Gym

I think that a popular magazine must have published a new workout routine recently because there were three or four groups of young men at the gym doing bizarre variations of a plate curl at the gym today. At least none of them were frat curling, they were all doing their curls *next* to my beloved squat rack.

Jesse

A Little Scared

I'm a little scared that I'm actually going to try to go into anaphylaxis on Friday. It will be my fourth time that my body wants to die on me. Oh well, at least the doctors and nurses will be right there next to me to save me. It's not fun when you start losing your breathing ability and feel like your body is being burned.

Melissa

News

Indiana Jones visits Cusco, Nazca, and Iquitos in the new 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.' We've been there! Awesome.

Melissa and I have also made offers on two houses we saw today, we'll see if either of the owners bite. Either one would be great, they're single family homes with lots of room to grow and plenty of yard space.

We have both been sick with some kind of stomach bug all week.

Speaking of sick, Melissa has another appointment with her allergist on Friday, where she's going to take some ibuprofen and run up and down stairs to see if that's what triggers her anaphylaxis. Good news is that if that what does it, she's in the clear, if not we get to keep try to get the reaction and staying away from activities and locations that previously caused said anaphylaxis.

That's all for now.

Let's Go Oakland!!!

Four days ago the Oakland A's were tied with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (lamest name ever, to go with that lame rally monkey...), so there was going to be this big four game showdown to close out April and all they can do is split, nothing solved. But for those who saw the first and last games, wasn't it great to see those no name A's beat the Angels that bad?

Also - for those who don't go to church sunday afternoon, the A's twenty hits yesterday means you can get plaza level seating for something like $5 on Sundays game v. the Rangers.

Here's hoping April wasn't the only good month for Oakland baseball.

Vegas and a Desert Run

Last weekend, Jesse and I went to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Monte Carlo and had a great time! Too many things to say so I'll just make some points.

1. Flying to Vegas is much easier than driving to Vegas.
2. It's really funny that in the morning there are only senior citizens roaming around in restaurants and the casinos. Everyone else is still sleeping.
3. People can walk around Vegas almost naked and it's ok.
4. Jesse and I took a Gondola ride inside the Venetian, which is something I've always wanted to do.
5. I love pigging out in Vegas. We went to the Bellagio buffet and had so much food. I loved their Lemon Merengue Pie, it was delicious. Jesse liked there little cheesecake.
6. On Sunday, I ran 5.9 miles in 57 minutes and 32 seconds from the outskirts of Vegas to almost downtown. I started running the in darkness of the morning around 5:15 a.m. and ran as the sun rose over some far off mountains. It was really pretty.
7. I usually run with an MP3 player but I couldn't during with it on this run so I was trying to sing in my mind or I had randomn thoughts to keep myself busy. I had been up since 4 am on Saturday morning so I was running on adrenalin and Mountain Dew.
8. Jesse got to ride in the follow van with the Chief of the IRS.
9. We saw Joakim Noah, from the Chicago Bulls surrounded by seven hot girls at the Palms. He was really, really tall.
10. Vegas is its own little world. I like it and so does my hubby.

Will post some pictures soon.

Melissa

The Omnivore's Dilemma

WARNING: LONG AND SEMI-POLITICAL POST AHEAD!!

I'm about halfway through a book called the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. I was going to post my general thoughts on it when I was done, but it turns out that the book is far too interesting to leave it at that. The book is about food, what we eat, why we eat it and some of the potential consequences. I'm going to try to distill what I've learned so far into short, easy to understand thoughts.

Some time in the first world war a German scientist (Haber) trying to build bombs without the need from nitrates from Chile developed a way to artificially fix nitrogen, and make explosives artificially. Fixing nitrogen is something that has to happen for the nitrogen to be useful to plants growing in the soil. Usually animal feces or some kinds of plants do this in nature, which is why crops get cycled in tradiational agriculture. Anyway, this was a process by which a farmer could continuously grow the same thing on the same land.

Some time either just pre or just post cold war there was a depression and subsequent rise in the price of corn. As the effects of this rippled through the economy the government stepped in and began to stabilize, and then subsidize corn prices. The results of this led to the production of corn and nothing but corn (and some soybeans) by most farms in America's breadbasket, because you were guarenteed money by corn. The variety of corn produced by these Iowa cornfields isn't edible, it's just really starchy and provides the most calorie per square foot of any other grain or grass, that's why the grow it as opposed to other things.

So there's a big corn surplus that the food industry needed to find something to do with, so they started breaking it down and making high fructose corn syrup, glucose, ethanol, xanthan gum, corn starch, and animal feed.

This is where it gets a little wierd and nasty in my estimation. A steer's lifespan is 1200 lbs, slaughter weight. The natural diet of cattle is grass, they're rumen's, which means they can break down and digest the sugars in grass, corn is actually poisonous to them. Corn, as mentioned above in unparalleled in it's calorie density, so cows are brought up to weight with a diet of mostly corn and antibiotics as well as feed additives (inculding other cow bits). The idea being to get the cow fat enough to slaughter before it get's too sick.

What's the point and who cares you may ask fairly enough, if it's got protein, carbohydrates and fat, the macronutrients, then you're set. The thing is: you are what you eat, and you are what you eat eats too. Our meat eats corn, our soda is 100% corn, most preservatives we use in food come from corn. This leaves our diets remarkably lacking in most everything but corn, there's little to no 'biodiversity' in our diets.

Organic farming helps a little bit in this, since organic meats eat organic food (food not fetilized by Haber-ized nitrates, or with pesticides used on them). Pesticides and other ways we 'help' plants make them weak and low on all the vitamins and minerals that make plants good for us. Anyway, when an organically raised steer eats his food, he's getting a better deal in terms of nutrients than standarly raised steer. There's a lot more to say on this, but I don't want to go on too long.

The next bit is something that Al Gore spoke to a little while ago and was roundly ridiculed for, which is that eating meat contributes more to global warming than driving. Even if you don't believe in man-made global warming a reasonable person would certainly cede that America needs to get off foreign oil, or at least help the sky to be less brown. The reason I bring this up is 20% or the fuel used in the US is used to get food from one place to another, that's a lot. Certainly it takes a lot of fuel to get corn from silos in Iowa to feed-lots in Kansas, and meat from Kansas to most of the midwest, or California, where some of it ends up.

I don't want to fault people for what they eat, if the food is available and it tastes good to them and that's what they want to eat then that's their right. I'm certainly not going to start a new People's Park and stick it to the man, but the half of this book I've read so far has put a number of stones in my shoes in regards to how I eat. I curious now about buying local foods, and buying organic foods, not to mention trying some grass-fed beef. Anyway, buy the book and read the book, it's facinating.

Two Years!

Jesse and I celebrated our two year anniversary last week. I think we liked being married to each other. Nothing too exciting going on in our lives, just the daily surprises of our crazy dog Rocky. One thing I guess we both have learned about each other is that we are really violent when we are sleeping. Apparently Jesse can't stop elbowing me in my chest/back and head butting me in the night, and I can't stop punching him in the back and biting his shoulder. Violent dreamers...

Melissa

exercising

I almost met pukie today, second time in the last year, I don't know if that means I'm working too hard, or not hard enough.



In other news, if you're not doing pullups you should definitely start.

Project 86

Project 86 is going to grace us with their presence again (or at least grace Sacramento), so we're driving up April 12th to Orangevale, Ca to see them. Let me know if you're interested.

Texas Gives Finger to the Hague!!

I don't know why this makes me so happy, but man it does. I love Texas.

New

For those who truly have time to kill I started a blog to track my hiking, biking, trekking and general travel data from my awesome new garmin 60CSx. Link Here.

War Protests

I don't give war protesters too much thought, but they were on the news last night as they made a ruckus over the fifth year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. I was just struck by a couple of things:

- In Berekley about 100 people came out to see Cindy Sheehan speak and 80 more marched on the Marine recruiter there in Berekley. I assume there were a few more people than that in SF, given about 150 were arrested, but they all made the news. I've seen more than 100 people at Hometown Buffet. More than 100 people go to Crossroads Church on sunday. Oh well.

- Channel 2 interviewed a conciencious objector from Iraq Vererans Against the War, he was a pretty young guy who said that the events of 9-11-01 had moved him to act, so he'd joined the marines. Good for him. He had to leave the marines however when, during training, he'd discovered that the marines were training him to fight and kill people. So not only was he a dufus (doofus?), but he wasn't even in fact a veteran of the Iraq War. Oh well.

Update

I don't want my blog to get too dusty, so here's the updates:

- I've been with Fard for three years now, making it my longest employment engagement.
- Finally there's a good radio station again in the bay: KCNL 104.9 Sunnyvale.
- Lifelock, a provider of sevices I'm very intested in, doesn't really do anything you can't do yourself. We'll see how my efforts work out.
- It's almost summertime, which means that we have trips to Las Vegas, Yosemite, Monterey, and Mexico coming in the next three months.
- Melissa and I will be 90% debt free by 2009. Given how we started 2007 that makes me very very happy.
- Climbing Mission peak is a lot of fun this time of year. It's not too hot and it's actually green.

That's all the random information I can think of right now. Happy Easter everyone.

Squats

When you do a squat you're supposed to go all the way down, then all the way back up. It's cool if you're squatting alone and you can't tell, I used to do that, but today I was on the rack right next to one of the personal trainers who was teaching a guy to squat. He loaded the guy up before the guy learned how to do the move so the squatter couldn't even go down past 45 degrees.

Personal training is kind of expensive, the guy should be be able to teach you how to squat. Even this kid knows how to do it. Perfect form.

Sick Girl

Well I'm sick with strep throat. I've been sick since last Wednesday, but didn't really feel it until Friday. I suspected that I had strep because I went on WebMD and read all about it, but the doctor confirmed it on Monday and gave me some pain killers and antibiotics. Last night I finally slept since Saturday night and it was great. I would never wish this disease on anyone, because it has been SO painful on my throat and the rest of my body.

I have completely lost my voice, but when I try to speak I sound like the little black boy in the wheel chair from Malcolm in the Middle....Jesse laughs at me every time I talk. Oh well.

Melissa

pigs

I heard the funniest story on NPR's California Report on Friday. They were doing a piece on the annual gathering of chefs at the Ahwanee Lodge in Yosemite. This year's theme was the Whole Hog, where the chefs made food out of all the different bits of a pig. Anyway, they interviewed a woman who said that she'd been a vegetarian for 22 years, then from the insistance of a friend, had a pork shoulder one night for dinner. Her life was changed by that pork shoulder, she renounced vegetarianism and loves eating pork, so much so that she got a tattoo of a pig on her arm. That's a great story. That's the power of pork.

I Wish

Sometimes I wish we could just leave and walk through nature's beauty again.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul appears to be the only candidate campaigning in California - at least he's the only guy running radio spots. I like his latest:

- Ron Paul favors a strong nationtal defense.
- Ron Paul would not close any domestic military bases.
- Ron Paul supports stealth warriors to hunt down terrorists dead or alive.
- Ron Paul would secure borders.
- Ron Paul would ban student visa for terrorist nations.
- Ron Paul would end government spending that continues to put us in debt to China and Saudi Arabia.
- Ron Paul has the highest donations among all candidates from active military members.

I really like that part about 'stealth warriors.'

CNN Radio

CNN does the news updates for the talk station I listen to in the morning, yesterday they capped off a two minute hourly update with:

"...and Pat Robertson has weighed in on the new year, saying that God told him 2008 will be filled with global conflict, and there will be a recession."

...what? That's not news. Why not just say: "...and Bill, from Washburn, North Dakota, has said that his dog told him that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west."

The Gym

This is by far the worst time of year to go to the gym, everyone in the world made their resolutions to get healthy and fit, and that's great. The problem is that the gym is just packed with those people right now, and I hate going. I go to the gym at least three times a week, I've done it long enough now so it's just habit. If it wasn't though, if I was just trying to start again right now, I think I'd quickly stop too, it's hard to get equipment and hard to find space to do your work. So if your new years resolution is to get fit, go running, or walking, or bike riding until March, then go to the gym, it will be a much better experience.