It Doesn't Even Matter

I didn't go to the gym at all yesterday. My sister called me just before I left to work out and asked if I wanted to eat lunch with her. So I did. And today, as usual, I ate with a friend. So that ruled today out, too, because I know I won't go after work.

I've been feeling really down lately, and not just your normal "I'll be OK" kind of down, either. I don't recall having ever been this down before. It feels as if I won't ever get back up again at times.

Making myself feel worse, I stumbled across an old friend on Facebook. Perhaps you might recognize her?

Remember me?

Don't worry about it if you have no idea who this. It's an old story and not really important. It's just like being kicked while you are already down. I ran across her without really meaning to. She's married, has kids, and is either living in Pittsburgh or Atlanta. From what I could tell, her parents are super wealthy and for the most part her life is pretty awesome. But this is the person I never knew, not the person I was actually talking to. So it doesn't even matter.





Despite Alana's warnings from the other day to steer clear of protein powder, last night before bed I drank a glass. Yeah, its supposed to keep your body from cannibalizing your muscles while you sleep. And Lord knows I can't afford to have my own body devouring my muscles. But the problem with drinking this protein shake before bed is the bladder aspect. I got up 3 times during the night to pee. And boy did I ever need to pee! So I'm a bit tired today.

It's hard to be productive when you're tired. And I'm behind on a project I need to be making good progress on. So that's not good.

Tomorrow, barring any unexpected lunch invitations, I will either go to bodypump class and embarrass myself or else do a back and bicep workout with the freeweights. Bodypump will make me look like a fool, which I tend to do all by myself most of the time anyway. Freeweights will just make me super sore so that I walk funny for the next 2 days because I can't hold my arms in a normal and relaxed position. But no one is looking at me anyway, for the most part, so that's OK. Just so long as no one challenges me to a boxing match or game of tennis I should be alright.

I have a lot of important things to think about. They are distracting me from my project at work. Also distracting me at work is a couple of unexpected problems a few people keep having which they call me about. They don't know what's wrong, so it's up to me to figure it out for them and fix it. Some people call that job security, but in this day and age I truly can't say that I believe in any such thing.

Well, the workday is done. It's time for me to hit the road. I have no specific plans for tonight and really nothing that I'm looking forward to. That's pretty sad. I need to sit down and start coming up with things that I can do by myself that I really enjoy and then go do them. Maybe I'll go see a movie.

Fatty McFattenfat

OK, so something weird is happening. Or maybe I'm just a moron?

I've reduced the amount of milk in my diet. I now mix my protein and creatine with water instead of milk. And the only other sports drink I'm taking in is something called Essential AmiN.O. Energy, which is an energy and recovery drink mix.

Other than that, I'm taking my usual vitamins, massive doses of steroids and human growth hormone .... no, wait, I'm thinking of Madonna. I'm not taking any steroids or human growth hormone. Not that I wouldn't if some nice person were to offer to give me some. Lord knows I need it.

Anyway, since dropping milk almost entirely I've noticed that my stomach seems to have swelled up like a Hoppity Hop.

For those of you in places like the UK or Australia, I'm going to just assume you had Hoppity Hops and simply called them something else, because you guys always do that, so I'm providing a photo:

I don't know exactly what is causing me to feel and look this way, but I'm looking pregnant. I swear I could pop out a little alien baby at any moment. It'd have to tear through my stomach, though, because I'm a man and thus lack a vagina.

Pink - seriously, its just for girls

Speaking of men with vaginas, as I was leaving the gym I passed a man wearing a pink shirt and tie coming in. I looked at his shirt and then up at his face. He looked away in shame rather than make eye contact. Dude, I have to ask, if you know how pathetic that is, why are you wearing it in the first place? Did you lose a bet or something?

Feels like this guy hit me

Anyway, I did legs today. Every machine in this gym is new to me, so it was a bit of an experience. After the weights I went upstairs and ran a mile on the treadmill in hopes of moving some of the lactic acid from Wednesday's chest workout and today's leg workout out of the muscles. I'm in agony from Wednesday. My chest feels like someone took a giant plank and whopped me across the chest with it. I can barely move my arms and shoulders. This, of course, caused me to run funny while on the treadmill. I'm sure all the college girls surrounding me noticed that and were likely thinking to themselves, "that man with the hoppity hop belly sure does run funny."

Don't hate

Thank you. I don't need your criticisms. Don't hate.

Dear Mr Gym Bag

Dear Mr Gym Bag,

the benches running the length of each aisle, surrounded by lockers, are not there for people to use for storage. They are there for people to use for changing clothes, especially sitting down to change their shoes and socks.

If you place your gym bag and equipment on the bench and leave, either to work out or go shower, anyone needing to use the bench for its intended purpose will take your bag off the bench and place it in the floor, especially when the locker room is crowded and the bench is completely full due to people using it while dressing.

If you do not wish to have your bag removed from the bench and placed on the floor, it is recommended that you put it inside a locker like everyone else. This is what the lockers are there for. This is why there are so many of them, at least half of which were empty at the time that you chose to simply leave your stuff in everyone's way on the bench instead of using one.

Even though this is a fairly crime-free city, compared to many others I won't mention by name, it is not inconceivable that some poor starving college student might see your wide open gym bag as an opportunity for free stuff and relieve you off it. I myself could easily have picked it up and walked out without anyone suspecting that it wasn't mine. Anyone could have simply searched the open bag for a wallet or car keys and taken them. As pissed off as you were to return and find your gym bag in the floor and underneath the bench, try to imagine how much more angry you would be were you to open the bag and discover that your wallet and car keys were missing, and possibly days later to find that your entire identity had been stolen, with resulting charges and headaches now coming home to you. Imagine how angry you would have been to return and find the bag not there at all.

In short, put your damn gym bag in a damn locker and don't give me attitude about putting it on the floor so I could sit down and put my shoes on. The bench is not a locker. Don't use it like one.

Sincerely,

E.F.

"Dude, totally NOT cool!"

And finally, Nicholas Cage is a vampire ...

Back In Black

So, it's been, what, nearly a month since I was last well enough to go to the gym and attempt a workout? Well, not that I'm well, exactly, but I went anyway out of sheer frustration and impatience.

Over the weekend I had some ... er ... bathroom incidents that gave me the impression that whatever has made me sick is not entirely cleared up yet. I nearly crapped in the floor of WalMart. It was OK, though. I was in the toilet-related aisle, where they keep the plungers, etc.

Walmart even has vampires

Last Thursday, just out of frustration at not being able to get to the gym for the past 3 weeks or so, I did some push ups and chin ups and tricep extensions using my own personal dumbbells while watching TV. The push ups were OK. The tricep extensions I rocked. The chin ups were an embarrassment. I haven't done a chin up in about 2 years. I think my body forgot how and was hoping I wouldn't ever try to remember. I'm not one to be so easily put off, though, so I pulled up a chair and forced out several sets of negatives. And they hurt like hell.

Today in bodypump class apparently I had been gone for so long that everyone forgot my face. People looked at me like a stranger when I walked in. And I got stuck in a spot between several female fitness fanatics who made me look like a quadriplegic in comparison to them. As if that wasn't bad enough, a woman showed up late and just basically climbed up my ass and started working out right behind me. Seriously, when the classroom is full, go lift some free weights or something. Don't give me an enema just because you can't find a spot to set up your stuff. Either that or warn me that you're going to give me an enema and I'll let you have my spot and I'll go lift free weights. I need to anyway. It's been over 6 months since I was doing any heavy lifting and that is way too long.

Sagging push up

I was total crap today. I did OK with the squats until my knee started complaining. I was great with the overhead presses. I even did OK with the weighted lunge/overhead press combos. But by the time we got to the push ups and abs I was collapsing in the middle. I almost need a little jack to put under my stomach to hold it up while I'm doing my push ups. I think it would help.

My knee bothered me enough that at one point the instructor looked over at me and said those horrible words that no one wants to hear directed at them, "are you all right?"

"Yes," I nodded and kept rubbing my knee and wishing everyone would quit looking at me.

Show off!

The woman to my left was cranking out push ups like she was in the marines. And her ab work was like something from one of those TV fitness commercials where everyone looks perfect and never gets tired. If I weren't so afraid of sharting I might've been tempted to release a fart in her direction just to slow her down. But as I have been a human butt rocket for the past month or so, I thought better of it. No farting for me for awhile.

I was informed this past weekend that milk is not good for you because it contains an insane amount of sugar in the form of lactose. I have to be honest, I didn't know that lactose was sugar. And I also don't know if the lactose form of sugar is the same as any other sugar and affects you the same way. Do any of you know much about this? I'd really like to know because I drink a lot of milk. Do I need to stop?

How can this be bad for me?

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Guitars

A few months ago, I was sitting in the TV room playing my fabulous Fender acoustic guitar when it occurred to me that it would be nice to have a cheap guitar that I could just leave in front of the TV and not care about so that every time I sat down I could pick it up and practice while watching TV and vegetating. I figured a cheap used guitar would be best so that if it got knocked over or bashed by anyone, I wouldn't care.

So, I went out on Craigslist and looked at a few used guitars. I called a few people. I found what I wanted, got the $100 cash, and headed over to buy it. Just as I was arriving, the guy called and said "I don't have the guitar. It's not at my house. It's at my friend's house and he won't bring it to me. He's being mean." WTF? What is this, kindergarten? Go get it yourself if you want to sell it. Ah, but he didn't. He was jerking me around.

Jerking me around

Time passed without me getting to meet up with the other people selling guitars whom I had contacted. In the meantime, a new store opened up right near where I work. The Guitar Center opened a brand new branch not 10 minutes from my office. Oh, you bastards!

Sure, the first time I went was just to look around. I wasn't there for anything special. I left with a used $50 amp and a used $100 Vox effects board.

I played my electronic-capable acoustic guitar through the new amp. It was nice enough. It would do the job. And then I started playing around with the Vox effects. Holy crap, this is fun! Ah, if only I had my electric here, it would be even cooler! But that guitar is hundreds of miles away. Oh well.

Later that week I went back to The Guitar Center. They had some starter electric guitars for around $100 that would work just fine for what I wanted. They were decent guitars and if anything happened to them I would not be very upset. I looked at them and wasn't overly enthused. I started to get a Squire Stratocaster, fairly similar to the electric guitar I already have. But then I thought, "why buy another Strat when I already have one, just not with me?" So I started looking at the Epiphone SG Junior which was $129. It was ... eh. I picked up the Epiphone SG Special, a little more expensive at $169, but clearly a better guitar.

SG Special

I bought the SG Special for $169, plus in my haste I somehow let slip past me a $45 pro warranty I didn't need. That pro warranty was money I could've saved, but it gave me 2 months to check out the guitar and bring it back if I wanted to.

I played the guitar for a month. I liked it OK. But the next model up the chain, the SG G-310 was better and I knew I wanted that one instead. It costs $249. So I decided to take my guitar back and trade up, plus cash, for the better model. One month and two weeks after I had purchased it, I took it back for the exchange.

SG G-310

Ah, but wouldn't you know, they never have that model in stock. I would have to turn in my guitar and order the G-310 to be shipped.

"Oh, but hey, we have the G-400 right here! In fact, we just got 2 of them in today. How lucky! Why not buy one of those instead? It's only another $100 more," said the sneaky tattooed salesman.

So I did.

Plus, despite my telling the sneaky tattooed salesman that I did not want and could not afford the pro warranty on this new guitar ($65), he slapped it on my credit card anyway. I had to go back the next day to get that refunded.

SG G-400 

What began as a seemingly logical idea, to buy a cheap used guitar which I planned to keep by the TV so I could practice every day and not care if it became damaged somehow, has ended with me now playing a $349 + tax very nice guitar that I very much do care about and don't want banged up or scratched or otherwise abused.

What the hell happened??










The most famous SG in the World

Augh!

I received a call from my dentist yesterday. Or rather, from his receptionist. She said I had an appointment to see him tomorrow. I don't recall making this appointment. It sounds like an evil plot to me.

Nevertheless, I went to see him despite my misgivings.

I have to say, they didn't keep me in the waiting room for very long. I was in there just long enough for a woman to come out of the bathroom which I needed, do my business, and come out again, before they sent someone out to get me and drag me to the back.

The first thing they did was to force me to stand in some sort of space alien detection machine. I had to bite on a plastic handle while they spun an X-ray around my head and made a screaming sound. I mean, the machine made the screaming sound, not the dental people. For some reason they felt it very important that I put my feet totally together and keep them that way. I thought this odd, but I suspect it was a crude attempt at protected my testicles from the X-rays so that I am less likely to one day sue them for giving me testicular cancer. Actually, if they gave me that, suing would be the least of their concerns. I have a gun, dammit.

Anyway, after the space alien torture, they put me in a chair and began trying to prying all my teeth out of my gums with a small bent ice pick. None of them came loose, so they told me I need to floss more. Yeah, I totally forgot to do that since my last visit, like at all.

After carving their initials into my teeth with the ice pick, they polished my teeth. At first I thought this was a very nice thing for them to do. I was remembering when I was a little kid and I would see those ads for Pearl Drops Tooth Polish. Everyone in those ads had Donny Osmond white teeth. For those of you who don't know who Donny Osmond is, just imagine the whitest teeth you have ever seen and then brighten them by about 10 percent. That's Donny Osmond's teeth.

But getting back to my own teeth which do not look like Donny Osmond's, I quickly realized, and by quickly, I mean it took me awhile, that the real reason the dentist always has to polish your teeth is because they've carved them up with those torture devices they use to dig things out of your gums and pry things off your enamel. Carved up teeth are like a rock climbing wall in a gym for bacteria and plaque and if they just left them all carved and initialed without polishing them, the next time you came in for your visit you'd have so much plaque attached to your teeth that they'd need a jackhammer to get it off. Probably.

I'm not a dentist, but this is my best guess.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the person who invented dental tools was some kind of satan-worshipping sadist who probably tortured animals as a child.

After my torture session was over, and I am proud to say that I did not cry, the dentist came in and looked at my X-rays. He said my teeth were great and showed no problems. Then he began discussing my sinuses and allergies. I don't know why. I think he was just making small-talk from all the extra stuff in my head that was showing up in the X-ray. He even mentioned my jaw and nerve canal and things that may have related to fishing, or perhaps they were dental terms I am unfamiliar with. I just nodded.

So now I have grit in my teeth which has stayed with me all day long. Every time I visit the dentist I spend the rest of the day with grit in my teeth. It seems ironic to me that my teeth feel cleaner going into the dentist's office than they do when I come out, all gritty and scraped and polished like they are.

I have a vague memory of having made an appointment for sometime next year. Most likely I will forget all about it. And then a mysterious phone call will come and leave a message on my machine, "it's time for your check-up. Come see your dentist."

Scary damn message.

WTF?

Have you ever received a notification from a social site, something like Facebook for Google+, telling you that someone had accepted your request? And you read their name and said "Who the hell is that and when did I send them a request?"

Yeah, well that happened to me today. Twice.

To be fair, one of the people who added me, I didn't send a request to. They just added me and then I was asked if I wanted to add them back. And I said to myself "self, this person hates your guts. I have no idea why they added you, but you can bet your bottom dollar that as soon as you add them back they are going to drop you." I said this to myself and yet I added them back anyway. I'm such a sucker.

The other one, though, accepted my friend request and I have no clue who they are. I think they might be a blogger, but we have no friends in common and I don't see any links to their blog on their page, so I have nothing to go on.

Hey, maybe I'm just THAT popular?

10 Things I'd Like to Say

I am stealing this from Ex-Hooters Girl - 10 things you'd like to say to 10 different people, but don't say who they are.

Ready? Go!

How dare you treat me like I treat you!

• You think you're so clever, having your friend email me pretending to be a blogger and drill me about you. And then after she reports back to you, you call me and give me massive drama seemingly out of nowhere. How would you react if I did this to you? Don't bother to answer. I know how you'd react. You'd go ballistic. And you have so little respect for me that you think I don't know what's going on.     

Oops, I molested your boy. Sorry, my bad.

• I think it's disgusting how you have pushed the FBI to redefine rape, not because it completely ignores male victims of sex crimes entirely, which it will continue to do, but because you openly state that there is federal tax-money to be gained from the new 'feminist' definition. You are everything the critics of feminism say and worse. You are despicable.



Der ... uh, yup. Gawsh!

• What part of "leave this here" do you not understand? And how did you not comprehend the problem when you filled my new office with the new person's furniture even as I was telling you that is my new office and the office I'm currently in will be her office? Tomorrow you're going to move that furniture out of that office and put mine in it, plus the cabinet you stupidly moved into my current office complete with the note attached saying "leave this here" still on it. And then you're going to have to move her furniture into my old office like I told you today you were supposed to be doing already. You must enjoy moving things an awful lot, because you're going to have to do it twice.  

Bitch

• After that huge favor I did for you, and all the "thank you, thank you, thank you", I have to say, I find it truly insulting that you would agree to spy on me and report on me while lying your ass off to me the way you are. I won't forget this.




• You can squeeze your employees as tightly as you want to, but it won't make them perform any better. You don't know what the hell you're doing and the harder you try to control things, micromanage things really, the worse they perform. Any normal non-egomaniac can see that. But you are no normal non-egomaniac.

This is fun

• I don't know just how much pleasure you could possibly be getting out of your life, but I have spent enough time and energy reaching out to you only to have you reach out to me not at all. I won't be doing any more of that. If I don't see you again, good luck to you.





Rock Star

•  I'm amazed at how you have seemingly achieved everything the rest of us always dreamed of. Even as kids, you were already on your way to being a rockstar and we were just idiots with cheap guitars. I still can't play worth a crap, and I still hear my mom saying periodically "we don't have any talent in our family. Why try?" But your family was so different from mine. They were behind you all the way, so encouraging. Oh what a difference that makes! Fly high, rockstar. I've got tickets to your next concert and I'll be sitting in the audience wondering how my life might've been different if only I'd been born to different parents.

• I encourage you as much as I can, but its not easy for me. I just try to say the opposite of what my parents always used to say to us. It seems to be working. Things are going well for you, and I'm glad to have been a part of that.

• Thank you guys for always letting me hang with you whenever I'm around. I realize you only barely know me, but in many ways you have been better friends to me than most of the people I once called my friends in the past.

I smiteth thee with my tongue

• No, none of us are better off than we were four years ago, that's true. A very astute observation on your part. But the fact that you don't seem to grasp how you and your buddies are largely responsible for that is truly alarming. This is the danger inherent in a system made up entirely of professional talkers - they know how to say the right words to win the job, or to shirk the blame, but once in power they have no clue how business and economies actually work. Worse still, I'm so very afraid that the man who appears likely to be your replacement will be an inadequate improvement relative to the change we really need. The two of you have more in common with each other than either of you has with the entire rest of the country. You probably play golf at the same country clubs. There will be no hope and change until we're rid of the whole lot of you and bring in some real Americans. But that seems almost too much to hope for.

I stole the following uber cool clip from Catch Her In The Wry:

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So, It's Wednesday

So I wrote this big old post, and then I looked it over and decided I didn't want to do anything with it. It was kind of fun to write, but I didn't quite think anyone would enjoy it as much as I did. And since I already got most of my enjoyment out of writing it, I couldn't think of a good reason for posting it and hoping anyone would read it.

I talked to a counselor today. He used to specialize in marriage counseling. Now he's doing all sorts of counseling. We met at a chicken place that I'm pretty sure serves only food that has been thoroughly soaked in heart-attack-inducing oils and nothing else. Everything I ate, once it went cold because I was talking instead of eating, had that cold cooking oil nastiness to it. I don't know how to explain it, but its like a kind of coldness that sets off instincts in your brain that seem to be saying, "don't eat that. It's seems nasty because it's killing you. It's blocking up your arteries with partially hydrogenated trans fats that will still be with you after you've been dead and buried a good 20 years." So I ended up throwing a good bit of my lunch in the trash. And it was probably for the best.

My wrist is hurting me again today. This is really driving me crazy. I haven't been to the gym in 2 weeks now, and I didn't hurt it in the gym, and it didn't hurt at all while I was last in the gym, but it just keeps hurting like hell. I know it is getting colder outside, and that affects things, but I don't even recall injuring this wrist. It was the other one, the one not hurting, that I totally screwed up in a football game and then re-aggravated while weight lifting. This just makes no sense to me.

Even worse, last weekend while touring a cotton gin facility (yes, seriously) my knee started to hurt so badly that I thought I was going to be sick. And I haven't done anything to injure my knee lately, either.

I think my body is plotting to assassinate me!

Listen, with as much pain as I have been in lately, you would think I was the one doing this: