It’s Monday. The first Monday in November. Kids have today and tomorrow off from school, so my morning routine was more akin to weekend than weekday – no alarm, no arguing with myself about getting up. The rest so far is similar. Workout, blog post. Make coffee. I have more company this morning than usual, since everyone is awake – even the sun.

It’s also the first Monday of non daylight savings time. Besides the fact that this makes no sense to me – why do we need to SAVE daylight in the summer, when we have so much of it? We need to save it in the winter, darn it! – this also has an impact on my routine. Like flying somewhere exotic with a time change, only the view hasn’t changed a bit.

Makes my wake-up a tad easier.

This morning, it also made it easier for me to up the weights in this morning’s torture my workout. The workout is “The Pyramid” from Shaun T’s T25, Gamma phase. The idea is you set a base and go up from there, peaking at the end. So you do things like hammer curls and squats, starting with one of each and working up to 7 of each (I think. I lose count.) The first two you think, “What’s the big deal?” and by the fifth or sixth level you are concentrating hard on not falling over or dropping the weights.

Last week when I did this workout I used 5 lb weights in each hand. (Snort at this and I dare you to come over and do the workout with me.) No real concentration needed to get it done, so I publicly announced that I’d up the weights this time. Thank goodness for these dial-a-weights . . .

Increments of 2.5 lbs don’t sound all that huge.

Tricep overheads to 90 degree holds in a pyramid fashion? Yep, 2.5 is the perfect increment.

Like my weights today, I think I’ll dial up the effort, the work. The badass potential.