Urgan Shows Up, Does the Thing

[Urgan]

Note: edited last two posts of October to include the instant grams and my ending measurements. Now back to your regularly scheduled November.

[RedStone]

9 hours ago, Urgan said:

November 2016 Goals!

 

 

What a month October was--the last two weeks of consecutive joblessness, the first two of being employed on contract basis. My goals were super simple and probably not that exciting to read. That...probably won't change that much, but it gets somewhat better! Maybe! Onward to goals!

 

 

 

Hey yo! If it aint broke!

 

9 hours ago, Urgan said:

 

And cuteness:

 

 

Thank you for this squeee.  

[Urgan]

1 hour ago, ~RedStone~ said:

Hey yo! If it aint broke!

 

I do try to live that motto, but this past month it's gotten me a little self-conscious. Ironically, I did tweak my November Goals a bit. I think icing will help me physically relax, which can't hurt my feelings much.

My dad-in-law has been discharged into rehab, but he's not liking it. Depression makes people so inwardly-focused they have no idea that what they do affects others. It's frustrating to watch. Dad-in-law's brother isn't doing well medically, dad-in-law reacts to this by getting depressed and hospitalizing HIMSELF, his son is being dragged down emotionally trying to deal with this situation. It's just one great big happy carousel from hell. This probably has some bearing on my needing to examine my stress, huh?

[Urgan]

10/31/2016

Except in bed, in the middle of the night. Waking up every hour. How am I still awake?

Eat

Lunch - Wild Snapper + baby bella mushrooms + rice

Dinner - Pasta with sausage and broccoli casserole + 2x Taco Bell Pintos and cheese

 

Halloween food was scary goood...lol. Perfect macros were perfect.

 

Recover

Up with the Chickens - 1/20

Ice that Back - 1/16

Saw the chiro today, all the recovery happened.

 

Do the Thing

Journal weekday stress - 1/20
DB Rows - 0/4
Bokken work 0/4

 

BP - 45 1x5

       50 1x3

       65 1x1

       80 6x5--5RM PR

       50 3x8--DB

 

So today’s stress started...Sunday night. Worrying about getting measurements in (time spent in the morning I don’t have), worrying about getting to my eye doc appointment after an early end to work, worrying about pushing the chiro visit late...tried to salve my nerves by working out that I could just work through lunch and eat the time loss there. Driving ANYWHERE after work is stressful. However, I felt like I had a pretty good day at work. Other than getting out of whack about arranging how to heat up lunch (flaky fish + mushy mushrooms + round pyrex container - rice can’t fit in with it = ajepaoejapeg how do?? I worked it out….jeez, me), I had a pretty good day at work. A seasoned vet with just about as much experience at this job as I do with being alive asked me to double check his work and I found two things amiss with it, which made me feel good. I have been doing this particular job for three whole weeks now.

 

I really do have trouble with schedule changes, they mess me up bad. But the gym was a good time, I handled 80lbs like NBD, and the DB assistance work felt easy. I’m going up next time to 30lbs in each hand.

 

 

I got to the eye doc appointment with plenty of time to spare, and afterward I walked around the entire mall, bought nothing (aside from the expensive doc bill, of course….). Way too many mall hawkers for my taste. Did chiro, decided with his advice to go with DB rows as my assistance for volume squat days, so gonna try that and see if my cranky-ass traps will agree to those terms. Came home, ate a square of casserole and immediately downed a pintos and cheese. Got a shower, ate the other one. A good day, really. And I can make up the lost hour required to get across town via early morning starts and working through lunch, so totally not worth all the lost sleep, seriously.

[Urgan]

11/1/2016

Alcohol. Sugar. Bacon.

Eat

Lunch - BBQ, a smidge of baked beans, and 3 bourbon bacon chocolate chip cookies--YOLO and all that

Dinner - Bacon and Egg fried rice, which is the actual best

 

Recover

Up with the Chickens - 2/12

Ice that Back - 1/16

 

Do the Thing

Journal weekday stress - 2/20
DB Rows - 0/4
Bokken work 0/4

 

Two things got me today--my computer grinding and crashing while trying to perform a FIND function on a text file, and missing a turn to get onto Hell’s Own Rd, which resulted in a major Adjustment to the route home. Amusingly, it involved not even getting onto Hellz Rd, soooooo…..yeah, that made me feel better in a perverse sorta way.

 

Did I mention the bourbon bacon chocolate chip cookies that were homemade by a male twice my age? It was only his second attempt at this recipe, and they turned out rather well. 10/10, would nom again.

 

That is all, otherwise the day was really cold and boring before the stress spike working on that damn data file, bah.

[ArgSki77]

10 hours ago, Urgan said:

Lunch - BBQ, a smidge of baked beans, and 3 bourbon bacon chocolate chip cookies--YOLO and all that

Dinner - Bacon and Egg fried rice, which is the actual best

Did you have bacon for breakfast too and complete the daily bacon trifecta?!

[shaar]

Is Hell's Own Road the tiny one with the bridge??  :3

 

Stress is the gains killer, seriously.  I can vouch for that one.  I guess as long as we keep Doing The Thing despite it all, we'll be better off in the long run.

 

Those cookies sound amazing.  I also had 3 pumpkin cookies with white chocolate chips yesterday - zero ragrets!

[Urgan]

1 hour ago, ArgSki77 said:

Did you have bacon for breakfast too and complete the daily bacon trifecta?!

 

No, but clearly I should.

 

31 minutes ago, shaar said:

Is Hell's Own Road the tiny one with the bridge??  :3

 

Stress is the gains killer, seriously.  I can vouch for that one.  I guess as long as we keep Doing The Thing despite it all, we'll be better off in the long run.

 

Those cookies sound amazing.  I also had 3 pumpkin cookies with white chocolate chips yesterday - zero ragrets!

 

No, it's the one that's windy and patchy with hairpin turns, a narrow bridge, and a pothole on a narrow, sharp incline. The one lane road with the one lane bridge is a step up, IMO.

 

I also think 5x5 at 6AM may be asking a smidge too much. 

 

COOKIES.

[shaar]

44 minutes ago, Urgan said:

I also think 5x5 at 6AM may be asking a smidge too much.

 

So now that you're lifting at o'dark-thirty too.... and this is probably hard to tell just yet because still settling in, and such, but are you seeing any major differences vs. an afternoon gym session?

 

I've always lifted early and I always wonder if it's the best choice - I mean, it's the best choice for me because it's the one that fits into my schedule, but sometimes I feel like my body isn't "warmed up" enough from daily activities, etc. I pretty much roll out of bed and am in the gym an hour later, and I often wonder if it's optimal?  Like if I lifted later on would I be able to do things better, be less stiff?, hmm, thinking points.

[Urgan]

16 minutes ago, shaar said:

 

So now that you're lifting at o'dark-thirty too.... and this is probably hard to tell just yet because still settling in, and such, but are you seeing any major differences vs. an afternoon gym session?

 

I've always lifted early and I always wonder if it's the best choice - I mean, it's the best choice for me because it's the one that fits into my schedule, but sometimes I feel like my body isn't "warmed up" enough from daily activities, etc. I pretty much roll out of bed and am in the gym an hour later, and I often wonder if it's optimal?  Like if I lifted later on would I be able to do things better, be less stiff?, hmm, thinking points.

 

Squats feel a little stiffer, slower to warm up, but then the last two sessions have been 5RM PRs. My upper body lifts are fine (I've PR'd on both in the mornings). Haven't deadlifted heavy because then I'd be doing heavy squats AND deadlifts with the Chickens and #nopenopenope #ain'thappening , buuuut my lightish ones felt fine. Go figure. 

 

My feelings on lifting morning vs afternoon?

 

Lifting in the afternoon is more relaxed in the sense of having no place you MUST be in T-2 hours. You do have to fight for access to a barbell a wee bit, depending on when you get there, which can put your getting home later.

 

Lifting in the morning makes getting out of bed way easier, and gets me part of the way to work before every Tom, Dick, and Harry swerves out of their garages. It's a bit of a slow start for volume squats and I feel the weight of Time on my shoulders. 

 

You could try hitting the gym on a weekend to see what you think?

[Urgan]

11/2/2016

Achieving Greater Heights

Eat

Lunch - fried rice redux (I miss you, fried rice)

Dinner - Zaxby's. Not my fav, but free so no kvetching

 

Recover

Up with the Chickens - 3/20*

Ice that Back - 1/16

 

Do the Thing

Journal weekday stress - 3/20
DB Rows - 1/4
Bokken work 0/4

 

Squats - 45 1x5

  100 1x3

  125 1x1

  148.5 5x5--5RM PR

DB Rows - 20 3x10

 

I think I'm going to try to 5RM at 150 for one set next week, then hit 4x3 for volume and see of that helps me function through the weekend. DB rows were easy, but that was the plan. Increasing weight to 25 next time.

 

It wasn't that stressful a day. Other than traffic being hell on a stick and nearly being late to Aikido on account of that and a dog and her owner running into my parents' yard, forcing a five minute chat. Aosjwgozoakekfgonnamissthetesting

 

Should have iced according to my plan. Didn't. After Aikido I had to drop off a package at the fail farm known as USPS, at which point I determined it was easier and faster to buy  pintos and cheese than it would have been to boil Last Minute Eggs. May seem like a step backwards for nutrition, but it was a step forward for bedtime compliance. Did that, ate that, slept hard because dead. At the end of the day, my hamstrings tightened up like jerky.

 

*Guys, I can't count.

[ArgSki77]

58 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Zaxby's. Not my fav, but free so no kvetching

Its my first stop when I go down south...I love Zaxbys but Im sure there are better places that aren't fast food. When I went to SC a few weeks ago we completed the chicken trifecta of Zaxbys, Bojangles, and Chic-fil-a.

[Urgan]

34 minutes ago, ArgSki77 said:

Its my first stop when I go down south...I love Zaxbys but Im sure there are better places that aren't fast food. When I went to SC a few weeks ago we completed the chicken trifecta of Zaxbys, Bojangles, and Chic-fil-a.

Foosackly's and Raising Cane's a la the Mobile/Gulf Coast area do chicken better. Neither taste like 1000+mg sodium in a fistful of chicken strips, each have a simple and/or unique breading that is super crunchy, yet the meat is just the best. Juicy and unembarrassed that it is in fact CHICKEN you are tasting. Not salt. Not pepper. Not some sugary sauce.

 

 

I have strong feelings about what a good chicken strip tastes like and it's been over a year since I've had one. I has a sad.

[shaar]

40 minutes ago, ArgSki77 said:

Bojangles

 

I'll never forget the first time I ate a Bojangles sausage biscuit.  It was so good but I had such an intense thirst for hours afterwards.  Not enough water in the world...

[Urgan]

2 minutes ago, shaar said:

 

I'll never forget the first time I ate a Bojangles sausage biscuit.  It was so good but I had such an intense thirst for hours afterwards.  Not enough water in the world...

 

How I feel after Zaxby's.

[ArgSki77]

5 minutes ago, Urgan said:

How I feel after Zaxby's

I too feel like this but as a northerner, its rare that I get anything other than the KFC trash so I deal with the salt on vacation. We have chic-fil-a up here but its banned in a lot of MA towns/cities because the owner is anti-LGBT.

[Urgan]

27 minutes ago, ArgSki77 said:

I too feel like this but as a northerner, its rare that I get anything other than the KFC trash so I deal with the salt on vacation. We have chic-fil-a up here but its banned in a lot of MA towns/cities because the owner is Christian.

FIFY. (No strike-through on mobile.) Progressives being tolerant as long as you conform precisely to their beliefs. Fail to full-throatedly endorse the line and you are BANNED because you are INTOLERANT. #tasteslikeirony #nowiwantachickenbiscuit

 

You can think whatever you want about all things LGBT, ArgSki, I'm not challenging your opinion. Just commenting on idiotic hypocritical anti-capitalist state policy. Put another way, either way, residents of these towns lose out if they want a decent chicken biscuit close by. I too know the pain of wanting chicken that is not sold within reasonable driving distance and it just should not be. 

[ArgSki77]

7 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Fail to full-throatedly endorse the line and you are BANNED because you are INTOLERANT. #tasteslikeirony

 

Just commenting on idiotic hypocritical anti-capitalist state policy.

I fight the progressive and conservative line constantly depending on issues. This is very different for my area and also my age group. Its a strange stance(especially in a super progressive state like MA) because I tend to let people believe whatever they want based on anything they want whether that is religion or other stuff. But that given, I believe that I should have the right to do the same... and that gets frowned upon. That hypocrisy drives me insane!

 

Either way...RIP chicken and biscuits in my area  Now I know what I need to add to my to-make meal list.

[Urgan]

1 minute ago, ArgSki77 said:

I fight the progressive and conservative line constantly depending on issues. This is very different for my area and also my age group. Its a strange stance(especially in a super progressive state like MA) because I tend to let people believe whatever they want based on anything they want whether that is religion or other stuff. But that given, I believe that I should have the right to do the same... and that gets frowned upon. That hypocrisy drives me insane!

 

Either way...RIP chicken and biscuits in my area  Now I know what I need to add to my to-make meal list.

 

Hello, my libertarian brother. Can we stop trying to make people do or not do stuff? Except lifting barbells, that should be mandated by law, minimum twice per week. And free chicken biscuits for every man, woman, and child. #seewhatididthere

 

I still hold out hope these franchises will expand, given the space to do so.

[Sam Ashen]

[/NVM]

 

I had to read the discussion a few times to figure out what each party was saying and decided not to comment.

[Urgan]

[ArgSki77]

1 hour ago, Sam Ashen said:

I had to read the discussion a few times to figure out what each party was saying and decided not to comment.

Ill provide the TL;DR - Everyone just do as you do.

[ixaera]

1 hour ago, Urgan said:

 

I laughed so hard at this

[Urgan]

13 minutes ago, ixaera said:

 

I laughed so hard at this

 

I fear someone might have actually done this. 

[ixaera]

6 minutes ago, Urgan said:

 

I fear someone might have actually done this. 

 

The jitters from heck