The Show of the Century

Yikes it's been almost a month since I last posted. Sorry about that. I've got to get better at keeping this updated.

Apparently the show on TV last night at around 5:30 was great. Probably epic. It was so profoundly interesting that I'm sure that it has changed the world. What was it? I have no idea, I wasn't paying attention, but Kylie was.

She was so enthralled and entranced by said show, that she decided that going to the bathroom and missing a few seconds of this monumental TV event was not worth the risk. So she peed herself in the chair and continued to watch.

Kylie will turn 3 in a couple of weeks and is fully potty trained so I can't imagine what must have been going through her head, although she has obviously inherited her Dad's trademark laziness. (Before you ask, I have never peed myself for TV as far as I can remember. Although with my DVR gone, I guess you never know...)

Her plan did backfire however due to the cleanup time and the 3 minute "timeout", so I guess she didn't fully weigh the risks, but that will come with time. It just cracks me up how things that we never even think of can be perfectly acceptable options for a 2 year old...

Tall Frozen Grass

Believe it or not, I had to mow the other night. We are trying to sell our house and the grass was just a little too tall and shabby looking to be left the way it was over the winter in case it doesn't snow much and we have people looking at our house.

You've heard of the wind chill factor? Well I would like to introduce you to the mower chill factor. It was about 40 degrees and I felt fine with just a fleece on outside before I got on the mower, however, once on and mowing, it felt every bit of 12.

In no time, I was running inside for the triple-thick toboggan, jacket and gloves. Yes you heard that right, I was mowing in at toboggan and gloves. At that point I was doing fine, but by the end of my 90 minute mowing adventure I was freezing again.

It doesn't help that I no longer have my famous tolerance for cold. Probably due to my lost weight. I shiver like a girl scout in haunted house now whenever it gets cold.

At least I now know that I'm officially done mowing for the year. I also know that I'm going to have to dress a lot more warmly when I go snowboarding this winter. Muscles look a lot better but that fat sure kept me warm.

Fitness Update

Things have changed a bit since my last update. I have officially started my bulking cycle so I'm hoping to start packing on the muscle. The workouts are very hard, but I suppose that that is the point.

I've stopped going to my interval training class after talking to a friend who endorsed working each muscle group in the gym twice a week. So it's 5 days of lifting every week. I'm starting week three and I'm already up to about 184 pounds (from 180), and since my body fat is down (see below) I have to assume that I'm building the muscle that I intended to. I took a picture of myself at the beginning of this cycle and I will take one at the end. If the difference is significant, I will consider posting them.

Current body fat

Body Fat 10/23	13.850%
Chest	12
Sub	14
Tri	8

The other thing that I'm doing is eating 6 meals a day. I'm trying to focus on eating 300 - 600 calorie meals at spaced intervals throughout the day to keep my metabolism up, as well as focusing on eating foods high in protein. I hope to get some protein shakes to supplement that as soon as possible.

I've come a long way since this time last year, and I still have a way to go, but I am definetly happy with the results up to this point.

Reading List

As you can see I have added a bit of info to the right column. You can now see what books I am currently reading courtesy of Bibliofile. It will automatically update as I finish a book and start a new one. Feel free to leave me a message if you are reading what I'm reading or have an opinion about the book.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I have been very busy.

Hard Core

"Core" is the big buzzword these days in the gym. If you are doing any kind of excercise at all right now you have probably had someone tell you about a great excercise for your core, or had someone tell you how doing an excercise a certain way will be great for your core.

But what I haven't heard is one single person saying...

"Hey check out the core on that chick/dude"

or

"Excuse me but I was just admiring your core from across the room..."

or

"She/He has a nice personality, but man what a great core"

I guess the ever core-conscious among us are just wasting our time. Maybe from now on I'll just start doing ab and lower back excercises instead, since I hate to be trend follower anyway....

Beam Me Up Scotty

If you regularly read Scott Adam's blog as I do, you will know that he harbors, a generally funny desire to rile up his readers so that they will post funny comments that give him more fodder. He also tends to loosely hide his opinion that anyone that is religious is an idiot. I don't really take that personally, but at the same his points can sometimes be a little silly.

Take his post over the weekend for instance. He asks the question:

If a man goes into the woods and pokes a bear with a stick, and the bear kills the man, whose fault is it?

Clearly the man, for not understanding the nature of the bear (Scott's point and I agree)

Next he suggests this:

Now substitute an irrational human being for the bear. The guy with the stick knows he’s dealing with an irrational and potentially violent person, and he pokes him with the stick anyway. Just like the bear, the irrational guy kills the guy who poked him.

Clearly things have changed. Surely the guy that does the poking is stupid to provoke this person, but the irrational man is still responsible for his actions as a self aware human being and thus he is at fault for the killing in my opinion. (again I think I am agreeing with Scott in this case)

Now Scott tries to hook us by asking this:

Okay, now suppose that the irrational guy is a specific kind of irrational guy – a literal believer in his faith. This is not an insult to the religious because even the Pope endorses the view that faith does not spring from rational thought. And let’s say this particular faith says that if ye poketh me with a sharpeth object, woe unto you, for I shall killeth!

I believe that Scott thinks that the situation has now changed in his loosely veiled attempt to take a jab at George W. Bush. Personally, I don't think that the situation has changed at all. The killer is no more justified by his religion to break the law than the irrational guy in step two. The provoker is just as stupid, but in the end, poking someone with a stick and murder are two very different crimes, and in no way could the cause justify the effect regardless of the killer's beliefs. This person would still be tried and convicted, regardless of their religion.

I'm not exactly sure why Scott is trying to lead us down this path, but it seems that to me that he was trying to trap a religious person into feeling like they had to be ok with murder because of the religious man's rights to his beliefs. We all have the right to believe what we want, but no one has the right to kill someone just for being annoying.

The other possibility is that he was simply saying that America is stupid for provoking the middle east and sticking are noses where they don't belong. I don't totally agree with our presence in Iraq, but at the same time, hind sight is 20/20 and at the time it seemed like we needed to be there, so I won't fault the administration for taking action, although I don't agree with how they did it.

Agree, disagree? What do you think?

UPDATE

Kevin a fellow Dilbert blog reader, suggested this:

"Obviously it's the stick's fault. It shouldn't have allowed itself to be picked up, much less sharpened."

Let's See How Wrong I Can Be.....

It's that time again. Here are my NFL picks for this season. We can look back and make fun of these later....

AFC Division Winners
Miami
Cincinnati
Indianapolis
San Diego

AFC Wildcards
Pittsburgh
Denver

AFC Super Bowl Team
Indianapolis

NFC Division Winners
NY Giants
Chicago
Tampa Bay
Seattle

NFC Wildcards
Dallas
Carolina

NFC Super Bowl Team
Seattle

Super Bowl Winner
Seattle