Month: June 2019

Happy anti-Christmas

television with image of newscasters surrounded by Christmas decorations
Cast of KLKN Channel 8 Eyewitness News, Dec. 2, 2008

If my math is correct (barring a fencepost error because counting is hard), June 26, 2019 at Noon, will mark the halfway point between Christmas 2018 and Christmas 2019. What better way to celebrate than to do nothing special?

In December of 2008, the team of the KLKN Channel 8 Eyewitness News invited viewers to send in pictures of their Christmas decorations and each broadcast they would select one of the pictures to be shared on live television. I think they called it the “Spread the Holiday Cheer” promotion.

I didn’t have any decorations of my own but I did have this grimy TV which would show the decorations on the set of the Channel 8 news so on 2008-12-02 I took a picture of the TV showing their 5:00 PM broadcast since their set decorations displayed on my TV were my actual decorations displayed in my room. I sent it in hoping that they would select my picture of holiday cheer to share with their viewers in Lincoln and the surrounding areas thinking it would be totally meta and funny and definitely not stalkerish and psycho. Unfortunately my “cheer” was not selected in favor of some little baby wearing felt reindeer antlers and I’m pretty sure my email address was blacklisted from the klkntv.com servers to boot.

Years later I saw Rod Fowler (the anchor on the left in the picture above) behind me in line at the checkout at the now defunct Village Market. I was tempted to bring up this “holiday cheer” incident but I looked rather disheveled and I daresay deranged at the time and didn’t want to disturb the man since he had a news program to anchor in a few minutes.

Still sorta wiped out, but for other reasons

Haven’t slept well the past few days. Yesterdays’s Wednesday workout didn’t go particularly well, only did 2 chin/dip/hamstring sets and called it a day. Gravity was high and energy was low.

But not all was lost! Got Stargate SG-1 seasons 1 and 2 from the library, and “Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series” which I hadn’t heard about before yesterday. Looking forward to watching it but think I’m going to wait until I watch the original Twin Peaks again then the follow-up movie Fire Walk With Me to put everything into its proper context.

Wiped out

Did three standard rep sets of exercises today instead of four half-plus-two sets, skipping the ab-wheel rollouts because I was too wiped out after everything else. The rows were especially difficult because my upper body was already fatigued from the chin/dip sets. I had originally planned to start incorporating handstands again but I just didn’t have enough left. We’ll see about Wednesday.

Aujourd’hui, j’ai réussi…

Today I succeeded. Did four half-plus-two sets of everything. Felt pretty strong everywhere but still feel like I had a good workout. The ab-wheel rollouts are improving, definitely feeling it in the right places this time, that is, in the ab muscles rather than the spine and in a good, non-injurious way.

Probably undid anything good by eating Long John Silvers for dinner though. Speaking of which, while I was waiting for the three “Two fish, two hushpuppies, fries and coleslaw” platters I remembered that LJS used to put their kids’ meals in a cardboard basket container shaped like a boat, and you’d get a cardboard pirate hat. It was weird sitting there in the restaurant remembering that, like it was a more significant and important memory than it should have been.

Apparently they don’t even have kids’ meals anymore, at least not at the Pambulon Heights region location.

Working on working out

Doing the Wednesday workout, doing four “half-plus-one” sets of each exercise. This should “work out” to a greater volume of movements, though not by much since I’m not doing the extra reps in the final sets. On Friday I think I’ll do “half-plus-two” sets instead for even greater volume.

So far did the chin/dip/ham-curl sets. Got a little pump, and a little fatigue.

Finished the row/pushup sets, went for broke on set four of each.

Did one double set of ab-wheel rollouts, just went for it. Probably gonna lay off of doing more today to see how it feels tomorrow.

Mediocre sleep

Didn’t sleep that well last night, been sorta tired all day. Could probably zonk out right now at 6:27 PM, but I’ll try to stay up as long as I can. Would rather go to sleep for the night than take a 2 hour nap and spoil my sleep for the rest of time. Or the rest of the week at least.

Did my Monday workout except for the ab-wheel rollouts which I’ll probably do soon, maybe in a half-hour or so [EDIT: ab-wheel rollouts are done now]. Still got some fried chicken and mac & cheese from dinner sloshing around in the stomach so don’t really want to stir it up more than necessary.

Didn’t add any new exercises today, didn’t feel up to it. Didn’t even really feel like doing the workout at all due to the poor rest last night but I got most of it done anyway. Spent most of the day messing around online and playing Borderlands 2 and Talos Principle VR. I’ve had Borderlands 2 for a few years but never really played it until today. Pretty fun! Got some DLC for it early this morning and let it install overnight.

I’m thinking for the Wednesday and Friday workouts this week I might switch up a bit and do 4 sets of each exercise with fewer reps per set, but with greater volume overall.

I’ll never forget the time..

I’ll never forget the time my buddy insisted he could park his enormous yacht of a car, a 1978 Chevrolet Impala, into this tiny parking spot clearly marked “Motorcycle Parking Only”. Upon getting out of the car I was stunned, in such disbelief that the car actually fit, that I felt like I had become a cantaloupe with hamburgers for pockets. That’s not a metaphor, I mean that literally.

?Pickle Power redux?

I’ve been thinking about it more and more the past couple of days and I struggle to find a situation that is not improved with the invitation of one or more pickles. They are truly remarkable, indeed amazing!