NBA Thread

Forgot to mention this...

My pick Celtics in 6.

First of all, if you don't believe the NBA is rigged, you need to wake up and get back to reality. If you don't think players no "the line" click here.  I was out for blood in Vegas when Sasha Vujacic hit the meaningless 3 at the buzzer last week against the Spurs to ensure the Lakers covered the spread.  Rarely, has there been that clear of an example of a player knowing the odds and for that I'm cheering all out of the Celtics and KG.

Second, if you don't think for a minute David Stern and the NBA want this dragged out as long as possible because of money you're crazy.  The NBA stands to gain almost an extra $1 billion dollars in TV revenue if the finals go to a game 6 or 7.  They're not turning that down.  If one team is up 3-1 in this series I'm betting my kidney and first born son or daughter on the team down 1-3 because the referee's will be the poo-poo platter deluxe.  We'll have 3 of the most worst ref's in the league doing those games to at least get it back to Boston for a game 6.  Mark my words, mark my words.

Go Celtics...Go KG...

Hydrotherapy

Well, I finally did it.  I've been told to look into this for about 12 years and I finally did it, partly because my guts were a mess from Vegas.  I got a colonic.

For those who don't know, a colonic is basically pumping water into your colon and intestines to flush your system.  It's supposed to improve digestion and help reduce colon cancer among other things and I needed it.  

(NOTE:  For those who don't like graphic toilet humor, stop reading now)

My experience was pretty much summed up in this video, since it was the exact place I went to. I first met with my hydrotherapy specialist for about 30 minutes talking about my diet, eating habits, and why I was hear.  After 30 minutes we'd come to the conclusion I'm the perfect candidate because of the fact that about 60-70% of my meals are take out meals.  

So we go into this room where there's this huge machine and she shows me how to take this plastic tube about the size of a pencil and stick it up my butt.  Good times...she said to use about half the little package of lube and I won't feel it.  I used 2 packets of lube and I felt it.  It's not the easiest thing in the world to lay on your back with your feet in the air trying to stick a little plastic tube up your ass, but I got it done.  

Next she comes back in and shows me how to start the water flow.  Simple enough.  She said when ever you feel like you have to go, let it go, don't hold it.  I didn't think after 10 seconds I'd have to let it go, but out it came and so proceeded an hour of a diarrhea sensation.  A colonic starts at the bottom of your rectum, fills up with water and you let it out down in to a collection basin.  As you clean your colon, it goes further and further up into your intestines cleaning as it goes.  It was actually quite amazing thinking about the fact that poop from the 80s was coming out of me.  

Although it seems gross and unlikely that you would want to do this after reading this, after an hour it felt like I had taken the best dump of my life.  Now John Wayne when he died had something like 40 pounds of poop in his intestines.  With that in mind I was hoping I would drop about 10 pounds, which is quite normal for people who are "stuffed".  Well, I only dropped about a pound, but I still felt great and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.  I mean you have to go into it with an open mind and be able to laugh at yourself and that's what I did.  The only weird part was after it was done, I was told to come back to see what was "flushed" out of me.  Now the women he was my specialist was younger than I was and somewhat cute for being a Vegan and into all sorts of holistic and natural remedies (those people are always weird to begin with).  But unexpectedly we stared at my poop that had just come out of me for about 5 minutes and we talked about it.  GREAT TIMES!

I come to find out, that based on my poop, my digestive track is very healthy as is my colon upon gazing at what came out of me.  YES!  That was about the only weird part really, talking about my poop.  Not something I do everyday.

Would I recommend it?  Ya, if you're having some problems it's actually not that bad of a time. I even talked Jarod into having it done this week too so we'll see what he says about it. 

As for working out?  I'm waiting until next week to see if my foot will calm down.  I just have no desire right now to be at school working out.  Once I get to MN and have nothing else to do I'll be fine.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas...one of my favorite places to visit.  It has nothing really to do with gambling and the booze, but man I love people watching.  Especially the odd combinations of men and women.  I wish my camera was working better this past weekend, but I love seeing the 60 year old fat guy with the 20ish wife with 48 DD's and Vegas has plenty of those.

Anyway, we were up to celebrate Jarod's bachelor party and it was a blast.  I'm glad I had dropped those 15 pounds the prior few weeks only to come back Sunday +7 lbs.  7 pounds!!!  How does that happen?  I mean sure we had our fair share of bad food and excess of alcoholic beverages, but 7 pounds is absurd.  Fortunately for me, I didn't feel soooo bad because Jarod gained 15! Needless to say I was ecstatic with my 7.

Anyway, staying up 4 days in a row until the sun comes up really messes up your system for about a week.  On the final night (morning) we were there after trying to get into Tryst at Wynn, we decided to cap off the weekend with 21 double cheeseburgers for the 6 of us.  We each had about 2 until there were 10 left and we bet Howard he couldn't eat the rest of them. Despite going Kobiyashi on them he made it to 6 and I think he's still backed up today.  

The workout routine really struggled as we didn't do much of anything other than lay in the pool during the day and then find some club to go to at night.  Another bad part about Vegas is all the walking I did, I my foot that I thought I had broken this winter is acting up and it feels like a hammer is hitting it every time I walk again.  Thankfully, my MN trip is a few days away and I'll be going full bore again once I get up there.

He's Back....

Dahhhh, da da da da da da dahhhhhhh, da dah

Don't you just love Thin Lizzy!  I mean an Irish Hard rock band from the 70's with a black guy as lead singer?  You can't make it up!  

First of all, thanks for all the emails wondering when my blog would get updated.  I really didn't think people were reading it, let alone checking it on a daily basis for updates!  Thanks, but the hard part about a blog and doing it daily is writing about working out gets boring...really boring.  I've got to change it up a bit, which is what I'm doing today.

Second of all, not to be racist, but I didn't know Ireland even had black people let alone when you look at the music landscape of the 70's, to have a minority as your lead singer was really revolutionary.  Outside of the master himself, Jimmy Hendrix, and Parliament with George Clinton, rock music was dominated by white musicians and especially white lead singers.

Look at some of the top bands from the era and you have a predominantly pale skinned.

Aerosmith, AC/DC, Bad Company, Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Guess Who, Jethro Tull, KISS, Moody Blues, etc.  On top of that, you put a black lead singer out there who jams and sounds white is awesome.  "Black" music during the 70's was going towards two and a half genres, Motown, Disco, and early forms of Rap/Hip Hop.

If I were to play you this and then this classic 99.9% of you would say the black lead singer was for KC and the Sunshine and not Thin Lizzy.  Amazing!  Not that blacks couldn't rock out, but taking all things into consideration about the era and landscape of the music industry and it's pretty amazing.

Another topic I'd like to talk about is the Discovery Channel.  The Discovery Channel is the best television you can watch with HBO's original programing coming in a distant second now that The Wire is over.  There are so many awesome, informative, educational shows on the Discovery Channel I can't stop complimenting it.

Deadliest Catch, Man Vs. Wild, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Survivorman, Planet Earth, The Alaska Experiment, etc.  The list is endless and they're all awesome shows.  So Dan and I had a brief discussion about two of my favorite shows, The Deadliest Catch and The Alaska Experiment.  As cool as it would be to say you were a crap fisherman, we both admitted there's not a chance in the world we could be a greenhorn on the Cornelia Marie or Northwestern.  1) I get sea sick in the bath tub and couldn't handle 25 foot swells, and 2) Dan can't go more than 2 hours without a meal.  The simple fact those guys will grind at times for 40 hours a shot is crazy.  I don't care how much money you make in that short of time, we couldn't do it.  Our hats go off to them.

For those of you who haven't stumbled upon The Alaska Experiment, the premise is they took 4 groups of people and stuck them in the middle of Alaska for the winter and said survive.  They have medical specialists taking in their vitals and making sure they're not near death, but other than that, they are in 3 thin wood cabins and 1 canvas tent.  They have to gather food for the winter, wood, water and while battling bears, wolves, and the elements.  Roughing it at it's best and I would LOVE to be a part of it.

Many people would probably say I'd be the first one to be dead, which Dan leaned towards, but I really think I would do as good if not better than the schmucks they have up there.  There's a couple that's been dating for a few months (he's a contractor and she's an adventure racer, whatever that is), a dad with his 2 lazy overweight daughters, a three-some of computer techies and a real estate person, and another group that I can't remember what they do.  Basically normal everyday people with little camping skills.

Now I'm not saying I'm Grizzly Adams, but I really think I'd do well on the show and like roughing it for that long.  This show sucked me in for 2 reasons.  1) to see how each group is approaching survival and what they're doing, and 2) I like to laugh at how dumb they are.  Some of their decisions made by these people, only idiots would make.  There's really too many to list, but I'm saying out of their top 50 dumbest things to do in that situation, 45 of them I wouldn't of considered.  

Basically when it comes to survival and using common sense to stay alive, I feel I'm in the Top 1% in the nation (The new poll came out Sunday and I was still in the Top 15 in the country).  I can suck it up with the best of them while keeping my wits.  Example, you're in Alaska for the winter reliant on some peanut butter, potatoes, and a few other food to get you through the first few weeks and the dad and his lazy fat daughters are eating like it's the last supper.  Ya-hello, don't assume you're going to catch salmon and shoot a moose every time you go hunting or fishing!!!  Then there's the group who couldn't figure out how to can fish so they only had like 12 jars of salmon.  They were also so genius instead of using polls and bait to fish, they thought it would be to use their hands.  Then there was the 3-some party who to celebrate their shooting of a goat, which would give them enough meat for most of the winter, decided to hike 40 miles to another group to say "hi", grossly misjudging the amount of time it would take and they had a 8 day hike back to camp without any food!!!  Honestly, nobody deserves to die, except child abusers and rapists, but some people beg for death with some of the decisions they make in life.  Not just on the show, but in life in general.  Like the guy dodging 6 lanes of freeway traffic today on The 60 in Mesa.  Something fell out of his truck that he had to have and he was dodging 6 lanes of traffic going 75 mph like he was frogger.  Or bomb squad guys, you're just asking for it.

Anyway, after my 2 day lifting layoff, my shoulder seems to be in good shape and I'm back to lifting starting on Tuesday.  After a few straight days of stretching, kenpo, yoga, and cardio, I'm ready to get started again with the lifting and actually looking forward to it.

I've compromised the 90 days of P90X, but to a certain extent, it's hard to devote 7 days a week to this.  My schedule just isn't conducive to it and I don't even do much.  However, I was able to keep working out and I've lost a few more pounds.  Last weigh in I was at 182,  so 2 more pounds I've shed for a total of 14 in 2 and a half weeks.  Not bad.  The only thing that's weird is it's hard to see where I've lost it.  I still have a little Buddha, but I guess so far I've just gotten lean and lost a lot of water weight, but 14 pounds of water weight isn't possible, so I must be losing somewhere.

Back at it tomorrow... 

Day 14 and Day 15

To sum up the past two days click here...

Sunday (Day 14) was a rest day, but I actually did some light lifting and stretching.  I was feeling good about my 77 on the golf course the day before so I was ready to do a little outside the P90X workout schedule.  So that's what I did.

Monday (Day 15) didn't go so well.  Today for the first time in these two and half weeks I decided to up my weight on some dumbbell work.  This was also the first time I didn't bother to do the complete "warmup" before working out.  So as I proceeded to start I felt a nice "pop" in my left shoulder. When I say "pop," the dumbbell pretty much fell immediately on the floor.  Not good times...

So I waited for awhile to see if it was just a tweak or if I really did something.  I cut the weight in half and tried to lift a 20 pounder and it fell on my foot.  So my arm is stiff as my back right now as I type this and it looks like I may have done something to postpone P90X for a few days. If I was a pitcher, I think I'd be day-to-day for right now, but I could be looking at a stint on the 15-day DL with at least a minor league rehab start.  That means I'm looking at a week full of cardio.  YES!

Day 13 - Hi-ya!

This morning was one day where I was at least able to stay on schedule.  Kenpo was today, this morning really as I had a tee time for 11:30.

I did some research on kenpo last night and found out it's kinda a hybrid of martial arts. Naturally, it derives from one American's interpretation of a bunch of styles.  Definitely not hard core martial arts, but kinda a introduction.  

ANYWAY, Dan didn't want to participate today and I knew I'd be too tired to do it later in the day so I woke up at 7, ate breakfast, and did kenpo by myself.  Today was a breeze and I dominated it, until I tweaked a hammy on a back kick that I executed wrong because I was getting tired.  Stupid back kick, nobody uses them anyway.  If I'm in a fight with against 2 other people...wait, if I'm ever in a fight at this point in my life it's a free for all at the Blue Goose and there's going to be about 5 or 6 of my buddies there.  It's not ever going to be 2 against 1.  I doubt I'd succumb to an 2 attackers at this point in my life either.

But the real reason I'm writing tonight.  Last time I golfed was a few weeks ago and boy was it brutal.  For some reason I couldn't execute anything.  Today i was hoping just to shoot under 90 in the 100 degree heat with Jarod and Dan.  Well I shot 77!  The big thing is I had more flexibility and was able to finish my swing.  

(Side note:  As I'm typing this I'm watching Evan Almighty.  Awful.)

My point is I can make an honest assessment and say even thought I hate the Yoga and some of the other things, it's helping a great deal.  Now I had a buddy ask me about the program and I will say this.  It's tough to commit to 60-90 minutes a day, 7 days a week.  I'm almost through 2 weeks and I'm already compromising the workout.  However I definitely think it's something I'll be able to continue as I go back to Minnesota this summer.  I may not look like they do in the DVD, but I should be able to continue with the majority of it through the full 90 days. 

Day 12 - More Blunders

Day 12 was going to be cardio since I've put that off.  You'd think that with 7 days and 7 programs it'd be easy to stay on schedule.  But the lesson to be learned here, is as always, I'm an idiot.

We were off so regardless of the schedule we hadn't done cardio yet so cardio it was going to be.  I chose to ride bike for a paltry 3.5 miles and then do the elliptical for 20 minutes, or was it 15?  I think it was just over 15 and then did a light ab workout.  I don't understand why it's so hard to stay on a 7 day schedule but it is.

I also have nothing else to write so this is it.  I figure you can tell what my eating routine is by now.  It's probably better if I post either a recipe or write about when I cheat.