Bleh day.

Today is a bleh day. Maybe its a crash from all of the recent progress I've made or something. I just feel bleh. Its wednesday, which is measurement day. That means I take out a tape measure and measure myself to track my progress. I quit weighing myself a few weeks back, mostly because I reached a point where I was no longer loosing weight because of my weight lifting and increased protein intake.

I'm still currently sitting at anywhere between 198-202lbs, depending on the day. I started measuring myself once a week, 3 weeks ago.

This week, my body fat is at 13.6 percent. I don't know if that's right or not, but at least its consistent with my other measurements. I started measuring at 15.9 percent BF.

In the past 3 weeks, these measurements have changed significantly:
Bicep: + 0.5 in
Forearm + 0.5 in
Chest: - 1.0 in
Waist: -1.0 in

Other measurements are pretty much the same, ie neck, thigh, calf, hips.

If i had looked at the scale for my progress, I would have seen that 3 weeks ago I was 199, and today I weighed in at 201.5, which would lead one to believe that I made negative progress, but clearly by the change in size of the parts of my body, the progress is positive. My chest and waist got smaller(those are the 2 places I store the most fat), and my arms got larger.

The bottom line is not to pay too much attention to the scale when you are trying to get more fit. The scale might tell you how much you weigh, but there are far more important factors to pay attention to.

Now with all of that being said, I feel very guilty because I cheated badly on my diet today. I convinced myself that I "deserved" a pizza, and I got one, and ate it...the whole thing. I should have just cooked up the pork chops and eggs that I had in the fridge, but NO, I deserved an effin pizza.

Accomplishment

I'm now setting daily goals for myself. I had 3 goals for after work today. 1, clean my kitchen(it became quite the mess when I repeatedly put my foot through the ceiling from the bathroom), 2) Construct a giant boat out of sheep shit and sticks!(ok, not quite, actually, it was "build a structure to surround my bathtub"), and the third was "walk the kiga when it got cooler out".

I know, walking the kiga isn't really a goal since I do it every day, but considering how OCD I am, tearing myself away from my construction once I get started is extremely difficult.

OK, so women who look at the picture above probably think "how boring, you better clean that up, and hurry up and get finished!", men who look at the above picture probably think something to the effect of "dude, is that your sledge hammer below the window? Its so small!"

First off, I'm comfortable with the size of my sledge hammer, and secondly, its more important to use a sledge hammer correctly, than to have a really big one.

The picture doesn't do it nearly the justice it deserves, but that is my tub surround structure. I need to put some wonderboard up next, and then I can work on putting up the tile.

I'm going to start posting pics of my remodeling. Mostly because I can. Pictures in blogs kicks ass.

Today, I had an interesting epiphany. I realized that as a kid, I mostly wanted to build stuff like tree houses, and forts, and stuff like that. I had neither the know-how, or the financial resources to do it. Today, I have both the know-how, and the financial resources, so basically I'm building a treehouse in my bathroom(you know, in an anecdotle sort of way).

I know that sledge hammers are historically demolition tools, so today the top 4 is reasons to have a sledge hammer handy when you are building stuff.

4) Spiders. Spiders get awefully flat when you hit em with a 13lb sledge. Flatter than they get when you use your foot, or a kleenex. I know, not very daoist of me, but spiders, as well as snakes, and those little millipede nasty things are excluded from my version of daoism.

3) Some times you just have to hit stuff really hard. A normal hammer won't do. You need a REAL hammer to get the job done. Do you really think that all those boards just "magically fit" into place just because I measured them and cut them to exact specifications? Heck NO! I had to pound many of them into place.

2) Aliens. Aliens just might invade at any time. Since I'm anti-gun, and having a sword handy while remodeling doesn't make much sense, a sledge hammer is the next best choice.

1) Obviously, without a 13lb sledge hammer, there would be very few things that could fall on my effin foot from 4-5 feet high. Clearly this is an obvious need when remodeling, and thus it is important to continuously place the sledge hammer in places where it can easily fall, either striking my foot, or coming awefully close causing me to jerk my foot away and slam it into a nearby obsticle that hurts almost as bad as a falling sledge hammer.

Personal Inventory

Yesterday, I took a personal inventory. No, not the "Dr. Phil(tm)" kind, but the kind where I ask myself what skills I contain and what I'd be able to accomplish if I were stuck on an island, with next to nothing, and a full set of power tools.

blog interruption.

A loud hissing noise just erupted from my bathroom...not the kind of thing you want to hear after you've soldered about 900 connections over the last 2 days. Turns out that it was just the neighbors weak electric weed whacker.

/blog interruption

So, I asks myself, "Self, what be you good at?" Obviously, grammer won't be on this list.

Turns out, that over my life, I've done quite a few things, and achieved mild amounts of success at them. Not world reknown or anything like that, but success in the "I left my bag of suck in my other jeans" kind of way.

So lets see, artistically, I've written poetry, played guitar and bass guitar, and composed some music for a couple bands. My artistic side is just about all gone. I don't have time for this kind of stuff anymore.

Hmm, so professionally, I've managed pizza shops, and a BBQ joint, I've done inventory work in factories, and of course, now I'm a computer programmer.

I play tennis, racketball, and white water kayak. I'm a half-way decent bowler, and I was a pretty damn good defensemen back when I played hockey.

Other than that, I can do plumbing now, and carpentry, electrical work, and interior design. I've fixed my furnace, and refinished my hardwood floors. I haven't paid anyone to work on my car in a very very long time, and I even cut my own hair.

Granted, I'm not "the best" at any of this junk, but I can do it.

A friend of mine once laughed when I was having a conversation with another guy about plumbing. He said something to the effect of "Can you imagine having to do all that yourself?". This guy has quite a few duckets, and lives in a 3/4 million$ house. He pays people to do stuff for him. I could too if I wanted to, but at the end of the day, I can look at my bathroom and say "I did that". I soldered every connection. Glued every piece of PVC pipe. Designed where the toilet and sink and bathtub would go. Hung all the drywall, and installed each and every light in the room. I did that.

So what could I do if I was stuck on a deserted island? Just about anything I put my mind to.

The top 4 things that I have attempted to do, but have fallen short at each and every time I tried.
4) learn a foreign language. I probably just don't dedicate enough time to this one. If my french teacher was half as hot as my english and/or typing teacher, I'd probably be living in paris by now.

3) Draw. I can't draw, and I'll never be able to. I don't know whats wrong with my brain, I just can't seem to get all the squiggly lines to connect and make something that doesn't look like a bunch of connected squiggly lines.

2) Sing. I ain't no good at it. My brain is out of tune or something. I don't know how to tune a brain, do you?(that's a morphine lyric)

1) Anything requiring a sincere and sympathetic emotional response. I'm not good at that. Everything sympathetic sounds insincere, and I'd rather be silent than insincere.

Today

A rather lengthy blog today. I did a lot today. Worked a lot, thought a lot, and there's a lot to write down.

I woke up around 8 o'clock, feeling bad that I couldn't walk "the kiga" before I launched my boat for today's kayak trip. Turns out my friend was running about 2 hours late(yeah, 2 effin hours, how the heck do you run 2 effin hours late? I'm not even that bad), but I still didn't get to walk the kiga because I didn't know he was going to be that late until he was that late.

Anyway, Mike had a rough day on the lehigh, and bailed after the first 2 miles. He walked his boat back to his car at the top. Luckily, my car was parked at the bottom, so I continued my trip alone. In his defense, the river was pretty damn high, 1000cfs. 1000cfs kicked my ass last year. This year, I seemed to handle it just fine.

So I did my trip, thought a lot, and formulated a plan for the rest of the day. Step one would be walking the kiga as soon as I got home. Step 2 would be to take a nap, and step 3 would be to finish installing my new bathtub so I could take a friggin bath. Step 4? You guessed it, take a bath.

I got off the river at about 3:00, and got home around 3:30. I walked the kiga, just as the plan dictated. While in the park, some guy decided to hitch himself to my peaceful dog walking. Normally, I use this time for my best thinking. Not today. Anyway, I'm pretty sure there was something wrong with the guy, not in an "he's obviously crazy" sort of way, but in a "just a little bit off" kinda way. People probably think the same about me. Oh well, I talked to him while I walked the kiga, making polite conversation along the way.

Step 2, nap man...nap. Not much to report about the nap, coulda been longer, that's about it.

Step 3. Finish the bathtub install. The news that my step mother is visiting can motivate me to do great things in small amounts of time. Now I HAVE to finish my bathroom in the next 2 weeks. I'm almost done I guess. I've been working like a dog, except for the occasional kayak trip here and there. Paddling kicks everything else's ass. Period. Anyway, the bathtub is installed. Its 20" deep. That means its deep enough to hold enough water to cover my ginormous ass. I have to fix a single slow drip at the drain. Probably just need to tighten it a bit. It was good enough to move on to step 4.

Step 4. Bath. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say about that.

Sheesh, I sure did a lot today, and its only 11:30.

So, I've never considered myself a "good neighbor". I'm more of a "leave me alone" kind of guy. I don't trim the bushes, or plant flowers, or even cut my grass most of the time. I don't want to. My neighbors are probably pissed at me most of the time. I don't care, all the more reason for them to leave me alone. Today; however, I realize the pinicle of "bad neighborship". I don't even rank anywhere near these guys on the scale. Seriously.

My neighbors down the street are having a party, lighting off some serious fireworks, and they have live music. Now that's all fine and dandy, but its damn near midnight. I don't sleep this early, but I know a lot of my neighbors do. The worst part of the live music is that its stinking Karaoke(I just figured out a word that I can't spell). There is a special level of "bad neighbor" reserved for the neighbors doing live karaoke at midnight. Damn, I hope someone calls the cops.

Yeah, I'm the old dude who wants the police to shut down the party? What the hell happened to my life? I swore that I'd never be that kind of old dude. Oh well, I guess age changes everything.

Jeeze, this blog could go on and on today, but it won't. I'll save the rest for tomorrow.