Hot Hot Heat

Busted. No, my night job as an exotic dancer in a gay night club called The Tool Box is still a tightly guarded secret. I mean the status of the central air unit in our house. As in, we need to buy a whole new one. Damn. Luckily, it's my folks' unit, I just use it. Or used to.

We don't realize how dependent most of us middle class and above people have become on our controlled indoor climates. Just ask the Dub. She grew up in a house that is constantly kept at 70 degrees. Any (READ: Normal) temperature above that makes her uncomfortable, even though she's equally sensitive to low temperatures. Come to think of it, I'm not sure she's ever not been too cold or too hot the whole time I've known her.

I don't mean to throw my dear, sweet future wife under the bus (okay, but I still did), but I think her situation illustrates how it is possible for us to lose touch with our normal, preset equilibrium. Take another issue I've been dealing with lately, lower back pain. Granted, I'm experiencing this pain because I'm working on my Olympic lifts, but anatomically, we're not built to sit down. Sitting down places undue stress on the hips and lower back. The natural idle position for bipeds like us is a squatting position, as in "your balls are showing."

On another note, now that classes have started back up, I'm adjusting well to yet again being the know-it-all go-getter in my classes, at least for the first few weeks. I do find it amazing how reluctant people in grad school are to step up and take leadership of projects. The fact that I'm being forced to be that guy is nothing short of appalling.

A little image to go with my last post...

More Meat

Results. So I just got back from my last workout before my week-long vacation in Kansas and Missouri. I did Check Your Legs I, which is 3 rounds for time, each round consisting of 25 bodyweight squats, 25 lunges on each leg, 50 switches, 12 jumping squats, and 25 kettle bell swings with a 50 lb. kettle bell. You do all of this while wearing a weighted vest with 10% of your body weight. Since I'm in a bragging kind of mood, I've embedded the ranking for this routine. For the record, Millie is a mother in her mid 40s who absolutely dominates everyone else at the gym. I'm quite proud of myself today.

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Yes, I do think I'm better than you, and so do people like me

KB 2.0. That's been the theme of the past month. I joined a Crossfit affiliated gym in South Orange called RunJumpLift, and the results so far have been amazing. I'm not built to get big or anything like that, but I love the rush of a good hard workout and realizing improvements from week to week. I have to admit, when I first walked into this place for a 2-week trial, I was skeptical. What I saw amounted to a converted auto garage with a few basic pieces of workout equipment and free weights sitting against the walls, some pullup bars, and a rather intimidating set of truck tires and sledge hammers. All of this amounted to about one step above the Italian Stallion's arrangements in Rocky IV.

Of course, part of realizing said improvements rests on the right kind of diet, and I've noticed my performance improve significantly since I started to eat like I actually cared. Admittedly, I've never eaten well in the traditional sense. On second thought, I've always eaten well, just not healthily. I'm talking wings; I'm talking Mexican food; and hell yes, I'm talking anything from Sheetz at all hours of the day and night. Indeed, a freakishly fast metabolism has been one of my life's joys. Yet lately, I've found it easier than anticipated to forsake all types of delicious food. Could it be that my competitive impulse is so strong that I would sooner give up the best sloppy joe in the country than add a minute to my Barbara time? It would appear so, and based on how ridiculously well things have gone so far, I don't see myself turning back any time soon.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Cliff Bar in front of me with my name written all over it.