So I Lied

I'm not going to post my workouts on here. I'll just continue posting them at http://makethepiecesfit.blogspot.com/. I figure this blog should be about life and that one can be dedicated to my fight preparation.

Had a good weekend. Just hung out with the family mostly. Yesterday my parents came down and we went to dinner. Ate and drank way too much. That's about all I have today. Really tired and I don't know why.

Are You Down With The Sickness

Tuesday, both of my kids had fevers and therefore had to go home sick. I stayed home with them yesterday and that was fun....like pulling teeth while getting kicked in the testicles. Since my daughter wasn't feeling good, she would just randomly start crying for no reason. It was awesome. At the end of the day, they seemed to be on the mend and we were going to be sending them back to school.

Last night I heard my son crying for a second and then it stopped. I got up and when I didn't hear anymore crying, I got back into bed, figuring it was just a nightmare. Well, some primordial parenting instinct made me go check on him. I went into his room and he was choking on his own vomit. Awesome. I turned him on his side and called for the superparent. My wife responded and we did the emergency clean up. Needless to say, he got to stay home again today and also needless to say, of course he seems to be feeling fine now. Right now he is watching one of his Spongebob Squarepants DVDs. He's in hog heaven. I bet he's going to school tomorrow.

What's even better is the little turd was gloating to his sister. "She has to go to school right? I get to stay home right? You have to go to school, Delilah, I don't. I'm staying home. I'm gonna watch t.v." And on and on. Luckily she has no idea what he is saying so it had no impact. He's going to be a nightmare when he's older.

On a related note, I don't know if it's the Stratera or if it's the beginnings of a cold but I'm hella nauseous. I haven't felt like working out which is bad. I'm just afraid I'm going to yack all over the place which would suck as kettlebells are hard to get vomit out of :)

Sunday Stuff

I have three blogs (Four including my now defunct Myspace one) and I can hardly keep up with just one. I've decided to consolidate and make this my primary. My other blog that I write on frequently is my workout blog, which I really don't want to get rid of so I'm going to put my workouts at the end of the blog. That way you can see the totality of my toolness in one spot. One stop tool shopping.

Last night we celebrated Emily's birthday. Today I am hurting. I drank way too much...again. I'm pretty sure Emily is hurting too because I got a Facebook status update last night at about 2 am. I remember the good old days of being able to party like a rockstar.

Wake up in a strange place or different state with no clue how you got there. Now I party like the Rolling Stones. I get drunk and am in bed by 9.


Today I am just recovering. I took the dog for a walk which is always entertaining as she can't keep up. Poor fat dog. And then worked out and am now blogging and screwing around on Facebook. Exciting day at my house.

Workout of the Day: Pavel's Manmaker
Set the timer for 20 minutes. In 20 minutes complete as many rounds of the following without rest. I got almost three rounds.
20 24kg(53lb) kettlebell swings
one minute of jumping jacks
20 swings
one minute of mountain climbers
20 swings
one minute of burpees
20 swings
one minute of running in place
20 swings

I did pretty well. The mountain climbers and the burpees sucked but otherwise it was ok. I'll have to either increase the amount of swings or the weight as that portion was too easy.
I give this rate this routine a 7 out of 10.

Yikes! Been so busy haven't been able to post. Today I went and had my heart ultra sounded just to make sure it's working ok. It was pretty cool. Contrary to popular belief I have a heart. There's not just a hamster on a wheel.

I should get some results in a few days. I'm hoping that there is nothing structurally wrong with my heart and that my body just doesn't like Ritalin. I started Stratera yesterday but still haven't really noticed any results which isn't unusual. My prescribing nurse is going on vacation which is good because she is kind of a nut herself. She doesn't actually listen to what I have to say instead she focuses in on keywords. I'd imagine she's trying to make sure I'm not drug seeking but she goes off the deep end.

For example, a few weeks back, she messed with my dosages and told me to monitor how I feel with the altered strengths. So I said, "Ok, I'll experiment with it and let you know." To this she barked, "Don't say experiment!!!" I then asked her what I should say. I am changing the dosages I am taking and monitoring the effects it has on my body, wouldn't that be, uh, experimenting? To this argument, she was oddly silent. And this week, she had me stop all medication in preparation for the Stratera. At the end of it, she asked how I was doing. I told her I was doing great with exception of the side effect of feeling like I was in a haze. To this she jumped in and said, "Side effect?! There can't be any side effects because you're not on anything!!!" I literally told her to settle down and that I misspoke. She then relaxed for half a second. Again, she's not actually listening, she's just fading out until I use a keyword that hits her spidey sense. I could go in there and tell her my dog is telling me to kill a public figure to impress Jodie Foster (Say goodbye to Andy Dick or Akon, I really, really hate Akon) and she wouldn't notice as long as I didn't use a drug seeking phrase. Nut job.

Tomorrow I am going to my sister-in-law's birthday. She's turning a whopping 26. I remember 26. I was young and dumb, which is no different then now except I'm not so young. Anywhoo, it should be fun. We're going to Joe's Crab Shack. I'd imagine there will be some drinking which is always fun. I love me some beer.

Since it's her birthday and I will be mentioning her Mom pretty frequently, I should probably give a quick shout out and/or explanation about my sister-in-law. This is Emily.


Emily is one of my best friends which is weird being that she is an in-law. She has been my saving grace for the last five years when it comes to buying my wife presents (If it wasn't for her, my wife would be getting kettlebells or a new handgun) and she also helps temper my crazy as she has alot of the same crazy. We're both ADD and I would venture to say she's toxic as well, she just hides it better. She and my other sister-in-law Madeline, are the sisters I never had (I really lucked out) and wouldn't be able to function without them. So happy early birthday Em. Your Mom. (Quick note: She probably won't actually ever read this as her ADD doesn't lend to following a blog)

Life goes on and on...

My fight was canceled due to a lack of fighter. It's upsetting as I was actually looking forward to getting hit in the head multiple times...What the hell did I just say? Something definitely wrong with me. I am now considering doing an MMA match.....in a mere three months and I haven't done BJJ in about a year. Again, what the hell is wrong with me? I don't know what it is about sparring that makes me feel so alive but I love it. I'm not very coordinated and not very tough, but I just love it.

I have to admit I am a little afraid of MMA. Amateur boxing has a very small chance of injury compared to MMA as there are alot more body parts involved (namely legs, knees) and you are having your joints manipulated alot more(Let's see what happens when we do this). Makes me nervous and is the only reason I am balking about fighting so soon. I should just nut up and do it but my tester one has gotten me into so much trouble in the past (Hey, let's jump out of this perfectly good airplane or Hey, I'll go to Afghanistan! Sounds like fun!).

On a different note, today we were very productive (I had to take some of my ADD meds to do it). We blew out all the leaves and other crap from the flower beds and rocks, changed the light bulbs outside, got lawn chairs, and raked up the yard. It looks a million times better. We also got to see a glimpse of how screwed up our children are going to be.

My son was rolling his Lightning McQueen up and down the wall when he dropped it and yelled loudly, "Shit!" The wife and I looked at each other and tried not to crack up. I then had to put on my father hat and lecture him about not saying that word. It's hypocritical of me to get all Ward Cleaver on his ass when in my own daily routine I use 'fuck' as an adjective, a noun, a pronoun, a verb, etc. (Let's conjugate it real quick, shall we?)


Tonight I am going to try and grill bleu cheese burgers. I am currently on a quest to make the perfect hamburger. I figure this will be my legacy and/or opus "Well, he was kind of a douche but man, he made a mean burger." I would be alot more successful in this endeavor if I didn't get Old Testament drunk beforehand. My grilling sessions usually degenerate into a drunken demonstration of Darwinism.


Oh well, that's why I chose who I married so well.

Clash of the Titans or Remaking Old Movies In 3D Doesn't Make It Better But Adding Gemma Arterton Does

Hmmm...Clash of the Titans...3D...... I was really, really stoked to see this movie as I had grown up with the original and it kicked...well, it was pretty cool when I was a kid. Granted, now it's pretty cheesy and the special effects are laughable compared to the James Cameron visual computer orgasms we have today, but it was cool for the eighties (*sigh* How I miss my mullet). So when I saw this trailer:


I really wanted go see this movie (Refer to the really, really stoked above). I mean, c'mon! The action scenes were coordinated with kickass music! That means it has to be good. Right? No. No, not at all. This movie was not very good. The plot was a regurgitation of the original, just with better special effects (which isn't saying much). They didn't even try to make it new (except they did get rid of the irritating mechanical owl which was basically the precursor to Jar Jar Binks). That's great for some movies but let's face it, the original really wasn't that good either. The script was cheesy and made me roll my eyes a few times. And at the end *spoiler alert*, everything turns out great for the protagonist. He even gets his dead girlfriend back. All the other red shirts he travelled with met their untimely and gruesome end, but at least he got his girl back. Saccharine bullshit.

Before this movie, I had watched the lead actor, Sam Worthington, in Avatar, and that movie was pretty good. Additionally, I had Netflixed old Sam in Terminator:Salvation and he carried that movie (Christian Bale's raspy and utterly inappropriate Batman voice generated hostility in me). So when I saw that it had my wife's crush Sam in it, it added to my excitement. Why Sam? Why?

I guess I should temper my terrible review of this movie with some good things. One, the action scenes were pretty incredible, especially in 3D. They did a phenomenal job with those and I love me some good fight scenes. Two, the lead female, Gemma Arterton is smoking hot.


She's so hot, I chose the biggest picture I could find of her to post on here. Ok, not really, it was the best one I found on google images and I'm ok with it being gigantic (Titan sized maybe? Hmmmm? No? I tried. Suck it.) And last but certainly not least, I got to watch all of the previews for other 3D movies and found out that this particularly craptastic abortion is coming out:


There were people literally laughing out loud (LOL for the normal conversation impaired) around me. Who in the hell green lit this movie? What mouthbreathing demographic goes to the movies enough to justify this crap in 3D? I especially love how the lead mouthbreather is giving a Fight Club-esque briefing to the new girl. Really dude? I hate to break this to you but no amount of tough talk will make you Tyler Durden (or even Meatloaf's bitch titted character) as you sacrificed all of your man points the minute your agent said "I have the perfect role for you." The first rule about dance club is you don't talk about dance club because people will take your lunch money and pummel the crap out of you.

But I digress. Clash O' Titans was decent for what it is: An action movie. If you are expecting substance, well, you're going to be sorely disappointed. And legitimately (hopefully), I don't think they were expecting an Oscar nod. If they were, they will be sorely disappointed as well. I give it a C-.

In A Funk

I took today off from work. I just feel....off. I used to love work but my bosses have sucked the life right out of me. Vampires. Oh well. I have faith that the universe will self correct and they will get theirs. I can personally attest that karma's a real bitch.

The other day I learned a valueable lesson about keeping your mouth closed when sparring. If you don't you will feel pain beyond pain as your opponent kindly dislocates your jaw for you and once he figures it out, he'll keep doing it. Little bastard. It's difficult to breath through your nose when you're exhausted but it would suck worse to have a broken jaw.

I need to get my conditioning up. I am still sucking wind pretty bad but I console myself with the fact that it is only the second week. I'm going to add some tabata drills with lots of burpees and hope that works. It can't hurt. Well, it can hurt quite a bit actually.

Yesterday my son and I went to the Disney's Cars website and they now have their online world up and running. It's still in Beta testing but is still pretty cool. You create a character, drive around, interact with notable cars from the movie, tractor tip, get chased by Frank etc. One of the things I think is strange about the game is that they have a name generator. You pick three car oriented words that you can't make up yourself and string them together to come up with a name similar to the ones in the movie. It has the effect of sounding like a pornstar's name. Do I really want my son driving around identifying himself as "Frank Quickshot"?

Oh well, pornstar names aside, it's pretty cool. I have a feeling that my son and I will be spending alot of time on the computer together. He gets so excited about it. Bouncing up and down and clapping his hands randomly. It's pretty adorable. It won't be when he's 18 and still calling himself Frank Quickshot but for now it most definitely is.

Another Day in Paradise

My son is learning his ABCs. So at least once a day we are treated to his rendition of this song. It's a little like watching other countries' versions of American Idol. You know where the contestants make up their own lyrics because their grasp of English isn't very good(kinda like mine)? Yep. It's like that but actually cute (And there is no Foreign version of Paula Abdul to generate hostility in me). He does pretty well at it until roughly around H. From H it becomes H-R-Tay-Tay-L-M-N-O-P etc.. Also, 'S' sounds suspiciously like 'x'. It's so endearing that the wife and I don't want to correct him. I figure he'll know everything and hate us soon enough, but for now, he can keep being my little boy.

My daughter is in a rush to grow up as well. Yesterday I watched her pull herself up into a stand, teeter, try a step and then plop down on her butt. She did this at least a dozen times. That's perserverance. She then got so frustrated that she threw a fit but the actions leading up to it were pretty impressive. She's definitely got heart. It probably didn't help that I would leg sweep her everytime she got more then one step but I'm breeding Spartans.....Ok, ok, that's not a true story and my wife would leg sweep me if I did that but it sounded hard. In reality, my daughter has me wrapped around her little finger. That little smile of hers melts my heart. Yeah, I'm pretty much screwed when she gets older.

On a different, much more manly note, my coach just called me and said that he has ringworm. Wonderful. On Monday, we grappled for conditioning (Which my wife says is just an excuse for us express our repressed homosexual urges but I don't agree because there is not a lot of kissin....er....doh!). Nothing is itching so maybe I avoided it. Just one more thing to worry about. Gotta love it.

Easy Like Sunday Morning (I wonder how many blogs are titled that?)

Yesterday, I got nice and toasty and wrote a blog. I thought it was a rather entertaining one (probably because I was drunk and I always think I'm uber witty whilst plowed). Unfortunately, in my altered state I accidentally deleted it. I'm not sure how I did this but it was just a few magical keystrokes and *poof* it was gone. It was rather upsetting and it drove me to drink...er....more. So now, I hit the save button every few minutes because I wouldn't want the world to be deprived of more nonsense.

So far, today has been a good day (Didn't even have to use my Ak...). Sunday is my day to sleep in and it was awesome. The extra sleep makes it all worth it and helps keep me from going postal (All work and no play makes James a dull boy). When I woke up, the wife and the boy went to the grocery store and my daughter took a nap. I had some time to myself which is always nice so I wrote while listening to music and all was right in the world. Well, not much to report and not feeling particularly witty today so I will end it here.

Weekend

Haven't posted in a few days. Been a tad bit busy. Learned a valueable lesson this week: If you use ADD meds, don't take them on the day you are going to go do a two hour butt kicking boxing workout. Yeah, I felt like my heart was going to explode. Oh well. Tomorrow I'm going to add Kenneth Jay's Viking Warrior Conditioning to my boxing routine. I'm hopeful that this will get me ready. Not alot to add. It's probably a good thing that I only have one follower because this is pretty lame.

Sick little animals

Today D, my daughter, woke up screaming at 4:15am. She was then inconsolable. I thought it might be the realization of who her father was but alas, no she's legitimately sick with a temperature of 101 and a nasty little cough. So I am staying home from work today. Why couldn't she have gotten sick on a Monday or a Friday? Kind of inconsiderate of her. Oh well. I'll remember this when she needs braces or some organ, which in turn, will screw me when it's time to select an old folks home. I'm sure she'll choose the one from Happy Gilmore.

Of course after dosing her with some infant pain meds, she's running around engaging in various shenanigans. She took my day planner apart and then looked up and grinned at me. A gigantic toothless grin that melted my heart. Now I have no idea what I'm doing for the next two months, but damn it was a beautiful smile. She has me completely wrapped around her finger. I am so screwed.

On a different note, I got in the ring yesterday for the first time in about three months. It was ugly. I got worked and to top it all off, I got freaked out by the head gear. I've only sparred before in the open faced head gear. This one has a bar across the front. That's great for protecting your face (I'm so pretty) but I felt like I was suffocating. The second round I literally felt like ripping off my head gear and running out of the ring. I stayed by sheer force of will (that and the fear of the ribbing that would be forthcoming) but switched head gear for the last round. I didn't know I was claustrophobic. I was good after that. Well, as good as you can be getting punched in the face by a professional boxer.

Today, I am a mass of soreness. My shoulders are killing me. My face and solar plexus feel thoroughly tenderized (There's a joke in there somewhere). That's what I get for slacking. I was going to lift today, but I think I will let my body recover since I have to do it all over again tomorrow. That's the smart thing to do, so more then likely I'll go lift an hour or so. I'm kinda dumb like that.

Requiem for my brain cells

Yesterday was my kids' joint birthday party. It, of course, was a gigantic cluster. We had close to 30 people in our house at one time. Hilarity ensued. My kids got more presents then they could ever possibly play with. Hell, they have more presents then twenty kids could possibly play with. If my son didn't have ADD before, he does now. He's like a hummingbird flitting between flowers in rapid succession. But instead of collecting nectar, he's narrating various scenes of what the characters are doing, having multiple coversations before moving on to the next toy. He's having a great time or he's having a psychotic break. Tough to say at this point.

On the bright side, before the party, we still had some open spaces on the carpet that had not been covered by some kind of toy. Now I can literally walk from one end of my house to the other and never have to worry about touching carpet. A trip to the kitchen sounds like a montage of Disney movies as the toys activate and spew their vitrolic catch phrases. If I have to hear Lightning McQueen (From Disney's Cars) say "I am speed" one more time, I may have a psychotic break of my own....But I digress

In an effort to keep my sanity yesterday, I got Lindsay Lohan drunk.


This has become a birthday tradition with Daddy stumbling around making an ass out of himself (I think I'm quite charming drunk, everyone else, not so much), while various family members take pictures (See? Lindsay Lohan drunk). Yeah, my kids will end up on a psychiatrist's couch someday talking about how Daddy punched out the clown or peed off the deck (Stay Classy). In my defense, I try and keep the Old Testament drinking to once in a blue moon. Also, my wife and damn near every living relative we have were there. It's not like I took them shooting or something ("Here son, hold my beer and watch this..") Don't you judge me!