[The Most Loathed] learns....slowly

[The Most Loathed]

So you guys talked crossfit? Do you also have that urge to go and give advice about lifting and diet etc? :X I very often have to reign myself in very very hard because it's not cool really.

I wouldn't say we really talked about crossfit that much. He's really overweight so I just kind of encouraged him to keep going and made my usual blanket offer to come use my gym and learn about kettlebells anytime. He was curious about kettlebells since he and his wife own one and never use it and he's been exposed to the "American Swing" via crossfit so I talked about the core differences and what it means to "compete" at kettlebells. 

He seems like a guy who was strong when he was younger and has let himself go with age and is just getting back into fitness in his middle age. I consider those lifters very delicate at that stage, their ego and their body do not agree with one another. If we can keep them safe and motivated through the first couple years, that's a win, then we'll talk about improving things Besides, I made a friend out of him so I figure I have all the time in the world to woo him to better techniques.

[RisenPhoenix]

I worked the morning, went downtown for my monthly massage in the afternoon 

 

I think I've asked this before, but do you find the monthly massages worth it?

 

I'm still on the fence about budgeting that cost into my life right now.  I'll waiver towards yes and get smacked with some weird expend out of the blue which makes me flit back towards no, and then I'll be sore, and start trending towards yes again...  I oscillate.  A lot.

 

So you guys talked crossfit? Do you also have that urge to go and give advice about lifting and diet etc? :X I very often have to reign myself in very very hard because it's not cool really.

 

It's really good I wasn't drinking anything when I read this.  Because it would have been all over my screen.

[Bearlee]

I was a restaurant Sunday, the kind that has all kinds of nick-nacks on the wall and they had a pair of Indian clubs on the wall, which I only know because you showed me your pair. Then I started wondering if you're still using them or not?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[The Most Loathed]

I was a restaurant Sunday, the kind that has all kinds of nick-nacks on the wall and they had a pair of Indian clubs on the wall, which I only know because you showed me your pair. Then I started wondering if you're still using them or not?

I haven't been using them over the winter because my basement clearance is too low. Once I get back outside, yes. They were a very valuable warm up tool for me.

 

I think I've asked this before, but do you find the monthly massages worth it?

 

I'm still on the fence about budgeting that cost into my life right now.  I'll waiver towards yes and get smacked with some weird expend out of the blue which makes me flit back towards no, and then I'll be sore, and start trending towards yes again...  I oscillate.  A lot.

RE: massage therapists, they help marginally. I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that everything I hear about in articles and podcast that isn't Sleep, Eat, Train Regularly is a marginal improvement at best. So I do feel that there is value gained but if you aren't getting a really good massage and also the lack of money isn't going to put you into any kind of hardship, save your money for more amazing food.

I'd argue that my guy is really good but I'd also acknowledge that this is a luxury and that if money gets tight as Laura goes back to school, this will have to go on the chopping block. 

 

 

 

02/20/2016 (saturday)

no training, just working, no mediation either

 

02/21/2016

I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep so I walked the dogs and did work. By noon it was clear what would and what would not get done, regardless of hours thrown at it. so I was able to call it a day at 1 and we went out for a nice late lunch. Laura and I took and "adults only walk" (when we don't take the dogs). It was great. 

 

Train

LC 24 KG 30

LC 24 KG 20

LC 24 KG 10

 

Swing 32 KG

25/25

20/15

0/5

5/5

5/5

 

Thread the Needle 5 x 5/5

 

not my best workout by far but I did it. It was a blend of the crappy feeling for all the sitting I've been doing and being amusedly distracted by getting to spend time with Laura. 

 

Now for a lesson on stress. I wear a fitbit that has a heart rate monitor built into it. It's not super accurate but it's good enough. Based on having my HR measured I know that when I'm feeling good and feeling fit, I'm just shy of 60 BPM.My fitbit tend to mark me in the same area, about 2 BPM above what I measure when I truly try and suppress it and sit there and measure it. Here is the last month for me.

 

Prep for the week of 02/22

Monday: still thinking about this. I have my rowing circuit written down but I've got some things I want to try out. 

Tuesday: Pilates

Wednesday: maybe a workout 20kg lc 10:00

Thursday: either 1ALc or ketttlebell complex fo 30:00

Friday: of I miss wednesday, push wed to Thurs and Thurs to here

Saturday: optional (moving furniture)

Sunday: LC 24 kg 3:00, 3:00 x 3?

 

Since I mentioned my fandom of Ru Paul's Drag Race, here's your music for the week

[Rooks]

Love your log.  I'm going to be stealing some organizational things from it.    

 

And I'll be shooting you a PM soon.  I'm going to get over there for that KB session (assuming of course you are still welcoming of a schlub like myself..  Got to just put it on the calendar.  

[The Most Loathed]

Love your log.  I'm going to be stealing some organizational things from it.  

 

And I'll be shooting you a PM soon.  I'm going to get over there for that KB session (assuming of course you are still welcoming of a schlub like myself..  Got to just put it on the calendar.  

you bet. and your timing is great. 

also, I recommend peelout's log for some nice organization of habits. Now that my big-ass project is in the winding down phase, I have more time.

I'm booked next weekend but we can do a weeknight or get together in March as needed. 

[The Most Loathed]

02/22/2016

Eat: back on good food behavior

Train: none, Laura wanted down time

Meditate: no, we had an all afternoon staff meeting so I didn't take my time out then. I tried to when I got home but nope

Geek: none

 

02/23/2016

Eat: Still eating well. I've been kind of in the mood to deviate but Laura is actually trying to diet for once which means she's not lobbing bail out suggestions at me and I'm always reticent to bring them up. so while I would have taken a bail out today, it didn't come up

Train: no, this is apparently going to be one of those weeks where Laura is going to need to "hang out", which basically means I did chores all night while she sat on the internet. I'm promised a workout today (wednesday) but I've always thought we were over booked tonight so I'm dubious

Meditate: yes, and it went really well. Trying to work on holding the right balance of alertness.

Geek

[Sloth the Enduring]

I love the Fitbit graph. You might have just sold me.

[The Most Loathed]

I love the Fitbit graph. You might have just sold me.

here's the full dashboard. nothing is super accurate but lots of directional stuff on there. 

Despite what they say it won't accurately track you biking but it will track the HR change.

Like all pedometers, the steps can be gamed. Laura doesn't wear hers because the HR isn't super accurate.

 

Here's my already improving resting HR

 

02/24/2016

Eat: good behavior, shake, beef, salad, veggies, quesadillas for supper.

Train: some

LC 28 kg x 20

Snatch 16 kg 20/20 x 3?

1ALC 36 KG 3/3

mobiity stuff

Meditation: yes. It's pretty much entirely unguided at this point.I'm wondering how it will feel at the end of this series when I step into a different, more guided series.

Geek: this has been abysmal of late. I'm optimistic that I'll get to geek out on Friday a bit when I'm off half a day.

 

 

 

[The Most Loathed]

02/25/21016

Eat: I knew I'd be on bad behavior today so I had nachos for lunch. I love those freaking things but I need to chill out on them.

Train: nah. Laura till needed someone to sit with plus I knew I'd do an am workout on Friday so I let it go

Meditate: yes

Geek:no

 

02/26/2016

Eat: left over quesadilla, double decker egg sammie and salomn and asparagus for supper

Train: jog 5 km, row 10:00 at 2:05-210 /500 pace

Meditate: no

Geek: no

Notes: this was meant to be a work from home 1/2 day and off 1/2 day but the clean up from that project and a promise not to work this weekend meant it became a full day of work for me, with a couple of things left for Monday morning. The weather was amazing though so I went out for a slow jog. I did 5km in 33 minutes or so. I forced myself to only nose breathe as throttle. It worked very well.

 

02/27/2016

Eat: eggs for breakfast, pizza for lunch (yep pizza) and egg and avocado for supper

Train: no training, see notes

Meditate: no

Geek: none

notes: today was spent swapping out TV room for our bedroom. It's a slightly long story but the short version is our bedroom used to be in the only room on the second floor of our house and our TV room used to be the front room (not the one you enter but off to the side). Now it's the other way around. I worked on this from about 8 am to 9 pm with food and occasional other breaks but it was a full day of activity.

 

I'm short on time right now but I have so many things I want to talk about. We're headed to get groceries then I'm going to workout. If I can get all my chores done and food cooked I'll post a big exposition post tonight otherwise it'll have to be later in the week (Monday am is going to be supper busy but maybe I'll take an hour in the afternoon to drat a long post).

[The Most Loathed]

I have a few minutes of down time before I start my gear down for bed which includes not looking at the computer, so a few thoughts:

 

food

I tweaked my food plan for the week. First, I calculated my macros without any protein bars (since they have been bothering me lately) and came up with a food plan for most days for the week. Second, I did a whole pile of prep to support that plan. For tomorrow I will have

• morning smoothie - protein powder, ginger, turmeric, lemon, water
• 1 lb ground beef
• 300 G (about 2/3 lbs) mashed sweet potatoes
• Elli's Quark
• 5 oz Blue Diamond almonds
• 15 oz veggies (tomorrow I'm cheating and using some veggies I stir fried tonight, normally these are frozen)
• 100g fermented saurkraut.

By my math this nets out to 2700 calories which is a little higher than i was targeting (2500) but  that's probably for the better. The above combined with whatever I do for supper each night (M:quesadillas, T:eggs, W: burger king) is my food for the day.

Is it any wonder my coworkers think it's weird that I roll into work with a stack of tupperware?

 

Competition

Our new, local lifter went to a meet this weekend. That combined with looking back at my logs from my 2014 meet has really got me in the mood to go to a meet again. I had planned to go to one in May but they've never been able to nail down a weekend for me so at this point I'm giving up on that particular one. 

I gave Laura a heads up that this is something that is on my mind but with the caveat that I fully realized that we already have one out of state event planned for March, April, May and June. Also with her plan to go back to school or even her recent proposal that she just quit working, I need to see what develops before I make any commitments. She, of course, was interested in meets we could spin into vacations but most of the meet locations in the US aren't exactly the kinds of places we would vacation. 

So no plans right now but it's on my mind.

 

I'm over time for the night so I'm going to go read and gear down but I'll post more tomorrow.

[The Most Loathed]

ok, I'm screwing off right now a bit. I should be looking at this 1,500 line code block that someone else wrote and figuring out how to clean it up. 

 

Happy Leap Day! I don't know why but I think this day is special. It just gets me a little excited. It's dumb but I like it.

 

02/28/2016

Eat: good food behavior yesterday, eggs and bacon of brakfast, no real lunch and Steelhead and Brussel Sprouts for supper

Train:

LC 28 kg 5 x 10

1 Arm Clean and Press 24 kg 5 x 10/10

TRX rows 5 x 10

Meditate: No. I started but the washer started to make weird noises and I needed to check  and broke off and never restarted

Geek: I got two D&D books using an Amazon giftcard. One arrives tomorrow and the other will come out mid-march.

 

The Week of 02/29/2016

This week is not going to be strong workout-wise.

• Monday: circuit (probably row, burpee, swing)
• Tuesday: Pilates
• Wednesday: Game Night! (finally)
• Thursday: LC 28 kg 1 set
• Friday: LC 20 KG, 2x50 probably
• Saturday: off? maybe jog
• Sunday LC 28 kg 1:00,1:00 x N

Feb

I haven't gone back and read each post but I can think of a a few big ticket items

1. overtime - Obviously this month was tremendously impacted by the number of days with long hours or weekend days I worked. I knew this month would have these but it didn't make them all that much easier. The good news is that I'm over that hump and it's time to move on
2. meditation - I've really been enjoying my meditation and time and I feel like my personality is being positively impacted by this practice. I feel like I'm becoming less likely to put my hackles up when someone says something challenging or frustrating to me. that's not traditionally been a huge problem but it's even better. Where I used to have more trouble is when those people would then seem to obstruct each attempt to help them. I'm coming to accept this more. I'm also finding that I wish I could spend more time meditating. 
3. geek time - this has been sorely lacking this month. In future months I'll strive to give myself more time to just enjoy the things that I enjoy.
4. competition - starting a couple weeks ago I was getting a desire to go to a meet. Last year was frustrating progress-wise but I went back and read some old logs and realized that while I haven't progressed much, I have progressed. I also ended up listening to a podcast that described exactly my scenario and prescribed more aerobic base building as potential solution so look for that. Finally, we had our third local lifter go to a meet and I watched he snatch set on live stream. It made me want to lift again. I also heard someone talk about how to use competition as a diagnostic tool which made me want to do that as well. All that said, I don't currently have a plan. At earliest it'll be fall but it could be next year, I don't know.

 

March

March is here!

Hey, get this, I thought about making  challenge thread. It wouldn't replace this one but enhance it a bit. I still might, but I might not. I was thinking about making a thread to focus on meditation and what I think and feel about it. If I do that, i'll still log everything here but I'll use that space to wax rhapsodic about meditation only. 

 

In March, I want training to get more bipolar. I'm planning to go heavy two days a week and I may even sneak out to the garage for some squat sets.. Two days a week I'm going to try and do some cardio. I've got my basement circuit that I like and I can start running on nice days as well. Those four days combined with pilates will likely make up my training week most weeks.

 

This month will be my first vacation time of the year and each month through June will be a new trip (May is still being planned).

 

I'm sure I had more in mind but that's all that comes to me right now. It's time to wrap up this post and do at least some code review before I pack up for the day.

[The Most Loathed]

02/29/2016

Eat: very good behavior. I did, however, experience a pretty nasty brain fog in the afternoon that I haven't faced in a long time. I suspect it was the huge dish of carby veggies that I ate early in the day (three bell peppers and broccoli)

Meditate: yes. also watched a bunch of videos from a comedian who did a 100 meditation challenge. Made me want to create more time to work on this

Train

Row 1km (4:00 x 4, 4:10 x 3)

Burpee x 20

Sqing 24 kg 20/20

x 7 in just over 60 minutes

I had a lot more energy than usual which I'm also tempted to attribute to the carby veggie load

Geek:mostly just looking into meditation a bunch.

 

 

My love of parody rock is well documented. How I didn't know about the 5FDP cover of Mama Said Knock You Out

[The Most Loathed]

03/01/2016

 

Eat: I knew today would be bad behavior. I wanted to get together with a friend and he really wanted to get lunch. So I rolled with it and got a really delicious burrito. 

Train: pilates. It was a really good session. It was a small class and the couple of older, very out of shape ladies weren't there so the instructor decided to play around with some different things. I don't begrudge those women their trip to the class but it's interesting to see the ideas in the instructors head when that throttle is turned off. 

I also talked to the instructor about progressions for times when I'm not in class and she was so happy that someone wanted to work outside of class that she offered to send me a bunch of her previously generated client workouts. No extra work for her but I get what I wanted as well.

Meditate: meditation sucked. I had trouble finding a quiet space (literal, physical space not a metaphor for focus). Once I found one, it got loud because the next room over got excited.

Also, I'm reading You Are Here b the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. It's a super small book. If I had a couple hours I could read it in one sitting. I like it. It focuses a lot on the minute to minute, day to day practice of meditating and less on the exercise. I'm bad at the minute to minute so I'm finding it helpful.

Geek: a slim volume arrived in the mail, The Sword Coast Adventurer's guide. I bought this with an Amazon gift card that I got for free from work. It's basically a book that just talks about one of the established area in the D&D universe. My current campaign is not on the established D&D map because I don't know it well. This book should help fill in that gap in my knowledge. It probably won't be super useful but it's a fun distraction for free. I also spent some time reading the wikipedia article on Strahd, the vampire from the new adventure module that is coming out this month and I preordered with the same gift card. I'm very seriously considering converting out campaign over to that module.

[peelout]

Since I can't find meditation in my flowchart organized mind, the whole concept is blank to me.  I mean, I know what it is, but I just can't "understand" what it is.  Can you describe what it does for you.  Interested more in the outcome than the act.

[The Most Loathed]

Since I can't find meditation in my flowchart organized mind, the whole concept is blank to me.  I mean, I know what it is, but I just can't "understand" what it is.  Can you describe what it does for you.  Interested more in the outcome than the act.

This sounds very much like my half of the conversation with my occasional training partner that got me started down this path. I will answer your question as completely as I can but I'm a relative novice (not even 6 months in) and a lot of these things are very squishy and your best bet is to try the Take 10 series from Headspace for free (yep, I'm advertising for free for them). You'll learn more in your ten ten minute sessions than I can realistically explain.

 

Process

The process for most new people seems to be pretty similar. As one matures I think it becomes very personalized. Generally the process is about acknowledging things then "letting them go". So you'll be seated somewhere and want to notice all the physical things (noise, smell, touch) and now that you know they are there, they can fall into the background for you. Now you can experience your breath (sounds hippy dippy right?). Just observe your breath coming in and out and the pauses between. In theory you do this for a while and have a super calm mind that can focus and do what it needs to do and be awesome when you're done.

In practice, at least for me, a couple breathes in, usually on the pause after I exhale, a thought pops into my head like "I wonder if we could grill tonight for supper" or "what was that person thinking when they sent that email". Sometimes I go down that rabbit hole for a few breathes. Once I realize I have done this i come back to experiencing the breath. The cycle repeats but hopefully the gaps between wandering off get longer and the wanders get shorter. Eventually, on the best days, there is a point where the thought comes in, I observe it is there then it goes out and I don't go with it.

 

Results

break vicious cycles of stress

There's a ton of research that exists about reducing stress and all kinds of things but those are pretty academic in nature, right? For me, meditation decouples certain trains of thought. For example, if I get in the loop of being pissed because some manager promised a project in two weeks that will take six weeks to do right, I'm wasting a ton of energy thinking about that rather than solving the problems that will get the project done. And for me and others I have observed, that will be a long running undercurrent of thought. so I might try to go solve problems but I just keep coming back to how annoyed I am. meditating breaks that cycle. It doesn't mean I won't think of it again later but it gives me some time both during and after meditation . With practice it is getting easier to break those cycles with less and less effort and time. 

improved communication

Another aspect of meditation is that thing of just sitting with the breath. With time that comes forward in life. This is most visible in interpersonal communications. That same manager who made those promises (real world case for me) came to me to ask questions and in the past just seeing his stupid face would get me wound up around those issues and make me resistant to anything. Now I'm more open to hear him and not bind it to that past experience. In a recent case, his new request was super easy, in fact it was done. So I was able to just agree and show him the result. He was super happy and I had no moments of anxiety around it.

Improved mood

This is the probably the most hippy dippy of the things I'll mention but for me there has been a generally improvement of mood. I'm sure the above thing a impact that but also, there is a joy in just experiencing things without the hang ups of the yesterday or tomorrow on my shoulders. It's like the moment on a summer's day when I'm walking home and I suddenly realize that the temperature is perfect and the sky is a clear and things are pretty great, it's like that except I can conjure it a few times a day as needed.

 

I'm sure that someone deeper into the practice would have more thoughts but I'm a relative noob. I know it's not for everyone. I've talked to my wife about it and she's made it clear that she doesn't like the idea of letting go of her feelings about yesterday or worries about tomorrow. I don't begrudge her wanting to feel her own feels and that same is true for anyone else. For me, it's been really valuable and I find myself really wanting to clear some time to attempt longer meditations as well as get more consistent (I'm still bad at making time on weekends).

 

Thanks for asking the question and giving me an excuse to talk about it. I tried to sit down last night and type something similar but just couldn't find a way to get started without feeling like I was just arbitrarily preaching. So you've done me a service.

[peelout]

I would encourage everyone to preach about what they believe it.  I babble endlessly about habit formation, if someone chooses to use it great, if not, they can pass on it.  No arm twisting, but when you find something that works for you, you should share it.  It might click for someone else and benefit them.

 

I think I used a lower level of this to relax in college.  I returned to college when I was 30 to get an ME degree.  I had realized that this was probably my last chance of getting a "career" that payed a lot.  I also knew that being older was at least somewhat detrimental in that companies would probably prefer to higher someone younger (at least that was my perception).  So I went back w/ the attitude that I must excel gradewise to standout.  I set the expectation of all A's and anything less was failure.  I stressed over every lab, homework assignment, quiz, and test.  No amount of study was too much.  I didn't succeed in all A's, but I came close w/ only 2 B's and the rest A's.  During this time I got highly stressed.  My neighbor was playing a tape called "Classical music for people who hate classical music" and it just clicked for me.  I started putting this tape in and would just zone out.  It was my breath.  Sounds like meditation is similar except you go even further into emptying the mind.

 

Hope you keep talking about your experiences.  It will benefit everyone who has an open mind.

[The Most Loathed]

I would encourage everyone to preach about what they believe it.  I babble endlessly about habit formation, if someone chooses to use it great, if not, they can pass on it.  No arm twisting, but when you find something that works for you, you should share it.  It might click for someone else and benefit them.

 

I think I used a lower level of this to relax in college. ...

 

Hope you keep talking about your experiences.  It will benefit everyone who has an open mind.

Thank you.

 

 

It does sound like you have dabbled in this area. I found, once I got going that I had as well, I just didn't really know what it was or where I was going with it. I'd say that anyone who trains seriously has done at least some.

[The Most Loathed]

03/02/2016

 

Eat: good behavior at work, whopper for supper as planned (Burger King is the designated meeting place for game night), I shouldn't have said ok to the Pepsi once gaming started

Train: none, game night

Meditate: yes, it was very good. I succeeded at counting 100 breathes in a row then was able to drop the focus on breath and hold a very calm mind. I also read a bit more of my book last night which is a good primer regarding day to day, minute to minute stuff so I've been trying to grab more brief moments

Geek:Game night. Brian and I met up for two games of Prodigal's Club and one cooldown of Race for the Galaxy. I'm unconvinced that Prodigal's Club is a worthy successor to Last Will but I've played Last will dozens of times so it's probably not a fair comparison. We did try Prodigal's with all three modules (rather than the usual two) and while it makes a much more challenging game, I'm unconvinced that it's better. 

I'm kind of sad to say that my total drop off in game playing has killed my appetite for it alot. When I was playing games every day I would play just about any game and be happy to play it. Now that I'm not even gaming once a month, I find that I don't want to play and ok game. I'd even like that say that this is because I find those gaming minutes so precious but that would be dishonest. In fact, I find that I'd rather be doing something else than playing a mediocre game. If I know I gave up my workout tonight for this, it damn well better be worth it. 

I'm a little conflicted over this.

 

In other news, the kettlebell sport world in the US is once again proving that the collectively have too much time on their hands. There have been these weird official posts for a couple weeks now that are distancing the US arm of the IUKL from the Russian arm. They were pretty cryptic and there were only a couple, in the last couple days there have been several more that are less cryptic and honestly pretty good. Basically, apparently the Russian ban anyone who competes for a different org and the US went along with it at first but then rethought their position. This was years ago but someone found the old documents and started circulating them. 

Then more official posts came out on other topics today. In an effort to understand what they hell is going on I looked at the comments and they were filled with people picking sides and sniping at one another. This is the stuff that kills my desire to compete. because I can lift for ten minutes anyday but everytime I look at this community, I'm realized that the per capita rate of assholes is above my limit.

 

I'm still looking to find a meet somewhere this year, just being reminded why I typically don't friend anyone who's facebook picture features them holding a kettlebell. 

[RisenPhoenix]

because I can lift for ten minutes anyday but everytime I look at this community, I'm realized that the per capita rate of assholes is above my limit.

 

I feel like you look at any community hard enough, and you're going to find a depressingly high rate of assholes everywhere.

 

Because people suck.

 

 

And I hear you on the "If I'm giving up something I love to do this, this better be as awesome" feelings.  Any chance you can pre-screen the games a bit better?  Maybe that can help address the issue?

[The Most Loathed]

I feel like you look at any community hard enough, and you're going to find a depressingly high rate of assholes everywhere.

 

Because people suck.

 

 

And I hear you on the "If I'm giving up something I love to do this, this better be as awesome" feelings.  Any chance you can pre-screen the games a bit better?  Maybe that can help address the issue?

You're probably right about community's. I can be kind of a princess in this way. I'm totally happy being alone so when I see a group of people that make me less happy than being alone, I tend to default back to aloneness.

 

I typically curate my games pretty well. This week was a bit of an anomaly in that although I suspected I wouldn't love it, I wanted to finish vetting a relatively new game. I was disappointed that it didn't work out better. That said, when I get together with friends, I deliberately give up the control of vetting games and we can play some duds sometimes. In the past I have been pretty ok with this and was just surprised to see how much I was annoyed this time. Something I will have to get better at when playing games with certain groups of friends in the future.

 

02/03/2016

eat: good food behavior

meditate: yes, not as good as the day before but ok. 

train: nope. Laura asked me to spend the time with her and I knew I was planning to workout early on Friday so I figured past attempts to work out the night before then the following morning haven't been great so I'd go with it.

geek: not much, just read my meditation book and looked for early reviews of Curse of Strahd

 

02/04/2016

eat: bad food behavior. oatmeal for breakfast, two beef patties for lunch but then I took a walk and bought a cafe miel and a box of macaroni and cheese (been craving this lately even though it's a disappointment everytime). Ate the mac and cheese. Tonight we're splitting an Amy's pizza

meditate: we'll see. I normally type these the day after but chose not to today. I'm WFH so my habits don't support this but I'll make an effort.

train: run 5km. I had planned on doing my skipped kettlebell set from last night but when I got downstairs, sitting in the rack with even a single 20 kg bell felt awful. There was a ton of pressure at the base of my spine. It was right after I woke up so I'm guessing that I was just trying to push myself into it too fast. post run it felt better.

geek: Actually found an early review of Curse of Strahd and read it. It sounds great.

 

I decided yesterday that I would work a half day so I could come home and get my run in before Laura got home. Then I saw that it was supposed to rain all afternoon. That was not going to be a thing. So I decided that the half day that I would work would be the afternoon and I'd do it from home. 

I got up this morning at 5 to walk the dogs, like always. While Laura got read for the day I dozed on the couch with the dogs. Once she was gone I went back to bed and slept off and on for 2 hours. I finally got out of bed for good at 9. I tried to get downstairs to do kettlebells but as I mentioned above, that felt horrible. Rather than get hurt by pushing through or trash the whole workout and not do it, I went for the run portion. I went a bit past my 5km turn around, I kept it slow, at a nose breathing pace. 

After I got home, I wanted some more light work so I showered and changed into normal clothes and walked a a local coffee shop for coffee then came back. I've eaten and am currently on my work laptop with a coworker trying to troubleshoot a link that doesn't work (and that frankly I don't care about all that much).

 

This weekend is going to be reasonably quiet. We have some friends who wanted to meetup during my big project and I asked if we push it off, tomorrow is the day for that. The AM will be typical Saturday stuff, groceries and maybe a workout early. the early afternoon will be clean up time and the evening will be dinner with friends and Pandemic Legacy (FINALLY). Sunday will be just stuff around the house, which after so many crazy weekends, we're both really happy for. 

 

The experiment of moving the bedroom downstairs is having exactly the expected effect. We're both enjoying having the bedroom right here. We haven't watched TV since the move. We're both sleeping well since we have cell blinds and blackout curtains in the windows. Also the temperature of the room is much more stable than it ever was upstairs.

 

Aside from having lots of cleaning up to do around the house, our next big process will be tightening our budget. We don't know what Laura's income or professional life will be like in a few months, since she says she's going to quit her job but we don't know if her next steps are a new full time job, a part time job and/or college again. Even if all that uncertainty weren't on the horizon, this is a good move for us. We've both got all the crap we need and then some. I'd rather spend additional money on more trips and things like that than anything else in my house. I'm also at a bit of an advantage because  my primary discretionary expenses are workout things (and I own plenty of gear right now) and boardgames (Which I'm just playing and buying a lot fewer of now).

[Sloth the Enduring]

I haven't felt qualified to speak on much lately, but I've been reading your stuff.  I agree with you on the experiences vs. stuff, it's hard to put into practice though.

 

Here's a gif for you:

[The Most Loathed]

 

This has got to be my favorite animated gif. Does anyone else find the incense smoke hypnotic?

 

03/05/2016

Eat: not bad, eggs sandwich for breafast, 3 egg omlete with goat cheese and jarred peppers for lunch, pumpkin muffin post workout and we had quinoa nachos (my name for them) for supper. We were visiting friends for dinner and the wife (and primary cook) is a vegetarian and pretty good baker. As result our meals with them are not our healthiest. This time they had basically set out all the things you might throw in a taco or on nachos (avocado, black beans, salsa, corn relish, lime wedges) and she had made some quinoa. I got down on some corn relish and avocados use corn chips as my silverware. not the healthiest but not super unhealthy a reasonable compromise.

Train: 

LC 28 kg 20, 10

Circuit (20, 10, 5)

  burpee

  lunges

  push ups

  sit outs

  air squats

 I didn't time it but in the past this is about 10:00

Meditate: yes, I did. 

Geek: we got to play February of  Pandemic Legacy. We made an error that made the game easier for us. I can't really undo it since all changes in the game involve destroying cards or applying stickers. Also, I don't really regret it. If we hadn't goofed, I don't think we would have ever taken advantage of the thing they added. Then we watched Wayne's World on DVD, because why not.

 

 

03/06/2016

Eat: kinda meh. Laura wanted pancakes for breakfast which I haven't made in a while so I made blueberry pancakes(I like lemon better but blueberry is always her go-to). Laura made a pretty great black bean and feta salad for lunch. Supper was chicken brats and brussel sprouts. I pretty much always go for a grilled meat with veggie on the side. I could eat that pretty much even days a week and be happy.

Train:

LC 20 kg 70 - I just went for volume with no timer. In hindsight I think having a timer might have pushed a few more reps out of me, if I had known I was at 9 of 10 minutes or something like that. 

Back squat 60 kg x 20 - not heavy at all but my first time back out to the garage for a back squat since it got cold so I thought I'd keep it easy

run 5 km - used nose breathing only to throttle speed.

Not bad for a third consecutive day but I'm feeling the beginning of accumulation of soreness and losses of efficiency that come with back to back weight workouts. I'm going to do a rare fourth workout tomorrow but I wouldn't expect it to be legendary. 

meditate: no, I mean, I practiced a little doing house chores and just being around, but not a formal exercise

geek: nothing, I need to write a note to the D&D group but it's 9:04 and I like to be done with computers and phone by 9 so this is the last thing for the night.

note:

something I have done for the last three days, that I haven't done in forever is nothing. By that I mean that I have made the choice to not do anything for a little bit. Maybe a little bit of meditating or maybe just sitting with Laura or even talking if she wants to talk but nothing else. For the past decade I've slept when I was too tired to stay awake, I've talked to Laura while I do dishes or pick up. I read some but always with a purpose. I do recreational things like play boardgames and come to NerdFitness but I never just do nothing. I tried it and I didn't hate it. I don't really have a long term plan with this, just something I did and will probably do some more of. Just playing with the very concept of doing nothing and being ok with it.

[The Most Loathed]

Week of 2/29 wrap up

Eat: my eating habits this year have been very on again, off again and this week carried that trend forward. This is something I'm not nearly as committed to as I would like to be

Train: a good week in terms of number of times in the gym but very middling output in my opinion. I was glad to see the return to running. This year I'm hopping to balance the scale with extremes of running and lifting with a slight cut to circuit and kettlebell activity. This is a reversal of last year, when I attempted to walk the middle of the road.

Meditate: a good week. Not seven days but that's ok. I have been making efforts to do more moments of centering outside of the formal exercise and feel like this is a big benefit but no very measureable.

Geek: I managed to get two plays of boardgames in which was awesome.

Notes: The weirdest thing this week was my deliberate choice Friday, Saturday and Sunday to A) spend more time in bed and spend some time just deliberately doing nothing. This is very counter to my historical behavior of trying to always be working on something. I didn't declare it as a specific intent or anything but I think Laura noticed the bit of extra time just being around her. although, I think that she found it weird to see me just sitting there and was prone to asking what was wrong.

I also didn't feel added stress by losing the extra hours, which has historically been a fear that has driven me to keep working. More playing needed on this.

 

Week of 03/07 kick off

• 03/07/02016 Monday - LC 28 kg 1:00,1:00, power cleans, barbell row
• 03/08/2016 Tuesday - Pilates
• 03/09/2016 Wednesday - LC 20 kg 10:00, back squat, standing press
• 03/10/2016 Thursday - jog?, travel to Lake Superior
• 03/11/2016 Friday - vacation, no training, hopefully lots of walking
• 03/12/2016 Saturday - vacation - no training, hopefully lots of walking
• 03/13/2016 Sunday - travel home, jog?

This week obviously is largely an off week and the beginning of next week will be more of the same. I want to get some fun work in the first half but the second half is my opportunity to practice lots of just sitting and being quiet and sleeping extra. This is harder for me than it sounds so it's good practice.

 

A fun music video for the week

[The Most Loathed]

I just got an email notification that I will be allowed to participate in the beta test of a kettlebell sport club in Seattle that is going to record their classes and make them available to people to watch from the web and follow along. Look for that to pop up in my workouts in future weeks. I'm really excited to participate, even if only remotely.