ⅱ) could possibly still have my lost content.

I opened up its history, accessing a pop-up that had self-limited itself to the most recent 500 saves of data from absolutely everything and anything I had been working on ─ i.e., not just in that WordPress website.

It took some sleuthing, but I finally narrowed down the most likely save after some 'trial and error.' 

I copied and pasted today's content assignment into notepad, and then deleted everything from the post draft that I use to work in.

Then I copied that batch of data from Form History Control and and pasted it into my now-empty working draft post, and then previewed it...and to my enormous relief, all of yesterday's lost content had been retrieved!

This time, I was most careful to ensure that I properly saved all of yesterday's and today's supplies of content, and all was well again in my world.

Of course, this entire fiasco and resolution all took quite a lot of time to figure out. And as a result, I never had the time to put in all of the exercising that I intended for today.

It has not helped that I was up late last night. My younger brother held onto his consciousness after he was home from wherever it was that he had been drinking, so I sat up with him to operate our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch episodes of four of the T.V. series we follow.

One of those episodes was the series final of The Durrells ─ I will rather miss visiting that family of characters and everyone they interact with, and it was always so nice to share in their small section of pre-World War II Corfu.

I have to get this post published, for it is already after 7:00 p.m. However, I wanted to link to some interesting articles telling of research that has demonstrated how many cases of rheumatoid arthritis (and Crohn's disease) seem to be caused by exposure to a bacterium known as Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP).

The people identified as vulnerable to this 'bug' have certain genetic mutations that are not at all rare.

And since the germ "contaminates" beef, it also does so to milk ─ and even produce that has been fertilized with material derived from infected cattle.

Here is the article that alerted me to this development:

JacksDailydose.com

This “Fridge Secret” is Causing Your Arthritis

I had thought that the research was fairly recent, but evidently not ─ here are two other articles about it from early last year:

• ScienceDaily.com (January 30, 2018): Bacteria in milk and beef linked to rheumatoid arthritis
• NHS.uk (February 1, 2018): Bacteria found in milk and beef linked to rheumatoid arthritis

And research goes back even farther than that.

I wonder why just cooking one's beef thoroughly wouldn't kill the bacteria? 

Wikipedia's article about the bacteria explains that the bacteria are capable of surviving milk pasteurization, but can some also survive some serious cooking of beef?

Maybe not. I found this statement:

It is likely that contaminated meat that is cooked at low temperatures or not processed thoroughly may contain live MAP.

That's from this 2017 study at TandFonline.com: Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis – an important food borne pathogen of high public health significance with special reference to India: an update. 

I also found this statement:

The presence of at least some Map in raw milk and meat and in natural waters is likely, but the numbers of Map in those foods and waters should be reduced through cooking or purification.

So it can even be found in drinking water! Wikipedia did say that the bacteria can survive chlorination.

That second quote is from research published in 2011 at website jfoodprotection.org: Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in dairy products, meat, and drinking water. 

I noticed in that abstract of the study that even Type 1 diabetes may be caused by this infernal bacteria in susceptible people.  

I have to stop ─ it is now after 8:00 p.m.

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Concerning Planks and Push-Ups

As far as home exercising went, yesterday did not go as planned. My wife showed up unexpectedly very early in the afternoon primarily to do some cooking.

She tends to spend her weekends somewhere in Vancouver, and so it was that she had not been home since leaving here for work in the latter morning of Friday.

She had taken the morning off work yesterday, citing soreness of her back. However, she was to leave here shortly after mid-afternoon to attend the later portion of her workday at her friend's Thai restaurant.

I had suggested that she probably should have rested up before leaving here, but she countered that she felt the duty of preparing a proper cooked meal for those of us here in the household ─ i.e., her two young adult sons, my younger brother, and I.

I rather suspect that her greater concern or guilt was over her boys.

Anyway, had she not come home when she did, I probably would have attempted a plank (the exercise). Just a few days prior, I had succeeded in attaining just over 12 minutes with planking on two successive days.

Nevertheless, I might not have planked even if my wife had not come home, for I was feeling discouraged by a YouTube video I had watched earlier that day: The TRUTH About Planks (IT’S UGLY!).

After all of the suffering I have gone through for the past six or so weeks, just to have this very muscular chap come along and declare that they are ineffective for the benefits that are being claimed by planking proponents! ─ of course it was discouraging.

Well, I have since considered matters for myself, and early this a.m. ere it was yet dawn I performed another 12-minute plank ─ actually, a bit better than 10 seconds more.

I don't know if all of the young man's contentions are correct. What I do know is that when I began planking maybe 1½ months ago, 12 minutes were far beyond me. Heck, I felt much accomplishment when I finally first managed to reach five minutes.

So how can progressing to a 12-minute plank not be a sure indication that some structural elements of my physique are not considerably more enhanced than they were?

He also seemed to imply that a static plank was not doing anything to build muscle strength ─ in this instance, he was referring to the "glutes." That discussion is just after the two-minute mark of the video, I believe.

He compared the plank's ineffectiveness in that regard to the uselessness of just flexing one's bicep and expecting it to be getting trained.

I found the argument to be very shaky. Planking is a form of isometrics, I would say. Isometrics can be extremely effective muscle and strength developers, but few people have the patience to apply themselves with isometrics because the exercise is so damned boring.

There is no sense of achievement. There is nothing to point to in terms of any bragging rights, even in one's own mind. After all, there are no repetitions being increased as would be the case in something like chin-ups or push-ups; nor is there the other proof of increased strength that is very visual as when added weight is incrementally or gradually added over time to barbells and dumbbells that a weight-trainer would be working with.

I have never been able to stick to isometrics ─ it's just too boring, as I already said.

However, if I found myself shut up ─ much as in solitary confinement ─ and had no means of exercising beyond what I could devise with my own body, then I am sure I could easily incorporate isometrics into whatever routines I would resort to.

One good takeaway that I got from that video was the suggestion of trying the demonstrator's version of reverse planks ─ I have yet to try one, but I certainly do intend to.

Maybe even tomorrow.

A different planking video I rather liked was this one: NEVER DO PLANKS LIKE THIS | 10 Most Common Mistakes.

It had not previously occurred to me that shifting one's body about when endurance planking was actually cheating, for it helped release the buildup of tensions ─ and that tension is the entire design for why we are planking, isn't it?

So I am going to concentrate and try to minimize my shifting until  can pretty much rigidly plank for 12 minutes.

Or that's what I presently think that I am going to try to do.

One other exercise video ─ and I loved it! ─ displayed a guy performing perhaps the most beautiful strict chin-ups I have ever seen being done.

I always tried to be as strict with them as I could when I performed chin-ups over the years. Maybe I was never racking up the ridiculously huge numbers some guys claim, but most of those guys are almost just see-sawing themselves up and down ─ their elbows are practically never un-crooked.

The young fellow in this video is fabulously strict with the exercise ─ and he is almost tireless, too: 20 Pull Ups in a Row | Workout For Beginners.

Have you ever seen anyone doing such controlled, slow, and absolutely full-range chin-ups as that? ─ and so many at a time!

Boy, I wish I could have had access to a video like that back when I was in my 20s.

The desire is still there...but I'm now just over two weeks from having my 70th birthday, and I don't even have a chin-up bar to train with.

Nothing but discouragement....

I am going to finish this post with a commemorative collage that Google Photos apparently created yesterday from three photos that I had taken exactly six years earlier ─ i.e., September 23, 2013:

So what are we looking at, exactly?

Well, it is an orb-weaver spider and its web ─ but I had never before seen such a spider's web anchor lines extend so very far.

The main web where the spider was waiting had to be about 13 feet above the ground. And one stay line was anchored upon my house, while another was anchored on a neighbour's house ─ perhaps 15 feet from mine.

The work and commitment that the spider put into its array ─ as well as the webbing resources ─ were outstanding.

The entire set-up was sufficiently elevated that no one was going to accidentally walk into any part of the web and destroy it. Alas, however, I doubt that it existed more than a week. 

I suspect that a bird ─ probably a crow ─ at some point blindly flew through some part of the web and thus collapsed it. And the spider never reconstructed at the same site ─ if the speculated bird did not in fact snatch the spider from its web.

Here are the three original photos, although there were some others:

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💀💀💀 Despair │ Bogus Fraud Call from "VISA Credit Card Department" │ Can You Identify this Ground Cover?

This has been a morally and spiritually dark day for me, thanks to the usual deprivation I could not resist after rising around 2:30 a.m. this morning and putting in some work on the post I have in development at one of my six hosted websites.

I only supplied approximately half of the expected day's content assignment, for I deemed myself too seriously in need of a proper night's sleep.

It was lightly raining outside, and has done so for much of the day.

Had I returned to bed, I would have benefitted from a lot of darkness, for I probably could have been back in bed by 5:00 a.m.

Instead, I remained up in dissolution until just after 9:00 a.m.

I never did overcome the sleep deficit, despite one or two more naps later in the day. The first of those was in the early afternoon, and I rose from the nap to find that my younger brother had already left to catch up on his daily drinking.

He had not gotten home last evening until 9:20 p.m. or more. If he is not here by 9:00 p.m., I wash my hands of him and will not join him to sit up and operate our T9 Android TV Box to find episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow.

He does not know how to operate the device, so he is stuck having to find whatever is of tolerable interest with the basic cable package we have.

I actually avoided him entirely, basically secluding myself in my bedroom until my infernal eldest stepson had vacated the bathroom and thereby allowed me to use it ere getting to bed barely ahead of 10:00 p.m.

Until I rose a few short hours later in the a.m., my sleep was of the fractured variety.

Is this to be my lot until I finally die?

Speaking of my eldest stepson, I had to seek financial aid from him after he was home from work on Friday. The monthly mortgage is due to be debited from my chequing account today or tomorrow, but its balance was more than $200 deficient.

The debit is supposed to occur on the 22nd of each month, but when that date is not a banking day, it often happens one or even two days thereafter. 

The account was nearly $130 short. My hope was that my stepson would be generous and pad it, since he and his younger brother do live here rent-free.

But all he offered as a transfer from his own account were $200.

I will probably receive my monthly pension late in the coming week; but until I do, I am limited on what grocery shopping I can dare make. I had hoped to get out today ─ in truth, if finances had not been a concern, I like to think that I would have been better behaved this early a.m. add returned to bed when I ought to have.

As it is, I have about $70 available in that account until my pension does come, but I never know when there might be some small automatic debit that could be applied to it ─ there are so many of them!

Consequently, I feel I must sit tight until my pension funds arrive.

It is all so disheartening that I am financially hostage to my wife and her two sons like this.

In my post yesterday, I did not have time to mention the following fraud call ─ I posted this recording to YouTube this afternoon, but it was left on our house telephone's answering machine yesterday.

The description I gave it at YouTube follows the video:

Bogus Fraud Call from "VISA Credit Card Department"

Bogus Fraud Call from "VISA Credit Card Department"

This message was left on our home telephone's answering machine on Saturday morning, September 21, 2019.

It is a lie. 

My younger brother heard the message first, and was suspicious because nobody was addressed. That bothered me, too.

Five adults life in this household, by the way.

Certainly, citing that the first two digits of the supposedly affected credit card are "4" and "5" might seem sufficient, and no one specific need be named. But why not name the card owner? If VISA was actually calling, would they not name whomever it was that they wanted to alert?

And why did they not leave a telephone number for anyone to make a return call to? When it was realized that no one was taking the call and it had gone to voicemail, would VISA not insist that someone call them back immediately upon hearing the message?

Otherwise, what good was the alert?

As it happens, I DO have a VISA card that leads off with "4" and "5." But I immediately went online and checked out the statement activity for my card.

It was last used on Friday ─ the day prior to when this telephone message claimed it had been used. And yes, I did use it on Friday (for an Amazon order).

The female voice on the message was clearly pre-recorded ─ it was not someone calling live. If VISA truly did have a serious alert and were calling, it would have been someone doing so in person ─ not a pre-recording.    

What if I had actually taken the call, and in a panic selected the second offered option to of course cancel the fraud charges that were supposed to have been made?

This would probably have tweaked one of the fraudsters behind the call to personally get involved; and then I would likely have been coaxed to prove my identity and offer details about me. 

Then I am sure that I would have to submit some identifying information about my credit card to supposedly further prove that I am indeed the owner of the affected credit card ─ most probably, the fraudster would want me to give up the three-digit card security code on the reverse of the credit card.

Once enough verifying information about me and my credit card had been gathered, the fraudster would in essence have all that was needed to start making the very type of fraud charges against me that I gullibly had thought I was having VISA cancel.

I didn't fall prey to the call ─ but there will be people who will, sadly.

Now concerning something considerably more cheerful, back on September 2nd while I was walking home through Surrey's Holland Park after I had done some grocery shopping, I stopped to take the following two photos of some sort of 'ground cover' plant:

I have been interested for a few years to know just what it is, for it would be ideal for a section of garden in our front yard.

The plant is so very low it almost appears to be some manner of green artificial surface, for it is finer in texture than is moss. It reminds me of that green fertilizer that may contain grass seeds ─ landscapers and parks' maintenance people often use it on areas of disturbed ground where they want new lawn growth to spring forth. 

I wish someone who is familiar with the plant would reach out and make me wise concerning it. 

I am going to conclude this post now by admitting that ─ after setting a 12-minute record for myself yesterday and the day before in planking ─ I failed this afternoon to have the stuff to endure the stress and strain.

I only lasted until I had just managed to surpass 10 minutes, and then I yielded in abject defeat.

Perhaps the result would have been different if I was not as depressed as I am ─ and if I had achieved better sleep.

It has just occurred to me that I feel like getting drunk....

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Achieved ─ a 12-Minute Plank!

I don't know what I would do if I was not retired and I had to go to work for a living ─ I sleep so badly!

Although I believe that I went to bed last evening around 9:45 p.m., I only slept a short time and was up during the midnight hour.

I worked on the new post I have begun at one of my six hosted websites ─ but I did so only after initial distractions such as various news articles and the accumulated E-mails in my Inbox, and it was already after 5:00 a.m. by the time I returned to bed.

I had felt too ill-slept to care to attempt a plank ─ an exercise I began immersing myself into maybe six weeks ago.

For the record, I only perform static planks. I want to practice endurance. And so late yesterday afternoon or early in the evening, I set myself a new record.

But to preface this, I use the stopwatch 'app' in my iPhone 5. My usual procedure is to assume the plank position; and then after a couple or so seconds when I feel comfortably situated, I start the stopwatch.

Then I close my eyes and start a slow-count to 500, for I have found that just staring at the too-slowly accumulating counter of the stopwatch is for me counterproductive ─ it is exasperating.

If I count slow enough, I find that by the time I reach 500 and then log back into my cellphone to check the stopwatch (the cellphone screen fades out after something like five minutes), I am usually beyond nine minutes.

In such cases, I hold out until I achieve 10 minutes.

And sometimes I am even beyond 10 minutes by the time I check the stopwatch ─ I think I have managed to hold out for 11 minutes on seven occasions thus far. Eleven minutes have been my record.

Note that I typically exceed that point by five or so seconds before stopping the stopwatch and breaking my plank.

As a result, my total time is always at least seven or more seconds than that actual key total of minutes that I have targeted.

Well, yesterday I evidently counted exceptionally slowly to 500. By the time I logged back into my cellphone to check the stopwatch, it was just surpassing 11 minutes and 40 seconds ─ there was absolutely no way that I was not going to weather the pain and hit the 12-minute mark when I saw that!

Nevertheless, the concern with having done so is that 12 minutes now become the rabbit or prize to chase after...and I am not even remotely comfortable getting to 11 minutes!

Anyway, I returned to bed before dawn this morning as described, but I continued to sleep poorly. I even realized that I was having lucid dreams. This occurred to me when I had believed I was being sleepless; but then it dawned upon me that I was nevertheless experiencing what could only be deemed a dream, for the scenario being played out was nothing that I would have been consciously fantasizing.

This happened at least twice.

Whatever the case, the point is that I was back up from bed shortly after 8:00 a.m., and I have probably returned to bed for further (shorter) naps at least twice since then.

This sort of routine would be impossible if I had to go to work.

Yet late in the morning, I decided to tackle yet another plank. Could I count slowly enough to 500 to allow me to reach another 12-minute plank even though the first time was not quite ¾ of a day earlier?

Oh, I suffered. In fact, after counting to 200 I considered stopping because my abdominal wall felt...odd.

To explain, twice in my past ─ once around 19 years ago, and a second time about a dozen years ago ─ I suffered a small rupture of my abdominal wall while straining excessively at exercise.

I believe that the first time I was involved in a virtual marathon of push-ups; and the second time occurred while straining to do headstand press-ups against a wall after I had come home from eating at a Thai restaurant. My stomach was too full then, and I should have had more sense.

The odd sensation today was at the same location ─ maybe two or so inches up from my navel.

I have never sought medical attention for this hernia ─ I just know that the rupture is there. Although I have too much midsection flab to clearly see my abdominals ─ that is, the six-pack that does exist but cannot be seen ─ there is a slight swelling of that midsection 'flab' at the rupture site.

It is not apparent to anyone else, and I do not draw attention to it. But I perceive it.

There is no pain. I suspect that after the two incidents, the injury more or less 'healed' up each time, but some bulge remained. 

If you are unfamiliar with what I am attempting to describe, I suppose that I would self-diagnose it as an epigastric hernia.

If you look at a very fit person's six-pack, the various muscles that stand out are each separated by a sort of groove ─ the central 'groove' that separates each half of a six-pack is called the linea alba. 

Those 'grooves' separating the individual abdominal muscles are actual points of weakness, even though they are fibrous connective tissue. 

If you check out this exceptional young woman's six-pack, you will see the 'grooves' I am speaking of that define her six-pack:

Looking at her, I think that the probable location of my small rupture is that identical location an inch or two just up from her navel where the vertical linea alba is intersected with the rather similar horizontal 'groove' that helps delineate each of the individual muscles of the so-called six-pack.

Those horizontal creases or grooves are apparently called tendinous inscriptions. You can see the one immediately above her navel, and then the next one a couple or so inches higher ─ that's where I suspect my problem lies.

Anyway, while planking today, I almost called a halt because the strain I was feeling after a couple of minutes seemed different from what I have previously experienced while planking.

Nevertheless, it was not sharp or painful as if something had unnaturally or suddenly given way, so I bucked up and just accepted that I was only feeling additional strain because of how recently I had achieved that first-ever 12-minute plank.

Then, after reaching the agonizingly slow count of 500, I logged back into my cellphone to find that something like 11 minutes and 10 seconds had elapsed.

Heck, I had gotten that far ─ I knew that I could hold out for another 50 seconds with the 12-minute mark so near.

And so I did. I stopped the counter at 12 minutes and 6.62 seconds.

And remember, I did not start the stopwatch until I had already been into the plank position for a few seconds while getting adjusted for whatever initial comfort I would be able to enjoy.   

Oh gosh ─ it is already 7:30 p.m., and my younger brother may be home at any point now from wherever it is that he has been drinking this afternoon and early evening.

I have to get this post published ─ I had at least a couple of other topics I wanted to cover, but this bother trying to explain that bit of abdominal anatomy has consumed the time I had available to me. 

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Charged for Shipping by Amazon Canada Despite Claims of Free Shipping

At this precise moment, it is 2:59 a.m., and I have been up since something like 12:23 a.m. after getting to bed at 9:45 p.m. last evening.

I sleep abominably. Even after getting to bed, and eventually falling asleep, I was awake enough afterward to be checking the time around 11:09 p.m.

I slept a wee bit further, and then rose in the midnight hour after once more checking the time during a period of wakefulness.

I meant to get right to work on this blog post, but I got involved trying to figure out how to add an ads.txt file to one of my six hosted websites.

I thought that a plugin had done it for me a month or two ago, but it evidently failed. So I tried two or three more related plugins, but none of them did the job either.

I finally had to upload the file myself ─ I found a guide showing how to do it through the website's cPanel.

For anyone curious, the instruction was at 99MediaSector.com, and titled How To Create Ads.txt File Into Root Directory.

These tasks never resolve easily for me, for I am no 'techie.'

I still won't know if the ads.txt file is set up properly because it can reportedly take a couple or even more days for it to become recognized by Google.

I am running the risk of forgetting all about it by then!

Anyway, while I was being involved with this work, my wife had since come home after supposedly working yesterday at her friend's Thai restaurant.

I was too wrapped up in what I was doing to get up and speak with her, but as she speedily went to bed she asked me not to wake her in the morning ─ she apparently intends to go in to work late.

Normally, her long workday at the restaurant starts at 11:00 a.m., so she likes to get up around 10:00 a.m. to begin readying herself. She has a fair drive ahead to get to the restaurant.

Incidentally, she has not been home since late Monday evening after working that day. It seems that she had better things to do than to come home after working Tuesday.

Such is my marriage.

Since I am getting such a late start on this post, I will be unable to do any preliminary work on a new post that I want to create for another of my other six hosted websites (i.e., not the website where I wanted to upload the ads.txt file).

The latest website post that I finally got published ─ after working on it for over two weeks ─ went live yesterday at yet another of those six websites. This time, the website was Siam-Longings.

The post itself is titled Thailand AA Meetings, should anyone care about the topic.

And since it has been a few days since my last post in this blog, I want to give a mention to a fairly interesting movie that my younger brother and I watched late Monday morning: Death Defying Acts.

It was a nice piece of romantic fiction involving magician Harry Houdini.

I knew something of the folklore surrounding his death ─ that is, that he supposedly died from the aftermath of an unexpected blow to the abdominal region.

In this movie, he died within a few minutes of receiving the blow while he was on the steps of a Montreal building and being hounded by public and reporters.

But according to Wikipedia's section on his death, Harry did not die for several days thereafter, and even performed some shows.

An October 2013 article at WildAboutHoudini.com makes a good case that he might not even have died from the punch itself, but because he was suffering from appendicitis: Time to rethink the rethinking on the Houdini punch.

But I want to get back to bed, so I am going to drop the subject.

Often in the recent past when I am up like this, I will take the time to perform an extended plank. I will not tonight ─ I performed one late last afternoon for several seconds over 11 minutes.

I also planked for just over 11 minutes when I was up in the wee a.m. of Tuesday. But the day before that, I only had the resolve to plank for a 'mere' 10 minutes.

Please bear in mind that I have my birthday coming up not a month from now in October ─ I will turn 70 years old.

As well, I am not exactly built like a twig. At a height of a tad over five feet and 10 inches, I weigh in the mid-180-pound range.

Okay, I was going to get into one other topic, but it is now 4:13 a.m. ─ I really must get back to bed.

oooooooooooooo

It is now almost 12 hours later ─ 4:09 p.m., to be precise. 

I slept poorly after returning to bed, and I was up again shortly after 8:00 a.m. I am just now recently up from a good and needed nap.

My wife rose for work later than she usually does, but she was on her way shortly after 11:00 a.m.

The day has been overcast, and sometimes there is evidence of light rain. I hope to try and get out later this afternoon or early this evening to do some local grocery shopping.

Yesterday I did some online shopping ─ at Amazon Canada.

For a couple or so months ─ maybe even longer than that ─ I have been considering buying a beard trimmer.

I had one many years ago that I very much liked ─ it was a Remington Titanium Model MB-35 Type A. 

It was very satisfactory until I one day dropped it, and then it never worked again. It remained lifeless ─ I still have the useless thing, and will probably toss it once the beard trimmer I ordered yesterday shows up. 

I have been using a Remington Precision MB-10 for many years since the loss of my first Remington, but the Precision only runs when fuelled by AA batteries ─ it cannot be charged, and that sort of shaver is what I wanted to be done away with.

I have no idea how many AA batteries I have gone through over the years!

With what little I am able to extract selfishly for just myself from my monthly pension, I am unable to be extravagant. I just hope that the trimmer I settled upon does not prove to be cheaply made as well as being inexpensive, for the SUPRENT Beard Trimmer was priced at just $29.99 Canadian.

Apart from its relative inexpensiveness, I chose it because even though it only had eight reviews, all of the reviewers gave it five out five stars.

I saw that the item qualified for free shipping if my order exceeded $35 Canadian, so I decided I would splurge and get a couple of other items I have long been considering. I ensured that both of them would also qualify for that same free shipping.

One of the items happened to cost $53 Canadian ─ a saw palmetto supplement, for I have self-diagnosed myself as likely suffering from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

I certainly hope my trouble is nothing worse!

At any rate, I have been having 'problems' of various types in the genitourinary region for years. I first realized it in the late 1990s, in fact. 

As I said, though, I hope the trouble is nothing more serious than that. I am not one to seek medical attention until I find myself unable to live with whatever is amiss.

After I submitted for the purchases, my entire Amazon order came to $113.32 ─ and the damned price included $5.53 Canadian for "Shipping & Handling."

So how the hell does this "FREE Shipping" claim each of the items qualified for figure into that?

I could have cancelled the order, but I have waited far too long to make it ─ I deem myself to be quite in need. There was no option for submitting a question concerning it. The only option I could find was to telephone or engage in a live chat.

I decided to just accept that I was fleeced of the $5.53 ─ pursuing reimbursement appeared to be considerably more trouble than the result would warrant even if I was successful at getting the sum refunded.

This is how my life seems to go.

Anyway, the "guaranteed delivery date" for the "Standard Shipping" of everything is Wednesday, September 25. If this proves true, then I suppose the sacrifice will have been worthwhile if I am happy with everything I purchased.

I have one last topic I want to bring some attention to ─ a wonderful rant by Jack Harrison against the medical profession in the States, and how it is that what seems to be the majority of M.D.s have no compunction at all about accepting bribes from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries:

JacksDailyDose.com

Unbelievable! Big Pharma and mainstream docs just flipped you the BIRD!

If I was living in the States, I certainly would want to know if any doctor of mine was in that database that lists medical professionals who have accepted such largesse ─ of any magnitude whatsoever.

I don't think it's possible to take money from someone and not feel even some slight incentive to favour that person or the company he or she backs when it comes to making medical decisions such as what medications to prescribe, or which specialists or specialist institutions to refer the patient to for specific tests.

Sometimes it seems like corruption is everywhere and has tainted everything.

I close now with a few more photos that my wife took in June of 2018 when she was in Rome to visit a sister of hers who has made Italy to be her second home.

The first photo is a selfie taken by my wife:

The edifice in those photos is evidently some manner of museum, and the many photos that were next taken were done so from within. I will not append any of those photos to this post today, for it is nigh 6:00 p.m.

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