Year: 2008 Page 9 of 15

Bryan sent me a screen capture image he extracted from a video he took at a great party we had before Lorena and I got married. In June of 1992, Lorena flew to Oregon from Monterrey for the first time to spend a couple of months to get to know my family. She stayed with Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah at their house with the big cement pond outside of Newberg. I lived in Boynton Beach, Florida at the time and worked for Motorola at the time, but flew back to Oregon to spend the Fourth of July weekend with Lorena. We threw a big party for all our friends to introduce Lorena to them and to celebrate Grandpa Milo’s and Grandma Sarah’s 39th wedding anniversary. It was a great party.

Lorena and the weather were both beautiful. Lorena made her famous frijoles a la charra (cowboy bean soup). Lorena worked hard to get them just right. Right before they were served, Grandpa Milo poured off all the broth because he assumed that they were just supposed to be beans with a few condiments and that Lorena had somehow gotten it wrong. Lorena was horrified and did not say anything. The beans still tasted great, but I guess it just was not part of his paradigm that Mexican beans should be in a soup. We harrass him about that to this day–the broth is the best part.

The future best men (Byan and Warren) at our wedding were both there along with about a hundred or so other people. In Mexico they have two testigos instead of just one best man. It was honor to have both of them stand up for me. Paul and Beth Bellam were there. Paul gave a fabulous toast to commemorate both the anniversary and the engagement. Warren played his guitar and sang to entertain the crowd.

Lorena says she loved her stay with my parents. The hardest part was that it was so quiet out at their little farm. Lorena grew up in a city of about four million people with lots of traffic and neighbors who lived very close. She and Grandma really hit it off. All of my family and friends loved her and she loved them back. Lorena stay with my folks capped by that great party were a great confirmation of what I already knew–I had hit the lottery when Lorena agreed to marry me.

This picture surely brought back great memories. Thanks Bryan.

View Larger Map

Check out Cousin Charlie’s awesome Guatemala blog. It is a fascinating read. He is definitely having an “interesting” time and I am sure he would appreciate any comments you might leave. For future reference, so you can get back to it whenever you want, I have add a link to his blog in my blog roll to the left of this text. We were reminded about this by…

My sister, Julia is visiting for a few days from Oregon. She is out east to go to a trade show in Atlanta so she is spending a few days with us. We are VERY happy that she is hear, especially since part of the plan is to teach some more cooking to Kelly and Christian. I guess today they are going to make grilled pizza! Julia is the craft queen, too, so the kids are wildly happy she is here. I will post a picture here of her with the kids for those of you who know her. She is an iron woman! She is operating on west coast time, but plans to get up with Lorena and the kids to go get in a workout when they go to their swim practice at what would be 4:30 AM in Oregon. Inspiring!

I got a great note from our buddy Kevin W. He was looking for a bible program to run on his laptop. He has converted it over to Ubuntu Linux! He used e-sword on his Windows computer and wanted to do the same on the Ubuntu computer. I recommended BibleTime and GnomeSword. He got them installed and working, but could not transfer his notes. So, instead of give up, he figured out how to run the Windows e-Sword program using the Wine program that provides the capability to run Windows programs on Linux computers. Not everything worked perfectly. He had to jump through some hoops to get his notes imported into the program, but he got it going and is using it now. He sent us a note about it and has inspired us to try to get our Rosetta Stone Spanish running on Wine. That will be a great project for Christian.

Our little family has always enjoyed small town 4th of July celebrations. In Oregon we went to McMinnville several times, Forest Grove, and Independence. This year, there were many places we could have gone, but we wanted to find something with that small town feel. I searched around on the web and found that the small town of Lillington, North Carolina, about twenty-five miles from our house, has one of the biggest fireworks shows in the state. It is a small town and their 4th of July celebration definitely did not disappoint! Here is what their webpage says about the town:

The Harnett County Seat, Lillington a picturesque town with a population of about 4,000 nestled in the heart of North Carolina. The beautiful Cape Fear River meanders through town as it flows to the Atlantic.

Just north of Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, and south of North Carolina’s state capital city of Raleigh, Lillington is perfectly located close enough so that the big city opportunities are just a commute while providing the comforts of a small town lifestyle.

Our town is a fine place to live and raise a family, re-locate or start a business, or retire. There is something for everyone in Lillington.

We got there about 6:00 in the evening. So we would have a reasonable chance of getting away after the party, we parked about a half mile away from the carnival, bandstand (with a live band playing classic rock–name “The Grand Oz” or something like that). We grabbed our chairs, fried chicken, drinks, and camera and set ourselves up by the baseball field between the Republican Party booth and some of the food stands. It was awesome–exactly what we were looking for. The local police put on quite a show on the baseball field with their K9 corp–the dogs found some drugs and explosives hidden in a car, subdued a bad guy, and then sat patiently while the kids petted them. The politicians were there passing at cards and shaking hands. A rather tipsy woman who must have been in her late fifties and was dressed like a hippie danced quite joyfully by herself in front of the band. I am sure there were literally a thousand other towns around America where this same celebration took place.

We were just getting seated to watch the fireworks when it started to rain. The sky was very dark and it looked like it was going to start coming down hard. Lots of other people were packing up to leave, so we did, too. We were pretty disappointed, but by the time we got to our car, the rain had stopped. We noticed that there were lots of people setting up in the parking area near our car to watch the fireworks, so instead of heading home, we stayed to see if the weather would hold long enough for the fireworks to continue. Providence was on our side. We watched kids playing with sparklers and setting off other fireworks until the real show started.

The fireworks were awesome. I do not think they were as good as the massive fireworks display we saw when Kelly was just a baby in West Palm Beach, but they were close and the setting seemed a whole lot more representative of the America in which I was raised. As long as we are here in North Carolina, we will go back there to celebrate the 4th of July. Hopefully, next year, we will take some other people with us.

P.S. Christian figured out the settings on the camera and took some nice fireworks pictures. The one in this blog post was one of them.
Interesting stuff: While chess boxing does not look like that much fun to do, it might be fun to watch.

Well, it looks like I am going to have to rethink the plans we have made for the kids as they move into high school. It turns out that one has to jump through a ton of hoops to get kids below the age of sixteen into our local Wake Tech Community College. The requirement is for the kid to take a bunch of tests at the parent’s expense. Then, and only if an administrator at the community college gives their personal approvales of both the test scores and the maturity of the kid, he can be admitted to the school. If the kid is admitted, the parent must sit in on every minute of the class–and this for the mediocre, politically correct education provided at the community college.

It also turns out that the “transfer” degree at the school is not a transfer degree in the traditional sense. All the Wake Tech transfer degree says is that if the state universities in North Carolina would normally accept a class that is part of the transfer degree program, then the credit will be given for the class at that university. The “transfer” part of the program sounds EXACTLY the same as just taking classes at the community college without participating in any program and then transferring them over to the big state university. The only thing one receives from the community college is an Associate of Science transfer degree which requires throw-away classes like psychology and sociology and is worth just about as much as a government high school diploma–the cost of the paper.

We were planning to send both of the kids to the community college for a couple of years each. Based on the abysmal and inadequate “transfer” program and age discrimination at Wake Tech, we have decided to just have them take as many CLEP tests as possible until they are sixteen. Then, if we have no other option, put them into a community college to take a couple of math and science classes that can be transferred to a real school.

Kelly took here second CLEP test today. The one she took was History of the United States I: Early Colonization to 1877 for three semester hours of college credit. She did great and will now be going on to take the History of the United States II (3 hours), Spanish (12 hours), Analyzing Literature (6 hours), Biology (3 hours), Sociology (3 hours), and Psychology (3 hours) next year. We really did not want her to take so many CLEP tests next year, but the local community college, Wake Tech, is not very friendly to homeschoolers who are under the age of 16 even if they have a demonstrated ability to do the work. So, we will just have her take a few more CLEP tests next year and the year after. If we are still around when she arrives at her Junior year in high school, we will sign her up.

We have found that one of the tests accepted by the state of North Carolina as a nationally normed, standardized test for homeschoolers is the ACT test. Both Kelly and Christian will take it at the end of each school year starting next year. It is really a college entrance exam, but that is good, because it will give them practice on taking a test they will need when the time comes to go to college.

We definitely want to go see some fireworks this Fourth of July. It sounds like there is an opportunity rich environment; there are fireworks, in Fuquay Varina, Garner, Lillington, and I have been trying to think of what we can do to fill out the weekend. We have been invited to a get-together on Friday. I have been checking on museums and the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh will definitely be open over the whole weekend. I think the kids and I should give Lorena a break and barbeque up some ribs, make some coleslaw, and maybe try to make some of our own ice cream. We really need to go to the Holly Springs Library to turn in our books and get some new ones–we found that our friends Jim and Madelaine Melton live just a couple of blocks from the library, so we might stop in and bring them some homemade bread or something like that, too. We are definitely going to need to get some

As for the volcano camera, we are still making good progress. I am writing up a cross-platform application in Python that will connect to and control the volcano camera computer from either a Windows or a Linux laptop. We are making some minor modifications to the GPS so we can hook it up properly and the camera is now up and working, too. We have to swap our camera out for a triggered version so we can trigger the capture from the GPS pulse-per-second signal, but that is a fairly trivial change. We have been ticking the problems off one by one to the point where now all we have is a couple more items and a fairly large application programming task.

We have lots of pictures this morning. First of all, we are very proud of cousin Dayanita from Monterrey. She and Lorena’s cousin are the same age, go to the same school, and just celebrated their graduation from sixth grade. Our understanding is that Dayanita was one of the academic stars of her class. CONGRATULATIONS Dayanita. We are looking forward to saying that in person when we go to Monterrey in the fall.

Dayanita y Adrian en su graduación

The second set of pictures were taken by our friend Catherine at the going away potluck we had for the Yee family at our house. We had a GREAT time, but ate way too much food. You can click on the thumbnails to view a bigger image. Our friends, Gary and Sidony are returning to live in Florida. Gary will be working in the Boynton Beach Mall. That is the mall that is about a half a block from where Lorena and I lived when we first got married. Lorena and her friend Vanessa used to push Kelly around the mall just about every day. We are definitely going to have to go there for a visit. The potluck started around 12:30 and did not break up until 5:30 that afternoon. We all had a great time, especially listening to some great stories by Jim and Madelaine.

Finally, Bryan sent a great photo of his niece and Kelly at the Y2K party we attended at his brother Gary’s house on December 31, 1999. I just loved the photo and thought I should post it. We really miss all the Joyces out here.

We all started drawing again last night. We are still working on the Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces book by Carrie Stuart Parks. I think we will be on it for awhile. Kelly was the only one who finished her drawing yesterday and I present it here for your viewing pleasure. See if you can guess who it is. She already posted it on her private blog, so people who have access to that cannot guess! Christian and I should be finishing up our drawings in the next few days, so I will try to post those, too. It was really great to sit down at the dining room table, turn on some classical music and just draw. We are not great, but as we go through the book, I think we are getting better.

???

We were going to have a couple of couples over for dinner Sunday after meeting, but at our bible study, we learned that Sunday will be the last meeting for our good friends Gary and Sidony. So we turned the dinner into a good-bye potluck and invited over the whole meeting. It is sad to lose them, but we also found out that a recently graduated engineer from Virginia Tech and his (soon to be) wife will be moving down from Virginia and joining our meeting, so that will be nice. We have another swim meet tomorrow morning. It is a home meet so I will be able to get into the gym for a workout tomorrow. I will try to take a few pictures of all of the above to document all these events.

Here is an amazing article that starts out by saying:

A new study has linked vitamin D deficiency with an increased risk of death, especially from cardiovascular disease, in the latest evidence of the important role the vitamin plays in human health.

Low levels of Vitamin D are associated with high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. An, if you do not get enough Vitamin D, you will die sooner. The amazing deal is that it does not take much to increase your bodies Vitamin D production:

The chief source for vitamin D is sun exposure, since the ultraviolet rays of the sun trigger vitamin D synthesis within the human body. Ten to fifteen minutes a day in the sun is sufficient.

I have read that people who garden live longer than people who do not. I always figured that was because people who garden get more exercise and they are right in amongst all those oxygen generating plants. That is all probably true, but this study shows that the act of being out in the sunlight, all by itself, is a huge contributor to a longer and healthier life. This surely seems like some good information to have. I am going to return this to my daily program. When I worked at ATS in Corvallis, I took a half an hour walk almost every day down to the Subway for lunch (You will remember that is where I met the famous Jared.). Not that I am lifting weights more and aerobicizing less, I plan to start walking in the afternoons for a half an hour or so. If I do not get to it during a break at work, I can take a walk in the neighborhood with the family when I get home.

A special note to Christian: This is the cell phone/PDA you should get. You can even program it in Python.
A second special note to Christian: Here is a book available online that will teach you Python.

I heard the author of a new book titled Thrilled to Death in an interview on the radio on the way to work this morning. He said that if children are not bored when they grow up, they never have the opportunity to develop the imaginative and creative parts of their brains. The name of the author is Archibald D. Hart and the subtitle of the book is How the Endless Pursuit of Pleasure is Leaving Us Numb. What he said rang true to me. Some of it was pretty scary. He said that children today are over-stimulated. They have PlayStations, XBoxes, Televisions, the Internet, cell phones, and a million other things that stimulate them all the time. With overuse of the brain’s pleasure circuits a condition called anhedonia can occur. A symptom of this is profound boredom, not bred of having enough to stimulate, rather from having too many things that stimulate. Boredom bred of too little stimulation helps children develop the creative and imaginative parts of the brain. Boredom bred of too much stimulation can lead to anhedonia which can be a significant contributing factor in depression.

Dr. Hart believes that, due to the ubiquity of overstimulation in the youth of today, there will soon be an epidemic of drug addiction and other addictive behavior. People will turn to anything that works to help them overcome the boredom and lack of stimulation when the pleasure centers of the brain shut down from overuse. Quite a few thoughts entered my head while I listened to the interview. First, I was thankful that we have never had a television and that we read and did a lot of art with the kids. Second, I realized that I need to exercise a little more control in our household with respect to the amount of time the kids spend on the computer.

A big part of the problem appears to be that parents are so busy, they put their children in front of a television or a computer game so they (the parent) can do something else. Either that, or they send their children to day-care or after school-care that does the exact same thing. One of the best parts of our experience raising Kelly and Christian has been doing things in the evening with them after work. Right now, all we do every night is read our book on multiple worldviews. I think it is time we got back to our art program. We sit together, listen to classical music, and draw. It is not so much that we are becoming great artists, but, for every minute we spend drawing, we will not be on the computer and we will be talking to each other.

Happy Birthday Bryan. Seeing Bryan turn fifty has gotten me to thinking again of the importance of enjoying one’s age. It is a lecture that I often give to Christian and Kelly. I am more thankful now than ever that God created time and that it only goes one direction. To not be able to return to an earlier age to fix something we did wrong or revisit something we enjoyed greatly is a blessing. It keeps us looking forward and helps us focus on the now. I never would have imagined that I would enjoy being forty more than thirty, and fifty more than forty, but I do. The beauty of belief in Christ is that the stronger the belief, the better it is to be older and closer to the time when we will be with Him.

From our weight loss chart, you can see that Bryan was able to lose over fifty pounds from when we started in February. He only has eight pounds to go. As soon as he loses that eight pounds, I am going to owe him dinner and I am going to very much enjoy buying it for him. He has done an absolutely stellar job of getting his weight down. While my weight loss line looks like a sine wave because I keep falling off the wagon on the weekend, the whole competition thing has kept me going and I am down close to twenty-five pounds now. Lyle is sticking to it, too. Now that he is back from convention rounds, he can refocus.

First thing this morning, I popped over to my buddy Eric’s blog and read his latest post on how he and his wife Audrey picked their new baby’s name. It is a great name. I highly recommend you check it out and read the whole thing. The most telling thing about the post, though, is what it says about the author. Eric is the engineer’s engineer: Teutonic roots, born in the seat of automobile engineering and manufacturing in the Midwest, Rose-Hulman graduate, given to mathematical descriptions of virtually everything. I can think of no better way to illustrate his engineerness (if that is a word) than to just quote from his post:

My formula for dealing with females is as follows. First, you analyze the situation and reach a conclusion. Then, you take the inverse of the conclusion and multiply it by the degree of uncertainty (a mood-based variable). For instance, if a female asks you how she looks, the analytical left hemisphere would interpret this question as a solicitation for feedback on improving her looks. You conclude she is asking you to identify necessary improvements. But with my formula, you would invert that conclusion and it becomes “no improvements are necessary.” Secondly, you ascertain her mood. If she is really happy or really sad, the degree of uncertainty is very high. In the case of very high uncertainty, the answer to her then becomes, “Wow! You look absolutely fabulous.”

On another note, we had a marvelous weekend full of social activity. We had three families over for dinner on Friday night, vegetated together as a family on Saturday, and then went out to dinner after meeting on Sunday with a couple of families. We were with our good friends Gary and Sidony and their two children Warren and Kiera on both Friday night and Sunday. Sidony is one of those mystical types who has premonitions and dreams that, whether they are really true matters not so much as that they make for great and often scary stories. Some, mostly female, members of our family love to listen to those stories, but then are scared to death to be anywhere by themselves for the next several months. I am trying to look at the up side to the situation. My hope is that the extra trips to the second story of our house to accompany the fearful will translate into some lost weight.

Weight loss note: Lyle is in an amazingly good place in the whole weight loss death match after having gone through a whole round of conventions. Bryan hits another milestone. Ken tanks again on the weekend with another round of carbo-loading.

Last night was a very interesting night. Christian and I went to a swim meet at a YMCA north of Raleigh while Lorena took Kelly to her piano mini-camp. There are four other girls in the camp with Kelly. They are about the same age as Kelly and they are very serious about their studies, both of piano and at their government schools. All four of them have Asian parents–three from China, one from Korea. They are part of a government school subculture to which Kelly has not really had a lot exposure. Lorena talked to their mothers before and after the class. It dawned on me that we probably have similar thoughts about each others’ schooling methods. They asked Lorena how I could possibly teach all the high school subjects Kelly needs to get into college. There are so many subjects it is not possible to know them all well. When she told me that, I marveled that people who had such a profound interest in the education of their children were so unaware of the abysmal state of the government school teacher education and certification system.

While I might not be perfect in all the subject areas, I work hard to select good programs and materials to help us. The bar is not very high to be better than even the very best government schools. They also wondered how Kelly could get into college without a high school transcript, but they did not know about CLEP testing. They did not know that homeschoolers have better academic and social preparation for college in addition to their well documented superior performance on nationally normed standardized tests. The funny deal is that they were all talking about this while Kelly was taking a class from an absolutely stellar teacher in music, the one subject I am most horribly unqualified to teach. Thankfully, the least of their worries was whether or not Kelly was well “socialized.” Nevertheless, it is great for Kelly to be around nice girls whose families are very interested in assuring their children get the best education they know how to give.

Note: After I wrote the above harangue, I found this article. Boy did this guy get it right.

I have been wracking my brain to figure out a cool new project for the summer and I finally think I have found one. I think we could make a great youtube how-to video in the process. We have a little Dremel tool that we have not really used very much, but that can be very useful for a lot of things. It all has to do with a business opportunity we have at Quality Corners. We need to make some small intricate router cuts on the edges of some parts. I figured out how to do it with something called a pantograph. Here is a very cool little java script that gives a good sense for how they work. The concept is that you can engrave two dimensional and carve three dimensional designs using the pantograph. The thing that makes it particularly appealing in this case, is that it is possible to trace a big pattern while cutting a small pattern or trace a big pattern while cutting a small one. It would be very cool to design and build a little machine to be able to make designs and wooden bas-relief sculptures. Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah have an amazing bas-relief chest that it would be fun to try to make. I think we might good ahead and jump into making a prototype of a pantograph on Saturday. I am thinking that we can use some drawer slides as a base for our first pass. We will keep you posted.

Now that the research reports for the year are complete, it is starting to feel like homeschool is finished and the summer has arrived. Kelly has one CLEP test to finish before we are really done, but that should not take up too much of her day. I really thought we would slow down a little when the summer came, but it surely seems like we are doing more than ever. The kids have swim team practice every morning at 8:00–there is a swim meet tomorrow. Kelly is in piano mini-camp this week–yesterday she got to play a harpsichord, today she is going to a class and lecture from a professional piano tuner. Both of the kids continue with their regular weekly music (Kelly–piano, Christian–guitar) classes. We are reading through our worldview book each night. We did a couple of days in the radio book, but I think I am going to change that from a summer thing to a class the kids will take this fall. The book we are using from the ARRL lends itself to self study. The kids are doing fifteen minutes per day of Rosetta Stone Spanish and Christian has decided he is going to continue on Mavis Beacon typing to get his speed up a little more. We are having a bunch of people over for dinner on Friday. I am hoping things slow down a little next week. I cannot believe I am saying this, but I think we had more time when we were just doing homeschool.

Question of the day: What has happened to Bryan and Lyle on the weight loss chart?

Kelly and Christian have finished their annual homeschool research reports. You can read them by clicking the images:

We really had a wonderful weekend. It was full of parties, sleepovers, swim meets, etc. For the record, Kelly became completely enamored with face painting when we went to the library, Christian got three firsts (100m freestyle, 100m breaststroke, and 100m butterfly) and a second (100m backstroke). Rubix and Kiwi got way out of hand at the party. Here are some pictures. You can click on them to make them big.

Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

Kelly is having several girls over for her birthday party this evening. They are going to swim, eat pizza, do crafts, and just have a great time. I will try to post some pictures when I get the chance. Next week, she is going to start a week of two hour piano classes (camp) with some other of her teacher’s students. I am not sure what all they are doing, but it will include a lecture by a piano tuner at one of the big piano stores and some instruction on playing the harpsichord. Opportunities like that always get me invigorated on whatever is the subject of interest. The last thing I did that fit into that category was to take one week programming seminars at the (now renamed) Oregon Graduate Institute. They were inspirational, educational, and we got free lunch, too! Maybe I can talk my boss into sending me to a Python class.

The kids have a swim meet this weekend in Wake Forest. After the swim meet, Lorena and I are going to drop them off at a bookstore or a library for an hour so we can make an appearance at a company party for our company’s successful laboratory trial at our BIG customer. Nothing ever goes perfectly, but we really did pretty well, so we are going to celebrate a little. With Lorena there, I will have to stay away from the chips and dips so there will not be a huge increase on the weight chart on Monday–or at least one that is not any huger than normal.

Bryan and I started our weight loss competition on February 1 of this year. Lyle joined us in mid-April. So far, Bryan is down 50 pounds, I am down 23, and Lyle is down an (adjusted for his late start) 22. I have been about as faithful as possible about doing my exercise and, after four months of only cardiovascular exercise, I have transitioned over to doing more exercise. A long time ago I read something that Kenneth Cooper said about lifting weights. He has done a lot of research on exercise and its impact on aging. He found that it is very important for people over the age of 50 to lift weights to avoid dramatic loss of muscle mass. There is a pretty good write-up on the subject here. In the past, I was always able to start up a weight program fairly quickly, but I am taking it very slowly this time. After a couple of days (Day 1: chest, Day 2: legs), I am pretty sore, but not so much that I am going to have to lay off for a couple of weeks or anything like that. I was thinking I was going to get up at 5:00 AM every morning to go in to the YMCA and lift, but based on both schedule and frame of mind, that is not going to happen. I have decided to just try to get up one day at 5:00 AM to go in and do squats (and legs) on Tuesdays and do dead-lifts (and back) on Saturdays, but do the rest of my workouts in the gym at lunch during the week.

The GPS for the volcano computer came yesterday. We have been making good progress on the system as a whole. We finally got Debian Linux running on the system with the right kernel patches so that we could talk to it via SSH. It is very cool. The GPS cost under $70 and will be perfect for what we want to do. The next step is to add a little circuitry to the end of the GPS cable so we can take the PPS (Pulse Per Second) signal from the GPS into the Linux computer. After that we need to add a patch to our already modified Linux kernel and write some code to get the two devices to talk.

Evan is currently in the process of getting the camera to talk to the computer so we can take pictures. We are getting the technical challenges out of the way. Soon it will be time to start in on the programming. I need to specify a format for the configuration files and start thinking about how we are going to package the whole thing in some kind of a enclosure. All we probably need to do is find some way to attach a metal bracket directly to the computer enclosure onto which we can mount a power connector and the GPS and we will be done. We have been thinking it would be cool to add a UPS weather module or two (thermometer, barometer, anemometer) so you could time, place, and environmental condition stamp the images.

On another note, yesterday was my second day of weightlifting. I am trying to avoid the macho thing of lifting too heavy while getting started. Yesterday I did squats, lunges, and calf raises. I kept it pretty light and am kind of amazed that I am a little wobbly but not really sore at all. We see how I feel in a couple of days.