In which a shadow is poked...

ith my son contemplating the buying of a house, some parental reflexes kicked in, and I had to have a look at it first. I learned some things.

First, the highway system in the province ain't hardly my friend. Its surly standoffishness manifests in a number of ways. The trip to Halifax, for example, takes about two hours, if you're lucky. The trip goes over Mount Thom. Mount Thom is the place where you are not lucky, and you crawl in terror through monsoon, blizzard, fog, jaywalking moose and werewolves. If you are lucky, the road is dry, the sun shining, you drive with your head on a swivel like a Great War fighter pilot, trying to figure out what you've missed: Tornadoes? Flash floods? Army maneuvers? Landslides? Volcanoes? Randomized speed limit enforcement?

Second, they build very small houses better than I remember -- at least some of them.

Third,  if you're going out at omg:15 in the morning, lay everything out the night before, including tools, because you're not going to be at your best and brightest. As you stumble out, wondering just how far you can reasonably go before calling for a Tim's stop, you will not think,

     "You know what I need? A couple of screwdrivers and a circuit tester or two. That's just what m'sieu's ensemble requires this morning. And a natty step ladder. Maybe a fashionable carpenter's level. And a boldly rustic rafter square..."

 No, I'm not going to think that in the morning. In the morning, I don't think. All thinking must be done the night before.

Fourth, there are drywallers out there who are vastly worse than y'r ob'd't correspondent. (Try to bury your incredulity in thanksgiving. Bad drywalling seldom kills anybody. While these guys are drywalling, they're not doing electrical, or plumbing.) 

I've had a long think about The Ceiling Incident, and I've concluded that if the prospective buyer or his agent can poke a finger through your drywall seam, the damage is not the fault of the prospective buyer. Or his agent.

Actually, this incident has been puzzling me, and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure it out.

There is, in the hypothetical new house, a badly installed ceiling fan. (I say this without fear of contradiction, as I am an expert on the incompetent installation of ceiling fans.) Leading to the ceiling fan is a funny shadow on the ceiling.

Now, the point of looking at something before you buy it is to find out what you're buying. So I stared at the shadow for a while. Then I poked it. Then my finger went right through. There was a little escarpment

Escarpment, not exactly as illustrated.

in the ceiling drywall, that someone had tried to hide. And questions started to percolate through the solid Pre-Cambrian rock beneath my skull.

First question: how in the name of Birch Bark Canoe Patches did I stick my finger through a drywall seam? I've made some bad drywall seams in my time, but I've never had one that bad. Eventually, after much contemplation I realized the depths of half-assery we're dealing with here.

This was the initial problem.

The normal way of fixing it, used by most multicellular organisms, is to smooth out the problem with drywall compound, like this.

 Then you add drywall tape to hold everything together, like this.

Then you alternately smooth the whole thing out with drywall compound, and sand it, and smooth it, and sand it, and so on until it looks good, or the guys with the butterfly net take you away, whichever comes first.

What the genius that did this repair decided to do, was, apparently, this.

 Which looked superficially okay, until y'r ob'd't correspondent came along and did this.

So the obvious solution is to get in there with a stepladder and a load of drywall compound, rip out the patch, and do it properly. A bit of mesh tape, a bit of Sheetrock 20, a bit of low-dust compound, feather it out to, oh, thirty, maybe thirty-six inches on each side, sand a bit, should look okay. Perfectly easy, don't know why they didn't do it right the first time...

But here's the big question: What caused the escarpment?Why doesn't the ceiling fan mount touch the ceiling anywhere? Was it just incredibly incompetent hanging of sheetrock? Or is there a bigger problem?  Is there a romex cable run between the joists and the drywall? Is there, Gawd'elpus, a cracked ceiling joist? A chest of pirate gold? A family of obese racoons, watching Jerry Springer, and arguing about whose turn it is to get more chips and diet Pepsi?

Now I know how Mike Holmes feels.

The rest of the weekend was more straightforward: Drive down to Country Harbour through not-quite-freezing rain, drive back, talk to Second Son on Skype, blow a little cornet, watch Foyle's war with Sue. (Have you watched Foyle's war? 'Cause you really should.)

This morning back to the gym, possibly to explore the joys of circuit training!

In which the Strangeness and Contrariness of Life faithfully manifest themselves.

ith the machinery of weight loss running smoothly, the appearance of a monkey wrench was inevitable. In response to  the call of its ancestral destiny, a monkey wrench duly showed up. And the manner of its arrival was thus. 

     Assorted studies have revealed that one the necessary conditions for catching a cold (perhaps the only truly essential one) is dehydration. Your common mucous membrane is quite happy with its job of slipping the occasional stray rhino-virus on its way, as long as it is sufficiently hydrated. (The membrane, not the virus. I don't know if viruses are happier when hydrated, and face it, nobody cares, because nobody loves a rhino-virus. The way that they reproduce should make it clear that rhino-viruses are not even attractive to other rhino-viruses, and I'm not surprised in the least. But I digress.) One of the problems of the training programme I've been on, is that you sweat. A lot. There is a fix for that, which oddly enough consists of drinking water by the gallon. Still for various reasons, (the taste of the local water is one) a couple of weeks ago, I got nicely dried out, which the local rhino-viruses took as an excuse to roll up and start squatting in my sinuses, writing graffiti on the walls, throwing all night raves, and never cleaning the bathtub. Overall, not good tenants. 

     "Okay," said I, "I'll just carry on as I was." Which I did... until late last week. At that point between exhaustion, bad sleep, and lack of food, things took a turn for the worse. By Thursday, the viruses had started to file badly written court documents asserting adverse possession of the sinuses on the left side of my head, and I wound up mostly in bed for about three days. 

     Good news: I live in a civilized country, where one can purchase codeine over the counter. This greatly relieves the, ahem, discomfort associated with raving viruses in one's sinuses. 

     Bad news: I can't take ephedra based decongestants. Which would have helped, a lot.

     Good news: Doctor Who is on Netflix. Which helps, more than I would have imagined. 

     By Monday, I was back in the gym. I did about half a workout, and found myself looking for reasons not to go to sleep on the floor, beside the squat rack. This was taken as a sign that it was time to go home. I finally got a really good night's sleep, which also helps. 

     Today, in celebration of the temporary and anomalous lack of blizzards, I went for a walk. Allow, y'r o'b't correspondent, at this point, a small divergence to rave about one of the greatest websites in the world: http://gmap-pedometer.com/ This is a development on top of Google maps, which allows you to track the distance you walk (or drive or run, or bike, or whatever.)  It will give you a number of details of your walk, including the elevation changes and, a calorie counter! So, even in the absence of The Cardio Machines, there is impartial evidence of a 750 calorie workout.

     Based on this, y'r o'b't correspondent can be pronounced "Back to normal," for vaguely defined values of normal. The weather is also back to normal (for here.) When I click on the weather network, it just says, "Honestly, now, do you really want to know?"

     The inability to work out did not put any weight back on me, I'm happy to see. 

     While it's good to be working out again, and will be better when I can drop the intensity below "Kamikaze pilot on three-day meth binge," my musical situation is really strange. There's no band to play in. I still practise, and might arguably be getting better, but even so, there's a strange feeling of, "and then?" I miss the Trafalgar Players more than I can say.  

     The same malaise, (aggravated by the pernicious interference of gravity) affects the realignment of the studio. I've just about figured how to make it all work, but question keeps coming up, "and then?" 

     More dispatches to come, on the road to finding out.

Because it's all about accountability. (Until it's all about something else.)

his is the first post in a new category, which will be of interest only to people in a similar medical situation, but it does put my efforts on an undeniable public platform.  I'm hoping that this will make it harder to blow off workouts.

     Today was aerobics day. Started on the treadmill for 20 minutes. (The club will not allow you to do more that 20 minutes at a time on the machines. Faut pas chercher à comprendre.) 

     Then, on to the elliptical for 20 minutes, which was exhausting and painful. I haven't figured out how to slow down on one of those things.  On the treadmill I was doing around 500 calories per hour, which is plenty right now; on the elliptical, the least I could do was over 600. Next time I'm on those machines, I'll have to investigate further.

     Back on the treadmill for another 20. This put me up to about 475 calories burned. Over to the bike! 75 calories worth on the bike.

     The original plan (and I insist on calling it that) was to do another 20 minutes on the treadmill, but I was already up to 550, which is a modern era record, so I bagged it at that point and staggered home for a bowl of lettuce.

     Next week I'll be over 600 calories in a workout, which will put me back to where I was three years ago, although it will be taking me about 50% longer. (Who was the pitcher who said, "I throw as hard as I did 20 years ago. It just takes the ball longer to get there?")

     Tomorrow I wrap up the first cycle of German (sic) Volume Training and bid farewell to the leg press for a while. The new workout will be built around deadlifts and pulls, with some pressing and squat variations. The aerobic workouts will continue to be built around tedium and exhaustion.


     One question, if anybody knows: How many calories does it take to wish they would stop running the same vershlugginer hockey highlights for hours on end, and put the curling on? Because I did a lot of reps on that.

    

In which history repeats itself, this time as farce.

esterday was moving day again. You know how it goes: almost all the cardboard boxes are gone, you've started to feel settled, and then it hits you: Everything's in the wrong place. The bed is right where the morning sun will hit you in the eye at 5 AM. You'll never be able to mount the dresser on the mirror, because it's under a window. (You know - the one the sun comes in in the morning.) You put the desks in the wrong offices.

      Moving a four-poster bed is fun. It's easy. We didn't even have to take it entirely to pieces. (Might have been faster if we did.)

     The piano quite clearly belongs in the other corner. That corner over there, with the particle board bookshelves, that weigh about 400 lbs. And have about two hundred DVDs and CDs on them, plus several shelf feet of music. But that's where the piano obviously belongs. You just have to move it past the armchair. Not sure where the armchair is going to go while you're doing that, but no big deal, you have to get it out of the way anyway. How else will you get that desk downstairs? And the other one upstairs?

     And the stairs take us to the basement: (The fire pole project being temporarily on hold.) Ah, the basement. There are actual storage shelves down there. Just have to be able to get to them past the boxes of tools. (While you're sorting that out, keep an eye open for the one labeled  "Do not Crush." It's the vaguely trapezoidal one.)

     But I have a dream! Some day I'll get this just the way I want it...

     Did I say yesterday was moving day? I lied. Every day is moving day until I get this crap sorted.

In which a milestone is reached, (maybe two), a feast is eaten, and a damn fool mistake is made.

o, I have achieved a milestone: this morning, I weighed in at 240 pounds. I'm not sure when I last weighed this much. My children may remember me at this size, but they certainly don't remember me well. This is approximately 20 pounds off since the 12th of February; 31 days, just about four and a half pounds a week.

     Immediately relevant question: can I maintain this rate? I think so. In the past month I've gone through two time changes, which is a big deal in itself; as someone with precarious sleep patterns, like the old lady in David Copperfield, "I feel it more." The next two months I will, according to all signs and portents, remain in the same time zone. Better sleep should mean less hunger, and less eating, and better (in this case, crudely, more ) training. 

     Now, my starting weight is a bit vague: it could easily have been anything from 258 to 262, but I'm taking the average. 240 is therefore a nice round number, and calls for a celebration. In my case, I went down to breakfast and had two! (2!) cups of decaf, and extra lettuce! Then, gorged with this gluttonous start to the day, I hobbled Quasimodo-like to the couch to flop out and read Elizabeth Moon for a while.

     (Elizabeth Moon is, in her own right, several perfectly adequate reasons for a celebration, but that's another story, and a celebration for another day. In any event, I'm running low on lettuce.)

     So, asks the sharp-eyed reader, why does y'r o'b'd't correspondent do his comic bell-ringer imitation on such a glad day? The answer, my friends is, "stupidity." Those who know me well, please, at least try to look surprised.

     The basis of the training plan right now is volume. Do more. Then do more than that. Come next week, see if I can't do a little more. In a couple of weeks, see if I can push a little more volume into the workout.
 
     At what point in the previous paragraph did I use the word "intensity?" You're right! I didn't! Ramping up the intensity of work plays only the tiniest, wee, subordinate role in all this.

     So, what in the name of cowboy biscuits was I doing in a Spin class at 6AM yesterday? How did I ever conclude that this was a good idea? By what tortured logic did I figure that, (in the middle of a programme based on huge volume of work, spread over as much of my body as possible,) doing an hour of intense work, all on the same three muscle groups, was somehow going to make things better? I woke up this morning, feeling like I had been run over by something. Something large, and slow, which kind of lingered as it stepped on me, like a meditative, wool-gathering rhinoceros with no place that it had to be, any time soon.
 
     Which leads me to the second near-milestone. There are several sequential goals in this programme:  

• be under 210 by the end of April; 
• fasting blood sugar below 5 by May; 
• rehab the shoulders to they don't clank when I do bench presses;  
• hit 2-3-4 (200 pound bench press, 300 pound squat, 400 pound deadlift)by the end of next year. 

     All of these goals are in the future, and aspirational, but there is one goal which I have already reached: My consumption of Advil is now at normal powerlifting levels! 

(Advil -- the official vitamin of powerlifting!) 

     Seriously, if I'm not hurting somewhere, at this stage of the programme, I'm not working hard enough. From recent evidence, I'm working hard enough. However, thanks to carefully following Roguszka's Rule (You can put up with a lot more crap in life if you own a really comfortable chair.) even today I'm more or less functional by noon. 

     And, being functional and mobile, it's time to go bust some sets in the gym. More on this come Monday, Lord willing and we don't get washed away in the spring runoff.

In which our hero meets German Volume Training, and is not sure that they'll ever be friends

here is some tentative news to report on the health front: As of today, I appear to have lost something quite close to twenty pounds in the course of a month, without contracting scurvy, beriberi, or the galloping epizootic.


     The method has been extremely simple. In a previous post I alluded to the dietary restrictions. (Did I mention, there has not been a moment in the last month when I could not have instantly devoured the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast, including immediately after finishing supper?) The other half of it involves going to the gym six days a week, and being there for something between an hour and two and a half hours.

     So, of course, when you go to the gym, the question is, "To do what, exactly?"  My goal over the next month or two is to burn precisely as many calories as humanly possible. I'm familiar with many weightlifting protocols, but they all seem organized to be as efficient as possible, because burning extra calories will interfere with teh gainz. This is not what I want. I'm not here for teh gainz. I'm here for teh Lossez. To that end, I want huge, unreasonable energy expenditures, and not efficiency of any kind.  Baffled and confused, I had only one way to turn for help:

     My friend Google. I asked about high volume weight training, and it gave me something called German Volume Training. (To be honest, the connection with German history or culture is a little vague. Perhaps I'm supposed to time the rest intervals by reciting the greatest hits of Karl Barth, or singing a bit of Schubert. That would still not be the strangest thing I've seen people do in a gym.  But I digress.) The deal is to do sets of ten repetitions. Ten of them. The sets, that it, as well as the reps. And that's not ten sets per workout, or ten sets per body part. That's ten sets per exercise.

     For example: Tomorrow morning, I start with leg presses. It'll be 160 or 170 pounds. I'll do ten, then step off the machine for a minute and a half to contemplate the meaning of life. Then I do exactly the same sequence nine more times. Then I do the same thing with straight-leg deadlifts. (or as many sets as my back will allow.) Then I do about three or four sets of leg extensions, because the leg extensions are an "assistance" lift, not a real lift.

     And wherever there are leg extensions, I meet another old friend.One-and-a-quarter reps.

     One-and-a-quarter reps have done me so much good in my life. They stabilize my knees. They make my legs stronger. They improve the tracking of my kneecaps, and increase the likelihood that I'll be able to live my entire life in my own home. They signal that my warfare is accomplished, and the lower-body part of the workout is over. They give me a benchmark from which to minimize many other unpleasant experiences.

     The other major exercise I do is seated rows. Again, supremely boring, and long, but it burns calories. When my shoulders stop hurting quite so much, I'll be doing bench presses as well, and possibly military (overhead) presses, too. Leg presses will give way to squats in about a week and a half, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

     There are a couple of things that have to be said about German (sic) Volume Training. On the one hand, it's unpleasant. On the other hand, you get to do a lot of it.

     A standard workout will involve forty working sets (distinct for warmup sets). My gym gives out workout cards that have room for a maximum of twenty one sets. I'm apparently doing about twice as much as I'm supposed to.
         
     There is one more good thing about this training: It seems to work. My clothes are looser already. In another week I try another VO2 max test, and see if there's an improvement. In a month I check the blood sugar again, and see if there is progress on the one thing that matters. The stiffness, soreness, exhaustion and questioning of the meaning of life are just the box that the results come in.

In which Someday arrives.

    

 ell, I'm in the wee town, and several things are happening. The amount of brown cardboard in our house is slowly diminishing. I'm within striking distance of being able to walk across the music room without looking like a tap dancer in an earthquake. (One more box, and I'll be able to see floor! Measurable areas of floor!)

     I've made contact with a local brass quintet, and I sat in (listening) on one of their rehearsals last night. I've had a long look at the second trumpet music, to see if I would be any use to them when they need a sub. The verdict is: maybe. Someday. Just not soon. So I'm setting my second priority: play the heck out of the cornet, six or seven days a week, and try to get to where it's some musical use. I start every day with the "Have You Ever Actually Played This Thing?" Session. (Mostly flow exercises, including Cichowicz.)

     After a bit of a rest, I have "Okay, Arguably You've Played This Before, But Why Bother To Try Again?" Session. (Mostly Long Tones and Michael Irons Lip Slurs.)  In later sessions, I have a run at the Clarke Technical Studies, and any repertoire that recommends itself.
 
     "But," you cry, "why only the second priority? Surely, the chances of making a fool or yourself on cornet would make that the first only thought on your mind?" And that brings me to the Fairly Bad News.

     In rapid succession, I've received two pieces of medical news that are not entirely unexpected, but were almost entirely bad: 1) I meet the clinical standards for obesity, which is bad, but not exactly a surprise, and 2) I meet the clinical definition of diabetic which is very bad, and something of a surprise. I always knew that I was too heavy, and I knew that it could cause complications, someday. Well, someday arrived on the 12th of February.

Now, being a linear, reductionist kind of thinker, I assumed that there was something to be done, and I went looking for it. I found two things: First, this diet, outlined in the Guardian. Yes, it's extreme, but I've seen what type II diabetes does if not handled, and it's even more extreme. (Reminds me of the guy that said, "I don't really care about climate change. It's just that climate change is in the process of destroying everything that I do care about." But I digress.) The second was this study by people at UCalgary and UOttawa. It seems to show that working out six days a week was better than working out three days a week. This is the beginning of a plan....

I've joined a gym here in the wee town, and the routine here is: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm lifting weights. My shoulders are still a mess, which restricts what I can do, but the leg press and the cable row are still my friends. (The leg extension machine is still my friend, I think.) Overall, I'm nicely into the "Training seriously, walking kind of funny" mode which I knew and loved many years ago. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I'm exploring the aerobic machines. The working goal is to do 1000 calories in a workout, which is roughly equivalent, at my size, to walking or running a 10K. So far, I'm up to 400 calories, but progress continues. (This will also help with my VO2 max. When I tested it, the machine just said, "Ashes to ashes....")

Then there's the diet. Oh yes, the diet... Basically, carbohydrates are a thing of the past. My new favourites vary from spinach omelettes, (Eggs with spinach in it) to Eggs Florentine (Spinach with eggs in it). This may stir some memories for some readers. I also get into almonds, but not as much as I'd like. What I don't get is bread. Cake. Cookies. Could someone wander past Wendy's, and see if they still do baked potatoes? (I'd just like to know.) There have been moments when I've started to hallucinate about toasted Wonderbread.... but I digress. The essential rule is, if I'm not kind of hungry at any moment, I'm doing something wrong. Most of the time, I seem to be vaguely on target.

Now, because too much of a good thing tends to be my standard procedure, I'm adding a couple more elements: I've acquired the parts for an adjustable kettlebell. That will give me something to do in the evenings, to fight the urge to go back to the gym. The wee town is rated as very walkable (by someone who measures distances and sidewalks, and not hills,) so I intend to walk around the wee town, whenever the weather gets warm enough to make the polar bears and wolves safely lethargic. Which I'm about to do.

In which our hero drives a thousand miles, but complication follows him faithfully every step of the way...

There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have a blog. I'm not a published -or even publishable author; I'm magnificently out of the flow of most modern thought; I've never been very good at the kind of sustained, long-term project that a good blog is.

But, a number of people have suggested that it's a way to keep in touch now that I'm a thousand miles away, so...


I drove down from the Centre of the Universe this week. My house sold on Monday, and I stayed overnight with friends up north. Tuesday, I had lunch with my brother and sister-in-law, and rolled on a little farther before nightfall. My magnificent trip planning meant that I started by hitting the Toronto morning rush hour, always a good start to a trip. Still light traffic and OPP with better things to do got me to lunch on time.

I hear that there was a multiple-car accident on the 400 this week; I'm surprised they don't have them every day. There are people out there making bad, bad tactical decisions.

The second day involved the one non-negotiable part of the trip: Never drive 185 in the dark!  (Tried it back in November, didn't like it. 1/10, would not drive again.)

This wouldn't have been too hard, but I stopped to help a guy with a flat (on a Dodge Ram - rather like jacking up a tank) so this led to the second speed run in two days, to get past Edmundston before the sun went down. (By the way, if you're the guy who designed the spare-tire hanger on the Dodge Ram, I need a word with you about your true vocation in life, and why it doesn't involve designing stuff.)

The highway 20 route through Quebec is one of my favourite parts of the world to dawdle around, and take detours, and explore. Actually, it's one of my favourite parts of the world, period. So, of course, for the fifth time in 13 weeks, I drove through it about as fast as I could, and missed everything that I love about the  Eastern Townships. One of the things I missed was Restaurant de la Montagne, in Saint-Pascal. The food is terrific, and I promised myself I was going to get back there, which I will. One of these days.

The rest of day two would have been pretty easy, except for a wrong turn in Woodstock. It delayed me just long enough to encounter something between an over-sized snowstorm, and an avalanche with a lot of air in it. At one point I was driving on and off the corrugations on the side of the road, because that was the only way to know where I was. Fun times, I tell you. This is what you miss when you go to Spain for the winter!

Third day should have been relatively uneventful. Let me just say, about taking wrong turns in Fredericton: Don't take wrong turns in Fredericton. Just don't, okay? And then there was the traditional driving snowstorm as the sun went down. #ThisWasntFunnyTheFirstTime.

Strange occurrence that night, as I was sitting here checking email. I had a vague but persistent feeling that I should be in a band practice somewhere.

And that's about it. I'm in the wee town where I'll be for the next several years.

Can't wait to see what comes next.