Tenacious DM and the Log of Destiny

[Bytsi]

Listen to your body - a skill many of us haven't developed yet... enjoy the break and you'll come back even stronger.

And WHOOT on 139 peeking around the corner at ya!

[DirtyMartini]

I'm feeling pretty good today.

Last night, John & I went out for dinner @ the local brewpub (75th St brewing) and I had a turkey burger with sweet potato fries, a brown ale, and a pale ale.
Then we walked down the street to a little beer bar where I ordered a Rogue Imperial IPA and john had a Sinebrychoff porter. He also helped me finish the IIPA (750ml bottle). We sat & played Connect Four (I lost every game, psshh) and talked to the bartender who was about our age and just as much of a beergeek as we are.

It was great and just what I needed. I got so dehydrated and carb-puffy that my muscles & veins were popping out all over my arms. I loved it. I have really needed this mental and physical break. We're doing Office Olympics today at work (opening ceremonies begin shortly). Among many other games, there's a blind beer tasting event (Name That Beer, basically). I hope to at least medal. Then we're going camping for the weekend. I should have some pretty badass workouts next week after this fantastic and replenishing break. YEAH, GO ME. And I'm going to start letting myself have more beer, starting next week.

[Bytsi]

Sounds like a fun night - I'm betting on you to take the gold in the beer-tasting event!

[stingo]

Originally Posted by DirtyMartini

I hope to at least medal.

Win or don't come home, because if you don't win we'll have to revoke your beer geek membership card.

[DirtyMartini]

Well I had an epic fail at the beer contest!!

There were 6 beers to taste & 15 to choose from. I either wrote the numbers down wrong or someone read my paper wrong (I'm leaning toward the first) because the 2 guys who got bronze got 3 right and I KNOW i got 3 right. Oh well.

The beers they had were:

1. coors light
2. Heineken
3. Leinenkugel berry weisse
4. Killian's Irish Red
5. Something I forgot
6. Guinness.

I got 1, 3, and 6 right. I thought Heineken was Bass (oops), I thought Killian's was Dos Equis, and I can't for the life of me remember what that other beer was.

I can't say I've had Heineken more than twice in my life, and the last time I had it was around 2002. The berry weisse was a total guess; they had 2 berry beers on the list to choose from so I picked one. Guiness was easy even though I haven't had it in a while (the only 2 dark beer choices on the list were Guinness or Boulevard Porter and it was pretty clearly NOT the porter). Coors Light was a total guess too - the list had Bud Light, Coors Light, and Michelob Light. I DON'T KNOW! I know Coors Light is probably the wateriest of all those, so I picked that one since the one we tasted was pretty damn watery. Adjunct water, yum.

I'm hanging on to my beer geek card for dear life because the beers they had there were crappy and it's not my fault for not knowing what all of them were. So there.

Oh well. It was fun. I also played a rubber band shotput (shoot the rubber band into concentric circles for points) and a paper airplane javelin. I sucked horribly at both of those so I just sat around & talked to people instead. Good times.

[stingo]

Originally Posted by DirtyMartini

Well I had an epic fail at the beer contest!!

There were 6 beers to taste & 15 to choose from. I either wrote the numbers down wrong or someone read my paper wrong (I'm leaning toward the first) because the 2 guys who got bronze got 3 right and I KNOW i got 3 right. Oh well.

The beers they had were:

1. coors light
2. Heineken
3. Leinenkugel berry weisse
4. Killian's Irish Red
5. Something I forgot
6. Guinness.

I got 1, 3, and 6 right. I thought Heineken was Bass (oops), I thought Killian's was Dos Equis, and I can't for the life of me remember what that other beer was.

I can't say I've had Heineken more than twice in my life, and the last time I had it was around 2002. The berry weisse was a total guess; they had 2 berry beers on the list to choose from so I picked one. Guiness was easy even though I haven't had it in a while (the only 2 dark beer choices on the list were Guinness or Boulevard Porter and it was pretty clearly NOT the porter). Coors Light was a total guess too - the list had Bud Light, Coors Light, and Michelob Light. I DON'T KNOW! I know Coors Light is probably the wateriest of all those, so I picked that one since the one we tasted was pretty damn watery. Adjunct water, yum.

I'm hanging on to my beer geek card for dear life because the beers they had there were crappy and it's not my fault for not knowing what all of them were. So there.

Oh well. It was fun. I also played a rubber band shotput (shoot the rubber band into concentric circles for points) and a paper airplane javelin. I sucked horribly at both of those so I just sat around & talked to people instead. Good times.

Turns out I had more of a diet break than I'd planned, but it was great and I don't care. I "gained" 3 pounds this weekend but most of it will come off (if not all or more) in the next few days as I've done a massive increase in carb intake. Thursday was the turkey burger, sweet potato fries, and beeeeer. Friday I had eggs, 3 big slices of pizza (1 all-meat and 2 cheeseburger), a couple of alco-pops & a homemade burger + bun. Saturday I had cereal, a turkey sandwich, a hot dog + bun, sushi, and cherries & grapes. Today I've had cereal. I'm living it up. I'll probably start going back to my healthy eating here this afternoon & do a workout as well. Whee!

That's ok - I'd not be able to know the difference (if any) between 1 and 2, 3 I've never had, but heard of it (as being a decent beer), 4 and 6 I probably would've gotten. But I think the most distressing thing to me would be that I actually spent calories drinking 1 and 2. You should hold your own tasting with good beer and see how that goes.

[DirtyMartini]

Turns out I had more of a diet break than I'd planned, but it was great and I don't care. I "gained" 3 pounds this weekend but most of it will come off (if not all or more) in the next few days as I've done a massive increase in carb intake.

Thursday:
eggs
salad & veggies
lunchmeat & veggies
turkey burger, 2 pints & 375ml IIPA
some kashi go lean crunch

Friday:
eggs w/spinach & mushrooms
pizza (1 slice all-meat (even bacon!) and 2 slices cheeseburger
1/2 protein bar
plain hamburger w/ ff cheese on ww bun
2 alco-pops (bacardi peach)
carrots, pea pods, cherries
kashi go-lean (plain, no milk, just munched on it)

Saturday:
Barbara's Bakery multigrain shredded spoonfuls (kind of like wheat chex) & ff milk
turkey breast lunchmeat on Ezekiel bread (plain)
soy dog (SmartDog) w/bun & mustard
cherries
sushi (mmmm!)
more cherries

So what seemed like a gluttonous weekend really wasn't that bad.

I told John on our way back from our Thursday night adventure, it's funny how that seemed like a MAJOR unhealthy evening (and, really, it was!) but we used to do that EVERY weekend. Burgers, fries, and lots of beer at least one if not two times per weekend. And then this camping weekend seemed like SUCH a bad weekend since it was a far departure from my normal eating habits. But really, we didn't take a lot of food camping this weekend and what we did take was pretty healthy - no chips, no candy... the unhealthiest thing outside the bacardi stuff was probably the white hot dog buns.

I really needed this diet break. i feel completely refreshed & well.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally Posted by stingo

That's ok - I'd not be able to know the difference (if any) between 1 and 2, 3 I've never had, but heard of it (as being a decent beer), 4 and 6 I probably would've gotten. But I think the most distressing thing to me would be that I actually spent calories drinking 1 and 2. You should hold your own tasting with good beer and see how that goes.

The berry weisse was horrible. It was SWEEEEET and it took me forever to get the taste of it out of my mouth. More than 3-4 sips of it would have been nauseating. It was like a really sweet wine cooler. YUCK.

I agree, it was distressing knowing what i was drinking, and that it contained calories. At least they were only 1-2oz tastes and most of them I just took about 2 sips and dumped the rest out.

I told one guy there (who's kind of a beer head) that we should do our own tasting with beers that are actually good, and he said "yeah but then no one would know what they were"... I asked him what his point was. At least my approach got us drinking good beer.

Oh and the guy who won (got 5 out of 6) wears beer t-shirts to work a lot. Probably the one he wears the most is Hale's Troll Porter. I felt better about him winning than some frat boy jock who thinks Heineken is the epitome of fine imported beer.

[DirtyMartini]

Here are a few pictures from our camping trip...

An Osage Orange:


I'd heard of these but never seen one in person. They're about the size of a softball and about as hard as one. They're inedible and weigh a ton. Pretty damn cool fruits. AKA hedge apples.

Honey Locust tree:

and

The thorns on this tree are about 4" long on average - many of them longer. I've never heard of or seen anything like this in my life & had to look up what it was when we got home

Playing with b/w filtering in picasa. once I finish my digital photo book I'm going to read my GIMP book & figure out how to use this in GIMP. b/w filtering is pretty cool from what I've done with it so far. this is with a cyan filter. The original picture was taken at dusk with a shutter speed of 1/2s.



This was a completely different camping experience for me. The campgrounds were like big grassy areas and I'm used to lots of trees & bushes to separate the campsites (you can see the people camping behind me; that was about 3 campsites away from us). It reminded me a lot of European camping, only a bit more spread out.

We went swimming in the lake on Saturday morning (me, john, john's sister) and had a complete blast. It was raining but the lake water was SO warm - another new experience for me since I'm used to mountain lakes in the PNW. I've been looking forward to doing this since last summer and hope to go camping at least one more time this year. I was really disappointed that it rained us out yesterday (after about an hour of rain, we packed up & left; it wasn't supposed to rain until Sunday night). We camped without our rain flys on the tents, the first time I've ever done that. It was so wonderful to go to sleep looking up at the stars in the sky.

[DirtyMartini]

All right, my bitches, I'm back!

Fat Loss I, A4

Barbell Squats
2x12x100
1x10x100
TRIPLE DIGITS, CAN I GET AN AMEN

Seated Row
3x12x85
Explosive and solid

Supine Hip Extension
3x12

Dumbbell Push Press
1x7x25e, 1x5x22.5e
2x12x22.5e

Rotating Lunge
3x12x25e

Swiss Ball Crunch
1x12x15
2x12x20

ETA:
DB one-point rows, left arm only
3x12x30
I forgot to mention this and I have a question - the imbalance between my right & left side is increasing (see my lats & delts in my most recent pic, or here). What's the best way to minimize this? I realize my right side will probably always be stronger than my left, but I want to minimize the difference as much as possible. Any ideas/suggestions?

Some of the PRs are a combo of weight + reps (most reps at that weight); others are weight period (most weight regardless of reps).

Also did about an hour of yardwork today (weeding & edging).

[stingo]

I'd say it was the carb-loading from the beer (even crappy beer at that) that led to your PRs. Keep up the good work.

[DirtyMartini]

I'm pretty sure it was the Rogue I2PA. XS stands for Extra Strong, right?

[stingo]

Originally Posted by DirtyMartini

I'm pretty sure it was the Rogue I2PA. XS stands for Extra Strong, right?

Sounds good to me. Looks like I'll need some of Weyerbacher's Slam Dunkel...

[Bytsi]

Awesome DM - lotsa red in there!!!

[DirtyMartini]

Thanks bytsi.

I'm back down in the 141's today just in case anyone was curious. Very glad I took my moderate diet break as I feel refreshed and renewed, strong, and rearin' to go again. And with minimal impact to my goals and, hopefully, acceleration of them due to increased motivation and disruption to my hormone levels & metabolic rate.