I admit it, although once upon a time I biked fairly regularly I've gradually turned into a couch potato over the past several years.

By couch potato, I mean one whose biggest exercise was probably walking through the parking lot at work, or an occasional visit to Borders or to LensCrafters in the mall. (To be self-servingly honest, there were reasons for some of it, but continued inactivity didn't help.) So, today, I tell myself, "I'll try the garage sale circuit". Picked up a couple of lawn chairs and assorted nick-nacks, brought them home (which itself was probably more activity than I'd done for weeks).

Went to the store, waded through the Saturday crowds and picked up a few things. Then I made the fateful decision, "Okay, let me work on some of these weed bushes out in front of my house."

By weed bushes, that's almost what I literally mean. I've got a neighborhood kid mowing the lawn, but he's not doing anything about the growths that have sprung up around, say, my front door. I've got an evergreen that some misguided previous owner put between the entrance side walk and the house (it's a large thing, must be ten or twelve feet high by now, situated midway in the two or three foot gap between sidewalk and house - obviously too big for where it is, probably a danger to my foundations, at the very least overgrowing the sidewalk.) My azalea bed (also misguided, it's not really the right soil or a good climate for it, and two of the three have died out) is getting 'way overgrown with weeds.

The net effect is that my front door is pretty much inaccessible unless you push your way through a wall of weeds and bushes - to be honest, not necessarily a Bad Thing, if you consider it an anti- door-to-door salesman "persuader". I decided to start working on that, which *did* turn out to be a Bad Thing for a wannabe reformed couch potato. Between bending and clipping and snipping the stuff closest to the door (one of these days I'm going to take a chain saw to that damn evergreen, but not today - just whacked off whatever was overhanging the front walk) and between clipping weeds whose bases had grown to unbelievable propoortions (an inch or more in some places), I can now see out from my front porch - I sat in one of the two cushioned lawn chairs I'd purchased and rested from my labors.

And then the pains and exhaustion started setting in. I went inside and lay down on my couch and sorta drowsed through Cops and America's Most Wanted, got up, went to bed, never could get into a comfortable position since my back was starting to kill me.

Such was the saga of my Saturday.

Two morals of the story: Don't try too much too soon. And don't let your couch-potato-ness get that bad in the first place.