The Excuses We Make

It's amazing what we'll come up with to keep us from working out. For example, at the beginning of this academic year I bought a combination master lock so that I could keep my stuff safe when I went to work out. Naturally, I took the combination to this lock, committed it to memory, and then promptly ate the piece of paper it was printed on. Two weeks later, I couldn't quite recall whether the 10 went before the 26, or to the right of the 33.

The result; I haven't worked out in awhile.

The good news, though, is that since Christmas (when my parents bought me a nice glass-top, digital, body% measuring scale), I've dropped nearly 10 lbs. To those friends who haven't seen me in a couple months, don't worry: this isn't to say I look famished or that I have that sunken look some vegetarians get about them. On the contrary, it was no secret I kept a little in reserve around the midsection and a good deal of that is what is gone now. As mentioned, I haven't been working out (at least, no cardiovascular, though I do have some weights in my apartment), but obviously my dietary practices have changed fairly dramatically in the past 3 or 4 months. Given, I started the whole vegetarian thing right after Thanksgiving, but it took awhile to get get out of the junk-food-veg phase. Once I started cooking actual meals for myself and stopped relying on overly-processed broccoli and cheese hot pockets (namely, after the first of the year), I saw the bulk of that weight drop.

Anyways, though I know you love to hear about my current physique (you know I'd post pictures, but this isn't that type of blog), the main point of this post is to tell all those of you out there who similarly absolutely can't manage to work out because you, too, have forgotten your master lock combination, there is hope! The title of this post is linked to the first site googled under "lost combination for master lock". It's a process I knew to exist from my lock-picking days a couple years back, but I'd forgotten the exact details of it. Don't worry, despite the deceptive descriptive language the author of said page utilizes, this is very much not a hard process to figure out. And, though it may take a little trial and error when you get to the end-game, it goes a lot quicker than you'd imagine. Running through the digits of my own lock's locked final minutes literally took, uh, minutes. And, for the 3 or 4 bucks a master lock costs, I'd rather spend 10 minutes playing the game of figuring out its combination. Good luck if you need to use it...if not, we'll see what tomorrow's gym session brings about. I'll keep you updated (I might even create a new label...but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

P.S. Thanks goes out to Brad B. for mentioning the idea of motivating your own work-outs by making them public on your blog. Thanks for the idea.