Thursday, November 13, 2014

State of the Blog

m: oh no!

p: oh no what?

m: one of the domos fell off one of the horses.

p: what horses?

horsemen

p: LOL!
m: they've been there for like a month.

So. I'm doing this State of the Blog a couple weeks ahead of time, usually these state of the Bs are the last week of the month. Because I'm done with my big project this year, the food charts and cooking practices, and now I want to dust sheet everything and close the house for the season. Just not think about it for a couple weeks, and then think about what I want write to next year. How I want to write.

Quick look at the dipstick: stats have leveled off at around 350 hits per day, about 10,000 per month. Earnings actually seem to have ticked up a bit, by which I mean they're around $5/month. I should get my first $100 payout early next year. I look at stats and earnings like I look at my weight: not with a lot of interest or initiative, but I still look. It is what it is, it's fine, it doesn't change much.

I'm much more interested in having a project, I haven't thought what that's going to be yet.

Guess what though, I bought a new domain name: Nomnomnomicon. Hahaha! So I also have to think what one blog will be to the other. I mean, I feel pretty well settled with not at all trying to write either of them to the world. I write to myself or to my clients or classes, and leave it out here in case somebody else finds it useful. Both of them will still be like that, only maybe alla Poppy will be more like the magazine and Nomnomnomicon will be more like the book.

But first, the sheets. The white. The calm.

Oh, I just had idea for something I could write.

See, that's how it is.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Late Fall Tuesday Cooking Practice

Oh woop, today is meat, greens, and quinoa day, but Sunday I was out of greens so I made kale and I was excited about fitting potatoes in the oven so I made potatoes. So I'm all done for the week.

Thank god, because the house needs to be cleaned super bad.

I'm just going to drop this little factoid here, I usually can't cook and do something else. I mean, I probably could have managed popping some potatoes in the oven and then getting on with housecleaning. Focusing on one thing in a big chunk of time works a lot better for me, though. Just saying it helps to not overschedule yourself and thus not set yourself up for failure, that wears on a soul time and time again.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Stand Up 2x/Hour


Part four of four daily practices for whole day fitness.

Did I ever tell you, I'm sure I have, about having to do country reports in sixth grade and I only got a Good on my Poland report; there were two higher designations, I forget what, but basically I got a C, I KNOW, I deeply believed that my life was ruined. Because in describing the topography, I only detailed the mountains and rivers and valleys and neglected the very large plain in the middle that I guess is mostly Poland? Idk I still have a pretty unclear concept of Poland, I pretty much blocked it out after that. Which really is the only plausible explanation for why I never ate a paczki until this year.

Anyway the last piece of my whole day fitness puzzle is like that, the very large plain in the middle. Which for me is my work day, my office work. Which I spend mostly sitting, I get into the office at 9:30 AM—a super-sweet deal thanks to the aforementioned forward thinking office manager—and putter around a bit getting my breakfast, and then pretty much sit from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

I've written a bunch of stuff about what sitting does, that info is still pretty good though I've improved my answer about what to do about that. Omghaha remember when I tried those hourly exercise breaks, I demented myself. The very simple thing to do is, just stand up twice an hour. That's it! Literally get up, reset glutes-abs-supes—did I tell you about supes, supes is my new word for rotator cuff muscles, come to one of my classes and you can hear alllll about supes—and sit back down. Anything more than that is gravy, stretch a bit, sure, go for a little walk, lovely, climb a flight of stairs, if you must. I like to keep it as simple and undisruptive as possible to my work. Maybe I'd be healthier if I wrangled cows for a living, but that's not what this service economy has to offer me and these spreadsheets aren't going to wrangle themselves! And anyway, let's not romanticize manual labor. Everything is pluses and minuses, I just need to undo this little minus of mine by unsitting now and again. Do you see what I'm saying? If sitting too much is the problem, the solution doesn't have to be LIFT THREE HUNDRED POUNDS. Though that's a very admirable goal in itself. The simple solution is... don't sit too much. How do you don't sit? Stand up!

The problem with my hourly exercise breaks was a) too complicated, and b) gah, an alarm going off twice an hour. I tried it and it didn't work, no shame in that. I'll tell you what eventually did work to set this habit and when you hear what it is you can join me in a hearty YMMV.

jelly bracelets

Jelly bracelets. I ordered a bunch of them off Amazon, I suppose you could also get them at Hot Topic lol. So I get into work at 9:30 and putter around so I'm up and about, that leaves 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, and 4 times two is fourteen jelly bracelets that go on my left wrist. Whenever I get up, a jelly bracelet goes from my left wrist to my right wrist. So I know if it's 12:15, I should already have four jellies on my right wrist (two for 10, two for 11) and now's as good a time as any to stand up and move another one over.

What if you get behind on jellies? It's jelly bracelets, how seriously are you going to take them? Do jumping jacks, whatever. Or quietly note "faaack" and go back to counting your bracelets, meditation is everywhere, amirite? Make a jelly discard pile and frown at it. You don't have to kill yourself over this, the whole point of this is to unkill yourself. This is a very low impact thing that has a huge impact on your health, and you know what, also your fitness, and also your athleticism. So basically, my favorite kind of thing.

And so it goes until all fourteen are on the right and it's time to get up and go home like Fred Flintstone.

I mean, I get that the significant flaw in this plan is that it has you wearing jelly bracelets. It doesn't have to be jelly bracelets. And it's not forever, I just wore them until I had this down and now I don't wear them anymore. Mostly. I might be wearing them now. Don't you know when you stress out a sixth grader about getting a C on a report, what you get is a forty-seven year old woman who wears jelly bracelets now and again.

Obviously the cost of shipping would exceed the cost of jelly bracelets but if you throw them on another of your Amazon orders, remember you can buy through Amazon Smiles in support of the Windy City Rollers. Use the URL http://smile.amazon.com/ and search for Windy City Rollers. Most purchases are eligible for us to get a cut!


Sunday, November 9, 2014

Late Fall Sunday Cooking Practice

Now that I've wrapped up a year of food charts, it occurs to me how much of what I eat and what I cook have to do with what I publish. I mean, right? I have this editorial calendar, which means this shooting schedule, which means this cooking plan, which means this food that I eat. More about this later, but I was reflexively planning—just in my head, not on paper or anything—what I was going to cook when, next year, and had an epiphany that I don't have to write about food next year, of course not, I don't have to do anything. It's just that writing about food has been going on for a long time for me, circumspicere, how far does this blog go back? Geez, 2009. That's like five years. Of photographing my food before I eat it. Of that, really it's been the last two years that I've been seriously developing these food charts. Which is still a long time, long enough that it was a slow realization that eating and taking pictures could be unhitched. And that eating might flower into something totally else with that freedom, kind of like, well, I did. When I got unhitched.

Anyway.

I had sort of a car wreck of a week last week where I managed to make all the food on the chart, but then did not want to eat any of the food. I just couldn't face microwaved eggs at work, and idk what but the slow chicken I made last week was just gross. Meat, greens, and quinoa were fine.

So today started with taking stock: I still have four shakshuka jars in the fridge and I still don't think I can face microwaved eggs so it's going to be peanut butter apples for breakfast. And bleagh last week's chicken really put me off slow chicken, so it's going to be baked chicken shakshuka, hey-o, for lunch. I have roasted edamame, almonds, and cashews for afternoon snack. And the sweetie man's made spaghetti with meat sauce for the past two weeks and there's plenty of meat sauce left over, so that will stand in for meat and all I need is greens and starch.

Oh first of all, I made sweet clafouti with fresh apple for breakfast and put the peels in the toaster oven for crispy apple sticks. And then I got sidetracked setting up my old R3s for a recruit who wants to borrow them for tonight's clinic.

1. Cook kale.

In fact I need greens now-ish, I finished the greens in the fridge on Thursday. So first thing is I put some water on to blanch the kale.

2. Bake chicken, and also tomatoes, garlic, and jalapenos for guacamole.

So I bone a package of chicken thighs and put them in a baking pan, and I also want to bring some guacamole to Sparty's to watch the Bears game tonight so I figure out how to jam all of that in the same pan:

chicken and salsa fixins

I hope all that cooks evenly, I suppose I could have spread them out a bit more on a baking sheet. But then I wouldn't have been able to:

3. Bake potatoes.

If you're wondering how big my oven is, it exactly fits a 13x9 baking pan and four baking potatoes. I figured that sounded good for dinner, baked potatoes with meat sauce and kale. I got the idea from Food52.

And now the apple sticks are done, because life is good like that. Brb!

Coda

Okay so, the potatoes are in little foil jackets in the fridge like Food52 said to do. The chicken I cut up and filled two pint mason jars, it may or may not be enough. I may have snacked on a couple three all of the crispy chicken skins, what, they don't keep and they're yum.

Quick ran a knife through the tomatoes, jalapenos, and garlic, and cut open all the avocados I had in the fridge, it's kind of time for an avocado turnover around here. Mashed it all together and voila:

guacamole

Not to be disloyal, but I have a feeling this isn't the only green we're going to be eating tonight. PROVE ME WRONG, CUTLER.

Finalmente, I decided to toss the blanched kale in the remaining chicken fat and tomato-jalapeno juices and finish it in the oven. I just took a peek at that and some of the top bits had crisped up like kale chips, that's not going to keep either so yum.

Sheesh, life is time-consuming. Just enough time to get the kale out of the oven and wash up for LTS and referee practice tonight. At least I've snacked enough, I think I'm okay on food!

GOD DAMN IT, CUTLER.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Late Fall Food Chart




Black coffee in bed.
Eggs shakshuka for work breakfasts.
fried eggs shakshuka at home.
Slow chicken with steamed vegetables for most lunches.
Tea and fruit for afternoon snack.
Ground meat, greens, and quinoa for pre-workout dinner.
I have to stop trying to make fish happen.
Beetlejuice for pre-workout drink.
Cococherry2O for workout drink.
Peanut butter apple for post-workout snack.
It's mulled wine season, motherfuckers.

Not a lot different this month, just my new favorite thing is crispy fried eggs.

Ultimate food chart! Always tweaking...
Late fall food planner for the extremely detail-oriented.

Omg I just counted and I've done twelve of these, that means I'm donnnnne. Yeyyy, a month earlier than I thought. That means I can cancel cancel cancel stuff from my to do list, clear my head for home season and the holidays and what I want to do for next year...

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Furious Fitness Chart

As I do:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP
morning morning morning morning morning morning morning
HOME
cooking
WORK
 
HOME
cooking
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^^
 
WORK
 
HOME
bills
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
HOBBY
appts
PASTIME
 
PLAY
practice
PLAY^^
 
PLAY^^
 
PLAY
scrimmage
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
4 5 4 4 5 2 3
evening evening evening evening evening evening evening
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

I'm not as driven as I was to hit my marks, not that this is a bad fitness chart at all. Three high intensity workouts, check; three low intensity workouts, check + 1; three rests, check + 1, I know, that adds up to 9.

So let's look at it from a whole day fitness view: two high intensity days, three low intensity days, one very low intensity day, one rest day = 7 days. Where the "ideal" is three high, two low, and two rest, and idk how I feel about ideal anymore. Ideal is as ideal does, and this is what does for the way my life is right now. I might get a little time freed up on Tuesday now and again, and then I can slot in another strength workout:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP
morning morning morning morning morning morning morning
HOME
cooking
WORK
 
HOME
cooking
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^^
 
WORK
 
HOME
bills
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
HOBBY
appts
PASTIME
 
PLAY
practice
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^^
 
PLAY
scrimmage
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
4 5 5 4 5 2 3
evening evening evening evening evening evening evening
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

That would work, too.

But my basic plan is, walk in the morning, don't sit for more than 30 minutes without a break, meditate in the afternoon, and stretch in the evening, balls out for the high intensity workouts that I do get, and then, er, balls back in and be present for my clients.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Happy Election Day!

YAY VOTING

Now introducing Kevin S. Johnson, Shanna sent him to live with us like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in reverse.

Monday, November 3, 2014

How to be Furious Chart

So you know, one of my favorite books is Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and one of the central tropes of my life comes from when the butler is feeling out of sorts and has an epiphany, he needs a new staff plan. I am that butler! You probably do know because I've probably already told you this eighty times. Anyway I've been feeling a little out of sorts and then I had an epiphany, I need a new chart. There are food charts and fitness charts but then there are these whole life charts to rule them all. Though really, fitness rules everything else around here. Or really, derby rules everything. Which doesn't so much reflect the importance of derby, just that derby is done with other people and that time is not all my own. So whatever part of my derby year I'm in, I organize the rest of my life around that. In a chart! I love charts.

I thought I'd start giving them more fun names, too. So here we are going back into home season, time to get furious:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP
morning morning morning morning morning morning morning
HOME
Cooking
WORK
 
HOME
Cooking
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
PLAY^
strength
PLAY^^
 
WORK
 
SYSTEMS
bills
WORK
 
WORK
 
WORK
 
SYSTEMS
appts
afternoon afternoon afternoon afternoon afternoon afternoon afternoon
PASTIME
 
PLAY
practice
PLAY^^
 
PLAY^^
 
PLAY
scrimmage
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
evening evening evening evening evening evening evening
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

On the one hand, this chart is elegant in its simplicity. On the other hand, lol headdesk I am never going to get my house clean; my mom is rolling her eyes in her grave right now. OH WELL, it is what it is. I think it's going to be like this through March.

I had my fun with Sunday like a normal person, but I'm putting that cooking practice back in. I pretty much blew a fuse with that hella long cooking practice and didn't cook at all for the next two weeks. A new super nice thing on Sunday, though, is that referees shortened and moved up their practice, so I have my block of classes in the afternoon more or less and then have the evening free for pastime pursuits.

Not much else to comment on, I'm seeing if I can stick with these four days of work and hanging for dear life onto these two cooking blocks and these two systems blocks.

Pretty majorly rethinking how I'm going to do this blog. Maybe by cutting out my social life? I kid. Sort of?

Will zoom in on the fitness breakdown in another chart. As I do.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Offseason Review

I really love how this session whittled itself down right from the start, no seriously, not being ironic at all. I feel like I can totally respect what Marcus Martinez has to say and still be confident about what's going to work for me. Which is pretty great!

So I ended up, or at this point I should say, I started out with:

Sunday: 15 minute onskates interval session
Monday: 60 minute housecleaning session
Tuesday: 45 minute strength session
Wednesday: 60 minute foot and body rub
Thursday: AD HOC TIME
Friday: rest and relaxation
Saturday: 45 minute strength session
a 30 minute walk every other morning
15 minutes of meditation every afternoon
15 minutes of stretching every evening

And here's how that actually rolled:

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SEP 21^
 
22
}mnf
23
{
24^
//foot
25
\\
26
}birds
27^
}n&b
28^^
//hiit
29
\\
30^
//dead
OCT 1
/
2
}pizza
3
}wine
4^
//squat
//dead
5^^
 
6
/
7^^
 
8
/
9
/
10
{who
11^
//tacos
12
 
13
}mgp
14^^
//squat
15^
//foot
16
\\
17
{shield
18^
//dead
19^^
//hiit
20
}pumpkin
21^^
 
22^^
 
23
{
24
{gotham
25^
//dead
26^^
//hiit
27
\\
28^^
 
29
//bison
30
//joann
31
{shield
NOV 1
}hair

First of all, that whole first week was supposed to be a complete rest break. Had I thought it through beforehand, I wouldn't have scheduled that post-bout 9/21 learn to skate clinic. I forgot that I'm always beyond drained after a bout, it was a horrorshow dragging myself off the couch to teach. Though, I think it went all right. Besides that, this was just a fun, social week: Monday Night Football at the Coffinnails, Tuesday Nora cancelled so I just holed up, Wednesday foot and body rub, Thursday I did some housecleaning apparently, Friday me and the sweetie man went to see The Birds wot I wrote, and Saturday was Nipps & Babe's wedding picnic.

Sunday: 15 minute onskates interval session
I did my onskates interval workout once, it was pretty great. The next week was post doing Saturday back squats and deadlift, oh my god I was so sore. Here's where I feel like I finally get making wise choices for myself, I jettisoned the interval workout and just twirled around a bit teaching LTS and referees. The week after that I had a break from LTS and referees, you best believe I took it! The last two weeks my interval workouts were courtesy Flo and Sparty—and incidentally 60, not 15 minutes.

So that's, what, 3/5 weeks covered? Not half bad.

Monday: 60 minute housecleaning session
Who could have predicted, housecleaning got the short end of the stick. The chart shows that I cleaned 4/6 weeks, but this was light housecleaning at best.

Tuesday: 45 minute strength session
I got started with deadlifts, and then I picked up my new Tuesday client. I squeezed in some back squats on a rainy night that I took the bus and was way early; theoretically I could always go early, do my workout, then train my two clients... but it doesn't really work like that. There's other things on my list to do on Tuesday; you can't just keep jamming one more thing into a day, which is a finite container. There'a point where you have to choose, I chose the other things for now.

So, 2/5. Not good, but it is what it is.

Wednesday: 60 minute foot and body rub
Kris and I only got 2/6 foot and body rubs in, I can't complain. I got some extra ad hoc nights writing for clients and blog, interviewing my new Wednesday client, and running some bike errands that ending up with eating bison chili at the Boxstone's.

Thursday: AD HOC TIME
Ad hoc time was a huge success and went just as not planned, and not even all on Thursday: the aforementioned Monday Night Football, a pizza quest, a little systems work, A-bomb's storytelling night, pumpkin carving at Biggie and Outlaw's house, more bike errands to get things for silly domo costumes.

Friday: rest and relaxation
Rest and relaxation, you don't have to tell me twice: the aforementioned Birds, wine party at Trouble's, and the rest couch time watching nerdy television.

Saturday: 45 minute strength session
Last but not least, 3/5 on Saturday strength workouts. After the horrorshow back squats + deadlifts workout, well first, Problem organized a taco bike ride. Long ride, lots of tacos. Then I scaled back to just deadlifts and did two more weeks of those, and then Travis cancelled his workout the last week so I got my hair did:

blue

Oh and, I did pretty all right with the daily practices: walks happened about 4-5x/week, meditation happened about 5-6x/week, stretching happened about 3-4x/week. That's about right. Still working up to the 15 minutes of stretching, I'll get there when I get there.

Overall, I really liked how this break turned out. Even that it started out whittled down, and then it whittled itself down even more. I feel like for the first time ever I felt engaged with what was really going on with me, and not stressed over some ideal training plan. In hindsight, I was trying to accomplish at least three different objectives: rest, crosstrain, and socialize. When you try to do three things at once, ha well, first of all, housecleaning doesn't happen, and you don't get really down with any one of them. But the game isn't always to really get down with one thing, sometimes the game is getting a little bit down with as much of three things that you don't normally get as you can fit into six weeks.

And also, six weeks is just a start and I'm just figuring things out. I plan to keep strength training at least once a week through home season, so will update that again.