Surrender

 Our outside temp is warm. 69 (F).  It's also very humid.  We're supposed to have showers and drizzles this morning.  They will extend into this afternoon, with a high temp in the upper 80s (F).  Things are predicted to cool down overnight, with tomorrow's highs in the mid 70s (F).  Evidently El Nino has arrived which means we might have a cool, wet summer.  That means a lot of mowing.

Yesterday was a fine day.  My Wednesday workout revolves around the machine with a lot less of a reliance on dumbbells.  It's a good change up.  The only exercise I do with dumbbell cs is the dumbbell thruster.  This is the same exercise that Pete Hegseth was failing so miserably.  I use 20 lb dumbbells and it's not unusual to get my heart rate up to 140 beats per minute.  This is a good thing.  Like all muscles, your heart needs to be exercised.

And I had a long lunch with my friends Tami and Ann.  They've been friends for decades.  Not all friendships survive the passing of time.

The Boroughs on Netflix has not been renewed for a 2nd season.  This does not surprise me.  Like Boots, it has an ending that doesn't a continuation of the storyline.  Unlike Widow's Bay, on Apple TV, which used it's 10 episodes to specifically guide you to a cliffhanger ending.  

And, I'm please to announce that there is a least one person in Washington DC who is happy with the green Reflecting Pool.

Don't you find watching Republicans scramble to try and defend the agreement Orangie signed to sit down and talk about a peace deal with Iran amusing.  There are so many who see this as the greatest foreign policy failure in our entire history as a country.  Orangie started a war and then surrendered.  Oh, wait, that's right, it was never really called a war.  What was it he called this attack on Iran?  An excursion?  Yep, that sounds a bit right.  And he signed this surrender in Versailles, surrounded by world leaders who hold him with much more disdain than you can even imagine.  Accountability is coming.  Not only for the  Republican Party, but the Conservative movement as well.  This is why you need to keep them as far away from power as possible.  They always screw things up.

This is Not Going to End Well

Our outside temp is a chilly 29 (F).  Today will be warming up, however, climbing up into the mid 40s (F).  By Thursday our temps should be in the mid to upper 50s (F).  There's nothing wrong with temps like that when your heading into the dead of winter, and that is our current direction.  Personally, I feel that Spring should be right around the corner, not a little over 2 months away.  On the bright side, I saw that 30 days from now we'll be getting a full 54 minutes more of daylight.  Now, isn't that a nice thought.

Yesterday was a workout day and a writing day.  I've upped the poundage on my dumbbells for the bench press to 25 lbs in each hand.  Actually, I upped the weight that I use in all of my dumbbell exercises.  Needless to say I'm a bit sore today.  There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of ache in your triceps, or your shoulders.  Or your quads, even.  Six months ago if you'd told me I'd be doing squats with 20 lb dumbbells I'd have called you crazy since I hate squats.

I did print off my 1099 SM yesterday in preparation for doing my income taxes.  All I need now is my W2 from the home improvement retailer I work for, and my taxes will be done.  

And game playing.  I've been playing Outer Worlds 2 since October 29.  I've leveled up to the point where I rarely die, and when I do it's usually my fault because I've done something stupid.  

Dinner yesterday was a chorizo and rice dish with lots of cilantro.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but I will tell you it was quite tasty.

I saw that Stevie Miller as on CNN last evening shrieking about the United States being a Super Power, and as such should start acting like one; that we should forcibly take Greenland.  This little man is dumb as a brick.  He's a big mouthed man in a tiny body, think Napoleon, however Napoleon was intelligent.  Miller?  Let me be redundant and tell you that he is dumb as a brick.  This is going to turn out badly for the United States.  He will be arrested and quite probably executed for war crimes.  Then Tommy Tuberville said there is no such thing as International Law.  I am starting to believe that RFK's brain worm is not dead, but rather has been quietly breeding, most probably at Mar a Lago.

The apposition leader for Venezuela, Machado, the woman who won the Nobel Peace Price also went on TV saying that the Orange Anus she'd give that prize to Orangie if he allowed free elections in Venezuela.  That woman evidently doesn't understand how Orangie works.  He doesn't want a Democratic government there, he wants a colony that is subservient to American Big Oil.  This is why they are calling Marco Rubio a Viceroy.  What is most likely to happen is that her opposition party will join the revolutionaries when they begin attacking the American troops Orangie will soon be putting on the ground.  This is not going to end will.

Dumbells

Well, here it is, Saturday... again.  I do have to go in to work today, for 6 hours.  Hopefully they will be fine.  This is the time of year when business does a dive... at least on most years.  Last year business was... busy.  Same as the year before.  I don't know where people are getting the money, but they don't seem to mind spending it.  Perhaps most of them are just content to go deeper and deeper into debt.  That is not such a good plan.  Believe me, the sooner you are debt free, the better life will be.

Rather than 3 miles a day, I've been walking 2 on the treadmill, well, to be more accurate, I usually walk for 45 minutes.  I was under the belief that my Garmin Fenix Pro 6 tracking distance through footsteps, so steps were wracking up every time my feet hit the moving belt.  Nope.  That's not the case.  Evidently the swinging of your arm as you walk is what is used for that calculation.  This means gripping the HRM on the front bar to check your heart rate causes you to lose steps.  Not swinging your arms forcefully enough, will cause you to lose steps.  Son of a bitch!

And, for those cold winter days when the temperatures are below freezing and you don't want to bundle up to go to the gym, might I recommend The Fit Gent.  He does all of his workouts with just bands and dumbbells, and by dumbbells I mean the ones you hold in your hand, not the ones you work with.

One of the things I find truly amazing about Republicans is that they really don't think.  They jump to conclusions as though they were concrete facts, rather than a proven conclusion.  Take the 74 million voters who checked Trump rather than Biden on their ballot.  In their feeble minds, those 74 million are locked in and guaranteed to vote Republican.  That terrible miscalculation is one dumbbells can not stop themselves from making, to think otherwise would mean they might be wrong.  Conservatives are never wrong, and they will lie through their teeth to convince you of that fact.  This is why they need to be relegated to some obscure political position where they will have absolutely no access to change what normal people expect in their daily lives.  And, since they will never learn, our only choice is to vote them into the history books as a greasy foot note.  Vote Blue.   Vote Blue.   Vote Blue.

 

Is this a dream?

 Sunday, and I slept in an extra hour.  I had an odd dream about being a resident in some sort of house.  There had been a party with lots of food.  The time came for me to go to bed and I couldn't wait to wake up to see what food was left over.  When I woke up, everything had been put away.  No food.  So I made a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. The dream was rather depressing, and when I checked the headlines on my phone this morning I saw the Idiot Jerk's campaign was asking for another recount in Georgia.  Son of a Bitch!

Yesterday was an odd day at work.  We were fairly busy in what my Mammy (yes, that's what I called my grandmother on my mother's side) the forenoon.  I cut a lot of carpet.  There were the odd questions.  I couldn't wait to leave, and when I got home I made egg salad.  Perhaps that was responsible for the food in my dream.  I didn't write anything, but did play more Valhalla.  I did win my first flyting contest.  Flyting is a ritual poetic exchange of insults.    There are some famous Norse poems involving the god Loki and flyting.  I never thought I'd be trying to verbally abuse someone with poetry in a video game.

Of course, a Federal judge in Pennsylvania smacked back at the Idiot Jerk's appeal to throw out every ballot in the state.  In response, the Idiot Jerk's henchies were hoping to take the case to the Supreme Court.   For those who don't know, this is how sedition works as he and his team constantly fuel the anger of his base.  This is why the Republicans packed the Supreme Court.  This is what evil looks like.  The blame for this falls directly on the shoulders of those who didn't vote in 2016, the ones who sat home.  By doing so, they opened the door to those who desperately want to destroy our democracy.

Finally, it's time for the dogs to get their walk in, and after that a dumbbell work out is on the calendar.  The exercises marked in orange are those on the workout.  Believe me, it's fun!

Torch This

Well, it Wednesday morning and also a free weight morning, 18 (F) is too cold for me to jump into my car wearing my sweats and drive over to Planet Fitness, so it's dumbbells, and squats, and medicine ball crunches for me.
Evidently there was a dumbbell on TV last night... wait, that's being too kind.  The Idiot Jerk spit out farts and turds his Idiot supporters scraped onto their plates.  At one point Pelosi had to shush some booing from the Center.  Melanoma was there but evidently the Porn Star and her Forbes magazine weren't... now wouldn't that have been a hoot?  Anyway, I guess he touted the economy, and how it's surged.  Interestingly enough, 50% of the country give credit to Obama for the economy... Oops.
If an article in Bloomberg yesterday on McDonald's and labor costs is an indicator, fast food prices have already begun to increase.  The Dollar Meal may be back but don't expect it to be value packed.
Oh, and am I the only one to notice how gasoline prices are increasing?  I paid $2.85 for a gallon of regular yesterday.  Rising gas prices are not a good sign for the economy.  What good is that great tax cut we're all getting if we need to spend it on rising fuel costs?  But then again, maybe that was the plan.
I also got a call from the "big" director of my Mom's senior living facility - thanks to a conversation I had with him, her monthly cost is only going up around $500.  It seems as though he is the one who actually decides what charges get applied to which residents.  Oh, and he is big, at least 350 lbs - maybe I should bribe him with a couple of Twinkies, or a McDonald's gift card that's going to be less in 3 months than it is today.

Speaking of gas, well, there are all types of gases out there, some that are actually lighter than air,  some that smell bad (like Big Seig's farts), some that are lethal, and then there are those that are flammable... and then, of course, we have those that are a combination of the two, like methane.  Never light a match around methane.  What a shame no one lighted a match last night during the State of the Union... we might have gotten to see something like this.

Hitting 50 means it's time to start working your ass off!

It's that time of year again where some people are actually making a concerted effort to lose a few pounds and maybe get in shape.  By this time all of those New Year's Eve resolutions doomed to be crushed underfoot have been long been forgotten and all of those 6 month gym memberships that were purchased have been classified as a poor investment.  Yet there are those who are making the effort.  Some of them go to the gym and others do their workouts at home.    If you are one of the latter chances are you might have bought a work out video, there are a shit load of them out there.  One of the most popular is the P90 program.  I also do an abbreviated version since I don't have an hour and half every day just to run through the routines.  Also, I never play the music since it's not something I enjoy listening to and I don't find it at all rousing nor do I find it inducing enthusiasm.  Another thing I rarely complete are the push ups.  I have always hated them, for as far back as I can remember, which is nearly prehistoric.  Quite a lot of the routines, however, are beneficial, if you tweak them to be age appropriate.    I'm not thirty, so jumping around like I am might result in injury.

In addition I include weight training in the form of dumbbells and a medicine ball. As we age, both men and women, our muscles tend to atrophy - they get smaller.  How often have  you seen an elderly person and realized their musculature almost matches that of a baby?  I see in all of the time.  That's one thing I don't want to grow into, which is why I advocate weight training.  I think it might even be more important the jumping around I do with the P90 programs.

If you do this often enough you can start wearing the cute, little black shorts.

I use a 12 pound medicine ball and love it.  The routine is simple and takes about 7 minutes to run through.  It's great for stretching!

My cardio usually consists of a hour three times a week done on either my Sole elliptical or my bike which is mounted on a Cycleops trainer.  

Why do I do cardio, free weights, and stretching?  Because as we get older we need to do all three.  I do four if you throw in the Yoga which is something I definitely need to work on since it is the one thing I tend to forget (something about bending over to do a double dare dog or what ever it's called seems odd to me).  Staying active is important as hell. Once you've decided you deserve to sit on your ass ad relax you start losing the battle.  The weight will pound on, your energy will dissipate.  I know because I see people like this every day as they trudge through life.

 

Adonis my ass or working with dumbbells

I'm sure there are some of you who think weight training is a dirty word because you equate it with muscle soreness.  I have one thing to say to you:  get a life!  Muscle soreness tells you the muscle hasn't been used in, and this is a presumptive guess, YEARS!  Most likely because you're middle aged and lazy.  "No pain, no gain" is just as true as "use it or lose it."  The choice is yours.  You can maintain the muscle you have, maybe build a little on it, or you can continue to slowly waste away.    Let's put some emphasis on the word waste.  Maybe you want to be 85 and have the muscle tone of an 8 month old baby.  I don't.  So get your ass out the sweet spot of you Laziboy and grab some weights.  Now there is something you need to be very much aware of, your age!  If you're in your mid-twenties you're probably not going to have much of a problem.  However, if you just happen to be middle-aged, like me, you're not going to want to start swinging around 25 pound dumbbells.  Start easy!  Ten pound dumbbells are fine.  In fact I'll let you in on a little secret, when you're a young, strapping Adonis having big biceps and shoulders and pecs capable off poking out some one's eye is important as hell, poundage is fine.

See, even back in the Greco - Roman days they used dumbbells

The bigger the plates the bigger the muscle.  However, if you're middle-aged, like me, your days of even dreaming of looking like one of the statues above are long gone.   However, if you lust for six pack abs and don't mind working your balls off there just might be hope for you (slim hope to be sure).  The truth about abs like that?  We all have them, they're just covered in body fat.  The truth of the matter is that you should be more concerned about muscle maintenance at this stage of your life and lower weights is the way to go.  The results you want are strength not size.  Muscle mass disappears as you get older, this is normal.  The only way to keep your muscles from doing a fade out is to work them and when you work them it should be a repetitive routine.  This doesn't mean you should stick to low poundage, medium (for your body weight and size) will work just fine.  You just need to workout regularly, on a fixed schedule, otherwise all you will end up doing is wasting your time, which is the type of thing a porko deluxe might do.