Friday, December 28, 2012

Egression #2

Attractors. Via The Cleverest.

This is also singularly great. You can move the circles around, and you can move and tilt the seesaws to affect the flow of dots. It's best if I don't tell you what does what, maybe you want your dots to do something different. I like trapping the dots in orbit around the circles, and then setting them free. And then zooming out and seeing myself as trapped! And then posting it here and trapping others!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Winter Food Chart
 food chart 100%?

So you know my goal has been, all my goals have been, to come up with a master plan for everything, which reminds me of the freshman history paper I wrote titled "Western Thought from The Enlightenment to The Present," whereupon my professor commented, "Ambitious!" But anyway foodwise, I have wanted to come up with a four by four grid of meals—a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, and a post-workout snack for each season—that I could cycle through annually and not have to think about food anymore, or at least a lot less than I currently think about food, which is basically all the time, and this has been unfolding for more than a few years like the world's slowest-moving Bildungsroman about eating your vegetables where we last left our heroine making a little jump from veganish to paleoish. I've just been doing a little reading for my continuing ed and I guess there's a name for the way I eat now, viz., low glycemic, neither low fat nor low carb. I talk about this all the time, but once again it's 1) whole, unprocessed foods in general, and 2) protein and vegetable at every meal, and 3) starchy vegetables or whole grains only around workouts:

BEFORE
light protein &
complex carbs

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE & DURING WORKOUT
simple carbs
 
IMMEDIATELY AFTER
light protein &
simple carbs
AFTER
heavy protein &
complex carbs
BETWEEN
heavy protein &
complex carbs

Immediately before/after means within 45 minutes of, before/after means within 1-3 hours of, and between means more than 3 hours before or after workouts.

All of this you know and you also know that I work out mostly in the evening, so dinner is my starch meal. All of which I think I have finally more or less worked out in an ultimate food chart, and it's basically eggs and vegetables (or fruit) for breakfast, chicken and vegetables for lunch, quinoa and vegetables for dinner, and greek yogurt and fruit for post-workout snack ALL YEAR ROUND. Anyway, try it if you want. Eventually I will put a food planner for each season in this book of charts, and explain how those work if they're not self-explanatory, or even if they are self-explanatory, explain them anyway.

So winter food will be this:

I had an epiphany that greek yogurt could stand very nicely for post-workout protein, if I bumped over the roasted fruit recipes that I just developed for breakfasts. Which leaves me with some egg problems to solve for work breakfasts, but oh well, bridge, later. So mainly I've upgraded from last winter's post-workout ramen and udon, which I was full of regret about. So I had an udon bowl to be sure! And after a year of not eating noodles very much at all, meh, it was only okay.

I cannot tell a lie though, all of a sudden I want bagels again. After nine months of not even thinking about pasta or bread, I've been standing up after breakfast and walking straight downstairs for a bagel like I'm possessed. Just at work, I mean. After a couple weeks of this I thought I might as well go straight for the bagel and I'm back down to one breakfast again. Eh, I trust that my body needs starch for some good reason. Like if I'm going to be smashing my bony parts on other people's bony parts, it's not going to hurt to have a little layer of fat. Or maybe just to stay warm or maybe to keep the SADs away, those are totally believable too.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Winter Fitness Chart

I think I finally, really have this five workouts per week thing down:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
HOBBY
Systems
HOBBY
Home
WORK
 
HOBBY
Home
WORK
 
HOBBY
Home
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^
 
PLAY
 
WORK
 
PLAY
 
WORK
 
PLAY
 
PASTIME
 
PLAY
Leag/Ref
PLAY
Fury
PASTIME
 
PLAY^
volume
PLAY^
Scrimmage
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PLAY
 
PASTIME
 
HOBBY
 
HOBBY
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 

I maybe also have this high-low down? Orange on this chart are high-intensity key practices and blue are low-intensity recovery practices.

Key practices
I work as hard as I can for my three skate practices: Sunday is catch as catch can depending on what I get for league practice but at the very least is a long workout every other week when I have refs, Monday OMG LOL SEND HELP, Ska and Kwow work us HARD, but seriously I love it so much, Ska has us starting practice with hour-long hitting pacelines and alternately Kwow with twenty-plus minutes of sprinting and skills, and Thursday is scrimmage, which is, you know, scrimmage.

Recovery practices
Wednesday is supposed to be a low intensity volume day, two seven-mile bike rides and an hour training clients in between. I try to just bike at a comfortable pace, I'd guess that I'm doing six-minute miles. I have to think to go slower or faster than that, and really the point is to deliver myself unstressed and mentally ready to give my attention to my clients. Saturday has been low intensity movement work, which I'm teaching to the sweetie man in preparation for strength work. Movement is mainly what I teach and is great for everybody to return to now and again, I think my balance and agility are up a notch this season just from teaching this.

I think this is good for now? I'm itching a little bit to do higher-intensity work like striking or climbing; but I'm skating now, so it is what it is. I just read again about how athletes are so bad at actually lowering their intensity for their recovery workouts, so I'm trying to be good.

You know what would be even better than recovery workout followed by key workout followed by rest though, key workout followed by recovery workout followed by rest. Though that would require life changes that haven't come down the pike yet, so hold that thought—

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Eight Presents
 2012

purple scarfmason funnelcasserolethree bowlstightsblack walletrubberbanditzblue hat

  1. Purple infinity scarf - I knitted an orange scarf last winter, or maybe two winters ago, out of this Misti Alpaca Chunky yarn that I get from nina: a well-knit shop on Division. My skinny green spring work scarf is also made from this yarn. I pretty much only make scarves, and pretty much only out of this yarn on I think size 13 needles, and just sort of wing it for width and number of skeins which equals length, anyway, I wanted the orange scarf to be super wide and I might even have used three skeins, but still it came out slightly short, so sorry longest story about a scarf ever, I was thinking forever about taking it apart and reknitting on circular needles to make an infinity scarf, but it took forever to knit the first time, and I didn't feel like buying more needles, AND THEN, almost done, I read a tutorial whose link I've lost that said the secret to an infinity scarf is to fold it over on itself Moebius-style and join it like that, which is to say, it's not cheating to sew together the ends of an infinity scarf, which I had been hung up on. So I did that with a scrap piece of yarn, and it's amazing and perfect. OKAY SO then I have had this mushroom fleece winter coat that my sister got me years ago, and I will pretty much never throw out a coat so this will probably be my forever winter coat, only the orange scarf sort of clashes with its undertones. Which didn't stop me from wearing them together for a whole winter, but I've had it in my head that purple would look better, so finally, ta da.
  2. Mason jar funnel - So you know I hate washing plastic containers, I like washing glasses, and mason jars are basically glasses with also easy-to-wash lids and did you know that you can put them in the microwave—I mean, not the lids—so basically now I use mason jars for ...food containers, I am genius. I have a dozen quart-size and a dozen pint-size jars, and of course the lids are interchangeable. And they have a smaller footprint in the fridge, so you can really load up your fridge with food for the week. And the only thing is that sometimes it's a mess to spoon things into the jars, mason jar funnel, problem solved.
  3. Microwave-safe casserole with lid - I forget what this is, Pyrex or Corningware or something. I got it at Target. So steamfresh vegetables were great for getting me started eating vegetables and now that I like vegetables, I want more than just broccoli and green beans, so stage two, now I make regular frozen vegetables in this casserole in the microwave. At work, I mean. At home, I just make them on the stove.
  4. Bowls - I just needed more bowls, both my little green ones broke and the little red one that was their replacement is unglazed, which means it makes a horrible scraping sound when you touch it with your fork or spoon. I got these from Target too and I totally love them, they're good-sized and yes glazed inside and I like having three different colors.
  5. Cotton tights - OMG THE BEST. These are Vermont Country Store's Smooth Cotton Tights. I've been wearing Maggie's Cotton Tights, which are okay, but you have to wear underwear over them if you don't want the crotch of your tights to sink down to your knees, which is actually not okay. Because the whole point of tights is to wear them without underwear, so you're all smooth down there. They're warm, though, but the worst thing was that they stopped making black. Just "organic" colors like loden and bark and random acts of kindness. Look man, goths get cold too. I kid, not a goth. So first of all, it's super hard to find cotton tights at all. And second, tights are expensivish for something pretty utilitarian that you wear like underwear. So I just kept wearing my old cotton tights, three black and also three brown from back when I wore everything brown, which isn't is my palette anymore, alternately saggy or alternately with panty lines, and also even when they started getting threadbare at the heels. Okay so then, I sent out my black tights to be laundered... and they didn't come back. Because cotton tights are hard to find, somebody saw them at the laundromat and scooped them up? So then I debated some more with myself whether I could bring myself to buy six pairs of tights at twenty dollars a pair. Which what kind of debate is this, you have no tights now. Except for brown tights that weren't at the laundry because they weren't dirty because you don't wear them. You know, I never fight with people, like, on Facebook. I have my hands full with tights. Eight presents, though, is exactly for making yourself buy stuff that seems too extravagant, so now I have an embarrassment of riches in tights: two black, two grey, and two navy, so I can mix up my leg colors, and they're stretchy cotton somehow so they're warm but they don't sag at all.
  6. Wallet - My Redtango wallet that I've had for years, like from back when I was married, finally started to peel away in shreds. And wow, it is surprisingly difficult to find a regular wallet. Or well, my wallet has to have one specific function, it needs a key ring attached so that my wallet and keys are always together. I looked on the internet and went to twenty different stores, and finally saw this on the counter at Brooklyn Industries, which I know nothing else about, I literally saw the wallet on the counter, saw the ring on the wallet, and bought it in two seconds.
  7. Rubberbanditz - Love, love these, I already had the purple and black and I got another purple and black and actually two red with the Amazon bucks I've saved up. I love to train four out of the five basic movements—squat, lunge, push, and rotate—with just bodyweight, but for pull it helps to have a resistance band to use with your body weight.
  8. Blue hat - I never really liked my WCR hat with my WCR dickies jacket, too many logos. Ma femme Helly has this perfect slouch hat in magenta that is my ideal hat that has been surprisingly hard for me to find, but this blue hat that I found at a secondhand shop—for a ridiculous not secondhand amount, I might add, though it is a Marc Jacobs hat, for what it's worth— is close and at least this color works.

One of the eight presents was supposed to be my new tattoo, I'm getting my number tattooed on my arm! Eeeee! I had some problems with escape velocity, though, and missed my tattoo guy before he went out of town for the holidays. Soon though, pics TK!

12/30/13
Eight Presents 2012: Where Are They Now?

  1. My go to cold weather work wear scarf.
  2. I use this all the time.
  3. I only use this for steamed veg with slow chicken, which is coming up, but I got a new Pyrex dish that I like better.
  4. I use these all the time.
  5. Love.
  6. Love.
  7. I could use these more. Especially now that I have a doorway pullup bar, I can do assisted pullups. But.
  8. Love.

Monday, December 24, 2012

The Box, You Opened It

p: how are you feeling?

p: less sick?

m: yes.

p: hooray.

m: hoorayzors.

p: hooraiser.

p: that's the cheerful cenobite.

p: his pins are wiggling with excitement.

p: is he a cenobite?

p: or is his name cenobite?

m: he is a cenobite.

p: okay.

Winter Chart

This schedule... might be the best schedule (cf. Dinosaur Comics)?

Evenly divided between practice/recovery/sleep, still! It's more than just having fourteen pink boxes, fourteen blue boxes, and fourteen silver boxes, it's more that every day has a flow or rhythm of tension and relaxation. Which is to say, every day has breath. When you can feel that you are breathing, it's pretty much being in touch with being alive. Which may not seem remarkable because here we are alive and breathing, it ought to be old hat by now. Except that it isn't, it feels new. Do you remember at the end of Adaptation when everything's gone all pear-shaped, Meryl Streep wails "I want to be newwwww," god, that was one of those movie moments that's like getting hit between the eyes with a shovel, but here I am, I feel new.

Did you know that Wikipedia defines rhythm as "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This is amazing to me, the idea of rhythm and the idea of opposites have been separately so fundamental to how I feel and think; but I never considered that one might be inherent to the other. It's kittens and Batman all over again.

We decided that the thing to do with climbing was to do one cycle on, one cycle off, substituting strength training for climbing in the off cycle. Which we did, I just spent the last six weeks training the sweetie man in movement and functional strength. And I love this schedule so much and we haven't even added weight yet, so we're going to continue with this for another six weeks at least:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
HOBBY
Systems
HOBBY
Home
WORK
 
HOBBY
Home
WORK
 
HOBBY
Home
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^
 
PLAY
 
WORK
 
PLAY
 
WORK
 
PLAY
 
PASTIME
 
PLAY
Leag/Ref
PLAY
Fury
PASTIME
 
PLAY^
interval
PLAY^
Scrimmage
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
PLAY
 
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
HOBBY
 
HOBBY
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 
SLEEP
 

Seriously the flow of my week is so good, I want to tell you how good but don't know where it starts. I suppose it starts with Sunday, Sunday starts with breakfast with the sweetie man at Hollywood Grill. I forget when this started to be every Sunday, it hasn't always been. It's so great though, just to get out of bed and get breakfast. After breakfast we have a team meeting about blog and business stuff, and after that I do desk work, and after that I go to practice; so Sunday pretty much is a work day, a play that is work day. MWF starts with housework, then desk work after lunch and practice after dinner. I used to feel guilty about doing housework in the morning—how weird am I, yeah I'm going straight to hell for doing housework—until I realized that I'm not on the clock at 9:00 AM, I don't work 9 to 5. More like 12 to 8, I actually have to be sharp and at my peak post-6:00 PM and not phoning it in. So I get to putter around in my pajamas until noon. Except TuTh I do work 9-to-5ish, but I like how that breaks up the week—if I ever feel snowblind writing, which is what I chiefly do MWF afternoons, I can always smack into the solid shapes of Tuesday and Thursday to keep myself from getting lost in the blizzard. And I suppose it ends with Saturday, Saturday starts with training the sweetie man and after that I do a whole lot of nothing or whatever I want. Do you see how that is, though? How Saturday starts with something to do and finishes with nothing to do, and Sunday starts with nothing and finishes with something, with the week wedged in between. It's like a perfectly designed rollercoaster, and furthermore like a Möbius rollercoaster. I could ride this forever.

The carats are client sessions, I have four of them including the sweetie man. I may talk more about them later, but for now I'm just grateful and learning a lot.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

You Don't Know What It's Like!!

p: you better brace yourself.

m: what?

p: you didn't brace yourself!

m: i didn't hear what you said!

p: you could have been injured!

m: what??

m: you mean your outfit.

p: so cute, right?

m: very cute.

p: i read this thing that the rule is, you can put together three colors in an outfit.

p: black is half.

p: so this is two and a half.

m: but you have blue, green, and orange, and black.

p: three and a half.

p: i guess i immediately broke that rule.

p: you could have thrown your back out.

p: maybe you should be fully braced at all times.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Egression #1

Happy Winterval, I'm back!

January. Via Disasterpeace.

All break the sweetie man and I have been rehearsing this new Friday feature that will be links I collect during the week, then he puts together all the thumbnails and I post them at the end of the week. This is far and away my favorite from the entire month so far, so it gets its own feature; it's a music generator that makes notes when you catch snowflakes with your tongue. It has a lot of commands but basically left and right arrows to chase the snowflakes around, up arrow to look up and stick your tongue out, and down arrow to put your head back down. Though I just chased the snowflakes with my tongue out. Then I got tired of moving my little guy around and wanted him to walk around by himself. Which is ultimate first world problem, but then Chuck said to just leave him standing and let the snowflakes fall on him. Which is genius and what a great life metaphor for sometimes. I just leave it on in the background, it's really pretty just like that and perfect for the season.

Things are good? I get SAD this time of year, but this is the best year yet. I realized that depression for me isn't feeling sad, it's feeling stopped. I feel basically happy, thank god. I just can't make myself do stuff like get out of bed. Knowing that I "should" get out of bed has lost its power over me, it takes a really happymaking thought to get me up. Though I am nothing if not easily amused, I should make a list. Wait until you see my new tights, ahhh!

Also I injured myself last Monday, haha, on Yvette, and am no contact until the new year and then I got sick. Because being sick, injured, and depressed all in one weekend is efficient, is what. And is what I designed this holiday for, because what you get when you get the secret to happiness isn't happiness ever after. What you get is not upset about unhappiness, you get that it just happens. You don't push it away, you sort of gently taste that it's not something you'd think you want to eat but it's actually kind of good. Speaking as somebody who just tried blue cheese, I mean. It is good, but you don't want to eat it a lot. Ah, this is how traditions get started. What can I make like charoset but with the rest of this blue cheese that celebrates the funky taste of seasonal depression...

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Don't Blink

m: what if for the top of the tree, a WEEPING angel.

p: eee!

p: weeping angels for ALL the ornaments.


Still thinking about it at breakfast:

p: like if you had kids, you could move the angels all around.

m: that wouldn't just be scary for kids.