230, Podcast enlightenment

For a long time I had abandoned doing conventional bench pressing because of shoulder pain.  For the past 20 years my bench press number was almost a numeric representation of my manliness.  That number has ranged over the years.  When I first started benching in my early 20’s 185 pounds was a milestone.  In my early 30’s when I got pumped up on creatine I pushed my one rep max up to 275 pounds.  A few years back when I dipped into creatine again I also hit the 275 mark. 

Well like I said, volleyball had screwed my shoulder up enough that I was unable to even do the bench pressing movement without pain, even with light weight.  Well a couple months ago I decided to give benching a try just for the hell of it.  I was surprised when I actually was able to do the exercise without much pain.  I guess whatever adhesions that were in there may have finally broken up.  Since then I have resumed benching weekly.  My strength numbers are way down.  Yesterday I one repped 230 and it was a struggle to do so.  I try to keep things in perspective.  When I was benching 275 I also weighed 20-25 pounds more.  Regardless it feels good to bench, it has always been one of my favorite exercises.

I have had an Ipod for years.  I have had an Iphone for 7 or 8 months.  I have NEVER downloaded or listened to a podcast until yesterday.  Sure podcasts have been around for at least a half a decade.  I was well aware of them but for whatever reason I never was interested enough in them to download one.  I heard Howard talking about his search for a new phone.  He was talking about the podcasts on the Iphone and how cool they were.  I hopped on Itunes and did a quick search of the podcast library. Wow, it is massive.  Pretty much any subject you can think of has a podcast.

I downloaded a WoW podcast and a bunch of other tech related ones.  I found it quite enjoyable to listen to the podcasts as I was working.   Podcasts will become a regular part of my daily listening routine. 

This weekend we are going to the counter top place to finalize our kitchen counter upgrade.  Part of that process will be going to the granite yard to pick out our slab, it should be interesting. 

Yesterday I locked in our interest rate for the refinance, yep we are doing it.  It’s going to open up a lot of financial flexibility for us, protect us from the possibility of our ARM mortgage and equity line floating and give us a tax bump as we write off the closing costs.  Nothing stops us from overpaying on the mortgage once we bump up our savings nest egg to the size we want.  We also can refinance back to a shorter term as finances allow.  We also have a number of home improvement projects that will get knocked out a s a result.  It should be an exciting few months coming up.

I am hoping to get out to see Watchmen this weekend.  Lots to do around the house but nothing we can’t get done with lots of time to spare.

I am totally not into DWTS this year.  I probably couldn’t even name half of the cast.  I did however see the first round of eliminations.  It came down to the chubby, very gay appearing guy from Apple and Belinda Carlisle from the Go Go’s.  When Belinda was with the Go Go’s I had a crush on her, I thought she was incredibly cute.  When I heard she was on the show this year I thought she would do quite well, after all she was a singer, she had to dance around on stage.  Well it appears that Belinda was bitten by the botox bug.  Her face looked frozen, borderline disturbing.  From what I saw of her dancing it wasn’t good.  Most surprising of all to me was she just didn’t come off as likeable.  End result, she was the first to get the boot.