Category Fitness

So yesterday I expected blow back from my decision to run a couple miles at lunch despite the sore IT band pain I have been dealing with for several months.  Last night I could feel the soreness settling in.  Last night I made a couple movements that resonated soreness through my right knee.  A few times during the night I woke up when I again had the right leg in a position that was painful. This morning things hurt and I have a small limp.  However if I am being an optimist (which I am not), the limp is less severe than the last time I tried to run.  Getting old isn’t for sissies.

Last night I ripped out my old Sirius antenna and receiver and installed the new unit that I really didn’t need.  The simple air vent install kit was much cleaner and less obtrusive than the rig I had in there before.  The cable routing might need some further adjustment but overall I like the end result.

Night time is when the Philips Hue lights really shine.  We like setting the under counter strip lights to a slow color rotation that casts a cool glow.  I moved one of the color bulbs to a small lamp that we used to never use on top of the cabinet by the slider doors.  It’s position is good to light up the corner of the room in whatever shade of color feels good at the time.  Cindy is a big fan of purple.

I am sure most have heard about Donald Trump’s latest stunt where he gave out Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number after calling him an idiot several times (he is going to need a few fresh insults eventually).  Lindsey was another person that criticized Trump’s choice of word’s regarding John McCain and his war service which included several years in an enemy POW camp.  Of course Donald reacted as he normally does when he is criticized, in a juvenile manner with obligatory name calling followed by the disclosure of Lindsey’s phone number.

I found it quite funny how Lindsey reacted, by creating a YouTube video showing the destruction of his phone in various creative ways.  It was a witty way to not directly sling mud while poking fun at the original slinger.

This was another weekend of labor. Hot, sweaty, annoying gnats buzzing your face labor. It started unconventionally on Friday night when our friend Tricia came out to the house with her sister Judy.  Originally they were talking about shooting an exercise video with Cindy for FitFarmChick channel.  They wound up showing up later than they expected so instead they just got a quick tour of the grounds and stayed to eat some Friday night pizza with us.

Judy is a real deal power lifter.  Even though we didn’t put her to the test you could easily tell she had a powerful build that would be able to move a lot of weight.  She also just recently became a certified personal trainer which is what Cindy has been working towards.  Judy is a good source of advice in regards to how to prepare for the test.

On Saturday I did not feel like getting up but Sadie had other plans.  I had a long list in my head of things I wanted to get done so I drug myself out of bed to get the day started.  After weeding the property I jumped straight into running the weed whacker.  By the time I got done with both tasks the heat of the day had started in earnest and I was soaked with sweat.  I turned my attention to the chicken coop/shed which was getting yet another of a seemingly endless amount of tweaks.

Since summer started the interior of the shed has been getting pretty brutally hot during the day.  Even with all of the windows and front doors open the thermometer would get up to around 105 degrees.    Although the chickens are out of the coop most of the day either in the run, under the shed platform or free ranging, it still is too damn hot in there.  Lucy goes in during the day to lay an egg plus I have several hundred dollars of electronic equipment in the coop that doesn’t enjoy temperatures in the triple digits.

After touching the roof from the inside of the coop a couple weeks ago and burning my hand almost instantly I determined the dark brown color of the roof was the primary culprit in super heating the space.  Dark colors absorb heat.  The simple solution, paint it white.  Now a white roof sort of messes with the the color coordination of the coop but I was willing to sacrifice esthetics for function.  After doing some research Cindy and I found some paint that is designed to be used on plastic.  While I was at the timer conference Cindy painted the back half of the roof.  I tackled the front.

It took some trial and error to find a spray pattern that laid down the gloss white in a more or less even manner. Cindy had masked off the edges of the roof along with the two front skylights for me.   I had on my sunglasses and a dust mask to protect my airway from the paint fumes.  Unfortunately because of the heat, breathing became quite challenging with the mask on.  My long arms were quite useful in reaching the upper areas of the roof.

When I was done the roof looked a bit odd but not terrible since the chicken run has white roof panels as well.   The mismatched color scheme was forgotten when mid-afternoon I was able to put my hand on the roof and keep it there.  It was only warm, not hot.  It seems like the simple color change on the roof has lowered the temperature in the coop during the heat of the day by around 10 degrees.

On Saturday my Philps Hue starter pack showed up.  The Hue is an intelligent lighting system that allows you to do all sorts of lighting magic thanks to a smart, web connected hub in addition to smart bulbs that talk to it.  It also integrates with the Amazon Echo, allowing you voice control of your lights which is cool to me of course.

I was able to get the Hue set up in less than 5 minutes, it is very, very easy to do.  I put one bulb in the kitchen and another in the bedroom and named them by location.  After pairing the Hue with the Echo I was able to turn on, turn off, or dim the lights in either location via a voice command.  It was very Star Trek-esque.

I was confused why I was unable to get the bulbs to change color.  After doing some digging I discovered that was because my starter kit has the Hue Lux bulbs which are white only.  If you want bulbs that can change to any color in the rainbow you need to spend triple what the white only bulbs cost.  Even without the Echo integration the Hue system is pretty damn cool.  Using your smart phone there are nearly countless ways you can customize and tweak their actions.

Speaking of the Echo, Cindy and I are still discovering what it can and can not do.  The one frustrating part is the somewhat limited access the Echo gives you to info compared to Siri.  Some of this has to do with the difference in providing information via voice as opposed to a screen but it seems like there is still a lot more power they could add to the device.  Many free form questions like “What movies are coming out this weekend” will generate a generic, I’m sorry I do not have an answer, response.  They are constantly adding features to the Echo so I am sure her sphere of knowledge will continue to expand.  In addition the platform is open architecture, allowing for 3rd parties to utilize the hardware which will only mean more and more power available to the little black cylinder.

On Saturday night we stayed home and finished off our 2nd generation Star Wars trilogy Netflix marathon, watching Episode 3.  After completing the second set of Star Wars films I can’t say my opinion of them changed significantly for the better or the worse.  They still are vastly inferior to their predecessor but are entertaining to a B+ degree.

On Sunday morning I did a rare solo bike ride.  Cindy had a sore neck that would not have been helped by the hunched over riding position her triathlon bike utilizes. I decided to do a 20 mile ride but not to Dunkin Donuts.  Instead I road 10 miles out Oil Well Road towards Ave Maria and then turned around.  I got out on the road a little later than I would like on a July morning, not cranking my first pedal revolution until a little after 9AM.

I hit head wind immediately as I turned onto Immokalee Road.  Head wind was a near constant factor for most of the ride.  Even after turning left onto Oil Well Road I had an angled wind slowing me down that somehow managed to follow me to a degree even after I turned around.  The only time I had a true tail wind was the final two miles after I turned back onto Immokalee Road.  I struggled pretty much the entire time.  I barely averaged 17 mph overall for the ride despite working at what felt like a high level.  The heat radiating off the road sapped my energy reserves and desire.  When I pulled back into the driveway I was soaked and panting.

Part of motivation for going out on the ride solo was I just got done flipping through a bunch of pictures from my 30th class reunion that went down Saturday night.  I have never attended a single class reunion since graduating high school.  I also have seen an amazingly few amount of high school classmates in person since 1985, my only contact with most is if they hooked up on Facebook.  If you would ask me why that is I would not have a clear and definitive answer for you although I am sure it is somehow tied into my hang ups regarding aging, which I have many.  If I would have paid attention more to the date of the reunion I could have easily tied it into my attendance of the RSU conference earlier in the week.  However I did not do that.

So anyway as I flipped through some of the pictures it did not take long until I grabbed my senior year book.  I was surprised how many faces that I had absolutely no idea who they were.  Weight gain, loss of hair, and just plain aging had transformed some of my former classmates enough that I no longer could match my 1985 version of them to the present day.   Of course I found this unsettling and made me feel even older.

From all accounts from the people in attendance, everyone had a FANTASTIC time.  I am relatively confident that once I got over the initial shock of seeing people that in most cases I had not seen in 30 years I would have been able to settle in and just enjoy the fact that we made it this far.  Of course alcohol would have been a key ingredient in making that happen.

I sometimes am curious of what my classmates think of my online presence which has a pretty large footprint at this point.  In school I certainly was not very loud or outspoken.  I would describe myself back then as mostly quiet and not the type to be outwardly seeking new personal connections or looking to draw much attention. (pretty much the same now)  That contrasts itself with my YouTube channel with nearly 600 videos as well as my personal blog that has been running for going on 13 years where I spill tons and tons of personal thoughts, opinions, and experiences for the world to digest. It’s an odd dichotomy.

I spent a decent amount of time editing some additional footage for Cindy’s YouTube channel over the weekend.  She now has over 25 videos posted, not bad for only being in existence a few weeks.  I have supplemented her channel with some excerpts from some of my Bar-barians challenge videos that she participated in.  We also posted some baking, exercise, and hot pepper eating videos.

On Sunday I had a few more tasks to complete.  I quickly threw together a small platform to house a nesting box for Jaina, the monster cornish cross hen.  She is too big to perch like all of the other chickens.  The stand was to house a dedicated nesting box that is supposed to serve as her bed at night.  Last night she was only mildly successful in using the box.

I also grabbed my tube of Scratch X to remove some marks on the back of the SSR that mysteriously happened while Cindy had the truck parked in a lot a couple weeks ago.  I have used Scratch X before to remove what seemed like pretty formidable paint blemishes.  Once again the product did it’s job.  After a few applications and a bit of elbow grease a casual passerby would never know there was a problem.

Later in the day my to do list was finally cleared and I could just veg out.  Cindy shot some cute video in the evening of the chickens hanging with the dogs.  It’s so cool that they all can hang together without conflict.

Over the last few days Cindy and I have been working on getting her own YouTube channel launched.  We named the channel Fit Farm Chick, looking for something unique and catchy.  I sort of suggested the idea to Cindy as one way for her to supplement her income.  Fit women on YouTube always seem to do very well, we figured in addition to exercise themed videos Cindy also could also post cooking, baking, gardening, and chicken related clips as well.

Cindy’s main job has been to produce the raw footage.  My role is to edit/produce the videos and get the channel up and monetized.  Yesterday she got final approval on her AdSense account, meaning her monetized videos on her channel now will start earning her a few pennies per view.  I have a marginally successful YouTube channel that has nearly 600,000 views and 750 subscribers that makes on average between $75 and $100 a month. I am hoping to leverage what I have learned to give Cindy’s channel a head start to success.

Cindy has always claimed that she was camera shy but the videos she has done the last few days have been solid.  Outside of a few logistical issues she comes off well and her personality shines through.   It will be a cool challenge to see how we can build the channel.  I also snagged the fitfarmchick.com domain name which for now forwards to her existing web site.

If you want to check it out go here.  Be sure to thumbs up and subscribe to her channel if you find it funny, entertaining, or informative.

Check out her latest video below 🙂

My knee problems over the last couple months have seemed to become more and more IT band related.  IT band problems can be chronic and very tough to deal with.  Yesterday I ran a couple miles over lunch on the treadmill and the band tightened up almost immediately afterward.  The IT band starts around your hip and extends down the outside of your leg down to a little below the knee.  That is exactly where my discomfort radiates from.

Last night when I got home I did some painful rolling on the area to try to loosen things up.  It felt better briefly but later on in the night I was limping around the house with a gait that looked like I was 77 instead of 47.  The only real treatment I know for the ailment is regular stretching/rolling.  Running on the treadmill yesterday probably didn’t help matters much.

Yesterday I saw on the Tarpons FB page that this Saturday’s game was for the X-league league championship.  I was confused.  According to my tickets for Saturday, this was supposed to be the fourth and final regular season home game against the team from Cape Fear.  I expressed this confusion as a reply to the post on Facebook.

David Albers/Staff
Timmy the Tarpon is announced at the first Florida Tarpons arena football game on Friday, March 9, 2012 in Estero.

I received a reply rather quickly.  The explanation was the team from Cape Fear was “suspended” from the league this past weekend for some unpublished reason.  They decided they would just convert that date into the championship game where the 5-2 Tarpons would play the 6-2 Rio Grand Valley Sol.  Evidently the head coach from the Sol has also been suspended for not following “roster guidelines”.  There seems to be a lot of rule breaking going on in the league.

Going into this season I was hopeful that the Tarpons joining up with a new league this year would elevate the situation both on the field and in the stands attendance-wise. Unfortunately that has not been the case.  The level of play has not improved, attendance is probably the worst I have ever seen and this league appears to be held together with bubble gum and shoestring, just like the previous league.  I see no possible scenario where the Tarpons will be back on the field in 2016, despite admirable efforts by ownership to make arena football viable in the area.

Saturday morning Cindy and I were out the door early to head down to Marco Island for the Hill Run.   Cindy was considering running this race as well but she has officially caught what I have had for 3 weeks and counting so she was feeling pretty lousy.

The race was small with numbers only in the low 200’s so timing it wasn’t a problem.  I had no weird glitches with the timing hardware this week.  The only failure I had was one timing bib that was dead as a doornail.  Since the race didn’t start until 8, was 5 miles long and was held in Marco, Cindy and I didn’t get back to the house until after 11am. After attending to post race work I headed outside to knock out a few chores before the Eagles game at 4:30.

So the Eagles were playing the 3-11 Washington Redskins, a team that has been in disarray all year long.  The Eagles had everything to play for since the only way they could ensure a playoff spot was to win their two remaining games against the lackluster Redskins and Giants, a challenging but totally doable scenario. So with it all on the line the Eagles came out and made a statement.  Unfortunately that statement was, “We suck”.

They played an incredibly sloppy game with double digit penalties, missed field goals, defensive backs left 1-1 in situations where they were overmatched and Mark Sanchez’s patented, “turn the ball over at the worst possible time” abilities. I found Chip Kelly’s stoic expression intensely aggravating as the game unraveled.  I was thoroughly disgusted as the ball sailed through the uprights after it left the Redskins kickers foot with 5 seconds remaining.

To make matters worse, one of the biggest reasons the Eagles lost was the Eagles defensive backs, particularly Bradley Fletcher was burned repeatedly by fcking Desean Jackson.  As much of an asshole as I think Jackson is, there is no doubt he is fast as hell and the Eagles just did not find a way to deal with it.

So when you pair the Eagles loss with the Cowboys surprising destruction of the Colts, the team is now officially eliminated from the playoffs. To be 9-3 at one point and not make the playoffs is really, really hard to do. Yet that is exactly what the team has done with this late season collapse. Ironically this is almost a complete reversal from last year where the team started slow but finished strong.

So where does this leave the team going forward?    Well the QB position should still be in the hands of Nick Foles.  Although statistically he was nowhere near as good as last year and he threw a lot of interceptions, at least the team was still finding ways to win.  With Sanchez the opposite has happened, they find ways to lose and many times it is connected to Sanchez turning the ball over in the clutch.  Most of his turnovers seem to be connected to him being indecisive in the pocket, taking just a moment too long to get rid of the ball.

The secondary pretty much sucks from what I can tell.  All season long they gave up 1st downs on 3rd and long far too routinely. This is hard to believe but the team gave up 1st downs on 3rd and 15 or greater an astonishing 33% of the time.  (the league average is 11%) The pressure the front 7 applied requires a a crew of D-backs adept at 1-1 coverage.  The team simply doesn’t have that.

In some ways the season was a bit misleading.  The Eagles wins were mostly built on the back of beating teams with losing records.  Except for a couple occasions, when they came up against the better teams in the league they went down in flames. With that being the case it probably meant that even if they made the playoffs the would have been one and doners once again.  The only positive I can take out of this is maybe this bitter disappointment and collapse will incite some greater change in the lineup next year. Oh well another year, another Eagles disappointment, I’m used to it.

Sunday morning I had it in my head to do a bike ride, Cindy was too sick to be out on the road so I planned flying solo.  For some reason I got it in my head that I should ride all the way out to Ave Maria even though it didn’t make sense based on my current state of wellness/endurance. I have done very minimal riding in the last few months, my last session being a pre-illness DD ride in early November.

In a way I think I wanted to do a long/hard ride just to prove I could still tackle something difficult after a 2014 that has been filled with much more fail than success from a physical standpoint.

Well as the ride began my inspiration eroded quickly.  After only 5 miles in my legs were feeling pretty shitty.  I started running contingency plans through my head like turning around at the 10 mile mark.  Well when I hit 10 miles it felt like I was almost there although it was another couple miles to the entrance, so I kept going.  I did compromise however, only going to the entrance of Ave Maria on Oil Well Road and not traversing the nearly 3 miles into town.  I was just happy to have made it to the sign.

So after chugging some water I reversed directions, content with returning at a significantly slower pace than I headed out at.   I dropped a gear so my cadence speed increased while decreasing the amount of torque I had to apply with each stroke.  Well the combination of the gear change and slightly more favorable wind conditions had a surprising effect, I actually was faster heading back.  The gear change made a big difference in the way my legs felt.  I was trucking 18-19mph much of the return ride.

During the last 25% of the trip a new problem arose, a nose that was flowing like a faucet.  Despite non-stop sniffling and forearm wiping I just could not get my nose under control.  It was maddening at times.  I sniffled my way into the driveway happy with my performance on the 24.25 mile ride and look forward to getting more into the swing of things as 2015 rolls in.

Shortly after I got back Cindy and I headed out to run some errands.  One of the stops was Lowes where I made a couple late additions to my Christmas decorations which were on clearance.  I grabbed a cool tree shaped LED thing which does all sorts of cool patterns, sort of the same way as my LED snowmen already do.  I also grabbed an inflatable, camouflaged Santa, for two reasons.  First I liked that he moves his arm which are holding binoculars up and down. Second, its tacky and silly, something that I don’t mind that much when it comes to holiday decorating.

Cindy was VERY busy on Sunday despite feeling bad, baking her ass off.  She made several cookie varieties as well as roasted pecans. The house smelled like the holidays all day. I am definitely the beneficiary of her love of cooking/baking.  She put our new corner cabinet/counter to good use in the process.

We saw the Hobbit at a very unconventional time for us, 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon.  We were rewarded with a theater that was nearly empty for the 3D showing.  I thought the movie was great just as I have thought every LOTR and Hobbit movie that preceded it was great.   I am a bit sad that the series now has officially run it’s course, great, great, great film making IMO.  It gets an A.

So I am officially the Buffalo Bills of my fantasy football league, losing in the finals for the third consecutive year.  Damn’s it’s frustrating.  Before I went to bed I had almost a 40 point lead despite Tom Brady and ironically the Bills defense underperforming greatly.  Well I awoke to see I had lost due to my opponent having Marshawn Lynch AND the Seahawks defense, both of which had big games.  I was very annoyed.  The annoyance was kicked up when I saw that if I started Tony Romo, who was predicted to score less points than Brady, I probably would have won the game since he outscored Brady 36-11. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I have a brief 3 day week followed by an awesome 6 days off in a row where I plan to tackle repainting the pool deck with Cindy’s help.

On Friday night Randall didn’t show up until after 8PM but it didn’t really matter since I had race prep to work on anyway.  Randall showed up bearing gifts of beer which was very nice of him.  The dogs were THRILLED to see Uncle Randall, they both sat by his side happily as he petted them.

Randall talked Cindy into running the race on Saturday since he planned to do so.  That set Cindy into race prep mode which is a very complex process.  I decided to use the van for the race equipment since it would be three people plus equipment which just would not work in the Tacoma.

I decided to only load a couple things Friday night due to the cold temperatures.  I didn’t want the battery based electronics or the timing mats chilling in the van all night long so I just planned to get up 10 minutes earlier to do it in the morning.

I really bundled up for the race, wearing jeans, wool socks, a t-shirt, Under Armour Cold Gear long sleeves, and two sweatshirts to battle the temps in the mid to upper 40’s.  I needed every layer.  We were the first ones on site.  I got the gate code to let us in and was given permission to raise and fire up the light tower used to light up the registration area.  This event is a stark contrast to the Thanksgiving race where the club has soooo many responsibilities to handle.  For this race since it is done in coordination with a PGA golf event most of the planning and set up is done in advance by the tournament organizers.

I had Randall and Chris handling data entry for me as I attended to other details before the race started.  There were around 450 people for the race, a far cry from the 3000 plus we handled a couple weeks ago but it was still a good crowd.

The race was started by Greg Norman, the tournament organizer and the race had at least one of the PGA pros running which was cool as well.

I had some timing difficulties once again although luckily this time it didn’t result in any dropped times.  I had two timing boxes at the finish once again and for some reason could not get one of them online during the race.  I also had a number of participants that had bad/missing registration data since this race uses a rather klutzy in house registration web site that is not designed for taking race entries.  This bad data resulted in quite a few people being thrown into the wrong age group. However I had 356 chip start times and 355 chip finish times so that was the number I was most concerned with.

Both Randall and Cindy did well considering the circumstances.  Randall has not been doing any consistent running (despite having a half marathon coming up in January).  Cindy has still not gotten back on a consistent running schedule and HATES running in cold air as it makes her chest close up.  They both finished pretty high up in their age group rankings.

After the race we got cleaned up and off site by around 9:15 which is great.  On the way home we of course had to stop for celebratory coffee.

Once we got home I dug into post race tasks as Cindy worked on other stuff and Randall chilled with the chickens.  Randall seems to find the chickens interesting and liked interacting with them, petting and holding them routinely.

Once everything was done Cindy made us a special grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch designed to combat the chill we all felt most of the morning in our bones.

Cindy suggested that it would be a smart thing if we tried to take naps since we were planning to see Exodus Saturday night, a very long movie.  If we hit it napless there was a good chance we would be watching a lot of it with closed eyelids. All three of us laid down in our respective beds but I was the only one that actually fell asleep and only briefly at that.  Randall and Cindy reported no actual napping took place for them.

I suggested to Cindy it would be nice to give her a break from cooking and just eat at Stir Crazy up at Coconut Point.  Although Cindy really loves cooking she was down with the idea.  We all enjoyed our meals during pre-movie warm up.  Randall graciously but sneakily paid the check on the down low without my knowledge.

So we saw the 3D version of the film.  As I have professed for awhile now, 3D is pretty much a non-feature for me, not even worth the premium you pay to see it.  It just happened that we got done with dinner right around the 3D showing so that is what we saw.  It just doesn’t add anything to my enjoyment of most films.

So Exodus is basically a remake of the holiday classic, The 10 Commandments, starring Yule Brenner and Charlton Heston, a film I think I only watched in it’s entirety once without falling asleep, it’s something like 4 hours long. With Exodus they trimmed it’s length to under 3 hours but it still felt very long.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of naps or the movie itself but Randall spent a large portion of the movie with his eyes closed.  Cindy likewise had a lot of nod off moments.  I only had a few of them but there was no disputing the film had slow moments.

Just like the original 10 Commandments, I question why this story would be one that Christians would want to embellish.  God in this story, is in my opinion, depicted as more or less of an asshole that punishes the innocent for the actions of the guilty, a premise that seems more appropriate for Islamic extremists.

Even with it’s length, there seemed to be large fast forwards in the plot with unanswered questions, like why was it significant that Joshua felt no pain and all he did most of the movie was act like a peeping Tom when Moses talked to a God only visible to him. It was odd. Cindy said she thought the acting in the movie was really good.  I really didn’t feel the same.  As a whole the movie was a sleepy experience, only deserving of a B rating in my book.

On Sunday morning we started the day very slow.  With temps once again in the 40’s it was too cold to do an early bike ride with Randall.  We talked about doing one later in the day possibly since Randall lugged his bike across Alligator Alley.  Instead we relaxed a bit.  I downloaded the final episode of Season 2 of the Walking Dead video game and played through it to completion.  Much like the real series there are surprising outcomes, lots of people dying and tangible drama.  If there is a season three of the game I have no idea where it will go from here, almost the entire core of the group the story is based on is out of the picture in one way or another.

So we decided to head up to the outlets, something Randall and I have done quite a few times when he has visited during the holiday season.  He especially likes the Under Armour and Oakley outlets that are housed there.  Cindy was excited to go as well although excitement faded as she had multiple bad experiences with idiot, rude shoppers in several stores. I wound up buying several things from several stores.  Randall had a good haul as well including scoring two sets of Oakley sunglasses that were 40% off, something you rarely see.

We grabbed lunch at Naples Flatbread which was quite good.  As we sat there Randall spotted a black guy he recognized as the awful, Love Boat style singer that serenaded us at the same mall last year at a different establishment.  This was Cindy’s first time seeing/hearing the guys cheesy, out of tune performance.  She quickly confirmed Randall and my evaluation of this guys singing ability was accurate.  I recorded a brief 30 seconds for your enjoyment.

On the way home we had to make two more stops which  put us back in my driveway after 4PM, too late to fit a bike ride in which I felt a bit badly about.  Instead we headed outside with my Phantom.  I let Randall fly almost two complete battery packs himself which he did just fine except for a near miss with the smaller shed that had me concerned for a few moments.  While we were out there we did some tire flipping, some box jumping onto stacked tires and I even did a muscle up just to confirm I still had it in me.  The chickens and dogs were out there having fun with us as well.

While Randall and I were entertaining ourselves Cindy had begun an incredible food preparation challenge.  She was working on cooking the chicken for the dogs meals, dinner, my birthday cake AND Christmas cookies all at the same time.  It was a ton of work.  She did almost all of the work at our new kitchen corner cabinet/counter which was really cool.  She loves doing the prep there, making the time, money and effort we put into it feel well worth it.  Randall and I both appreciated her efforts greatly, everything tasted really good.

Randall rolled out around 9PM, it was another fun and festive visit, something Cindy and I come to count on when Randall is in the house.

The Eagles did not play until 8:30 against the hated Cowboys, a team they smashed a couple weeks ago on Thanksgiving, in Dallas.  Well the game started out terribly right from the opening kickoff that the Eagles totally botched allowing for a very quick Cowboys score.  The onslaught continued with the Cowboys jumping to a fast and easy 21-0 lead.

All of a sudden the Eagles seemed to get angry and aggressive, dominating the middle portion of the game, putting 24 unanswered points on the board to take the lead.  Unfortunately this seemed to be a game of thirds, the Cowboys came back and dominated the last third of the game, winning 38-27, the Eagles second consecutive home loss in as many weeks and their third loss in the last four games.

The Eagles, despite their still decent 9-5 record have shown a disturbing trend of coming up small when going up against good (winning record) teams and a more disturbing sputtering end to the season.  Last year was the opposite, the team gained momentum and confidence as the season progressed, this feels like the exact opposite.

There was some bitter irony going on for me during the game.  I felt some pangs of happiness as Demarco Murray, the Cowboys star running back was racking up the yards and touchdowns since he was on my fantasy team which was playing in the semi-finals of the league championship.  His solid game was actually responsible for my win, propelling me to the league championship game for the third consecutive year, a pretty amazing feat considering the lack of time, energy and effort I put into managing my squad.  So even though the final score of the Eagles game was depressing, my virtual outcome helped my mood greatly.

Believe it or not I am still hacking and blowing my nose almost two complete weeks after first becoming symptomatic.  I am so ready to be over this.  Oh tomorrow is my birthday, a date on the calendar that I have not looked forward to since the mid-90’s.

So I got the party van back after work last night.  The repair price went up another $100 because they wound up replacing the front driver side metal brake line as well.  When they did a pressure test after replacing the passenger side brake line the driver side let loose.  So now all of the metal brake lines in the van except a small section that goes from the ABS unit to the master cylinder has been replaced.  In total I have spent $1300 replacing rusty brake line on the party van, how nice.

We have some strong weather blowing in.  Last night we had an abnormal, strong November thunderstorm.  Today the temperatures will be dropping from the mid 70’s we started at, dropping down into the mid-60’s with a low that could hit the 40’s tonight.

This will be the first winter that we have had with the chickens.  Even though the chickens are supposed to be cold tolerant we are probably going to start closing the ramp up to the coop on cold nights to keep it warmer for them.  Cindy said she thinks some nights the chickens huddle together in one of the three nesting boxes to stay warm based on the poop patterns the next morning.  If it gets really cold the landscape fabric we have to protect the garden and plants may instead be used to insulate the chicken living quarters.

I am going to be switching up my exercise routine.  I have mentioned directly and indirectly some of my issues below the belt that all started with my GI ailment in Early April.  Since then I have had off an on issues with irritation in “sensitive” areas.  Many times this irritation would crop up in the afternoon after my workout.  Yea I loosely thought about the connection but I never really thought about it seriously until yesterday.

I had been doing well in that area for several days and again yesterday morning I felt fine.  At the gym I did chest work which included some dumbbell chest press reps with relatively heavy weight.  As I was straining to complete some of the final reps at the heavier weight I could actually feel the strain extend down below, after which I stopped repping.  Yesterday afternoon I got treated to the return of irritation and soreness so it became crystal clear what was the catalyst.

My new workout routine will still contain some bodyweight staples like pull ups and push ups but heavy, low rep, high effort movements are off the menu for the foreseeable future.  I also think I will be doing a lot more cardio, including more rower time.  My routine may start to look a little more soccer mom-ish and less beast mode but if it allows me to return to normalcy in other areas of my overall health I am down with it.

I had a very enjoyable mid-week day off yesterday.  The weather was awesome with temps remaining in the 70’s most of the day. Except for a quick trip to grab some coffee I spent the entire day at the house and was totally content doing so.  The chickens were quite glad I was home as it meant they could be free ranging literally all day long.

I attended to a few minor chores including fixing the one screen door, laundry, dishes and a few other odds and ends. But for the most part I just relaxed, watching some of the huge Blizzcon feed collection and geeked out on the computer.

There was a brief period of the day where I was not relaxing.  I headed out to the bar park to get some exercise in. First I made an attempt at a timed Century circuit (40 BW squats, 30 push ups, 20 hanging knee raises, 10 pull ups) for time, something I had not tried to do seriously for around a year.  Considering the overall decline of my fitness level in 2014 I surprised myself by posting a time 15 seconds better than my previous best of 2:47.  It was encouraging.

I then got the idea in my head that I want to try something different in the tire flipping department.  I have two tires in my back yard, one is about 200 pounds and the other is 300.  Flipping the 200 pounder is pretty easy, the 300 pounder is more challenging but still very comfortably inside my wheelhouse.  Well I wanted to try something outside the box.

I got the idea in my head to try to lift both tires together which would add up to a formidable 500 pounds of rubber.  Simply stacking the tires on top of each other wouldn’t be sufficient since the top tire would slide off the bottom once the lift started.  I decided to use my ratcheting straps to lock the tires together temporarily.  My first attempts went nowhere, the weight of the tires pressed the bottom edge into the loose sandy soil, which gave me no grip whatsoever.  I got my post bar and my piece of 1″ schedule 40 pvc pipe that I use for dragon flags.  I pried up the tires just enough to kick the pipe under the edge so I at least had an edge for my fingers.

Even with the grip I still failed multiple times with my best effort getting the tires a few inches up in the air before I dropped it.  500 pounds feels heavy, imagine that.  Having two tires on top of each other made the act of tire flipping more difficult.  As you can see from the picture I had a wall of rubber to deal with. The height of the tires meant I could not get by upper body up and over the top edge of the tire to get into a better leverage position.  I was getting quite frustrated.

Finally after I don’t know how many fails I stepped back from the tires and started to get angry. Anger is normally seen as a negative emotion but when it comes to tackling difficult tasks it is a positive for me.  Anger focuses me.  After getting sufficiently pissed off at the tires I got down one more time gripped the edge and pushed up and into the rubber as hard as I could.  As the stack started to move I saw stars in my field of vision due to the strain.  The tires rose slowly past the prior dropping points and to the upright position as I grunted mightily.  When I pushed the tires back over they made a very satisfying THUNK as they crashed back into the ground.

I was pumped up after finally defeating my 500 pound rubber nemesis.  I celebrated by box jumping on top of it’s flipped over corpse.  If you didn’t see this unfold yesterday, here is the link.

I strongly support inserting one day off in the middle of the work week, permanently.

Just watch and it will all be explained.

So today was my first day doing my lunch workout at the Wellness Center.  As I expected there are some challenges that comes along with switching gyms.

Today the traffic on the way there was on the annoying side.  Since the gym is very close to downtown Naples there is no avoiding the swarms of old people behind the wheels of their luxury vehicles going 10 mph under the speed limit in all three lanes. It took me close to 10 minutes to get there today as a result.  I will be leaving my office a couple minutes earlier to compensate for the travel time.

As I also expected, there will be an entirely different harvest of gym goers to analyze and observe.  Already today I spotted a young kid showing his girlfriend how to curl with horrible form in the squat rack and another guy who really loved admiring himself in the mirror, a lot.

Today I wanted to do squats and deadlifts.  I was surprised that with the size of the gym they only have one squat rack.  I am not nuts about it’s construction either.  It is non-adjustable so the top set of pegs requires me to almost get on my toes to get the bar off and the next set down requires a bent leg starting position I’m not crazy about.  I struggled doing squats like I hadn’t done it in months, although I think I only missed last week if memory serves me correctly.  I topped out with three reps at 205 and it felt HEAVY.

There is not an obvious area to do dead lifting in the place.  I wound up doing it behind the benches in the free weight area.  I got a feeling that the crowd in there is not used to seeing someone deadlift, especially someone doing it in their socks.  I only did two sets of deadlifting and once again the bar felt heavy.

I was then looking to do quick sets of leg extensions and leg curls.  They have two different types of machines , TechnoGym and Hammer Strength.  I first tried doing leg curls on the TechnoGym machine and it seemed physically impossible to get it at an adjustment level that worked for my stork legs.  I eventually gave up and got on the Hammer Strength stuff which I am pretty sure will be the only machines I use in the place.  They also have some bizarre stuff that works with air pressure cylinders.  I didn’t even bother wasting my time on it.

As far as pull up and dip options go, thus far I have not been super impressed with my options.  They have one power tower type of rig and one assisted pull up/dip machine.  Unfortunately unlike the one at my old gym, there is no option to flip the assist plate out of the way so you can do reps freely.  I still need to do some more exploring to get a full inventory of what my options are, it will take some time. There was one piece of equipment I was interested in trying out, one of those continuous rope machines.  Basically you set a resistance level and then just start pulling a fat rope hand over hand for as fast and as long as you can.  It should be a good supplement to conventional pull up training.

The gym environment seemed a bit on the sterile side, filled mostly with people minding their own business.  It’s no big deal though and if more of my old gym buddies show up it will make things better.

I was very happy to see a gym employee meticulously cleaning the entire time I was there, what a concept.