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Didn't do a whole lot this weekend. It was nice to get some rest. I did take down some ugly shelves that had been over the bed and then put up a couple of reading lamps we had bought at Ikea. Then to celebrate we went to the library. They didn't have a bunch of the books on my list, but I did get a few.

First I read one called Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata, a science reporter for the NY Times. I had read an interview with Kolata which gave me the impression that the book was about debunking myths of exercise and fitness. (Like, all fit people are thin, or all thin people are fit. Which myth she does briefly address in the book.)

The book was partly about fitness myths, and that part was interesting. Also partly about the history of fitness fads over the past two hundred years, which was a little boring. But it was largely about the author's interest in spinning classes (those cardio classes on special stationary bikes), which was extremely boring. I mean, jeez. If I wanted to spend my entire weekend being lectured on the heady joys of spinning, I could hang around with gym rats.

So the book was mostly a disappointment. But there were some interesting tidbits, when she stopped prosletyzing for spinning long enough to address a few myths here and there. Like for instance, there's apparently no solid evidence that weight-bearing exercise prevents osteroperosis. According to Kolata, strength athletes like weightlifters do tend to have stronger bones, but that might just mean that people who are predisposed to be good at weight lifting are also predisposed to have strong bones. There is evidence that regular exercise helps prevent falling down, which is how bones are usually broken, but no evidence that exercise makes bones less likely to break when stressed. That was a bummer.

The only really useful information was that athletes tend to have irregular heartbeats and/or or heart murmurs. I've had an irregular heartbeat all my life. It used to bother me a lot -- would sometimes keep me awake at night -- but when I stopped consuming sugar and caffeine a couple of years ago, it went away. Which was great, until it came back a couple of months ago, right after I started exercising more vigorously and more regularly. I don't think it's anything to be alarmed about: it's never as bad as it used to be, and even back then a doctor told me it wasn't dangerous, just annoying.

But still, I had been wondering if I should be worried. Because isn't exercise supposed to improve your heart? That is why they call it cardio, after all. I had been thinking about seeing my doctor about it (I'm due for a checkup anyway) but was waiting until I could get my heart monitor replaced, so I could bring him some data on my resting heart rate, heart rate during arrhythmia, and so forth.

I probably will still mention it to my doctor next time I see him, but it was a great relief to read in this book that an irregular heartbeat is common among athletes and doesn't mean the heart is weakened or unhealthy. Not that I'm any kind of athlete, but I guess even the moderate exercise I'm doing is enough to aggravate the irregular heartbeat I already had.

Now I'm reading a Miss Manners book. Which is enjoyable, but not as much as I thought it would be. I'm noticing more and more what my friend Kevin pointed out a long time ago, that Miss Manners has no empathy whatsoever for people who work in the service industry. When interactions between customers and clerks, waitresses, cashiers, etc. go wrong, she invariably blames it all on the employee. One gets the impression that customers are never rude unless provoked by malicious or lazy clerks. In this book (I forget the title, something annoying about her rescuing civilization) someone wrote in to point out this very thing, and Miss Manners replied that she knows all there is to know about dealing with an angry public. I'm sure she does get a lot of rude letters in her line of work. But I have to say that if she thinks reading angry mail has much of anything in common with waiting on angry customers, she knows even less about the service industry than I thought.

Anyway, it's not high literature but it's still a fun way to kill a few hours. Which I seem to need, as I'm having trouble falling asleep tonight. This almost never happens to me. I think I ate too much garlic at dinner. Georg made his fabulous shrimp in mojo de ajo, and I maybe overindulged a little. But it was so good!