kamikaze

Tiring as hell day. My friends helped me move, but due to some weird issue with one of them picking the other one up, I ended up loading the heavy wood furniture into the moving van myself (and thus felt rather like a honey badger). When we arrived at my new place, it was essentially me and my ex-EMT friend moving all of the heavy stuff. My friend who is similar in size to me got very winded going up the stairs each time. She also had troubles staying steady while carrying the heavy furniture. I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to tell you how out of shape my friend is. I've lived here a month... and a month ago when I was hauling some of my stuff up to the 3rd floor from my car, I experienced the EXACT same stuff she was going through today. In this month, I've walked or biked to campus every week day. I've climbed the stairs to my apartment at least 4 times a day. And I've climbed the stairs to my 4th floor lab as well at least twice daily. But until today I hadn't realized how much of a positive impact these mundane daily activities have had on me. So there you have it. I sorely needed this dose of physical motivation.

So I rolled my ankle at Aikido on Saturday attempting forward rolls. It's now Friday and finally feeling better. Back to Aikido next week! Good on all other goals so far. Kicking ass at research and life... and finally (after a month of living here) getting my furniture moved tomorrow so I can feel like I actually live here. Excitement.

Welcome Bob! Fellow fisherman here - what's your favorite target catch?

Welcome to the Rebellion (and hopefully to the monastery as well), fellow Whovian! What style of kung fu are you going to be leaning?

Welcome to the Rebellion, chopkins! Strength training will help build muscle and that will help preserve your knees. Usually in most gyms, there are people who are regulars (especially in the weights area). I've found gym rats are pretty awesome people - if you go over and ask them for pointers, they're likely going to help you.

Yep, that sounds like time well spent at work on a martial art! Welcome back! Also, deadlifts are my most favorite lift. Here's a good guide on how to do them. http://stronglifts.com/how-to-deadlift-with-proper-technique/

Stranger danger! Harris! - It's good to see you back! :-) I'm starting full paleo tomorrow. This time it will happen. As for this week's activity totals: Walking: 13.15 miles total (all to get to someplace) Biking: (To dojo and back): 1.62 miles Aikido: 3 classes, total of 4.5 hours.

Way to go fellow aikidoka! Also that stew looks good!

Woohoo!

Late to the game, as per my usual - CONGRATS ON THE JOB! One step closer to the dream. Also I second the roommate agreement. I wish I'd had one with my previous roommate. And quadruple-quintiple-whatever level we're on agree with the "I'm cool with the internet and Netflix, thanks"

And 3rd class happened. This one had forward rolls. I have lots of room for improvement. LOTS... of room. Cooking a whole mess of food for the week tomorrow so "I don't feel like cooking, so screw this keto/paleo plan" isn't an excuse. (It shouldn't be an excuse anyway, harden up Kaze!) Will be back again tomorrow to update weekly activity totals and the like.

There's a difference between imperfect and stagnant. The important thing is forward motion. Go Jem!

So you have the goals, but what is the plan to get to each of them? Welcome to our humble monastery!

I feel like I got a good read on the club last night. I'm going back tonight to commit. I'm hoping to enjoy it as well. I did sleep like a rock last night, and I definitely am sore today! I think this dojo does colored belts for the kids, but the adult classes only have white belts or the black flowy pants. Edit: Went to my second class this evening. People were still awesomely nice. I'm still enthusiastic, also sore. Very very sore. Next class is Saturday.

Holy cats there are a lot of monks in the monastery. Word must have gotten around about how awesome we are as a guild! Catching up with the goals progress 1) Not progress. Unfortunately free food at a symposium was my undoing for the last day and a half (there were leftovers). Tomorrow starts the Whole30 of sorts. 2) So far so good on this front. Walking to work. Biked to aikido (more on that in a second after the goal run down) 3 and 4) Did both of these yesterday. Now the news. I attended my free intro to aikido class at the local dojo (and by local, I mean the next block over from my apartment). Everyone was uber-welcoming, I liked the senseis (both were present) and even though today was my first day, they actually had me doing the stuff the rest of the class was working on. I like the approach of working with your opponent's movement and remaining calm. I feel specifically the remaining calm in the face of stress would be widely beneficial. So it's the perfect storm - good people, proximity, and an art that should help me become a better person. I guess I'm going to be an aikidoka! There's a class tomorrow... and they said they hope to see me there!

The long commute will be worth getting started with your personal training life goal. Way to go Kishi!

Cool goals. I definitely second Kishi's suggestion on looking at bodyweight exercises. But running isn't bad to be have either - stamina is good to have on the mat and an aerobic base won't hurt you any.

Hi arwen, how are things going so far this week?

I think I may steal "Excellence in, excellence out" for my fridge. Thanks Chef! I figure there will be plenty of those days. Being well fueled (and hopefully it being second nature) will help me not suffer the supposed inevitable depression of PhD work. I'm just toying with the Tai Chi at the moment - hoping to join the aikido dojo just down the street at some point "soon" but I want to wait until I can get into one of their intro to aikido classes. If Tai Chi still helps calm me in the evenings, it'll stay. And my PhD will be in evolution, ecology and population biology. I just finished my Masters in May. I'm a month into the PhD program and I can tell that I need to be much more on my game than I was when I was finishing my Masters. So far so good. What period in history do you want to specialize in?

I like it! Followed.

Alright. I've defended, graduated with my M.S., have moved the very basics to close to my new school and am firmly entrenched in my PhD work now. I need to move furniture and stuff that wasn't absolutely essential (like most of my kitchen stuff, my books), but aside from that, I'm here in the city and I have some general bearings. Input: 1) 100% Paleo compliance for 30 days (2 Jun - 1 July). Output: 2) Walking or biking for all normal weekly activities (commuting to work, groceries). Track mileage. Staying well: 3) Lacrosse ball work on calves, roller work on thighs 5x a week to stave off grumpy posterior chain 4) Tai chi via Youtube 5x a week Bonus* - check in here every other day. Every post I make on my thread, I will make 2 other comments on other threads.

Did the first bike commute to campus today. You may not forget how to ride a bike, but your quads sure do forget what it's like to work hard in that modality. An impending storm on the way home made me forget the pain in favor of not being caught in a thunderstorm. Made it, got the dogs out and back in before the heavens opened up. Really need to get a handle on eating better.

Thanks man. Once i started to try to find alternatives, I realized it was not necessarily beyond my ability, but a question of what exactly I wanted to do in order to earn my degree. (We have a similar quantitative problem with wanting to track these fish without seeing them, just by their electrical discharges). Part of the thing I've learned with my Masters is that there's always someone who's more knowledgeable that yourself if you're going outside of your small little niche - you sir are that much more knowledgeable person! (and I thank you!) The end result would be uber-awesome if I sunk the time into it, but probably not the best use of my funded time on the grant (as you point out). I think I still want to learn to code, if for no other reason that down the road, it's a skill that could make me a more desirable job candidate.

Thanks Kishi and Leonine - I haven't been the main source of my own food for almost 10 years. I'm a little rusty, but that just gives me an excuse to cook good for me stuff! SFG - It's essentially a computer vision problem where we're asking the computer program to locate the center of a mass and give us (x,y) coordinates in pixels as well as which way the head is pointing. We're using it to track how electric fish respond to electric signals that are played back to them (presumably by following simple electric dipole lines). The program I've settled on right now is called Ethowatcher. It does a good job of tracking the centroid of the fish's mass and the angle. I'm not convinced it's perfectly ideal, but it's what we have right now in terms of working software (which is good enough for my rotation project purpose). Do you have any good suggestions on where to start if I was going to begin teaching myself how to program? Update: In my first week of living here, I've logged nearly 15 miles of walking just by commuting to my lab! How awesome is that!? I also picked up a bike today (have to pick up a helmet and a lock before I can use said bike). Exciting times!

The closest grocery is 1.8 miles away through neighborhoods, so low travel streets. My preferred grocery store (a little cheaper, more variety) is 2.5 miles, but via the big park. Both will be easy rides by bike, kind of annoying distances walking. I'm used to weekly shopping trips as well - raised in the sticks back in Georgia. Then lived suburban/college towns the rest of the time. The city thing is a new adventure, but I think my health is going to be seriously impacted in a good way by it! (Remind me of this sunny disposition when I bitch about my walk to work tomorrow in a thunderstorm! ) http://www.stlki.org/index.shtml is the page of the aikido school I plan to join. And beginner's mind (if you're fortunate) never goes away! 2.4 miles today (just to lab and back). And yeah... good day. I finally got one of the tracking programs I'd been playing with to work the way I need it. It will at least function until I can figure out how to program something more suited to our direct needs. Any monks proficient enough in programming C++ to recommend a good beginner's starting spot. (I took a course in high school, but that was 12 years and lots of non-practice ago)