Not enough hours? Or too much to do?

I've lately fallen into this trap of thinking that there's just not enough time in the day to get the things done that I want to get done. Currently my list of things I like to do are as follows:

• TV, around 6-10 hours a week (including news)
  
• Crossfit, around 1 hour a day (not including recovery)
• Kickball, 1-2 hours each Monday
• 8-ball, 2-3 hours each Thursday
• Work, about 40 hours a week
• Sleep, optimistically 56 hours a week
  

On top of this, I would like to go out weekends, get my laundry done, clean the house, prepare meals at home (instead of eat out), and a bunch of other projects that come and go.

I'm wondering then if it's unreasonable to try to be a salsa-dancing, israeli-folk dancing, pool playing, tv watching, gym going, kickball playing, working, cow roping, social butterfly. For me at least it's really unreasonable, considering if I do choose to do something, I'll obsess until it's perfect. Then again, I could just realize that all of these "extra things" that I want to do, don't have to be done now. Sure they're available now, but I don't have to dive in right now. I'm glad this doesn't extend into my shopping habits. I'd be the most impulsive shopper anyone's ever known...

Tonight I feel like some chili...

"You know how you can make anything suck? ..."

"... Add a 400m run to it"

Today was my second appearance at the fmp class. I'm way glad that I went, however it was way hard. Lots of running this time. First was 3x800m runs, then it ended with 3x400m runs, with other things tucked in there. The other pushups and pullups would have been fine on their own, but adding that little run in there just turned it into a terrible idea. The good news is everything got finished and it only took around an hour and a half to finish the whole ordeal.

After the class, it seemed a good idea to go for a ride aroun town. I met up with Morgan to start our ride but I was entirely too wiped out to actually go on the ride right away. So we hung out admiring his pocket bike for a little while. Those things are so rad, I might even get one for myself. We decided to go out on our ride, but the genious locked his keys in the house with no access to the house, garage, or his car. After spending 30 minutes or so looking for a spare key, we found an unlocked window and he was able to break into his own house.

Then began our ride. Man it was windy. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to make it around safely being blown around. There's a positive twist to this story though. Since I've lost quite a bit of weight and whatnot since last season, my jacket is way loose on me. A great problem to have, but unfortunately it acted like a windsail when trying to navigate the roads. We didn't end up making it the whole way to VC then, half because of the wind, and half because of the sheriff we ran into who was posed to follow us the whole way to keep us in line. On our way back to town, we stopped at michael's to check out some gear to see what my new size might be. I found a jacket that I really like, now to just find it at the price that I like.

Now to the only reason that I'm actually posting this blog. Especially at 1:30 am on a Saturday. Either the night went well, or it didn't. Either way it was eventful enough for me to have something to say about it. I wasn't planning on going out, but I had already said I wanted to, and a VIP table at a nightclub isn't something to easily pass up. All in all it was a really good night. The two downsides are I cheated a bit, one shot of Southern Comfort and two drinks of Absinthe. The other downside is I ended up on great terms with two women and both of which had boyfriends.

This brings me to my next point. We joked around on our birthright trip that if Oranim was meant as a sort of Jewish hookup birthright trip (of sorts), then there should be serious preference given to single men and women on the trip, waitlisting all of those people with "someone back home". Unfortunately this wasn't the case on the trip leaving about 18 single guys and maybe 4-5 single women on our trip. Not the best odds if you asked us. Fast forward to tonight. I wish there was some sort of nightclub where if a women walks up to you and starts genuine conversation, you already know that she's available. Twice tonight I got into non-trivial conversation, only at the (self-imposed) end of the evening did it even come up that they weren't available. Totally a "Boyfriend" moment. I know that it's not the end of the world of course, but it is annoying to say the least.

That's only the downside. On the upside, I got to meet two very interesting women, and I'm glad I had the opportunity. I felt great over the evening, getting plenty of compliments on my appearance, a first for me. At least the unprompted compliments. All that's left to do is sleep and get ready for tomorrow. It's snowing quite a bit down here, and I'm hoping that tomorrow there will be plenty left on the mountain for snowboarding down on. Finally a chance to get rid of those mt rose tickets burning a hole in my pocket.

This is why I crossfit (Part 1)

I say part one, only because it's tentatively part one. There are so many reasons why I enjoy crossfit, but there are very few that really stick out.

My first reason is the people. I know plenty of friends in dead end jobs, slaving to pay bills, and I'm not even talking recently. The only thing (besides the paycheck) that keeps them coming back is the people. The crowd of people you chose to surround yourself with makes all the difference in the world. When I was a member of a larger chain gym, there was certainly a crowd of people around me. It wasn't ever a problem to get a machine, or find the weights I wanted. It was a problem to find the motivation I needed. People surrounding me with their headphones on and trying their hardest to at least "look in the zone" aren't the most effective motivating factor for me.

Fast forward to cross fit. Not a single workout has gone by where I felt like I was the only one. I've been last quite a few times, but I was never the only one there. There's always a crowd of people working it out with you, cheering you on. I work harder here not to let myself down, but not to let everyone else down either. You can feel it even more when there's a team workout. Partner pushups were not the most thrilling workout I've ever done. With someone in front of you, relying on you relying on them, it's hard to say no to just "one more pushup".

This all came to me this morning when I read a post on another cross fit blog. I just started my journey on kipping pullups. It's slow going. Soon I'll be better, and maybe even I'll have the mental and physical ability to do more and more, even a strict from time to time. The one thing I do know though is if I start to slow down, there's someone to talk to me and keep me going. I know if I start to suffer and stop, there's someone to do it with me and show me it's possible. Most importantly, I know if I physically collapse, there's someone to pick me up and carry me to the end.

I cheated... and it was good

Well, it's officially day 16 of the challenge and as of noon yesterday, I cheated on the paleo challenge. Technically again a bit earlier, but I don't want to talk about it. Sob story short, I have inherited a condo in Vegas and this past week I got a phone call that the toilets in the condo started flooding into the basement. They caught it, and luckily I'm on the first floor, so no damage to anyone below me. The bad thing is, well, my freaking toilets flooded.

I had told the maintenance plumber earlier that I needed him to look at them and hopefully turn them off. He was going to look into it, found the issue, but never did the turning off that I wanted. Then this happens. The good thing is he was around to go in and fix the toilets from flooding, cut off the supply lines completely, and mop up a bit. Now I need new toilets and plumbing, no real surprise. Still I ended up going down south this past weekend to asses everything and take care of more work that is desperately needed down there. Two carloads full of donations, two trashcans full of trash, and one carload of stuff returning to Reno was the work I was able to get done during my one Saturday there. I also took a good set of pictures so I can keep in mind the things I still need to get done when I go back.

On the way down to Vegas, I stopped in Tonopah. More specifically I stopped at the McDonalds in Tonopah. Quite honestly I had that cheeseburger and fries out of anger and stress, but it's no excuse. On the plus side, the McDonalds there is terrible anyway, and so eating there gave me no pleasure whatsoever and I'm not expecting to do that any time soon.

In Vegas on Saturday after I turned in the last of my donations, I stopped by the cemetery to say hi to the folks. That got my spirits up a little bit, enough to google and find a crossfit gym schedule in Vegas I could sit in on. Lucky for me, there was one just on my side of the world and class started within the hour. I got in the car and headed right over. From the get go everyone there was great. The trainers were cool, people inviting, everything I started doing crossfit for really. The wod for the day was ridiculous, and I didn't end up finishing, but I got just enough of the high that I came to love from xfit, that I went right to the store and picked me up some grapes, pistacios, and bell peppers. So on the way home Sunday, I drove right past that McDonalds and it felt good. Sore, but good.

Then yesterday. I'm still in a good mood, and Mondays are Pho days, my good mood food. So I made myself a mental exception and let myself have some Pho. I have to say, it was really good, and not even because I hadn't had it in a while. The meats and portion were better than average for our visits there.

I then missed crossfit last night because we had a double-header kickball game and I got plenty of running and agility work for myself. No excuses today though, I'll be there right on time for my 6pm high. Can't wait.

It's official, Eating α 1/ (Physical Activity)

Read: Eating is inversely proportional to physical activity

I haven't been to the gym in a few days, and it's not likely to change in the next couple. I'm so angry I can convince myself of that, and slightly agitated that it's reasonably accurate. Tuesday I needed to go to the store (Costco) to get movie tickets for a work movie night. I also took the opportunity to buy some food to prepare meals from (my stew). Between the store and stew, I talked myself out of it.

Wednesday I left work early for a work lunch, and then shortly after went to said movie night. This means I worked less hours Wednesday and thus today I am inclined to stay at work a little later to make up for said hours on Wednesday. Thus two more days missed. Tomorrow I'll likely not be in the mood, although my status quo excuse is not really valid anymore.

Saturday I plan on going back, most definitely for the 9am class, and then Sunday for the FMP. Should be exciting.

I'm only down today because I'm hungry. I mean seriously hungry. It's uncharacteristically hunger I'm talking about. Lunch today consisted of "all you can eat soup and salad" at BJs. Two light vinaigrette salads, three "cup" bowls of tomato soup, and one broccoli cheddar later, I'm way hungry and it sucks.

I was almost ready to cheat this morning too. It's been 11 days so far since I started and today (besides day 2) is the day I was seriously considering it. Today it would have been for a philly cheese steak sandwich and some fries. I'm sort of glad that I didn't. I did end up bending a little bit with the cheddar soup and the vinaigrette dressing. I've never had the dressing before, it tastes like the juice of cherry cordials. In other words, like heaven. I love cherry cordials.

I think tonight I'll have to dust off the Wii fit and substitute some of that for some cross fit. Try to cram as much as I can. Might even be able to find some xfittish routine in the options, hopefully unlock something.

On the plus side, Wednesday I left early enough that after "dinner" I went home and got to ride my motorcycle. Mostly because the addiction is making me twitch, but also economical. Our dinner was closer home than near the theater, so making that trip twice in a day in the car is not something my wallet enjoys me doing. I can't wait until summer.

Dinner of champions

Today, one word rang through my head, constantly, and that word was "stew". I'm not sure why I had stew on the brain. Could be the smell of Stan's stew after lunch. Could be me fantasizing about how I'd like to eat my first potato after my paleo challenge is over. Stew just seemed like a logical conclusion. To top it off, I haven't ever actually made "a stew of my own".

I thus present to you my very first stew, and a paleo friendly stew at that. The main ingredients are:

• Stew beef chunks (3#)
  
• Onion (2 medium)
• Green zuccini (2 regular I guess)
• Diced tomatoes (2 cans)
  
• Cilantro
• Carrots
• Jalapenos
• Red Peppers
• "Italian seasoning - salt free"
• Cayenne pepper
• Other stuff I'm likely forgetting

All in all it turned out okay for only cooking a total of 2 hours or so. My plan is to leave it on low overnight to let it all juice up and then put it in some tupperware in the morning. My only immediate criticisms are the meat is a little too tough, hopefully that will be remedied in the morning. The carrots are way crunchy, again should be more than solved in the morning. The jalapenos and onions have lost most if not all their flavor and only provide a crunch. That's probably just because it's all been incorporated into the conglomerate flavor that is "stew".

I feel kippy, oh so kippy

This past weekend, two very important things happened. First daylight savings time tricked me once again. I completely forgot that it was an hour in the other direction, so when I woke up at 11:30 am, I was in quite a shock. Sleeping for over 10 hours was not in my plan. I completely missed my Sunday workout and my Sunday swim that I was looking forward to. On the plus side, all my colors are folded and the whites are sitting clean in the dryer. Still no word on the mess covering the rest of my room.

The second thing that happened is I did my very first unassisted pull-up. While not a standard pull up, exciting nonetheless. This was Saturday morning while getting pumped up for my first FMP, just like I said I was going to do! During the calm before the FMP, I decided I was going to try a kipping pull up. The only thing I did differently is I told everyone that I was going to do it. That and it's been almost two weeks since I tried last. Once I got the right swing, I just gave a good pull and up I went, chin well enough over the bar for me to be happy. Up at the top the only thing I could think of was "push away from the bar, don't you dare slam your chin on it". Once clear of the bar, I let go falling right to the ground, stunned. The classmates around me let out a sweet little cheer, I'm glad my first didn't go unnoticed.

My first comment was, "Man, I bet I probably couldn't do another one of those..." A voice from behind me came out, "Why not?" That was enough for me. I got back up on the bar and yet another one came out, just as easy as the first. "Well, there's no way I could do more than one in a row..." "Why not?" ... I got right back up, One, Two Three. "Holy shit, my first pull up, not only that, my first pull up was five pull ups. Hot damn"

Of course this means now during the warm-up pull ups, I'll be required, by myself if not my peers, to keep up those "kippers" and perhaps resort to some bandage when the wod includes a gazillion pull ups. I won't mind though. That's what the hell I started coming to this gym for. It's little victories that keep me coming back again and again. To top it off, I'm thankful that there's a good group of people around to share these little victories with, both mine and theirs.

The beast goes by many names

"The infection", "The voice snatcher", "Harold's whooping cough". No one knows its true name, form, or source. All that is known is when it comes, and trust me it will, it shows no mercy to those in its path. It starts as a small tickle in the throat upon waking. That's the first clue. Next comes the mild headache and general tiredness. Then the main course, three damn weeks of coughing non-stop. Finally the coup-de-gras, another three weeks without a voice. The upside for me during the whole experience, I usually don't feel all that bad during the whole thing. The initial throat tickle isn't fun, and the ab workout from the coughing is less than ideal, but it's not anything that can prevent me from doing any of my day-to-day. The one thing that does prevent me from my day-to-day is the constant complaining of people around me. Apparently the cough does annoy people around me.

I bring this up because this winter, I not have officially started my fourth round of this great little sickness of mine. First was after the very first chill of the winter this year, sometime early November. That didn't last too long, maybe a week and a half. Next came just before my trip to Israel. In fact, my preparation for my trip to Israel included massive vitamins, and trips to the gym to keep up my body so I wouldn't be sick in Israel. That ended just after the New Year, a good week before my trip. In Israel, my best friend followed me and struck four days before my trip ended, causing me to return on my scheduled flight rather than taking a few extra days to enjoy Israel for myself. That bout was fun, it lasted the full 3-4 weeks. It even got to the point where I was politely asked to stay home for a couple of days.

Now marks the beginning of my fourth bout, arguably much more tame than before, but not nonexistant. My plan is to still keep going to the gym because it somehow keeps the deamons at bay. Also keep up my daily airborne dose. This weekend will be spent at home mostly as well, besides two trips to the gym and one trip to a Hillel event. Hopefully the bed rest and indoors will help things along as well. The worst so far was this afternoon at work. I'm not sure what kicked it off, but at around 3:30 I just had some random coughing fit. By 4 I just had to leave to avoid the accusing eyes of those around me.

Barbara is a whore

My apologies to the millions of Barbara's out there, sans the one the aforementioned crossfit workout is named for. The kicker is I was part of the group that only completed three rounds of the workout rather than the prescribed full five rounds. Even still it took just over half an hour to complete. This of course was after I decided to waste about 24 of my good pullups, situps, etc. on my warm up for the day.

For those observant out there, you might also realize that it's almost a full day since we did the workout. The worst part about the workout has to be the pushups. By now I'm actually enjoying my "almost self-sustaining" pullups. Situps don't leave me sore for days, and historically haven't. Squats have lost their debilitating effect since the marathon session of 250 followed by other weighted squats and whatnot. Pushups however leave me sore for days. I can't cross my arms in front of myself without feeling like my chest is going to 'asplode. It's pain.

Good news is I get to take the next two days off. I'm going to need the rest if I'm planning on joining on Saturday's fun. Saturdays usually have a grueling workout planned called FMP, Full Mission Profile. These workouts are usually modelled after real life situations, and are much more intense than the regular wod. An example is the Predator FMP, a mission to retrieve downed military property from enemy territory. I'm not sure what this weekend will bring, but if I even try to go through with it, let alone actually "complete" it, I'll be super proud of myself.

Aside from the physical, the diet has been progressively easier. Must mean I'm doing it wrong. Apparently fruit, while allowed, is only supposed to be on a one serving per day sort of basis, and on top of that only before / after a wod to give / replenish energy. Well, I'm not sure I like that a whole lot, especially since grapes have now become my best friend. The crunch of a carrot, followed by the sweet of a grape, I can almost pretend I'm eating real snack food.

Lunch by far is the most difficult meal of the day to prepare for. I'm almost ready to call it quits on finding a place to eat out and get a somewhat paleo meal. Lunch today was the first meal I ate out since starting, and at that it was a chicken salad. The "cheating" items were a little bit of cheese and the likely amount of salt in the salsa I substituted for dressing. On the plus side, it was very tasty.

Dinners are easy by contrast. Just cook up some bit of meat, prepare a veggie to go on the side, and viola, dinner. Follow it up with a handful of nuts and my dried cran-strawberry, and I've got the perfect sweet, semi-salty finish up to the day. Funny considering I got the "unsalted pistachios". Still taste a bit salty if you ask me.

Breakfasts aren't a problem considering I usually end up skipping the meal. Today I even considered waking up early to make myself something, just to change it up. I went to bed early, even got up pretty early too. Then my tired body just decided to lay down and let sleep take me back to my normal wake up time.

I've started highlighting the foods in the "eat" and "don't eat" section of my book just so I can build a mental list of things I like and what section they're in. Given this list, I'll start expanding my repertoire of food items I'm able to prepare. Just a mental note on my part.

Computer science, instant gratification, and when they don't show up at work

The one thing that I always loved about computer science is the "build and run" gratification that you get. Sure it takes a while to code perhaps, but you can see most of the time how this piece is going to fit into the thing you're trying to build. And once you have a piece done, compile and run. Get a simple answer, it will run or some semi-colon is missing. The part you wrote is either now present in the program, or causes the program to freeze.

Historically that was the case anyway. Now that the project are bigger and more complex, things get more interesting. Lets say you wrote this piece of code, and yes it did work, and everything was fine. Well one day, some person decided to run your piece of code while eating a blueberry muffin. This person usually prefers cantaloupe, but today was a treat. All of a sudden because of this seemingly unrelated coincidence, the power goes out for the entire neighborhood. Those are the fun bugs to find. And no, my software hasn't caused a blackout, yet.

I can appreciate bugs that have some sort of cascading effect. Those are sometimes even cool to watch. These are the bugs where a beaver chips a tooth, which causes a log to be cut incorrectly, causing the damn to fail, flooding a campsite, and that's why your boots outside the the campsite are soaking wet (true story, got the tooth to prove it). Bugs like these have sort of a long path to follow, they're mostly straight forward, and it's relatively obvious where one leads to the next.

Bugs that I will not stand for are bugs that just hop along causing all their ruckus at the end. It's like a tick in the yard that jumped on a dog, then on the cat that the dog chased, then on the floor, that you stepped near to get infected with something bad. The cause of the result just got passed around and there's less of a evidence path to follow when finding where you might have a "tick colony" or something.

Which leads me to our nice bug today. Apparently while running our software, you can run someone else's software. We have a dialog that says you shouldn't do that, but computer users don't like to read dialogs, me included. Well, while running these two unrelated pieces of software, after closing their software, the subdirectories in our software's directory all get renamed. To make this even more fun, it only does this after running a specific portion of our software. This portion is specific, but large. We can narrow it down, but to run each test scenario takes upwards of 30-40 minutes to get the answer.

Thus mixing my two least favorite items, devious bugs and non-instant gratification. Today was a long day...

Why does a challenge have to be difficult?

As of 1pm today, I was prepared to commit paleo suicide. Yes, it's not even through day 2 all I can think about is a damn hamburger with fries. Man does that sound so good. The hard thing right now is finding something that feels filling, besides physical activity. A cruel irony if you ask me. If I'm actively doing something, then I can stand the light foods, even no food, which is actually really bad. I can't help it, if I'm doing something physical, then I don't need the "bad" foods. The flip side to this though is if I'm not being particularly active, lets say maybe for 8 hours a day while I'm sitting at work in front of the computer, then the lighter paleo foods are not filling what-so-ever. Gram for gram, if I ate a simple hamburger with katsup, 2 pickles, a leaf of letuce, onion, and a BUN, I would be plenty satisfied. I've probably eaten twice that in carrots, celery, apples and oranges and I'm having a hard time feeling satisfied.

On the plus side, since sleep is part of this whole challenge, and since last night's baseline workout of "Fight gone bad" (google it, seriously) basically kicked my ass, I slept like a baby. Went to bed around 11:30 pm and stayed that way until naturally waking up (no alarm) at around 6am, then just dozing until around 7:30 or so.

One more thing, it has come to my attention that this challenge also include a prize to be won. As if looking and feeling great isn't good enough. The person that makes the most progress in fgb, does the best in fgb, sticks to the paleo logs / diet, sleeps more, loses inches, gains inches, loses pounds, whatever, gets a little vacation getaway south of the border. While this isn't something that I'm particularly excited about, I am certainly interested in "winning", and that means against other people not just myself. :P

Paleo Challenge - Day 1

I wasn't planning on starting the whole challenge. In fact, last week I had already sort of gave in considering I absolutely love quite a few of the foods on the no-no list. Most notably, this is going to be hard without: cheese, potatoes, pho (noodles), the random sweet, tacos, and just about every other food I'm accustomed to just spontaneously eating. To top it off, I recently went on a shopping run to get a stockpile of these illicit items.

After work today, l was actually planning on going straight home, then it changed to stopping off at Barnes & Noble to look at some Mac related literature. Then came the decision to turn left to the BN, or right to crossfit. I'm guessing you now what happened next. To my pleasant surprise, my partner in crime Lynn was there to join in on the fun. Kumar and Devan were sadly absent. Kumar even talked to me at work today asking if I was interested in the challenge, and also joking how the paleo diet for a vegearian could very well kill you... Way to look on the positive side.

The paleo challenge is designed as follows. It's a 90 day long event where each participant is to keep a log of foods eaten, workouts completed, sleep gotten, and feelings felt. There's a log book that it's all supposed to go in, and weekly we'll post our progress on the main gym blog. Every three weeks, there's a baseline workout that we'll do, we'll weigh in, measure up, and perhaps take and post photos to track our progress.

Most everything I'm planning on keeping track of in my little log book, but as for the feelings part, I plan on just incorporating them here and maybe put the important bullet points in the log book. So far, I haven't gotten much sleep... the challenge only started today :P. I'm hoping to get to bed early today though. I woke up feeling a little on the sickish side, but as always after a good workout I'm feelin' fine. Keeping on my gym schedule is just about the only thing that I think will help keep me on my eating schedule. At least for my dinners anyway, lunches and "breakfast" I'll just have to keep the workout in mind. Just as a disclaimer as well, I already feel pretty darn good just including crossfit in my routine without changing / monitoring diet and sleep. I've got relatively high hopes for the 90 days if I can stick to it. BUT... I have relatively low hopes for the period of time after this "challenge". I'm not particularly good at open-ended goals, but a 90-day goal, I can keep that in mind.

I'll keep me posted.