P90X - Phase 2

This week is Week 5 of P90X, which begins Phase 2. There's 2 new videos for the next 3 weeks, then a recovery week, and then the next 4 weeks go back and forth between the first set and the 2nd set of videos.

I feel very good about the first month. I didn't skip any days, and I can see some definite improvement. By Week 3 I was doing more pushup and pullups than in Week 1. I went from about 138 lb. to 133 lb. and 24.5% body fat to 23.3%. I had a very strenuous martial arts test at the end of Week 4, and my recovery was very good. And that's just after the first month! Because of the test I had to do, I gave myself 2 extra rest days before beginning Week 5.

So now, I'm 3 days into Week 5. Monday I did the Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps video. It adds some of the exercises from the first phase on the Shoulders and Arms video, but most of them are new, and it adds about 6 new kinds of pushups, which are all I would say more advanced than the ones you get in Week 1.

Tuesday I did Plyometrics, same as before. I can't really do the rockstar jumps because they make my knees hurt, and the hot foot makes my left foot sore, so I just do a jump rope motion during that, but otherwise I can keep up pretty well with this video.

Today was Back and Biceps. The pullups are basically the same as in the other videos, but with the added pain of something called Corn Cob Pullups. I wasn't able to do as many pullups as I had been doing, probably because it's been 2 weeks since I did any, and this workout really makes your arms sore. It goes pullup exercise, some other back exercise, and then 2 bicep exercises.

Last week, I got some lighter weights (5 and 3 lb) for Core Synergistics, but now I'm really glad to have them, since both of these new Phase 2 videos required lighter weights than 10 lb. I don't feel bad at all to go down to 10 or 5 lb at the end of a workout when my arms are killing me and having good form isn't happening with something heavier.

P90X blogging

This blog has been dead for a while, but now I've got something new I want to keep track of - P90X training. I began on Saturday with some downloaded files (to try before I buy), but I've already ordered the DVDs to keep everything honest.

Day 1
Chest and Back

This was a hell of a lot of pushups and pullups. A few weights (rows and such) thrown in for fun. Elevated pushups, diamond, dive bomber (which I knew as Hindu pushups), wide arm.. all kinds of pushups. I won't do this one on Saturday anymore, since I do another workout regularly on Saturday mornings and the combination of the two just about killed me, but I'll switch it around with the rest/stretch day, which would normally be Friday for me now.

Day 2
Plyometrics

A cardio workout. This was a lot of fun, but it made me sweat for sure. Lots of jumping and explosive movement.

Day 3
Shoulders and Arms

Almost entirely weights and it cycled between shoulders, triceps, and bicep exercises. I learned there are many types of curls out there.

Day 4
Yoga

Just about killed me. I looked it up online and found a lot of other people like me, in pretty good shape who weren't too daunted by the cardio or weight stuff in P90X, but the yoga, which I never do, is very tough. I look forward to getting better at this, because I'm crazy.

Day 5
Back and Legs

More pullups for the back, and a lot of squats and lunges, some with weights, for the legs. My old friend the wall squat was in there.

Day 6
Kenpo

Explosive punching and kicking. Nothing new here for me, I do this kind of stuff all the time, but you do have to focus to make it challenging. I might add my 16 oz gloves at some point to make this a little tougher, since this one is done every week for the set.

This is as far as I've gotten so far. Tomorrow should be the Stretch video (for the rest day) but I'll do that on Saturday instead and repeat the Chest and Back video tomorrow. Then I repeat these for the next 2 weeks. The 4th week is a "recover" week, with no weights, but it throws in the Yoga twice, and some different cardio videos that I haven't seen yet. The 5-7 and 9-11 weeks add different weight videos than the ones I've done so far.

I didn't see anything to scare me off so far, and some new things for me to work on. I'm looking forward to keeping it going and seeing if I get some improvement in my arm muscles, pullup ability, and reduction in body fat %.

The Night Obama Won

This isn't something I don't get, I just don't ever want to forget what happened that night.

I had always said that on Nov. 4, 2008, I was going to get drunk, one way or another. The day before, the probability that Obama would win the election, according to fivethirtyeight.com, jumped from where it had been hovering between 92-96% over the past few weeks, to 98.1%. Tuesday morning, it was 98.9%. McCain had simply run out of time, and the polls were not indicating anything breaking his way. I was optimistic, but nervous because you know how these things can go. I remembered 2004, when the early exit polls looked good for Kerry, before everything went to hell. This was going to be different, but better not to get too excited, just in case. I had a drink before I left work, just to take the edge off my nerves, but I knew it hadn't even started yet.

I was trying not to constantly hit reload on my computer with fivethirtyeight, or my RSS feeds, so I didn't get a chance to check until around 4:30pm PST. The news outlets had already called Kentucky for McCain, and Vermont for Obama. No surprises there. Indiana was too close to call, and that was a good sign. I never really expected Obama to win Indiana, but the fact that they couldn't call it for McCain right off the bat was nice. I had to go to a meeting at 5pm, but I kept checking the results on my phone, and I saw that they called Pennsylvania for Obama right after the polls closed. This was excellent news. McCain had spent the month of October trying desperately to make something happen in PA, and it didn't work. At the end of my meeting, around 5:30, someone said "Tomorrow we'll know who the new President will be" and I said that I thought there was a good chance we'd know tonight. My Republican coworkers seemed depressed.

I decided to go home after the meeting, and I listened to NPR on the way. The anchors were trying to make things sound a little less bad for McCain, but they had to be honest that things weren't looking good. A few more states had been called, no surprises, and some of the states McCain really had to win, like Indiana and Virginia, continued to be too close to call. Around 6:30pm, they called Ohio for Obama, and that was really the nail in the coffin for McCain. One of the people on CNN made a What If map that had McCain winning every state he could conceivably win (Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Utah, etc), and it just didn't have enough electoral votes. Obama really only had to win the Kerry + Gore states, and then just one more, and Ohio was that state.

When they called Virginia for Obama around 7:45pm, it was just gravy. It was indicating that the electoral map was going to be a lot bluer than anyone thought possible even a few months earlier. The people wanted change, and McCain (and probably especially Palin) wasn't what they had in mind. The west coast polls closed at 8pm, the networks immediately called California, Oregon, and Washington for Obama, and then came the magic words, "We project Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States." I sobbed. I put my face in my hands and I cried. I wanted to hold that moment in my mind.

I woke up with a hangover on Wednesday. It was all worth it.

Going back in time to prevent X

Terminator. Heroes. There are probably other shows on TV right now where this is a plot point.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider is damaged due to the sabotage of a time-traveler from a future where it caused a black hole to begin eating the earth from the inside? And, in true TV show fashion, will this sabotage only make it worse??

Chicken sandwiches

I've always been a fan of Chick-Fil-A. When I was a kid, they were only in malls, but later on, when I was in college, they started popping up as regular fast food places with a drive-thru and all. Their chicken sandwich and chicken nuggets are the best you can get from a fast food joint, plus they've got other unique things like the waffle fries and lemonade. I think Chick-Fil-A is a chain that you can only find in the South (but I think they are expanding into other areas now). The part I don't get is why it's taken so long for another fast food chain to make a Chick-Fil-A style chicken sandwich. McDonalds has one now, their "Southern-style" sandwich. I tried one the other day, prepared to be disappointed, but I wasn't. It was the buttery bun, the crispy/juicy chicken breast, and 2 pickles, very similar to Chick-Fil-A, and certainly good enough considering I have no idea where the nearest one is. They've also got a chicken biscuit for breakfast, but I haven't tried that yet.

Now, if only a national chain would rip off Braum's....

Why Netflix doesn't have The Wire at my local distribution center

This is really annoying.

I've read in so many places how great a show The Wire is, and after watching Deadwood and thinking it's one of the best things ever on TV, I decided to give it a try. So I put the first DVD from the first season in my queue, and it showed "Long Wait" so it took a few tries to get it. That's fair enough. But, when it finally moved up into the "Shipping" part of my queue page, it said they expect to ship it tomorrow. Hmm. That's very unusual. And then I got an email that said it would be shipping tomorrow from a distribution center in another state. That never happened before. Well, I watched the DVD, and I thought it was interesting, so I put the 2nd DVD (which did not say "Long Wait") at the top of my queue. The exact same thing happened. It would ship tomorrow from another city. And would you believe that the third DVD is shipping tomorrow from a city halfway across the goddamn country?!? I do not live in Jericho, Kansas, people. I live in a major metropolitan area on the west coast. There must be at least two distribution centers within this major metropolitan area, and probably several more within the same state. Why do none of these centers have any of The Wire available?

Over the past few months, we've gone through more DVDs that usual, around 10-12 each month. It is possible that this is a form of throttling, but why with these DVDs, which do not show "Long Wait"? Why is it that most new releases which I put at the top of my queue ship right away, even if they do say there is a wait? I've never had any problems with Netflix before, so I'm not thinking about ending our business relationship over this, but it's annoying and I don't get it at all.

Why people don't clean up after themselves

This is one of my pet peeves. People can be so entitled, can be so unaware of what's going on around them and how other people manage to take care of their own business, plus that of slobs, that they never even realize it. Earlier today, there was birthday cake for a coworker, and the leftovers were put in the break room. Just now, walking through the break room, I noticed that the cake was all gone, but the platters were left out, full of crumbs and icing-covered plastic knives. Is it too much to ask that the person who takes the last piece of cake throw away the paper platter it was setting on? I asked this, rhetorically, of another coworker who was getting some coffee, and he sighed, and pointed to the half-full single serving container of creamer someone left on the counter. Are they trying to conserve resources in the hope that someone else who only wants half a cream will take it? Cause that will never happen. Or, more likely, they're just too much of a slob to bother to throw it away.

My SO said to me last night, "Hey, tomorrow's trash day, you better take the trash out." I gave him a dirty look, and he laughed, cause he knew I knew he was just playing asshole. It got me to thinking though, which would be worse, an SO who tells you it's trash day, and you better take the trash out, or an SO who has no idea when trash day is?