Evil Stick Blog

Still in “back-off” mode to ensure I don’t damage myself. I had wanted to start working out again this week, but due to some chaos in evil stick land I’m going to have to continue to take it slow. As it is, though, I’ll still be staying very active as we make improvements on the house this week and hit the still-packed stuff with a vengeance.

Starting next week, I’m going to start everything over. I’ll kick off the pushups from week 1 again, doing those on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ll then do the situps on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Part of the problem I think I ran in to is that I was doing the pushups and situps concurrently on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, possibly overtaxing my system. I’ll give this approach a couple weeks, and see how it goes. If it all goes well, then full steam ahead.

I’m also still on my enforced absence from the treadmill. I figure once the weather starts to warm up in March I’ll begin actually walking outside. in the meantime I don’t feel comfortable using the treadmill as it’s the beast that caused my problems in the first place. I may use it to do some walking, but I definitely won’t be running indoors for a while (if at all).

On a side note, as I was eating breakfast this morning (corn flakes, woo!) I remembered a snack I used to enjoy back in high school - put corn flakes in a cup, add whipped cream, then mix and enjoy! Ahh the halcyon days of youth, when I could eat whatever I wanted without fear of reprisal. Back then I had a theory that I wouldn’t start to get fat until I started working out heavily, as if I didn’t have a lot of muscle I wouldn’t have any muscle to convert to fat due to inactivity. Naive, but it has a certain ring to it, I think.

Did my pushups and crunches this morning. Hit a max of 19 and 18, respectively. This workout seems to be a lot harder on my core than the pushups alone (I know, duh, right?), meaning I feel more soreness the next day, but I do definitely get a bit of an endorphin lift after I finish a set. This is the kind of thing that I was looking for with running, but never received. After running I’d feel exhausted and I’d hurt all over. After doing the pushups and crunches I feel exhausted, but I also get a nice rush that helps to mellow out my morning commute.

Speaking of running, I’ve been taking the week off and, so far, I think my legs have been getting better. It could be the placebo effect, but it definitely feels like the hurt less each day. My left knee isn’t doing that random “here’s pain!” thing anymore, and my shins are definitely better than they were. Hopefully I’l lbe ready to take the torch up again on Monday, ’cause my fat ass needs to go.

I’ve been trying to think about how I got into this situation in the first place, and to me it’s very simple - I became less active. I weighed between 175 and 185 through most of college, and only really started to gain weight once I moved back to the Chicago area. I didn’t get the freshman fifteen - it was more like the new grad thirty. The basic gist is that while I was in school I was at least moderately active. I’d walk to class (sometimes covering as much as three miles a day), I’d take martial arts classes two or three times a week, I’d have marching band in the fall - scoff all you like, but it’s a great way to lose weight; and I was just generally up and about. I’d eat whatever I wanted, and never really see the effects. Especially when drum corps came around - junior corps is the best weight loss program on the planet.

Then I moved to Park Ridge. I still did a lot of walking as I was going for my master’s at the time, walking from apartment to train to class to train to apartment, but pretty much everything else was cut out. On top of that, my eating habits didn’t change. Thus, weight gain. From a fairly fit 185 I made my way up to 228 over the next couple years. Sure, I did things to try and get myself in shape - I created my own kind of morning workout that combined martial arts drills that I could remember with general fitness activities, or used the cheap elliptical we got from Wal-Mart that broke after four months - but I never really stuck to it. I didn’t let that stop me from eating, though.

Basically, the answer to weight loss for me is two-fold. First, I need to be more active. Second, I probably need to consider cutting back on what I eat. I have a sweet tooth (and the cavities to prove it) - I rarely meet a candy I don’t like (except for anything with coconut, and those lame-ass banana runts) - and my favorite foods are spaghetti and deep-dish pizza. Not exactly a low-carb diet.

When I started this thing, I told myself I wasn’t going to change how I eat in a substantive manner. In addition to the above, I find most vegetables disgusting (or, at the least, unpalatable), so a diet is doomed to fail from the start. I still hold to that somewhat, as I think - scratch that, I know - that any diet I try to follow will be an exercise in futility. Instead, I’m opting for a bit of portion control. Basically, I’m not actually changing what I eat, just trying to make a conscious effort to eat less of it. I know this isn’t the best way to go about it, but hopefully I’ll see some gain (or loss, depending on how you look at it ) just from eating less overall. I haven’t really been diligent about this so far, because the main goal of all this exercising stuff has always been to get in shape, following the “weight loss is a symptom of a healthy lifestyle” approach. I recognize, though, that in the end I’ll probably need to be more serious in my approach to food. I’ll tackle that bridge when I come to it, though.

I started the second week of “take it easy ’cause my knee is a bitch” this week, and after 25 minutes of walking at 3 MPH my knee started hurting again. So I’m gonna take the rest of the week off (no treadmill for me of any kind), then give it a shot next week. If my knee keeps complaining I’ll just need to find time to see a doctor about it. This is really freakin’ annoying. I don’t like running much to begin with, but just as I finally start making progress my body decides to rebel for no good reason whatsoever.

Started doing both pushups (with brand new kung-fu grip action! Actually, just slower and with better form) and crunches. Managed 20 and 15 respectively in my first exhaustion test. Hopefully I continue to see improvement with the pushups - really every week but week 6 was better than the last. And if this works for crunches I’ll be able to expand the program to other exercises. We’ll see, though - don’t want to get too into it before I have any results.

I start week 2 of baritone-holding this evening. i think I’ll start doing that in the morning while I’m taking a break from running/walking, since otherwise I have no real reason to wake up early on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

3 more weeks until open house. I feel like I’m in cram mode for an upcoming exam. I’ve been neglecting actually practicing my horn in favor of exercising and writing an ensemble piece, so I need to buckle down for the next couple weeks and get my chops back in shape. I started last week, but I’ve got a distance to go.

So I was hoping that I could post this a week ago. I recently finished the 100 pushups program, having completed week 6. I was all psyched - I’d actually stuck with this program for six weeks! My arms feel stronger, and look larger, and I feel more fit as a result. Then I tried to take my final exhaustion test - I tried to do 100 pushups. I got to 58 before I had to drop my knees and rest. Then I did 12 more, then rest, then 17, then rest, then 7, then rest, then 6. Total = 100, but not consecutive by any stretch of the imagination. So I figured hey, mebbe my arms are just tired, I’ll try it again on Thursday. Thursday I crapped out at 60, then finished out the hundred in a couple sets. So I said to myself “Listen, self - you’re prolly just tired. I mean you ran yesterday before your test, and you ran on Monday before your first test, so give it a couple days. You run tomorrow, so take Saturday off and try again on Sunday.” Thinking the logic was sound, I did just that - did my running on Friday, and did pretty much nothing stressful on Saturday. I woke up Sunday morning and said “Ok, today’s the day.” Stretched a bit, started, then faltered at 70. Rested for 20 seconds, then pounded out 20 more. Rested for 30 seconds, then did the final 10. So yeah, I did 100 pushups each time, but I have yet to do 100 consecutively, which is a problem.

I basically have two choices at this point. One, I can repeat week 6 and hope for the best. This is the most appealing option, but it doesn’t help to assuage some of my nagging doubts. The other option (option two for those playing along with our home game) is to recognize the cause of my failure and start over again at week 1. Basically I’m pretty sure that the reason I’m failing now is because I let my form slip. Instead of going all the way down (arms perpendicular, chest an inch off the ground, etc) I’ve been going only halfway, maybe 3/4ths of the way down. This is definitely a taxing exercise, and I went from being able to do 23 of these in a sitting to managing 70, but it is not the proper form. I’m sure somewhere along the line I’m neglecting needed improvement in my arms, pecs, back, shoulders, somewhere, and that lack of improvement in that area is prolly what’s impacting my ability to “do the hundred”. I’m not an exercise guy (regardless of what my blog has been saying for the past several weeks :-P), but I do recognize when I’ve been doing something half-assed and need to start over.

So basically, here’s the plan for the pushups. I’ll take the rest of the week off, then start again on Sunday with my initial exhaustion test. This time I’ll be focusing on proper form (going all the way down, coming all the way up), and doing them slowly so that I don’t rely upon momentum or anything to do the work for me. I’d also been putting off modifications to this regimen, as I also want to adapt this program to manage 100 situps consecutively, and I’ve got some upper-body work I’d been planning on starting with an end goal of being able to hold my horn up for half an hour. I basically put these off because I didn’t want to overstress my arms or anything, but from now on I’m going to add those workouts in. It’ll prolly mean getting up earlier, but it’s something I’m gonna have to do if next year’s Kiltie season is going to be my best yet.

Now, the dreaded running. I finished repeating week 4 last week, after having repeated week 3 as well. I felt pretty good after Friday’s run, so I moved on to week 5 today. To get a feel for what I’ve been up to, here’s a comparison:

Week 4:

• Walk 5 minutes
• Run 3 minutes
• Walk 1.5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 2.5 minutes
• Run 3 minutes
• Walk 1.5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes

Week 5, day 1:

• Walk 5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 3 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 3 minutes
• Run 5 minutes

So I did day 1 of week 5 today. Everything was going pretty good. The first set of 5 went ok, and the second set of 5 took a bit of a toll on me. The third set of 5 was pretty challenging, up until about the 3 minute mark. I’d been running with some intense complaints from my shin muscles, my side, and being short of breath, when all of a sudden for just about half a minute everything resolved itself. My shin muscles unknotted just a bit, my breathing slowed down, and my side stopped bothering me so much. I was able to finish out the final 5 minutes feeling pretty good (but still tired and sore). As I started a warmdown walk, my shin cramp (which had gone down but hadn’t necessarily disappeared) reasserted itself, and then a new pain appeared - out of nowhere my knee started to hurt. It’s only one knee, much as it’s only one shin that bothers me (my left knee and left shin, in case you’re wondering). The knee was actually somewhat painful until I got into the shower, where it seemed to get better. As it sits now, at my desk at work, it’s ok other than the slight twinge which I usually get after running.

Basically I’m concerned. I seem to hit a milestone today in encountering what I can only assume is some kind of second wind, and was looking forward to the rest of the week. On the other hand, this is the first time throughout these past 6 weeks that my knees have complained. My shins have always been kind of sore, but not so much that they concern me, but my knees are usually pretty quiet. I’m basically wondering if I’m overdoing it, and if I need to back it down a bit. Maybe I need to take the rest of the week off, or spend it walking instead of running - I’m not sure how to progress. I think I’ll need to see how it feels on Wednesday, then determine if I want to give running on it another shot. In the meantime, I’m definitely making progress along the running track. It’s just kind of frustrating that at every turn my body seems to want to find any way it possibly can to weasel out of all this effort.

On a side note, does anyone who run also drive a manual transmission vehicle? If so, do you notice a tendency in your clutch foot to experience more pain when running? When I was doing drum corps I noticed that if I drove myself to camp in stop-and-go traffic my clutch foot would cramp more easily after backwards marching for a while, whereas if I didn’t have to drive or if the drive was easy I wouldn’t have that problem. Anyone have an idea on how to resolve it?

5 weeks of running, and I finally managed to make it through week 4 of the program. So far, I’ve essentially stuck to this exercise thing for over a month. I’m feelin’ pretty good about myself, even if that demon fucking scale has yet to show any improvement whatsoever. I haven’t changed my eating habits much, just added the working out on top of what I already do. I wasn’t gaining weight before, so logic says that my increased calorie demands should result in at least some reduction of weight. Ah well, fuck it. I feel stronger, more fit. I guess that’s something.

Week 4 of the running program just kicked my ass, plain and simple. Even today, after a week of the same regimen, I just barely made it through - fighting cramps in my calves and a stitch in my side. I’m debating whether I should move on - while today was hard as hell I still managed to finish, and even today’s exhaustion was better than wednesday’s and monday’s near death. So I am improving, but am I improving fast enough? I think I might benefit from repeating this week again, as I don’t want to end in failure because I tried to move to fast. On the other hand, I don’t want to keep repeating weeks because if I keep giving in whenever I hit a challenging spot I’ll never improve. Conundrum. I’m leaning towards repeating the week, but I’ll make the final decision on Monday when I run again. This week was hard as hell, and given that I barely made it through today it’s prolly a signal that I’m not as fit as I was hoping I was. I dunno - I’m torn here.

Pushups got suddenly harder, as well. I’m making my way through week 6, barely meeting the minimums. I’ve got my last day tomorrow, then all that’s left is the final exhaustion test. I’ve been seeing real progress with this program (including an increase in the size of my arms that I wasn’t expecting ), so if nothing else i can wholeheartedly recommend this program to everyone. Next week I’ll start the move to the baritone, and keep the pushups in maintenance mode (doing 100 pushups 3 times a week should be sufficient - I mean, if I can do them why shouldn’t I?). Everything upper-body should be on track for open house on December 6th and 7th.

We picked up Wii Fit the other day. So far it’s an interesting product, but definitely worth the money for the tracking software alone. It’s not a substitute for a true exercise program, I think, but it’s definitely a way to get people off the couch and up and moving.

Now, on a different subject, I want to vent a bit. I just want to express my extreme hatred of all things advertising and advertising-related. One of the most annoying things in the world to me is people who make arguments that are incorrect, and this is the entire point of advertising. The goal of an advertising campaign is to take a product that most people have done just fine without, and convince them that the product, which they may or may not have heard of before, is worth their time and money. The problem is that, with few exceptions, there is ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING REASON to change your patterns to obtain this product. We’re inundated by idiotic ads that lampoon traditional gender roles in a pathetic and worthless attempt to appeal to some sort of sense of common fucking perception that perpetuates damaging and pointless stereotypes. We have the most minor of awards trotted out in front of us as if it’s the nobel fucking prize, and what should be a minor achievement (such as getting ADA approval, which is a fucking REQUIREMENT for marketing your product) is held up as the paragon of achievement. Illogical, bullshit statistics are presented as fact, and then skewed all over tarnation to demonstrate an invalid point. Let’s take a look at one of these statements:

• 9 out of 10 dentists prefer Asscream toothpaste over other leading brands

Seems innocuous, right? It’s got the veneer of credibility - they tested it among dentists! And it’s got statistical data, so it must be true! Well here’s a short list of how this result could have been manipulated to make you think these incorrect thoughts:

• How many dentists did they ask? Asking ten dentists to judge a product is a pretty fucking small sample size
• What if they asked 100 dentists, then just picked ten out of the group? If 91 said the toothpaste sucked, and 9 said it was “preferred,” you can very easily get a subset of 10 dentists where 9 of them prefer the product being hawked like a cheap taco
• What were their options? Did they have a choice between Asscream’s toothpaste and Dongmonster mouthwash? Was it a battle of Asscream Tartar Control (now with sprinkles) against the cheapest fucking version of the competitor’s brand they could find?
• How was the test conducted? Was it a true double-blind study, or did some one just walk in and say “Dude, check this toothpaste out, it’s awesome. Stop using that other crap! They kill babies to make it, you know”
• Who conducted this test? Was there a truly random sampling involved, or did they just browse store receipts?

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my meandering point. One radio advertisement claims that their product must work because it was HANDED OUT IN GIFT BAGS at international film festivals. In other words, they’re giving it away for free, and then using the fact that they can’t sell their own fucking garbage to claim that it is somehow more effective. Oh, but wait, they mentioned INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS! Stars! Hollywood! Glamour! I wanna be rich too! Bullshit. I bet they held a party at the fucking owner’s house and showed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon while masturbating to the thought of the money they’d make off of idiots that don’t know any better.

Seriously, does anyone fall for this shit? Can anyone reading this name a single time since they turned 17 that advertising has affected their purchase? I mean, are there actually people walking the aisles at Jewel and saying “Well, this Skippy peanut butter looks pretty good but Choosy Moms choose Jiff, and I’m pretty choosy”? I mean, what kind of logic is that? People who take forever to make a fucking decision settle on a product that’s marginally different from those occupying the same shelf? Give me a fucking break. Everything you’re going to find in a store will be the same overpriced shit, and will taste/look/work just as well as the bullshit next to it. Don’t forget that the reason these fuckers advertise is because they make a product so shitty that people are choosing competing products - they’re spending this money to overcome their own inability to make a decent product in the hopes that some poor sap will change their purchasing patterns and move away from the tried and true to sample the new and neglected.

Advertisers spend their entire lives lying to people in the hope of convincing them to part with money that would be better spent elsewhere, and people the world over are being subtly corrupted by their fucking bullshit tactics. Kids these days can recognize individual brands or ad campaigns more readily than they can list off states of the union, or identify presidents, or name a single fucking supreme court case. A generation of people with short attention spans has been spawned by television advertising that forcibly divests someone’s interest every 7 minutes so that more loud noises can be played in support of more worthless products. And advertisers torture you, too - how many times can you recall that you had a pointless fucking jingle for some stupid-ass product stuck in your head? When that happens I don’t want to purchase a damn thing, I want to castrate the motherfucker involved in ruining my day by making my brain wildly whistle a stupid corporate mantra.

Every commercial is worse than the last, every “argument” presented is so riddled with logical fallacy that I want to smack people with a basic philosophy textbook, every name is dumber than the previous, and so on, and so on. Celebrities trying to make a quick buck pop up out of nowhere to sell some worthless trinket that has “changed their life”. Wilford-fucking-Brimley continually mispronounces Diabetes - THERE’S NO FUCKING U IN THAT WORD, ASSHOLE! Sports stars croon about soup as if it’s the panacea for all ills. When does it stop?!

People wonder why I can’t stand television, or why I’ve mostly stopped listening to the radio. This is it. I’m tired of being sold, I’m tired of being marketed to, I’m tired of feeling like an ass because everyone else around me has bought hook, line, and sinker into the latest bullshit holiday and is surprised that I don’t love them enough to spend some green on trinkets they don’t need. I’m tired of watching entertainment that I enjoy only to have the volume change automatically to “pay the bills”.

Which brings me to another point. WHY IS THERE ADVERTISING ON CABLE TELEVISION?! I’m paying for this service, so they have no excuse. Broadcast television, sure, they don’t sell a product so they need a revenue stream to remain on-the air. I hate the method, but I can agree with the argument behind it. But if I’m paying a hundred fucking dollars a month to watch cable television, why should I then have to sit through more advertisements? Where does my monthly bill go? What the fuck is the point of charging for it if the amount they charge isn’t enough?!

I should stop myself before I go on much longer.

Finished Week 4, day 1. It was hard. I mean trying-to-pass-a-physics-exam-using-a-retarded-monkey-as-a-calculator hard. I assume it’s a combination of things that makes moving my bulk for those last 5 minutes more of a challenge, but hopefully I improve more quickly after this. Spending last week repeating week 3 might have helped some. I’m starting to wonder if I’m using the right speed settings. Right now I run at 5.5 MPH and jog/brisk walk at 2.5 MPH. Is that an appropriate speed? If I had run at 6.5, or even 8, would this whole thing be easier? Hell if I know. All I can really use to judge is that regardles of it being too fast or too slow, it’s definitely kicking my ass. Exhaustion = progress, and exhaustion I have in spades. Doing some research online, it looks like most people quit the couch-to-5k program at this point (either week 4 or week 5), so hopefully I’ll be able to push through it and not be a failure. Only time, and my own lackluster morning dedication, will tell.

I’m also still struggling to find the ultimate running distraction. I set aside the drum corps today for Rocky, and while it’s better at letting me establish my own pattern it can also be kind of slow going/not very motivational. I suppose I could just run Madison’s ‘95 show on a loop and be done with that problem, but eventually even that awesomeness would get old. I think I’ll stick with the movie for this week, though, if for no other reason than its metaphorical value.

Pushups - completed week 5 yesterday. Exhaustion test this evening, then starting week 6 tomorrow. This program I can get behind, and whole-heartedly recommend. I’ve come a long way in 5 short weeks, and the results are impressive. I worry a bit about whether or not I’m using proper form (I’m not, at least I don’t think I am), but then I realize I don’t care because even if I wasn’t using proper form, whatever it was I was doing was both exhausting and something that I couldn’t do very well 5 weeks ago. Onward and upward!

finished pushups week 4 on Saturday. Still getting harder, but I’m managing to complete the tasks set to me. I’m due for another exhaustion test - I didn’t do it yesterday because I wanted to give my arms time to recover I’ll most likely get to it this evening, which should be interesting seeing as I ran myself especially hard this morning.

Speaking of which, I started week 4 of running this morning, and kind of hit a wall. The program is segments of running interspersed with segments of walking. I run at 5.5 MPH, and walk at 2.5 (it’s supposed to be a brisk walk). The program today was supposed to resemble the following:

• Walk for 5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes
• Walk for 2.5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes

But my program ended up resembling the following:

• Walk for 5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes
• Walk for 2.5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes, barely making it through
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 4 minutes at a slower (5.0) pace
• Give up and shamble along like a zombie for 4 minutes, trying to catch my breath and deal with the stitch in my side

Not exactly what I call a successful effort. So I’m gonna knock myself back a level and finish the rest of the week as if it was week 3. Hopefully I’ll then be able to come out stronger next Monday, and not have 5 minutes of running kick my ass as much. This adjustment will have me running the full 30 minutes by the end of November, which should be pretty acceptable (though I shudder to think of running the day after Thanksgiving with all that digesting food in my stomach).

I’m also going to start level 1 of adapting programs for uses not originally intended. Specifically, I intend to use the running program to train my arms to hold a baritone properly. For those of you who play, you know the hell that can be brought on by a vindictive tech under the guise of “strengthening the arms,” and for those of you who don’t, just take a gallon of milk and hold it about a foot in front of your face with both arms (gallon of milk = about 8 pounds, baritone = about 8 pounds (actually closer to 7)). If you’re anything like me, your arms will prolly start shaking within 5 minutes or so. Ideally the pushups alone will combat this (it’s essentially why I started the program), but I want to make sure all my bases are covered. Looking at the program I use for running, a thought occurred to me - I could probably adapt that program for holding my baritone. If I could hold my horn at 10 degrees above parallel for half an hour, that’d be a Good Thing ™, if for no other reason than I could then simply smile at the aforementioned vindictive brass techs.

My scale still sucks, but it did go down. I think it’s ’cause I had a small dinner, though. Now sitting at 223.6. 38.6 pounds remaining until I’m no longer a fat ass. It’s a motivating factor, to be certain, but the downward march of the scale is too undependable to use as a true measurement of fitness (at least from my perspective).

In case anyone’s wondering why I’m pushing hard on all this stuff now, I thought I’d present one facet of my motivation:

I’m the guy in the blue shorts and shirt, next to the smallest and most hardcore bari player on the planet. I’m standing on a slight rise, here, so the conditions are not necessarily ideal, but one look at my horribly arched back (pushing out my pudge for the entire world to see) and my horn angle that’s actually dipping below level is frustrating. Frustrating because this wasn’t an early-season rehearsal - this was DCA weekend, meaning that I’d been holding that damn horn all summer and this was all I could manage. Unforgivable. This will not happen next year.

Prolly not though. It tends to vacillate wildly for no readily apparent reason. Either I’m losing fat one week then gaining muscle mass the next, or I’m going on some sort of secret binge that I’m not really aware of, then purging for another week. I know I’m not supposed to really focus on that particular number, but what can I say - I liked the days when I was 185 MUCH more than I like these days where I’m 226. It’s been nearly a month with all this stuff and I’ve barely seen any improvement in that particular number.

Finished week two of running, and started week 3 yesterday. I’m wondering when I’ll have the epiphany that so many running websites talk about that essentially means I’ll start to enjoy running. As it stands now running makes me ridiculously exhausted, and doesn’t really seem to be something enjoyable yet. On the plus side, though, there has been some progress. When I started this running deal I was having trouble managing several sets of 60-seconds-at-a-time running. Now I’m able to manage multiple 3-minute sessions of running (interspersed with shorter 90-second sessions). This is definitely something I wasn’t able to do consistently before, I think - not without getting so worn out that I couldn’t do it again. Of course this could all be in my mind - I’m pretty sure sections of the Kilties show were more strenuous than the running I’m currently doing. That’s really my only complaint with the couch-to-5k program so far: once you finally get a handle on the requirements for a week, it’s time to move on to the next one. I feel like I’m never really reaching a level where I can say that I feel good about my progress because I always feel like my ass has been kicked when I step off the treadmill.

I’m also on week 4 of the pushup program, and this has also grown more challenging. I’m doing many more pushups per day than I was before (up to 110 last week, and I’m still working on today’s total as I write this post), and my consecutive number has definitely increased (from 23 to 40), but it’s getting harder and harder to complete the required number of pushups each day. I’ve either hit a wall where my body really needs to work to improve, or I haven’t been working as hard at the prior weeks as I thought I was. I’m going to assume it’s the former and push on, and if I don’t do so well on my next exhaustion test (coming up on Sunday) then lesson learned - I’ll just have to repeat prior weeks until I’m happy with the result.

I’m still sticking to the exercising, starting week three of the pushups tomorrow and having started week two of running today. I almost lost it this past weekend, though, and over the last couple days of last week since I had some pretty harsh deadlines at work (I was at work from 10 AM Thursday until 4 AM Friday, then back at work at 10 AM Friday) that cut into my exercising. But I was able to make everything up, if not quite on the days that I had hoped I would. I’ve now had to do pushups on the days that I run twice, and I can’t quite say it’s pleasant.

Running is starting to be more of a chore, I think. I put on some drum corps in the background to keep me moving and motivated, but after a certain point I’m just staring at the timer, watching the seconds tick slowly away. Plus, running is actually really challenging for me. I pushed myself a bit too hard on Saturday morning, and I’m still kind of feeling the effects (even this morning). Of course the stepped nature of the program means that once I’ve adjusted to the program for one week it changes so that I have a whole new wall of pain to deal with. I’m still sticking with it, but it’s really starting to wear on me. I’ve just started week 2 and already I can’t wait for week 9 (which is the official end of the running program).

Also, my brain’s been pondering what happens once I finish these two programs. Do I do 100 pushups three times a week and run a 5K every other day just for maintenance? I’m especially interested in if I can turn these programs into training regimens for other muscle groups. For example - does the pushup program work just as well for crunches? Or how about calf raises? Or, maybe the running program can be adapted to help me hold the horn, and after 9 weeks I can hold a baritone at playing position for a half an hour. I would really like to try one or both of these, and then continue to carry these actions on through the season. I suspect that after a while lack of variety will ultimately kill my newfound fitness, since I’ll just get bored and start falling behind.

Me needs motivation, I think. I dunno, though - I think I may just be overthinking all this garbage. In any case, I do have marked progress to show. I took my second pushup exhaustion test today, which basically means “how many can you do at once?” My first test resulted in 23 consecutive pushups. This morning I finished 40 before calling it quits for the good of my muscles. That’s an improvement that I can be happy about, seeing as it came after only 2 weeks. Makes me excited for the remaining 4 weeks of the program.

“My fellow Americans, if the government doesn’t spend even more money that it doesn’t have, then the people of this great country will not be able to continue spending money that they don’t have.” - paraphrasing of Bush’s speech I found on the web

Some people wonder why I throw my vote away as a Libertarian. The above is an effective summary. Republicans want to take your hard work and give it to the upper class. Democrats want to take your hard work and give it to the lower class. Libertarians don’t want either. At least, in theory - we all know how pulpit and practice differ vastly. Above all, I want to see a smaller government. I don’t think that government should be involved in retirement planning, saving for a rainy day (a la unemployment), health care, or pretty much anything that involves my money going to some government program that benefits the masses.

Of course such a system could not exist under the current legal landscape - health care prices are ridiculous because medical malpractice suits are through the roof (not to mention people gaming the system for maximum usage of benefits, or protection of corporate assets through patents and copyrights sending the price of medicine skyrocketing), the government needs to fund social security simply because it’s still taking money out of our paychecks to cover it (thus imposing an obligation on them to at least cover their current commitment), and revamping the welfare system would most likely cause considerable civil unrest in lower-income areas of the country. However, that does not mean that we have to use these facts as a basis for the continual erosion of personal responsibility. Bailout? Fuck no. Fuck them. Fuck the government. Let the markets crash. Let the banks fail. Sure, it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt a lot. But in the end it’ll be for the better.

Bail out the banks now without sufficient consequences for those who helped to cause the issue, and they’ll just go ahead and do it again in a different way. Bail out the borrowers who didn’t read their mortgage agreements, and they’ll expect the government to solve all of their problems and take responsibility for their poor decisions (never mind how much this happens already). The school of hard knocks is still the best educational institution we have, and we’re long overdue for the start of next semester.

I find it patently offensive, not to mention morally repugnant, that because I chose to not only recognize the housing bubble for what it was, but to also only purchase a house I could safely afford when I finally elected to purchase property, that I now have to help out all the morons who said “Let’s give a mortgage to everyone, then diversify the debt obligation to the market at large,” or “ooh, looky, a big house. I’m an amerricun, i DESERVE a big house! I’ll just sign these papers without reading them closely.”

Yes, I know, the entire economic system is in a certain degree of jeopardy due to the actions of those mentioned above. I also know that if I default on $10,000 dollars it’s my problem, but if I default on $10,000,000,000 it’s society’s problem. Everything’s a complex tapestry - I get it. That does not mean that I’m happy about it, and since I’m kind of a dick I’d be more than happy to sit through the financial shitstorm that would hit us if we did nothing because I DID WHAT WAS RIGHT. People need to be smacked good and hard in the pocket book before they start to take notice. Bail ‘em out and they’ll just do it again. Let millions eat ramen for a while, let every investment bank crash and burn. Whatever emerges from the ashes will be a damn sight better than what we have now, and hopefully tempered with a bit of real-world pain and loss the American people will wise up to their lifestyles and learn how to save again.

The days of “Spend as much as you can to save the economy” are over. Most Americans are leveraged so heavily that even one extra bill will throw their finances all out of wack. I read somewhere that your average American carries $5,000 in credit card debt. This cannot continue forever. After a certain point we should only spend what we can afford to spend. Credit cards are not a form of income augmentation, they are ways of either solving an emergency problem with funds you have (but can’t procure at the moment) or of admitting failure as you buy something you just can’t afford.

My generation’s been taught to spend without consequence. Don’t question, just consume. Credit cards are endemic to our society - the newest version of the Monopoly board game ships with fake credit cards and a reader which have replaced the traditional paper money. Some may say that this is a sign of changing times, and that electronic currency is more prevalent nowadays. I say that Parker Brothers is doing a disservice to the youth of the world. By moving away from paper money, they are taking away one of the strengths of the game of monopoly - that you need to always keep in mind how much money you have available. Swiping a plastic card reduces the import of the purchase experience - you’re no longer paying out your hard-earned funds for a chance to procure an asset or utilize a service, you’re now transferring numbers about to get you what you want.

Maybe I’m just taking the mindset a little too far, but from my perspective the shift from a cash and check-based method of currency exchange to one where the swiping of cards can result in a usurous Non-Sufficient Funds “loan” represents a further erosion of the responsibility of the consumer. If I run out of cash in my wallet, I can’t buy anything else. If I use a debit card, it hits my account but my bank will still allow me to go over-balance (and charge me $30 for the pleasure). If I use a credit card, I delay the pain I feel from my purchases. By doing so I dissociate the purchase of a gigantic television from the financial pain I feel six months down the road as a result of buying something so ludicrously expensive. “Man, this expensive-ass TV is killing my funds” becomes “Man, this credit card bill is through the roof!”

Ugh. No more to say on this. Rant mode over - on to other stuff
Did week 2 day 2 of the pushups program today - got up to 30, so yay for me! If anyone wants to follow my progress in real-time, check out http://www.pushupslogger.com/plog/show_user?user_id=35 . Also did day 2 of running yesterday. I’ve been playing drum corps while I run to give me something to focus on and to motivate me. It tends to make the workouts seem like they take less time. Yesterday was easier than the first day, I think, but I definitely still have a long way to go. That, and I’m 97.3% certain that I need new running shoes. I plan on obtaining a pair as a reward for completing week 2. In the meantime, I’ll just kinda deal with the issues as they arise - I did two seasons of drum corps in these shoes, I think they’ll last another 9 days.