Week 3 of the One Hundred Pushup Challenge was a killer. I tested into the "> 25 pushups" portion after doing 30 on Sunday, and immediately on the first day, I had to start with 25 pushups for just the first set! It doesn't get easier, as you have 60 seconds to recover and move on to 17, 17, 15, then 25 to finish up. My form was... not good. But I pretty much finished it. Eventually on Day 3, this morning, I had to do 30, 22, 22, 20 and 27. I barely eked my way through that, leading me to consider redoing the week. However, after looking ahead to week 4, I realized it wouldn't be that much more than I did this week, so I will forge ahead and see how I do.
On the President's Challenge side, I'm now 86 % of the way toward the goal of 20000 points for a Bronze Award. I should be able to surpass 20000 by the end of next week.
On Monday morning, I'll be headed downtown for the Zipcar Low-Car Diet kickoff. If anyone happens to be near Gallery Place around 9am, stop by and say hi. The requirements are pretty simple: don't use your car for a month, and see how it goes. I have to send them email updates every couple of weeks, and I might record a video of my commute or our trips to the market or something. In return, I got a free Zipcar membership for the year, $150 driving credit for Zipcars, $250 MetroCard for riding the train or bus, a copy of How to Live Well Without Owning a Car (which I already read and own a copy of) and a free one year membership to the Washington Area Bicyclists Association. Not a bad haul, I must say. That MetroCard should definitely help on those bad weather days. Who knows? Maybe I can eventually sell our second car.
No, not made in St. Louis, but in Belgium. Interesting choice, given the Anheuser-Busch/InBev goings on of late.
Deep garnet color with light pink head. Fairly decent lacing on my tulip glass.
Obviously, I get a good deal of cherry in the aroma, on the sweet side. The taste smacked me in the face with nostalgia: Luden's cherry cough drops. It's not necessarily a bad thing, I loved those cough drops. It's just not what I'd expect in my beer. There's a bit of tartness in the aftertaste too.
Not all that great, I don't think. Too syrupy and sweet for me, even if that's what I was in the mood for.
Overall rating: 2.9
Ellie went swimming yesterday at her friend's place in Annapolis. She did really well swimming with the life jacket, even better than she does in the regular pool!
Let me know if you can't view the video above, I may have to invite you since it's a "private" video.
I completed Week 2 of the One Hundred Pushup Challenge this morning. So far it hasn't been too terribly difficult. Sometime this weekend, I will do another test to exhaustion, to see which column I have to do for weeks 3 and 4. I'm pretty sure I'll be in column 3 (the hardest) again, since I should be able to do more than 25 easily. One thing I do need to add is situps in the off-days, to make sure I stay well-rounded.
In the President's Challenge, I have 13413 "points," meaning I am roughly 2/3 of the way to a "Bronze Award." Not too bad after only a month of recording the data. I started getting points more quickly now that my biking speed has gotten faster, and I'm no longer in the "Moderate, 12 - 16 mph" but in the "Vigorous, faster than 16 mph" category. It's a big difference too, I have found that I can stay in the big gears going up hills for much longer. I am still definitely winded once I get to the top, but I'm getting there much quicker, which makes me feel good. And this morning, I raced the bus and won for the first time. We were both at the same stoplight, and when it turns green, the bus takes a short detour to pick up a couple of passengers while I go straight. The bus usually catches me before I get to the end of the mile long stretch, but this morning, I beat it by a good 30 seconds or so. A good way to start the morning.
And yet, there it is: Sid and Marty Krofft's MySpace page, complete with "Krofft Kwikies," 4-5 minutes versions of the original episodes of all your favorites: HR Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost and more. And yes, the special effects on Land of the Lost are just as freakin' hawesome as you remember.
This is going to kill the rest of my lunch break....
The first Land of the Lost "kwikie" is embedded below.
Found via io9, the cool sci-fi blog.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
My review
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's interesting to think that if a few things had gone just a little bit differently, I might have been a grad student under Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon. As it turned out, I never heard of him until seeing his last lecture video, and of course I had to read the accompanying book.
His advice is pretty simple really: live your childhood dreams. Easier said than done of course, but he effectively lays out how brick walls are thrown up to prevent you from reaching your goals, and how to overcome them. It's not a self-help book per se, but I could see it getting people off their rears to change the way they're living. For me, this means that one of these days, I'm totally doing one of those baseball fantasy camps. Yeah, it's not quite the same as living the dream of playing in the majors, but it's about as close as I'm gonna get at this point. Thanks Randy.
Next up is The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall.
A couple of weeks ago while browsing the Fatwallet forums, I stumbled across what seemed like a sweet deal: Sign up for the Zipcar "Car-Free Diet" plan. You agree to keep your car keys in your junk drawer for just one month, from July 21st through August 15th. In return, you get a loaded public transit pass, a free 1-year Zipcar membership, some driving time and more goodies that we'll tell you about a little later.
Seemed like a no-brainer, so I signed up and waited. And waited. Turned out, they only took 30 people from each area, not everyone who signed up. But, lo and behold, I was one of the chosen 30! Schweet! So on July 21st, I'll be downtown for the ceremonial key-relinquishing (they give them back, but I don't anticipate needing them). Coincidentally, that night, Lisa and the kids will be flying home from Detroit. Luckily, they are arriving at National airport, so we can take the Metro back. I could also potentially pick them up in one of the Zipcars, but the kids do love the train.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've done damn well riding my bike to work pretty much every day, so I don't think it'll be a big deal to keep doing so. The fun part will be the stuff I send in to them to document my experience. I'm planning on taking pictures of the receipt from my last gas fillup (June 26), my odometer which shouldn't move, and maybe some video of my ride to/from work, especially the part where I pass over the packed Beltway while on the trail. It should be a lot of fun.
I feel obliged to mention that yesterday, a young woman riding her bicycle was struck and killed by a garbage truck in DC. The driver apparently never saw her. There is also apparently a bike lane on this road, but it's not clear whether she was riding in the bike lane or not. Either way, it's certainly a wakeup call to everyone to pay attention when riding, driving, or walking. My heart goes out to her family. Ride safe out there everyone.
I need to make sure my GPS watch is charged better. I know these totals are going to be low because I didn't have the watch charged and thus it didn't record my stats those days. Still, for what it's worth, here they are:
Driving roundtrips: 5 (two of which were when I had a flat tire)
Biking roundtrips: 16
Bike mileage: 205.02 miles (I know I am missing two days of GPS data, so that probably adds another 30 miles or so)
I've gotten really good at the big hill on my commute home, and I've managed to get my average moving speed up over 16 mph a couple of times. Now if only I could avoid those couple of stupid traffic lights....
I bagged out of work early on Thursday afternoon so that we would go up to Hartland Orchard for some blueberry picking. We ended up with 12 pints of blueberries for $20, less than $1.67 per pint. They were on sale at the farmers market for $4.50/pint on Saturday. A good deal, even accounting for gas costs. Of course, now we have 12 pints of blueberries to eat. We gave away 3 pints to friends and neighbors, and Lisa made blueberry buckle for breakfast. That leaves a lot of blueberries left, though Evan has figured out that he can reach up on the table and grab handfuls at a time to snack on.
We biked up to the park on Friday for the Independence Day festivities. Shockingly, the "all-you-can-ride" bracelet was priced at a reasonable $10, so Ellie got to have all the fun she could handle on the various moon bounces and slides. It was a bit hot, but we brought plenty of water and had a lot of fun. We skipped out on the laser light show though (last year's fireworks went horribly wrong, shooting into spectators and badly injuring at least one woman) since it was starting to rain. Instead, we picked up Baskin-Robbins where Ellie had the very patriotic Nation's Birthday ice cream.
On Saturday, we headed down the street to our neighbor's second birthday party. They had a moon bounce there too, so Ellie was in heaven. Burgers, popsicles, cake, fun times had by all.
Finally, on Sunday we headed downtown for the last day of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Featured this year were Texas (skipped it, except for the BBQ), NASA (50th anniversary), and Bhutan. Learning about Bhutan, a small country wedged between Nepal, India and China, was fascinating. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the various alcoholic drinks they make all from the same fermented mash, the most popular of which is called ara. Unfortunately, the rules didn't allow us regular folks to sample the drink, so we'll just have to plan a trip to Bhutan sometime. Maybe then I could actually try some real "ema datshi," which they served in a watered-down, barely spicy version at the vending stands. We could also try the equally fascinating butter tea, suja. At any rate, the kids had a good time, especially at the NASA area.
So now I'm back at work after riding in this morning (73 degrees can be surprisingly oppressive when combined with 84% humidity), wishing I just had one more day for the long weekend.
Absolutely fascinating and smart novel from Ian McDonald. He deftly maneuvers between three completely different time periods and manages to weave them together with quantum theory to make my head hurt, but in a good way. He somehow manages to make it make sense, while simultaneously boggling the mind with the implications of quantum computing. Extremely entertaining read, recommended to sci-fi fans who like science in the sci-fi.
Next up is The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.
John got it right after a few guesses, and my brother got it right on his first guess: homemade yogurt! We bought milk at the farmers market on Saturday specifically for this purpose. It was pretty simple really, you heat the milk without scalding it, throw in some store bought yogurt, then put the jar in the warm car outside (110 degrees or so) for a few hours. It really does end up tasting just as good as the store bought stuff. It only saves a couple bucks, but every little bit helps, and it's fun too.
Better yet was when we were at Whole Foods picking up a few things and found local cherries on sale for $2/pound. We picked up 3 pounds, and Lisa made the best cherry pie from scratch. It was freaky how much it looked like a store bought pie, the filling looked like it was from a can, but everything she used was fresh ingredients. Just way too good to be good for my waistline.
Luckily, I've still been riding my bike, and this is the first week I've been doing the one hundred pushup challenge. I did day 2 this morning, and I'm having trouble imagining myself 5 weeks from now doing two sets of 27 pushups separated by 30 seconds of rest. But I'll keep trying and post my progress.
Hint: it's not mayo. Send me an email with your guess.
Nice rust color. Big full head on this one, leaving a lot of lacing on the glass.
I really didn't get a lot of aroma from here. Really, with the hops it seems like it should have been stronger.
Thankfully, the taste more than make up for it. The best way I could describe it is "green." The hops are foremost of course, but they are just balanced by a nice malty sweetness. It is strange to feel like a beer with such a prominent hop flavor can be so smooth, but it really is.
The nice thing is that even in a 24 ounce bottle, one can easily put down the whole thing in a sitting.
Definitely recommended.
Overall rating: 4.5
Round one of the President's Challenge Adult Fitness Test, I hope to do it again near the end of the summer or in September.
Gender: Male
Age: 34
1.5 mile run: 10:17
Half sit-ups in one minute: 73
Pushups: 25
Sit and reach: 18 inches (18.5, but no decimals in the test form)
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 159 lbs
Waist circumference: 32 inches
I was in the 80th percentile on the 1.5 mile run, 95th on situps, 45th on pushups, and 70th on sit and reach. That put me in the 72nd overall. My BMI was 22.8: "normal." So I was above average in 3 of the 4, not bad. I actually did the run on the local roads instead of a track, with hills and all, so I'm not sure if I could have done better there. If I had just done 2 more pushups, I would have been in the 50th percentile there too (but personally, I doubt that half of American males my age can do 10 pushups, let alone 25). I'll be using the 25 pushups as my initial test for the one hundred pushup challenge, which I'll start tomorrow.
By now it should be well known that I am a big Joss Whedon fan, as well as a big geek in general. So I have to share his latest hawesome work, Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. There's a teaser trailer out now that you can watch below. I love it. Nathan Fillion as the "superhero," Neil Patrick Harris as the evil supergenius. Too much fun. Enjoy.
