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The final week takes a huge step forward in the amount of pushups done. I could only get about halfway through the routine before I had to call it quits last night. So, I’m going to go back a week. I still plan on checking my max to see if I can do 100 at the end of this week. It’s going to be close.
Kathryn had her tonsils and adenoids out last Friday. The doctor told her they looked like cottage cheese, which is apparently not a good thing. Although he didn’t tell her what kind of cheese they should normally look like, so we’re not sure exactly how bad cottage cheese ranks on this scale.
Pushups are still coming along. Monday’s set was horrendous and I had to take a few breaks during the last set of reps. But I kicked last’s nights pushups ass. Next week is week 6; theoretically, after that I should be able to 100. I still have my doubts though.
Casey called me Ralph Macchio today. Referencing 80's movie stars is always good times.
I need a library card… and for that matter, a good library to visit. Two Friday’s ago I bought a new book and had it finished by the following Monday. I now have two new to me used books coming in the mail. It’s not that I’m a particularly fast reader. It’s just that when I find something I like, I have trouble putting it down, and it’s starting to add up.
Also,
After three weeks of pushups, Kathryn noticed my arms are bigger and stronger now, which is good incentive to stick with it. I’m halfway through week four now and I’m contemplating needing to do week four twice because I feel like I’m falling behind. We’ll see how I feel after Friday’s go-round.
Also, also
Last night I golfed on the Xbox with Kelly Kelly [sic] and The Captain. We had a heck of a time getting all three of us on the same course AND having the microphones work right. But once we were going, it was a lot of fun. Gaming online is pretty much the closest thing I have to hanging out with my friends from back home, so it’s always nice to connect that way.
I have my homepage set to a plain looking list of all the websites I regularly visit. About every four to five months I update it—adding new links and removing ones I don’t use anymore. Today was that day. I spent some time this morning reorganizing, and here are the 46 websites I currently can’t live without.
Also, I’m stilling working on the pushups. For week three I bumped myself into the 3rd and hardest column. It’s a much, much harder workout. To complete it I have to sacrifice good form, which doesn’t seem right. I’ve got another go around with them tonight. If I still can’t do them all with good form, I’m probably going to go back to the 2nd column workout for week four. Either way, I’m steadily improving, so we’ll see.
Yesterday afternoon I read the hands-down best article ever in Time. Its actually a few years old and I stumbled upon it from another site, but it was excellent. Let me summarize. Researchers at Yale taught monkeys the value of money by giving them tokens that they could trade in for Jell-O or grapes. Eventually one monkey stole a bunch of the “money” and threw it into the main monkey cage. While the researchers were frantically picking up all the stolen loot, one of them noticed that a particular monkey had taken one of the hot coins and used it to buy sex from another monkey, who it turn used the coin to buy a single grape. What can we learn from this? I guess obviously that monkeys are capable of understanding currency. But more importantly, we can see that there are such things as monkey prostitutes, and they are incredibly cheap.
Holy hell did we eat well this weekend. It all started late Thursday night when we walked over to the Flying Saucer for a smoked salmon and cheese plate that comes garnished with olive spread, grapes, walnuts and capers. We finished the late night snack with a hot brownie topped with ice cream and some sort of raspberry sauce.
Friday’s dinner was noodle bowls at Pei Wei. You can’t go wrong with anything on their menu; Kathryn had the Soba Miso bowl and I had Dan Dan noodles—spicy and delicious.
Saturday’s eating started at the Mediterranean place for lunch where I had a sampler platter with Dolma (stuffed grapes), Tabbouleh, Baba Ghanoush, Hummus, Tzatziki and pita. Kathryn had falafel and their amazingly addictive rice. Saturday night I made crepes stuffed with fresh asparagus, mushrooms and spinach, and topped them with an organic cheese sauce. For dessert, I made sweet crepes and stuffed them with raspberry jam and whipped cream.
Sunday’s breakfast consisted of warmed up raspberry crepes and Cheerios. For lunch we made Käsespätzle, which is fancy for spatzle mixed with melted, grated cheese. We’re learning just how awesome and yummy homemade spatzle is.
On the pushup front, in two weeks I’ve more than doubled my max from 15 to 35. Just over a third of the way to 100, but even so, this week’s workout is looking intimidating.
I live in Arkansas, I spent most of my weekends in Tennessee and I vacation in Michigan. These are the three states that make up my life, and they are all on the 2008 list of top ten fattest states. I can only conclude that my presence somehow leads to people cramming their face holes with Krispy Kreme donuts.
At the risk of becoming a one trick pony, I have to mention my quest to 100 pushups. Last night was the most physically taxing workout yet, but it was also the easiest, which I think means I’m already getting stronger.
Finally, with tomorrow being the 4th, and all the upper-ups in Germany at the moment, it’s really empty in the office this week. I kind of like. I just sit in my corner and do whatever without anyone bothering me. As an added bonus, we’re getting hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch today. I’m so hungry already, I plan on eating four of each.
At the end of last night’s workout I could definitely feel the tiniest bit stronger. I had the best finishing set yet, which was actually surprising for me because just prior to doing the pushups, Kathryn and I had taken a three mile walk around the neighborhood, so I was already feeling tired. But finish strong I did, and to celebrate, I took a shower and went to bed. That’s not quite true. I took a shower and crawled into bed where we watched an episode of Reaper and an episode of Sealab on the computer.
