A friend at Apple has me beat. He was talking about a 2AM meeting he might have to attend. I got an work email asking if 8AM was OK for a meeting, and then the guy scheduled it for 6AM. I guess Outlook sucks whether you’re here or there. Either way, it’s late in the day for the guy on the other end. At least it’s not midnight for him, like the last meeting we had.

You may have noticed a little outage yesterday. I fixed things here so I could get OUT from here, but I forgot to check to see if people could get IN from the outside. So I could send email, but I couldn’t get it.

I’m being banned from using the word “Eggamuffin” at the gym. Even worse, I’m not supposed to have a cheeseburger tomorrow. Today we went to Dairy Queen and the three of us who went decided to be a bit “healthier” and had grilled chicken sandwiches. They were awful. So now we know: don’t try to be healthy at the DQ. The hamburgers are great and they’re cheaper than the chicken, so we should eat them.

The guy who runs our local gym told me to stay away from the main crossfit web site because it’s a bit frightening. Those guys are a little intense and the gym I go to doesn’t go as far as a lot of the other crossfit gyms. I mean, there’s even a New York Times Magazine article calling crossfit a cult. I’m guessing we’re the exception. Come once a week; the trainers are always happy to see you. Everyone gets along and it’s fun to see how well you do, not how often you get to see your lunch.

But on the other hand, I have to go to the web site and see how to so a muscle-up. It’s one of the exercises we work up to and I want to keep working towards it.

Other than that, did you expect I did anything today? It’s March Madness and I watch almost anything when it gets to the playoffs. Baseball, soccer, football (though I watch that the whole season), and probably some other things I can’t remember. Curling maybe. I don’t know.

I can’t talk so much about work, since I know some of my co-workers actually read this thing. Heck, I just found out that someone in New Zealand reads this thing. I’m not quite sure why, but on the flip side people are probably wondering why I’m writing this thing.

I like my new job so far, even though it’s customer related and my job is to annoy everyone. The customer reports a problem, I ask people about it (annoying them), ask them to fix it (annoying them), and get the answer back to the customer who is annoyed that I didn’t give them the exact answer that they wanted. But it’s fun so far. The most silly and consistently annoying thing is that the guy in the next cube is a very loud typer and I have to use my iPod to drown it out. Fortunately, I remembered to reload the Eurodisco on my iPod tonight, so work will once again be harmonious. That and they finally fixed my “Voice Mail” light so it’s not stuck on all the time even though no one ever calls me.

So at the gym I found out two things. One is that I’m old and I’m not supposed to be working so hard so often (or so I’m told). The other is that no one remembers the National Lampoon recording of “The Jazz Musician” where “Mr. Rogers” is interviewing a jazz musician who calls the Egg McMuffin an “eggamuffin.” The guy who invented the Egg McMuffin just died and I told them I was in mourning. Fortunately, there’s someone else there who is my age and she remembered eggamuffins so I didn’t have to go running to Google to prove to everyone that my neurons weren’t randomly firing again.

R.I.P. Herb Peterson, Egg McMuffin inventor.

So I went to the gym and was doing today’s “easy” workout.It was kind of hard, but instead of being yelled at to go faster, Nathan just kind of looked at me and said, “Hey, slow down. Today is your easy day.” Yeah, but I knew the faster I went the quicker it would all be over. Besides, I was standing next to the young guy and he was going twice as fast as I was. Ah, youth.

Today was backsliding day at lunch. I suppose yesterday was as well. But man that cheeseburger at Dairy Queen tasted good. I only had a single patty. One guy had the double hamburger, another had the “Hillsburger” monstrosity, and yet another had a double-cheeseburger with ham. I think I still outweigh two of them. Life isn’t fair.

Yesterday at the gym we did a modified version of the “Helen” workout. That means running around the block (about 450m), 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups. Three times. Today we did the “Cindy” workout which is 20 minutes of as many rounds as you can do of 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats. I did 13 rounds and by the end I thought my arm was going to pull out. Well, I suppose that’s only 36 pullups yesterday and that’s only 70 pullups today (I did five extra at the end for some insane reason). Those pullups were looking pretty ugly towards the end, but I’m counting them.

There are ways to make things easier (like band pullups or jumping pullups) so I’d tell anyone to come on in to the gym. Especially since the head honcho Nathan said he’d buy me a cheeseburger if I got anyone reading my blog to come in. Besides, if I can do it, you can do it and no one’s yelling at you at this gym. Encouragement, of course, but no yelling.

And then you, too, can be faster than a rolling “o”, stronger than silent “e”, and able to leap capital “T” in a single bound.

Man, what would I do without google? Today at the gym we were stretching after our workout and we had our arms out in a “T”. What popped into my head was Letterman from The Electric Company, but my brain could only remember, “Stronger than Silent ‘E’! Able to leap Capital ‘T’ in a single bound! It’s a word! It’s a plan! It’s Letterman!” I knew there was something missing and I couldn’t think of what it was, so I looked it up. There was even video on YouTube. (It was “Faster than a rolling ‘O'” that I forgot.)

Now if I could only remember the names of New Edition because sometimes the names torment me like that game where you try to name all 50 states but forget one or two and it drives you nuts. (In case you’re wondering it’s Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mikey, Ralphie, Johnny.)

When I was in high school, satellite cable TV just started and a Bay Area station KTVU was on as filler. It was only on for a little while before the big boys decided to get on cable, but I remember TV Pow! and some of the ads. There’s one that still sticks in my head and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. Curse you Denevi Camera! Click on the link and hear the jingle at the end. (Dublin, Berkeley, San Lorenzo, Cupertino, San Jose.)

Oh, God, I can’t make it stop. “Uh, oh, Sergio. Uh, oh, Sergio. Sergio Valente, Sergio Valente.” “Turkeys from Turlock, Turkeys from Turlock! Valchris Turkeys from Turloooock!”

Aaaaigh.

There’s a STUPID, HORRIBLE movie out now called 21. Why do I say STUPID and HORRIBLE? Well, the only obvious Asian in the trailer is a dumb girl and as far as I know about the story, THEY WERE ALL ASIANS. Not whitey. I suppose this is more Stuff White People Like. (That link was sent to me by a Peruvian-American friend.

It was a sleepy Sunday today, but I did have lunch with the family (ma, sis, and brother-in-law). I continued my culinary experimentation, figuring a little grease might make salads a little bit more digestible. So far, so good. Salads with fried jalapeño and fried tortillas seemed to be fine with my innards. Like I heard, it’s probably just because I’m OLD. Maybe it’s creamed cauliflower from here on out.

I finally took my mom out for her birthday dinner to a Thai restaurant. It was pretty good, but we’re lucky that there are even better Thai restaurants within walking distance. The weirdest part was that a woman from my old gym (where I am still a member) came in on a first date with some dude. I got to overhear a lot of background info on the both of them.

For lunch I had a chicken salad and it was great. Unfortunately, my stomach (and the rest of my digestive system) did not agree. Now I’m not really sure, but it seems like whenever I eat any raw vegetables and lettuce my stomach (and the rest of my digestive system) complains quite vehemently. Rice and beans? No problems. Tortas? Fine. Cheeseburgers? Great, if I don’t have any raw onions which I really enjoy. Maybe I have to ease into this salad thing, or maybe I’m just allergic. I’ll just have to live on boiled cabbage or something.

I barely made it through the day. Last night I was wiped out by the workout but when I was ready to hit the hay I remembered that I needed to finish something for my sister.

For her job.

And she was on a Friday deadline.

I guess I could complain more about it and blame it all on her. My sister’s been reminding me about it for a month, but she never did get me the stuff that needed to be processed until Tuesday. She’ll say I had a couple of nights to finish it and yeah, I forgot.

In any case, I had to get up, go to work, and do my job. Today was my big yearly review and they told me I could keep coming for another year. Actually, I was told I did pretty well and it really did motivate me. By the end of the day, though, I was dragging.

Paradoxically, I always perk up a bit when I should be going to bed and now I’m changing themes on my blog and writing about how sleepy I am. The only, “Livin’ it up,” I’m doing is listening to the old Bell & James disco song. I have it on my iTunes. Oh, yeah.

I’m a bad son. It’s my mom’s birthday today and instead of going out to dinner with her, I went to the gym. I thought it was just going to be my mom and my sister, but my brother-in-law showed up as well and I felt really stupid about ditching them. But I’m addicted to the the gym. Everyone there gets along pretty well, so its fun as well. Like one of Dave the Trainer’s clients said, I need a social life. Somehow I think that would involve beer and tacos.

I was right when I predicted a hard workout today, but really there are hard days and there are easy days and they alternate so there wasn’t much prescience on my part. We talked about strategy again but when I got home I had to lay on the floor for a while before I had enough energy to think about dinner. I feel much better now, but I think I probably did as much as I could and “got my money’s worth” today.

Speaking of money’s worth, I should figure out where I am on my gym cost chart but I think I’m too tired to do that right now.

There’s a kid at the gym (and by kid I mean he’s in his late 20’s) who is there as regularly as I am. He’s also very serious about following a healthy diet while I, well, am not. He always orders the healthiest thing on the menu as well. So from now on I’m supposed to follow his eating habits. Which is NOT what I did tonight. I had a salmon caesar salad, but I also had an $8 baked Alaska. Both were great. The worst part is that we all went out after working out and so the trainers know what I ate for dinner and will punish me accordingly. Well, they’ll punish us all accordingly.

Somehow it’s voluntary, so I suppose it’s not really punishment. And while yesterdays workout just seemed kind of awful, most of the workouts are fairly challenging and fun to get through. Afterwards you kind of think, “Woo, we made it! Time for a beer!“

I eat a lot of bad food, and I’ve been trying to be better. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to do the right thing. Yesterday I had two chicken tacos and rice and beans. I’m sure there’s a ton of lard in the beans. Today we went to Rice Box, a Korean/Chinese restaurant because I thought that would be better for me. I had a lot of rice and a little Kung Pao chicken because that was the thing with the most vegetables. Well, I suppose there was kimchee and some sort of non-fermented cabbage as well, but who wants rice and cabbage for lunch? Turns out Kung Pao chicken is on the list of the worst things to eat. I may have to go back to cheeseburgers because they might actually be better for me.

I’m trying to improve my diet mainly because I’m at the gym 4 times a week and I should be doing more than just flopping around the floor and making everyone wait for me to finish. Today the workout of the day was 5 rounds of max pullups and max pushups (max just means you do as many as you can). We did as many pullups as we could and then as many pushups as we could and then rested for 3 minutes while our arms felt so tired that we thought they were going to fall off. Then we did it again. And again. And again. And again. At the very least I wanted my arms to fall off because they were so tired they hurt. Fortunately, my arms recovered quickly and I felt fine by the time we left. I don’t know how it will be tomorrow.

So you see, if I’m going to do a bunch of pullups, I really need to weigh less to make them easier. Sort of like when I was running, I wanted to be faster so my long runs wouldn’t take so long. It’s a goal, but not one I’m getting any closer to. People say it’s good to have goals.

Oh, hey, not only did I finish ordering my contacts and my prescriptions, but I also filled in a bunch of forms for my mom a doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately I’m getting to bed no earlier than I did last night.