I have fallen so far...

[midnight armadillo]

Well, my achilles tendonitis is finally healed up, now I won't get any exercise for my 3 weeks of paternity leave which'll start any day now. Yeah, excuses, excuses. ;)

Anyway, I'll be back on the kettlebell/jumprope bandwagon in a month or so. I'm dropping my gym membership too to concentrate on outdoor exercise and to finance some sandbags and a 32 kg kettlebell.

[seemunkee]

1. look at the US kettlebell

adjustable from 32 - 70lb. The handle could be a little bit more curved but otherwise I'm pleased with it.

[midnight armadillo]

2. Hey that's pretty cool

$300 for two, or ~$322 for a set of 3 fixed weights from Pavel. Hmmm...I keep these in my office (my antics grealy amuse and slightly frighten my coworkers) and adjustable ones would be very convenient.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will have to think about these. Heck, a pair of the adjustable ones means I could sell off my two fixed weight ones and make some of the purchase price back! Hmm...

For the sandbags I'm going to pick up the kit from Ironmind:
http://www6.mailordercentral.com/ironmind/prodinfo.asp?number=1390
My persnal time is at a premium with a new baby arriving any minute so I don't feel like making my own.

[Obamanaut]

3. I knew nothing of kettlebells, so I googled it, and looked at

several sites that offer adjustable ones, and some exercise sites. Reading your post re bess in office, I had to laugh at the mental picture of someone coming in just as you are beginning to swing a weight around.

Before I retired, I was maintenance chief in an aviation squadron (USN). When we were at sea, the two clerks in maintenance control office and I did pushups between launch/recover cycles - and even that got strange looks from pilots and acft maintainers who came into the office at those times.

Thanks for the mental image and the memory jog.