Reflections on wed.

Did the first workout yesterday. Got my butt kicked. i felt like puking as i wove my way outside to the car. Then i took a swig of the "original" [i.e. cotton candy flavored] surge. Just nearly reversed digestive polarity on m' steering wheel. i am way outta shape. i can say on day 3 here that the eating part is getting a little bit easier. And as of today i'm done with school, so i should be able to patch my schedule together a li'l tighter now. Peace out.

Why i don't climb shirtless

Little reflection on m' first day of the V diet. First of all, i have a serious addiction to food. i really love eating. Love. It. The number of times today i've had to stop myself from unconsciously grabbing easy food and cramming it in my mouth...

Second, it's entirely possible to pack down an extra few hundred calories in ground flax seed meal. :-)

The shake with peanut butter rocketh. Put that stuff in the blender with the chocolate mix and it's real nice. i licked the spoon shiny clean afterwards.

Tomorrow i'm gunna try to go up to the full dosage of hot rox and see if it stops my heart. i climbed a bit today, and i felt kinda sluggish, but i'm perfectly willing to chalk that up sleep deprivation. i've been decidedly hungry all day, but i definitely haven't felt shaky or bad (at least not for too long.) Anyhow, any doubts or questions i've had today are allayed by looking at my altogether unflattering pics here. There's a silver lining though: if i can climb v5/6 looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, maybe i have some room to move; and maybe i'll see some bigger numbers fall at the end of this.

i'll have to put up tape measurements after i find a tape. Also [note to self] i wanna get some fiber tablets. And it looks like i need one o' them there ab wheels. Suggestions on such creatures' native habitat?

Ground Zero

193 lbs. in my underoos s/p poopication. i'll hafta get tape measurements and the "before" pic up a bit later.

Started the V diet this morning. i'm looking forward to this thing. The shake is really good. i'm gonna hafta get a system going here. Gotta bust out the blender and get used to the timing. The diet plan itself tells how many calories, etc. to take on regular days vs. workout days, but it doesn't have separate plans. It doesn't say take this many shakes/ scoops on workout days vs. on regular days. i'm gonna have to research that a bit. Also it says to take the hot rocks on an empty stomach, but it doesn't say how long before you can eat. i took one this morning, and i'm probably gonna suffer for having coffee with it. we'll see. i might just be leaving off the coffee for the month as well.

i'm already seeing some deeply engrained habits. Making breakfast for the kids this morning i've had to refrain from munching on whatever i'm making for 'em. It's funny, 'cuz i barely noticed i was about to stick food in my mouth. Got a math final at 3:30 today, so we'll see if i've the juice to make it through. i'm also gonna try to climb a bit today. i'll post on how it goes.

Wash'd out

Well. Joshy's married. Light and balance have temporarily been restored to the universe. And i will spend today trying to heal from it. Think i've strung together a collective 12 or 14 hours of sleep in the last four nights. i wuz gunna start the v-diet today, but i got in way late and didn't have time to sort it all out. Anyhow, Washington rock-ed. i've missed those people so dang much... Think i'm gonna do that again in less than a decade this time if God allows it. It's hard to see what a dead, hollow shell of a human one has become without some light from the outside to shine in. There's catharsis there. And a thousand miles of cold river, and pear orchards, and rocks, and the crazy, endless snow-covered mountains that haunt my dreams. Hell, they even got me to go dancing. Today i get my bearings and sleep (and some fiber). Tomorrow i start purifying fer real. Also, i have finals this week. Your prayers are needed, Jungs.

"Give a man $300 worth of protein, and he'll eat for a month..."

She's arrived. Sustenance for the month of May. G's thinkin' of how yummy that b-day cake is not going to taste.

Amazing how warm it can be outside, and how cold it can be in this effin' house. That should be a country song. Ha ha! "'S too hot to golf... 's too hot to fish... and too cooold at hooome." Right. Screw it.

The rest of the day went well though. Got an A on my chem exam and a 98 on math. Put down another decent endurance day at the gym (and my joints felt really really good quite unexpectedly after the thurs./sat. onslaught) and ended with a third try send on a new v4, and i even almost tagged my project. In just over one week i'll be done with the semester (and the angels erupted in a lofty chorus), and in 2 probably very long days i'm off to Wa for Josh's wadding. i'm fairly happy about that. Yes i am. Any suggestions for wedding presents?

Happy Shredfest to me

Shwag Count: High.

Scored me the Arc'teryx S-240 sport harness at ye olde 2009 Shredfest today. Hundred dollar harness; clocks in at 8.5 oz. :-)

That was a pretty good time, Shredfest. we showed up early to clean up the trails/crag, then had a bouldering contest followed by a raffle/num-nums which i was blest at (i was seriously needing a new harness). Pulled down some fairly cool problems, even though i was still torn down from thursday's destruction. my hands are thrashed and bloody. Climbing at U-Mound is an exercise in pain tolerance: there are no truly positive holds, so you gun off of frictiony slopers to two-finger micro-crimps on quartz crystals, high step onto the same bits of natural glass, and grovel over the top out four moves later and twenty feet off the ground. Consequently there is no flesh left on my hands (one climb involved a series of hand jams on the crap, so the backs of my hands are also flayed) and it hurts to allow my consciousness to waft in their general direction. Good times. Good times...and some very cool folks to climb with, to boot.

Then yesterday my lovely, attentive wife gave me for the b-day permission to order The Master from Detroit Rock-- that skull hold i've wanted now for some time. If all goes well, i should have a trick campus wall in the very near future. Then maybe i can get strong for real. And shaving twenty lbs. off shouldn't hurt a thing, i'd think... assuming the numbskulls at Fed-Ex can figure out which bit of the U.S. Nuevo Mexico comprises.

i go now to heavily lubricate my tattered nubbins.

I slaughtered this horse last Tuesday; 'm afraid she's startin' to turn.

Strange and stormy days... There're snow flurries cavorting about out of doors. Yesterday i was forced into shorts to avoid heat stroke. i'm hoping the ominously equivocating maelstrom sounding off from my own south hole portends only that i'm really hungry, and not that i'll be decanting any future stools into the porcelein void. i'm confident, though, that the veggie Italian sausage and eggs with barbeque sauce, brie and feta i just ate'll calm the storm. i mean, how couldn't it?

i order the v-diet stuff when i'm done here. Still waffling about the lemon vs. chocolate Surge junk. i really hope my guts don't feel like this when i begin to relentlessly bombard 'em with organic acids. i guess i should be glad i'm getting it outta the way now.

Worked out at the rockgym proper yesterday. One o' my workout partners shewed up, and we punished each other. Do two routes in a row each, then switch-- back and forth for nearly three hours. That was the first time in a long time i got a legitimate solid failure-by-forearm-pump instead of quitting cuz my joints just couldn't take anymore. Then we did a pretty decent ab workout. Then i onsighted a stiff v3 that i really didn't think i was gonna be able to do when i scoped it. Ended up pulling down maybe 8 or ten 5.10s and a couple of 11s (although i didn't get any of those without hanging), and put in several tries on my 12- proj. i found that i really need to lose twenty pounds to feel solid on 12. That's friggin' haaard.

So on to the first step to the goal...

Bed Sore

Nutty week. Fri. evening we ended up staying up till two playing a game at Nate's And Beryll's. Then the baby decided to wake up every hour or so for the remainder of the nigh. Then Steph woke up blowing mud from every major orifice each time she'd open her eyes, so she stayed in bed all day, and i got the chil'uns all day on four hours of sleep. Then Annie succumbed to the plague. Not so surprisingly i woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, gagged and tried to roar an HCl hole through the bottom of the toily. Now i've been in bed most of the day, and they're all at our birthday party at the moment. So while it's shaping up to be a bad day for ab work or eating pork products, it does have its perks. Trouble is i have so much to do for the end of semester i can't afford to be sick, so i would surely appreciate a prayer for some healing. Peace, and may your Easter be as laid back as mine.

Some Beach

Sacre bleau... i've had enough Red Label to kill a lesser man. (Think maybe a 3 ft. tall man.) And we're watching "Sabrina" (which is why i'm able to write, presently). i climbed today, which was an error. i effed up a forearm tendon pretty good, so i'm gunna take thurs. off i think. And to top it off, i didn't get my project. Hacked my way up some dark 11s on tr and hurt most of the more useful joints in my body. And we're going on vacation may 23ish for a weekish, so i'm thinking it would be beneficial to my marital life to start the vdiet a tad earlier (what so's i can eat some seafood with the fam, etc.) So i'm thinking i'm gonna try to start it on mon. the 27th when i get back from josh's wedding. That'll put my first week of living on protein shakes and not drinking liquor at the beginning of finals week. Who knows? Maybe it'll make me brilliant.

Vee Six

i'm not so sure now if it was an intercostal or the right lateral serratus afterall. Anyhow, hurts to breathe. But i got me a V6 today. (At least, it says V6 on the start tape...) And i'll take it as one, cuz it was bloody hard and i ganked a muscle over and over and over doing it that theretofore i was unaware i had. Sick li'l climb.

Babaganoush

So i'm thinking sure, ya, i'll just go in to the Kletterhalle for to do some light toproping, ya. But, says i, first i'll tick off this prob i was trying to link on tuesday. And hijinks ensued. Turns out it's a v6. i did all the moves on it, but just couldn't quiiiiite link through the crux after the start. So i ended up spending around three hours sporadically going back and trying to link this damned thing. There is nearly no flesh left on my hands, and i think i actually managed to pull a posterior intercostal muscle. One of the most frustrating sessions i've experienced in a while-io. i know i can do it 'cause i did all of it already, but i could not pull through the crux lockoff for anything. It'll go on tues. but i really wanted it today. Anyhow, she didn't turn out to be much of a "light workout" day. On a brighter note, i did tick a handful of hard 5.10s on TR, and i think i just aced my math exam, so i'm finding a happy place. i think i need to take a week off and come hunt some pigs.