A Dead Run, Workouts, Devvi

Life has been moving at a dead run lately, which is why I’ve been ignoring blogging for a little bit.  I think things are going to slow down, though I’ve been adding things to my “personal” stack lately rather than by “business” stack, so I end up moving at about the same all the time (with some minor exceptions I’ll get into in a bit.)

But somehow my life has managed to reach a bit more… well, I guess you’d call it balance in it’s scheduling.  For a while it 90% work, 10% things I wanted to get done (like writing, etc.)  And if someone needed a hand, I’d completely throw my schedule in disarray.

Now it’s somehow better – it’s more like 70% – 30%, and if someone needs a hand from me, I’ll actually schedule it (unless it’s an emergency, that’s different.)  While a lot of my goals in life are business related, I had to finally address the fact that I wasn’t realizing some of my personal goals that have no business basis.  Sure, it’s not a true balance yet, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I had been doing things before.

Working out has been a serious pain in the ass for me over the last couple of years.  Workouts require a couple of things for me:

1)  Must be fun

2)  Must be portable, since I travel from time to time

3)  Must fit in a small place

4)  Must work

5)  Must be balanced (IE, cardio + core body + lower body + upper body)

6)  Must be easily repeatable, even when I’m having a bad day

At one time I started the Navy Seal training regime, but it requires running.  OK, well, jogging – most people call the speed that’s slightly faster than jogging running.  Which I can’t do.  I can walk, and I can run full bore.  That whole territory in between fucking hurts my knees bad.

DDR is fun, but it’s strictly cardio, and doesn’t provide much in the way of a balanced workout.

So I keep contemplating how to pull of a serious workout, and had started thinking along a particular set of threads, when there was an incident.  Devvi’s kids went bowling with the Twitter group a while back, and Mady grabbed my arm and I tried doing what I always used to do with Erin when she was young – basically just hold her up using my bicep on one arm, becoming a human jungle gym.  

I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t hold up an 80 lb. child.  I could swing her using my arm that way, but couldn’t hold her up continuously.  This pissed me off.  Time for a change.  I shoulda been able to hold her up with one arm, and pick up her brother with the other one easily – I USED to be that strong, but no more.

First thing I had to do was figure out how I was going to change my schedule so I could fit in a workout.  I spent a few days looking at how my communication channels worked – what points in the day was I getting more email / phone call than others?  There’s two low points in the day – from 9 PM on, and from 3 PM to 5 PM (towards the end of a normal “business day” and towards the time that people get home, so those that are doing sites as side job call after 5 PM.)

Now what to do…?  I loved the simplicity of the Navy Seal workout, minus the running, and DDR is a fuckload of fun.  OK, how to combine ’em?

I restructured my office completely to add more space to the area – I hate having to drag out the pads from their hiding space (adding hassle factor to my workout, something that slows me down), and they are in plain view reminding me all day to work out.  Nice.  It also gives me enough area for the Navy Seal non-cardio portion of the workout (except I’m missing a chin-up bar).    

Based on my weight, DDR alone is burning anywhere between 506 and 704 calories per hour.  OK, there’s some of what I needed for the cardio portion of things.

At first I thought I’d play DDR for an hour, then move to the other portion of the workout.  As I was playing, I realized there’s enough downtime to pull off doing a little bit between each song.  HM!  If I beat a song, you’re given about 25 seconds from the end of the song till when it kicks you back to the song selection menu automatically.  Cool.

So, after each song I do a section of the other workout.  After the first song I drop forward and do pushups.  After the second song I grab the edge of the bed and do dips.  After the third song, I do setups.  No downtime, so that cardio portion goes up, plus I’m getting the endurance training portion of the Navy Seal workout.  As an added bonus, I don’t have any downtime between songs now – my heartrate never drops having to wait on the score, etc.  Nice!

The only thing I’m missing is a chin-up bar, but that’s going to have to wait.  I don’t exactly have a place I can hang one here – they do make ones that you put on your door frame, but those cost money.  I might improvise something one of these days when the inspiration strikes.

Then I started looking at the flow of the game, and I can increase the length of my upper body / torso workout portion by ignoring the grading screen – you’re given 60 seconds to pick the next song, and since I go in order (I built my own custom song list) I don’t need that much time.  I could easily do the setups, etc. for about 60 seconds straight then have about 20 seconds to pick my next song and press enter (you don’t have to wait the full 60 seconds, and it loads the songs extremely fast.)

So what’s the results so far of this setup?  Well, I haven’t lost a single pound.  Seriously – I’m stuck at 220 lbs.  I don’t mind though – I fucking feel great afterwards, and feel stronger already.

I’ve also reduced my food intake just a bit, and moved it to a four to five meal a day plan – a light meal about an hour before the workout, and a light protein meal after the workout.  So I take in less calories overall, and spread it out for the best possible advantage.

Now the real question becomes will I keep it up?  Well, I’ve make it as easy as possible, as portable as possible, and all that good stuff.  I’m motivated as hell.  But somehow I think changing my priorities (giving myself more balance) and learning better discipline (things like writing books) increase my chances of sticking with it even more than making it easy does.  We’ll see how it goes.

One of my old friends / short term ex-girlfriends came back to Wichita a while back, and I’ve done what I could (which isn’t much) to help her get established here.  (Devvi has the distinction of being the only girl I ever dated that I didn’t have sex with, even though we specifically set out to have sex more than once.  Kinda funny 🙂

Now how much justice is there in this world that a gal who’s that good of a match for me is a lesbian?  Seriously, I’m starting to think the Universe just happens to feel the need to be crule for the sake of a good joke 🙂  (Actually, Devvi has reminded me more than once now she’s a lesbian, but that she still has “Bi Tendencies”.  That still means she’s a lesbian.)

She HAD a girlfriend who lived in Las Vegas when she moved here, but her GF broke things off (not because of miles between, but because of direction in life issues.)  After 6 years – ouch. 

So I’ve sort of become a part of her support structure.  I had actually figured when she got settled a bit I’d hear from her a lot less, but ends up I hear from her a lot more these days.  We usually talk by phone once a day, that sort of thing.  There’s nothing going on between us, even though we flirt a lot (she did joke about a “relationship of convenience,” but I quickly pointed out how that ends up going.)

But it’s nice it have a female friend back in my life to flirt with since I don’t talk to Tammy all that much anymore, and I don’t bother trying to date.  

Oh, and added bonus, she’s fed me twice now 🙂  (Actually, really funny thing – 14 years ago, she cooked for me at her house.  Spaghetti.  14 years later I help her move her bed, etc. to get her room set up, and she feeds me… spaghetti.  She called two days later to tell me she was making Chicken Cordon Bleu – in the back of my head I had to wonder if it wasn’t so she could prove that, yes, she could indeed cook 🙂

Of course, I’m telling all this triviality because it’s leading up to something 🙂  On Friday it rained like hell, and the roof sprung a leak here at Doc’s house.  RIGHT over my waterbed.  It was fucking soaked.  I was cursing on the phone, and told Devvi what happened.  Her response was “Well, I’ve got a really big bed.  You just have to bring your own pillows.”  

This actually filled me with a little excitement and dread all at once.  It’s been over two years since I’ve slept in the same bed with someone.  But I head over there with pillows (actually, we went out together to a free event that was going on, then headed to her house.)  

Good god we talk too much.  She had church to be at in the morning, so she shoulda been to bed by 1 AM at the latest.  We ended up chatting until 6 AM, way past when the sleepy sillies set in.  Eventually I just reached over and massaged her back – within two minutes she was passed out.  It’s good to have skills 😉  

It probably had something to do with us having laid there and talked ourselves to the point of exhaustion, but I discovered it was a great night’s sleep that came easily (after I put her to sleep.)  

The alarm went off at 8:15 AM, and we laid in bed and talked more until she finally had to get ready for Church (of course we kept talking after that too, but there was a room between us for most of that conversation since she was putting on makeup and changing. Though it was fun to watch her walking around in a guy shirt for a while 🙂

But the heartbreak comes when I left.  The realization that I had enjoyed the hell out of it, but given my dating experiences (IE, my lack of finding anyone to date) it will probably be another two years before I end up waking up to a cute face (well, cute face that also fits all of my other stringent requirements.)  That’s a long damned time.

The upside is even though I’m single, I’ve again got someone to spend my time with these days who fills that void somewhere between friend and girlfriend.  It definitely makes life less lonely 🙂