Hooray for friends, and a movie review.

First off, I have to say that on Friday I was thoroughly impressed by my friends. On two occasions that night, a different friend each time, they kept me on track. First, after the usual Friday Night Magic, a bunch of us decided to stick around and do a draft as practice for Nationals. As a result of an unexpectedly prolonged evening, myself and others found ourselves quite hungry. I had not planned for this and had no food. As I watched many others partake of several ordered pizzas, I started making plans. "Well, if I just have the crust, that's just like bread...right?" and "I could use my indulgence right now...on shitty pizza." My friend Jeremy heard me ask if someone was going to eat their crust and called me out on it saying "isn't that, like, terrible for you?" He was right. And so I stuck to my guns and declined the pizza.

The second time came about because I hadn't yet done my jump ropes for the day, and it was now midnight. I started muttering that I might just skip it, what's one day? My friend Aaron immediately jumped on my case and said no! I had to do 1200 jumps before bed! He was right, and I toughed it out and stuck with it.

Friends rock, even when they're half taunting you to break your routine.

Now, a movie review. I went and saw Transformers II yesterday, which has been getting scathing reviews. I loved it. I used my indulgence for popcorn (nothing wrong with that Sean.) as popcorn at movies is part of the whole package for me. It was delicious. Also, the movie. Now that was an indulgence. So much fun.

I figured out what the critics have been doing wrong. Yes, the character development of the robots was slim to none. Yes, the human characters, while more interesting, spent a lot of time running from explosions. And most of all Yes, the plot was contrived, cheesy, and full of holes. Here's the thing to keep in mind though: So was the plot of every single one of those cartoons. And most other cartoons from that era. And you know what? I loved. You know what I loved about those cartoons? It wasn't the plot, that's for sure.

The plot in those shows, and in this movie, is like a corn chip. It is merely a delivery mechanism for the juicy, sweet, spicy, filling salsa. The only thing that those old cartoons needed to have happen for myself and other grown up children to enjoy them again, is they needed to look better. I feel pretty confident that this movie is exactly what I would expect if all my friends and I had grown up into film makers and said "hey, we can remake our old cartoons, but this time with cooler graphics, the robots can swear and kill each other, and there can be hot chicks in it too! How can it not be awesome!!!"

And awesome it was. So all the critics out there berating the movie for a lame excuse for a plot... just pretend you are 8 years old again. Then you might get it. It doesn't need to be deep. It just needs to be cool.

Workout progress.

Got a full morning work out in for the first time in about a week. It was a little hard to get motivated, but once the jump ropes were done I sort of accidentally started the rest of the work out. I just sort of moved from one to the other without really paying attention. Still, the workout was tough. Here's a run down of how it went, since I haven't done an exercise report yet.

Squats were fine, those are old hat now.

Rowing was similar.

Pushups: it blows my mind that I can do 2 full sets of 10 real pushups now. Crazy! I had to go onto my knees halfway through the third set and for the fourth set though.

Double Katana: This was tough. Like, borderline impossible tough. I actually found I could only do two when I was actually standing on the band. So I used the door mount at around mid-calf height and found that this made the exercise doable, but even so I couldn't quite complete the second two sets. So i did a fourth half set.

Shoulder Fly: Tough but doable. 3 x 12 reps.

V-Sits: After the first 3 or 4, each sit-up was like a punch to the gut. They totally knock the wind out of me in a similar fashion. I get sort of stuck exhaling until maybe a second or two after I'm horizontal again, then it's a purely reflexive long deep inhale. I also feel these in my lower back a lot more than other ab workouts we were doing. I think this is what causes the wind to get knocked out of me.

I had no idea that more core muscles were so week. I don't know if these sit ups should suck so much, but it definitely feels like they are effective.

Also, I really like that jump rope has become almost meditative for me. I get a nice even burn in my calves and thighs, but I don't get winded the way I did when I started. If you had told me when we started at just 250 jumps a day that I would eventually bang out 1000+ like it was nothing, I would have called you crazy.

Some General Thoughts

When this project started, the workouts were tough, but not nearly the beating they've become in the last week. Where once they left me feeling invigorated and pumped, now I tend to finish up as a puddle of Jello. Especially Planks. That shit is tough. I had no idea my core was so weak. I would say I hope those get easier, but knowing Patrick, he'll switch us to something even harder the moment it starts to become "not so tough."

Keeping up with food has also been a challenge. I've been successful, pretty much across the board, but it's hard to find the motivation to not just make the same things each day. I guess mostly, I'm blown away by how much I have to plan ahead to be able to eat the right things. Gone are the days of just saying to myself "I think I want X" and then going out to eat it.

However, it makes basic life a little more challenging, and a little more satisfying at the same time. It reminds me very much of Peace Corps in that way.

Dice and Badasses

After Patrick's recommendation two days ago that we use some sort of counting method that's not just keeping our sets in our head, I decided to use one of my primary geek tools to do the job. So pulled out a 10 sided die (or a d10 in the proper parlance) and rotated it to the appropriate number after each set. It was great, though not ideal for a few reasons.

1) Sometimes it takes me a while to find the next number. Sometimes as much as 15 seconds. That's just annoying.

2) It is small and easily rolls to the wrong number.

3) It is small and not terribly satisfying to denote a completed set.

So last night while I was at the local game shop for a Magic tournament, I picked up this baby:

You can see my computer mouse on the left there for some scale. This is a d20, but it's big, heavy, and the numbers are sequential. And I love the fact that I am using the ultimate nerd object in an activity so rarely associated with geekery.

Also, I want to share with you the true inspiration for my PCP, since Sean was kind enough to tell us the story of Rufus. I don't have any pictures or videos for you, but a passage from one of my favorite books, Snow Crash. If you are at all a fan of cyberpunk then you need to read this book. The main character is a sword fighting, computer hacking badass named Hiro Protagonist. This passage is just after he meets the main villain, Raven, and really nails the thought process that lead me to PCP:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

For me, those thoughts didn't end at 25.

Some quick boosts.

The other day I was doing my jump ropes in the parking lot behind my apartment, which is shared with the bicycle shop next door. My landlord (who also owns the bicycle shop) came out of the store and as he was leaving shouted to me "Your too fit!" I laughed lots.

Last night, as I was jumping rope again (same parking lot) I turned around to rotate the 10 sided die I use to count my sets (a gamer through and through) I was startled to realize I had an audience. 4 of the neighbor kids and their friends were all gathered on the neighbor's back porch and were watching me. They started asking me why I was jumping rope (the answer being so that I would be super healthy) and if it was hard. They were impressed by how many I was doing and offered to help keep count. They were probably all like 6-8 years old. It was pretty freakin' awesome to see the way they were clearly impressed. I love kids.

Today my roommate ordered chicken wings from Wings Over Burlington. I seriously used to order wings like once a week. It was bad. They are so delicious though. Anyway, I turned away to go up and finish my workout just as the roommate who ordered wings started saying things like "Oh, I could do it..." to the other roommate and as I rounded the stairs I heard one of them say, "Yeah, but that's some impressive discipline." It made me feel pretty badass.

Bottom line, we may not look different yet, but people notice.

Deviations

So last night, after I finished 3rd in my magic tournament, I was invited out to dinner with a bunch of my friends (including the tournament winner). While I had packed a lunch for the tournament, I had not planned this far ahead. Never one to be antisocial I joined them. We went to a Mexican restaurant and I figured "Hey, tacos are basically just some meat, veggies, and a carbohydrate container...I'm pretty good at eyeballing my grams now and I can just go easy on the cheese.

Well we went, I declined the margarita, and did not partake of the chips and salsa despite being ravenous at this point (waaaaaay to salty). I ordered pretty much standard tacos with chicken and a side of rice. Once it arrived it was clear to me that this was clearly not really good PCP food. Still, I was starving, and if I didn't eat now, it was going to be a while before I could get home and cook myself some food. So I ate what I considered to be enough to fill my dietary needs and no more. This left maybe a third of the food on the plate.

What really struck me, was how unimpressed I was by the dish. Everyone was saying this was the best Mexican food in Vermont (A claim which I give to Bernie's in Montgomery Center anyway) but After the first bite or two, the flavor seemed kind of, overdone? I don't really know how to explain it. But honestly, by about halfway through, I think broiled chicken and steamed veggies sounded more appetizing. Also, as we left, I noticed that I felt fuller than after a PCP meal, but less satisfied. I felt heavy. The food clearly did not sit as comfortably as one of my own, extremely unexciting, meals. It actually wasn't until I got home and started doing my workout for the day that it felt like any of that overstuffed feeling was starting to go away.

All in all it was a very interesting experience and I'm kind of glad I slipped up a little, cause really, I think it makes dining out like I used to less tempting.

A lot of eggs.

Workout today was good. 900 is a lot of jump ropes. I've been trying to break it down into sets of 200 instead of just 100 as that seems to make it go by a little faster. I can get through the first set usually without any trips. After that though, depends on how tired/eager I am. Somewhere around jump 400 I start to feel the burn in my calves, which incidentally, are already noticeably more defined than pre PCP.

The rest of the workouts are pretty smooth now. Not that I mean they are easy, they still burn like hell, but I feel like I have a good idea of what I'm doing, and I get a pretty constant burn through all of them. I bought a 5lb resistance band to do the davinci's and shoulder raisesas my 15lb one that I bought first, I couldn't even get one rep up to the appropriate height. I still use the heavier one for rowing/ovations/curls though. Speaking of which, the outside curls made that little bump on my elbow pop again. I found that if I just don't release the arm quite all the way down, it's fine. This also actually keeps the muscles more heavily engaged the whole time, so is probably better anyway. Later today I plan to install my new pull up bar, so I can start doing real pull ups.

As I was perusing my various Magic strategy sites after my workout (trying to play at the obscene standards that I hold myself to takes a lot of time outside the game as well) I stumbled across an interesting article. This appears to be the launch of a new column that I will probably follow quite eagerly. What struck me about this article is that it absolutely nails what I love about gaming, and why I feel it is relevant to far more than just my leisure hours.

One of the things that you'll notice is that he compares Magic, and games in general, to other meditative activities, such as yoga, as something that "stills the writhing mind." This is absolutely true for me. When I play magic, that's all I'm doing. My mind is not focused on any of my outside stresses, and is completely absorbed in playing the best game of magic I can play. This also happens to me in other games. When I play a fighting game that I know well (the best example for me is Soul Calibur II on Game Cube) my mind is almost completely blank. All the combos and maneuvers I execute are no longer coming from conscious thought and execution, that would be too slow to respond, but rather from some deeper intuition that does not take the time to verbalize itself in my mind. That is to say, there is no inner monologue, I am just in the game. This must be what people talk about when they refer to being "in the zone."

My point is that you should all at least look at this article because for me a lot of the things it points out, I see manifest when I am doing my workouts. I think I am also already seeing the effects of PCP in heightening my mental magic game. This weekend there is a sealed (that is you get a bunch of packs to build your deck from) Grand Prix Trial to earn some byes for Grand Prix Boston later this summer. I'll let you all know how it goes and if I think PCP helped me at all.

Also, I might finally be getting tired of eggs. They're still fine, but I'm nowhere near as excited to eat them as I was. 5 a day is a lot.