Emerging from the Grad School Cave

Finals are over! My students' grades have been handed over to the professor I work with! I slept a little! 

Actual photo of me after turning in my last paper.

Now I can finally try to get back on schedule with working out. I've been kicking out sit ups for the December challenge in between writing papers (my coworkers all think it's funny to watch me in my cube with my abmat and kettlebell), and on Saturday I kicked out a pretty gruesome at-home rendition of semi-Angie.

-100 Squats (with a weight to help me balance)
-100 Pull Ups (band assisted, of course)
-200 Weighted Sit Ups
No Push Ups. 

In sad news, my back hasn't improved. Each morning has me groaning and gasping my way out of bed, but aside from twists and sideways bending, I do OK during the day. It seems to be laying down that does the most damage, especially since I don't find working out to be particularly painful, which is odd. 

My friend "I", who is my fitness buddy and general motivator when it comes to my fitness wonders why I don't use my rings to practice more dips (he's an extremely enthusiastic Muscle Up fan, and likes to push me to reach that level someday too), but truthfully, I'm terrified that my spindly arms are gonna blow out to the side and I'm going to screw my back up even more. As it is, I'll stick with my new dip station, which attaches quite cleverly to my dangle bar.... er, pull up bar. 

I'm looking forward to hitting the box tomorrow morning, since FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AGES, I get to go home at a reasonable time tonight. Go figure! Maybe I'll have time to take that petrified pizza out of my fridge. I'm not sure at which point during the past two weeks of finals that I made it, but the organisms living on it have nearly evolved to the iron age.