Short And Sweet

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 11% BF

 

Rode Sals last night, or rather hit a part of it as part of a short road/offroad ride: I did a loop from Anne's house over to the hospital, then up to Dodson on the road and down to the Reeb trailhead via the Yellow and Red Trails. (Total distance was 4.84 miles, which I did in 40:44 for a 7.1 mpg average. Avg/Max heart rate was 146/172, and total elevation gain was 748 feet, most of that coming from the climb up to Dodson. Thank you Garmin! Note: I have the data for this and another ride online, where you  can play it back and watch the dot on the map go around and around while monitoring my speed, heart rate etc... I'll make some of these publicly visible, but not the ones -- like this latest -- that have personally identifying geographic info. So stay tuned!) Trails are still snowy, but not too bad.

 

After the ride Anne and I went to Porters to hang out with Judy, and Erica and Toby. It was the first of the new Thursday Night Jazz thingies, and last night's band leader was someone Judy knows.

 

Now He Belongs To The Zombies: Rest in peace, Lux Interior. I saw that yesterday, and have been surprised by the number of people who had memorial comments -- I thought The Cramps were pretty obscure. The variety of types of people who were remembering him was surprising as well, though some I know were fans from way back... Speaking of which, I need a haircut, think I'll get one tomorrow.

 

Stepford State Update: What a bunch of tools!

 

Tonight I may do another one of those Sals quickies, then it's back to Porters for Sally's birthday. Tomorrow is yoga/gym, then we're seeing Raymond The Amish Comic in Doylestown.

 

 

Nerdvana

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 11.5% BF

 

Breakfast yesterday was small, and so was dinner, but I had a huge turkey (and cheese! and mayo!) sub for lunch -- a-and so much for suppression, yoga last night was pretty tough but there's no sign of it in those numbers.

 

Reading: I'm getting towards the end of Everything and More by David Foster Wallace, one of my Christmas presents. It's basically a history of how mathematics has come to grips with the idea of infinity, and believe it or not, it's actually a real page-turner, a real pleasure to read, especially if you're a fan of DFW's conversational, idiosyncratic style. Next up is a book about the Golden Ratio, which should be interesting but probably isn't as well-written as EaM.

 

Navigating: I plugged the GPS into the laptop last night, and it turns out that accessing the data is a piece of cake, the whole thing just appears as an external drive. The data is organized pretty logically in files and folders, and it turns out to be fairly easy to extract to various mapping/training software & websites. This may not be true about moving stuff the other way, like installing new maps or software updates onto the Garmin, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it -- for now it does what I want, and more.

 

(Looking up from the laptop last night, where I was watching animated graphics  of my location, elevation, speed and heart rate from a recent ride, I saw myself surrounded by little electronic gadgets (camera, GPS), wireless mice, and books about numbers, and realized I had achieved... nerdvana...)

 

The only problem with re-animating my nerdly-ass avatar (aside from the obvious ones) is that I was always a bit absent-minded. Today I walked out of the house without my gym stuff, so scratch that. I think I'll be doing a short MTB ride, maybe something at Sals, a Dodson-to-Reeb downhill through the snow. After that is Porters, to check out the new Thursday Night Jazz.

Bela Lugosi's Dead

Morning weigh-in: 171.5, 12.5% BF

 

Some exercise suppression going there, but probably not a lot. I think that's mostly "no dining out for a few days," and "the chili is all gone, if you know what I mean..."

 

White Nose Fever Comes Home To Roost: It looks like that bat-killing epidemic has finally reached Pennsylvania. 

 

Took the Turner out last night. I was supposed to do a Hellertown hill ride but the roads were just too scary/slippery, I didn't trust the cars I'd run into so I just tooled around the neighborhood, rode down to the towpath and around sand Island, then around in circles through West Bethlehem, mostly just testing out my new toy, which seemed pretty cool -- now I just have to figure out how to get the data out and into a mapping/training program...

 

Bloodbath: We had layoffs here yesterday, including a few in my department. I think I'm safe for now, but it was not a fun day.

 

Tonight is yoga, and tomorrow is the gym. I noticed last night that my heart rate refused to go very high, which is understandable given Monday's intervals -- I need a cardio rest day or two.

 

 

Fire In The Belly

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174.5%, 12% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 173.5#, 9.5% BF

 

Well, winter is half over, and the days are getting lighter, and I am so behind on my training it's not funny.

 

Weekend Recap:

 

Friday I had off, so I planned to use the day to run some errands -- which really meant that I hiked around Sals with Langston, then drifted over to Wired to get in some quality time with the laptop. Anne was at the library, doing research on local history for her next project, and eventually joined me there, and then Deb came by and we absconded to the Brew Works, where we decided that hamburgers at Rippers was a good idea... I was basically done by 9:00.

 

Saturday started with yoga, then it was back to Bethlehem for a busy day -- we were brewing beer with Anne's niece Lori & her husband Chris. This is a slow process, heat water, cool water, wait for grains to steep, boil stuff etc, lots of downtime (snacktime, BS'ing about music time) between tasks but it took most of the day. When things were finally done and we could leave the beer to ferment, we went over to the Tally Ho. Perry's birthday, we saw a bunch of the old Which Brew crowd -- it really hasn't been that long but it feels like forever since there was a Which Brew and a Which Brew scene -- and caught up with all the news and gossip. I'm happy to say most seem to be doing well and seem happy.

 

We didn't stay long, we were going to see Steve Forbert in Jim Thorpe. Awesome show, just him on stage with guitar and harmonica. I didn't know too much of his newer stuff, maybe a few songs were semi-familiar from Anne's iPod, but he did play "Romeo's Tune" at the end of the night. He also played a song about middle age, which I thought was going to be all like "huh huh, huh huh -- lumbago!" but instead was an extremely heavy look at, well, my life...

 

Sunday was the annual Superbowl of Chili at Pearly Baker's. Me and Anne, Brian, Eric, and we also saw Dick S and his wife, among many others. Seventeen chili entries, then we escaped the crowds by going to Mothers and eventually Porters. Anne drove home, and I napped through the Superbowl, then got up and read a book about infinity.

 

Gadget Alert! I just got a new toy, a Garmin Edge 705 combination GPS and heart rate monitor. I haven't really messed with it much yet, it came last night and I only played a little while it was charging. It looks really sweet so far, but it looks like I'm in for another voyage of discovery too, since the device needs supporting software, and that software don't run on Linux... (The GPS shows up as an external drive and I think I can get to the data, so I'm halfway there.)