In which is haste

Or

Which is in haste. Curved space confusion strikes again.


Some things to catch up on , and some excuses for delay.

First, the second blood test came back.

Fasting Glucose 4.4 (down from 6.4)
Haemoglobin A1C 5.1 (down from 6.

Basically, the probability of going blind and losing my extremities has taken  a very large hit. This entailed a visit to Dairy Queen... because if you go out for ice cream, there aren't leftovers in the fridge, calling softly to you in the wee hours of the morning. Or the middle sized hours of the afternoon.  Or the large-ish hours of the early evening, when it's hot and humid, and you've worked kind of hard, and deserve it. (Yeah, I know. Humidity in Nova Scotia. Who saw that coming?)

Second, I'm hurting in new ways, because I've taken up a new, and I hope brief, career in (very) rough carpentry. 

A few weeks back, Sue and I bought a house in Kentville. We're renting it to my son and daughter-in-law and their son, Micah (AKA Howlin' Mouse the Bluesman). It requires some changes to make it a little safer. The one I'm working on now is the railing around the back deck.  

"But Bob," you cry. "Granted that you are the Suzerain of Profitless Arcana, what do you know about building decks?"

And comes the answer: "A hell of a lot more than I knew three weeks ago."

I went down on the first of June, and came back on the ninth. At that point, I had removed the stairs on the north side (by the simple expedient of picking them up and walking away with them. You see why I thought the deck needed a bit of work?) The north side is now a rose arbour. (Note: If you want people to walk there, DON'T PLANT ROSE BUSHES. Just don't, okay? The two species are happier in a long distance relationship, for values of long ≥ three feet.)

By the ninth of June, there was a railing on the east side which pretty much meets code. There were steps on the east side which will meet code when I get hand rails on. There was a vague impression that somebody had been pounding nails into random parts of my body.

Now, a week later, I'm heading back to do the south side. There will be pictures.

In which I'se strong in the finach.

Cause I eats my spinach.

A long delay, in which blog posts have been written, but not posted. The process of adjustment to my new life continues, 

and sometimes thoughts get a bit darker than I want to put out in public. (I don't know who all might read this blog.)

    The thought of the day concerns Eggs Florentine. (Man, I'm coming to like spinach. It's like salad you can cook.) I tried this yesterday, poaching an egg in a silicon egg poacher. Since it's made of the same stuff that really good oven mitts are, I thought it might take longer to cook than I was hoping for... and I was right. Also, the egg stuck, so it rated a fail.

     Plan B: got a microwave egg poacher. Poaching eggs in a microwave has never been a great option, because the yolks cook much faster than the whites. Still, I figured that if they did it right, the plastic might heat up and cook the whites from the outside in, and all would be lovely.

     Nope. It would not be true to say that you could play golf with the yolks. They're too smooth, and a bit too small. About right for ping-pong, however.

     Plan C: Marry somebody smart, and steal her method. The next trick will be to 1) butter the poacher before the eggs go in; 2) separate the eggs, and cook the whites for 30 seconds before you put the yolks in. 3) add the yolks for another 30 seconds or so, 4) Open the poacher, and hope that this worked.

     Unlike the Ping-pong Yolk Conundrum, the amazing spinach-water conjunction has been definitively solved. Draining spinach is a drag. If you try decanting out the water, by the time you tip the bowl far enough to dump the water, the spinach starts falling out, and I'm trying not to use that kind of language. The answer, of course, is canned tuna fish.

     Not that I eat tuna fish any more. I started getting taller every time we had a heat wave, so it looks like there really is a mercury problem with it. But they do sell strainers for tuna fish (is there really anybody who doesn't just use the lid?) and with these, and diligence, you can drain the spinach without dumping it in the sink. (Take my advice, and buy your diligence in the 64 oz. cans. Otherwise, the price is ridiculous.)

     Music for the moment: Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz show. She's gone now, but her show is great.

     Coming soon: results of a follow-up blood test, and a follow-up fitness test; news on the house, and even, perhaps a sketch of the workbench,

In which things get intense, arguable madness ensues...

For the last few weeks, the weight loss has been kind of stuck. Certain changes must be made. Here they go.

     First, the weight workouts have been changed, again. They have the gall to be divided into three parts. The first part uses some intensity, in the 8-10 rep range. Second is a volume section, which uses 50-75% of the weight in the first part, for many, many sets. The third part is the small stuff, mostly rehab for shoulders and knees.

     I'm using two workouts. The first is leg presses, bench presses and seated rows. The second is deadlifts, military presses and pulldowns. With the exception of deadlifts, these will all happen on machines. Deadlifts may well get swapped out for more leg presses, because of a weird cultural thing at my gym.

     Most gyms I've been in are based around machines. The free weight section (if there even is one) is tucked away at the back, and is nearly deserted. Everybody wants to use the machines, with that sweet, sweet, shiny chrome that makes everything better.

     My current gym is about 25% free weights (by floor space) and the rest is a bemusing variety of machines, most of which isolate one muscle at a time. So far, so expected. But about 80% of the people at any one time in the back doing free weights, while the machines stand mostly idle. I've seen squat racks that were constantly busy before, but this one is actually being used for squats, instead of shrugs or curls. I feel like a rarely privileged and fortunate anthropologist, given the chance to see an ancient folk ritual in the same class as the Minehead Hobby Horse but I can't really afford to

wait an hour and a half for a chance to do three quick sets.

     Besides the waiting time, I'm still having issues with my left shoulder, so squats are off the menu right now, and I'm doing leg presses, instead.  And leg presses hit 270 last week! Rows were 120. Bench presses were a gingerly 60, with minimal problems. The first two weight will go up five pounds at a time until I hit a sticking point; bench presses will slowly sneak up at a lower speed.

     The second workout is aerobic, and that now means running. I burned 600 calories yesterday, but more importantly, I did nearly five minutes of real, no-kidding running. This has prompted a spasm of "I just gotta try this.."

So, I'm going to set an actual goal for running: a ten minute mile by the end of July. That'll be about twice as fast as I usually go on the treadmill. We'll see whether it results in this

 Or this.

I'm hoping for the first option.
    
     Finally, I've realized, again, the truth that you can't outrun a bad diet. My one indulgence is almonds. I've been eating too many of them. Reluctantly, I have to cut them back. I'll miss them.

Onwards!

In which there are gigs.

our gigs, to be precise.

I was asked by the Local Anglican Cleric to sing the Exsultet at the Easter vigil. When other people hear me sing, I expect bad things to happen, but for her I would do anything, of course I agreed.

     First problem: no voice. Hadn't sung in some months, had to practise like a fiend, didn't want to, but got around to it eventually, voice was coming around.

     Second problem: L.A.C., hearing me practise, told me that she really, really loves the Exsultet, and wanted the full (three or four page) version, not the short version I've been doing for the last several years, in my Little Presbyterian Home in the West.. O... kay.. I can do that. Just barely.

     Third problem: on the Saturday, I went to try it in the church, because acoustics. It was pointed out that the Sursum Corda is set to different music in the Exsultet (at least the one that I had) than the Anglican church usually sings. So, I whip over to the Book of Alternative Services (Presider's Edition) to get the tone that the congregation might know. Whoever typeset the BAS decided in his wisdom to print the Sursum Corda in a different notation than the rest of the Exsultet...

     It all goes okay on the night. The church is tiny, so my voice holds out, barely, and nobody throws anything.


     Meanwhile, back in my Little Presbyterian Home in the West, a very good friend of mine gets landed with the Exsultet on Easter morning. She has stage fright. (I sympathize!) She worries about it. According to multiple witnesses, she absolutely nails it.

     The third gig is Easter morning. No organist, so hymns are played by a guitarist and the cornet player. It doesn't go too badly, although, on the last hymn, when I nail an F#, I'm so astonished that I gargle the next bar completely.

     Finally, I got an email from the guy who runs the local brass quintet. His French horn player has retired, and I have a shot (until they get a new one) at playing the part on flugel. Of course I'm going to do it.

In which are tests, and cooking, and a flailing moment of creativity

My lovely wife out of town overnight, so I'm messing with music, doing laundry like a baus, and it's time for a blog. 

     As mentioned, I went and started a workout with a VO2 max test. It was up about 3 of whatever it's measured in. That's likely due mostly to weight loss, but higher is better, however you get there. (Yay!)

     Next up that day was weights, and it's getting tedious. Dumbbell deadlifts start the day, and at 60 pounds (x10x10) would just about do to end it. It's not a lot to deadlift, but there's a pretty good range of motion with dumbbells, and I'm also lifting a lot of me.

     Still, pressing on, never say die, there are leg extensions and then either pulldowns or T-bar rows. Generally, that will fry me to a light golden brown, so sprinkle a little lemon juice on me, and put me on a plate, 'cause I'm done. 

     On days when I'm really far sighted, I hang around and do shoulder work. This is problematic, because the shoulders are problematic, and tend to clank when asked to do full-range work. The sets therefore are on the lat raise machine, at ludicrously small weights, or some subset of the Jobe exercises, at even more ludicrously small weights. Still, they're working, and I can occasionally do bench presses very carefully, with no problems. 

     The imminent return of the bench press (and its cousin, the military press) are devoutly hoped for, as I'm running out of exercises. At the moment, I'm trying to avoid isolation exercises (the one-muscle-at-a-time approach) because it's too hard to keep up intensity like that. Unfortunately, compound exercises break down into Squats, Deadlift, Pushes and Pulls. Generally, you combine squats and deadlifts at your peril, so I need the pushes back!

     On the cheerful side, it's only another week until I change up the programme again, and I may make a somewhat radical change, which will relieve the boredom a bit.

     Anyway,  you were promised some cooking, and here it is, the simplest and best breakfast ever, the Spinach and Jalapeño Omelette. 

Grab as much (washed!) spinach as any sane man would put in an omelette. Grab the same amount in the other hand. Chop it all up. 

Get about three slices of hot peppers (I've been using pickled  jalapeños) out of the jar. USE. A. FORK. because touching jalapeños is a really bad idea, don't pay attention to me, let your hangnails explain it for you. Drop them beside the spinach, and cut them up, without touching them. 

Beat two eggs, (or three, if you're living large) with salt and pepper and tabasco sauce. 
Get a slightly oily pan rilly, rilly hot, and in rapid succession: 

• Pour in the eggs.
• Shake the pan to move them around a bit, so the liquid stuff flows under the cooked stuff.
• Sprinkle the spinach around
• Scrape the jalapeños into the eggs with the knife. 
• Just before the eggs are all cooked, roll the whole thing onto a plate. 

Some people will think it's boring to eat the same breakfast every day. If it's boring, you're not using enough jalapeños. 

And the weird burst of creativity: The Local Anglican Cleric has asked me to do musical stuff at Easter, as the organist will be away.  There's little stuff written for solo brass, and little of that little is practical at the current level of technique. 

     The Bach cello suites have been arranged for trumpet... just not this trumpet. Lightning midnight raids on the historical treasury of plainchant have produced the beginning of a little suite of Easter music, but it's not going to be ready. There really was nothing happening until: 

     About 10PM last night, Lasst Uns Erfreuen started running through my head... as a slip jig. Now, that's one variation... There are a couple of other possiblities... and it was done. The theme, plus three variations, without resorting to diminutions, which I can't play any. Composed entirely in the lilypond text editor. Set for any solo instrument in the treble clef, or my old buddy Andrew on trombone. (Available as a PDF upon request.) It's a kind of rudimentary thing, but it works. The L.A.C. likes it. We have a prelude. 

     Postlude.... hmm.. Something's trying to occur to me, but it's not here yet.

      Finally, the kind-of-good news. I hit the weight loss plateau about three weeks ago. It seems to have come to an end. Onward and downward!

In which we stay on the train too long, and end up in Crazytown...

This week, I went looking for advice on losing weight. I was shocked by what I found. 


     With my background, when looking for training advice, I inevitably start with weightlifting sites. With these, you need some patience and judgement, but you can find good information out there. Some, like bodybuilding.com, are a mixture of fairly good advice, occasional bad advice, and a lot of advertising. (To be fair, it's run by a commercial mail-order supplement company.) 

     There are some unexpected gems like muscleandstrength.com, even ironmanmagazine.com where you can find useful routines. (Iron Man, I'm glad to see, still has a column by Joe Horrigan, who writes very good sense about how the body works.) 

     For pure strength training, you can find sites about the Stronglifts programme, or Madcow, or (for the truly insane dedicated) routines with names like Sheiko and Smolov, and even Smolov Jr. There are still other sites which treat weight training as a pure expression of joyless rage; they may have good information, but life is too short to bother.

     What weightlifting sites don't have is useful diet information. Too many of them recommend vast quantities of supplements, and few of them are oriented toward losing weight. Their recommendations run largely to pharmaceutical diet aids, which tend to be either ineffective, overpriced,  or dangerous, or some unhappy combination of all three.

     So, y'r ob'd't correspondent takes a new bearing on his gyro-stabilized prismatic compass, and goes looking for strictly diet oriented information. Two of the best articles for my particular immediate purposes I found in general-circulation newspapers, here and here.

     I also found an interesting response/rebuttal to the Newcastle diet, with a headline that *ahem* does not reflect the content of the article, and content which diverges creatively from facts previously published. I shall not link it, because it's a sad bit of rubbish, but mention it as an example of the  noise that comes with the signal in this kind of research.

     Plunging on through the jungle, machete flashing over his head y'r ob'd't cartographer hacked through endless tangles of useless information 

("Eat a well balanced diet, and engage in moderate exercise, but not too often.")

 as well as some very small nuggets of useful information. 

     There's a lot of railing against fad diets by  serious nutritionists, for broadly defined values of "fad". The  serious nutritionists all preach moderation and restraint, and fear of failure (because failure is so much worse than not trying, right?) and fear of possible side effects (because obese people aren't already up to the Plimsoll Mark in possible side effects, right?)

      One superficially promising web site (which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) publishes a thumbnail recap of the semi-infamous Sacred Heart diet. Whatever its origins and failings, it contains an interesting soup recipe. 

2 cans of crushed tomatoes, 
3 large green onions, 
1 large can of consommé, 
package of Lipton soup mix, 
a bunch of celery, 
a pound of green beans, 
2 pounds of carrots, 
2 green peppers, 
chop it up, cover with water, turn it into soup.

Well, fair enough, that won't hurt anyone, might have to try it...

     Encouraged, I wander on through the site, looking for what else may be there and find advice, like: 

• Don't eat between 7 at night and 7 in the morning. (Good idea for most people; prevents the mindless eating as you get tired at night, which messes up your sleep patterns, and can get through a lot of food that you don't even enjoy.)
• Stay up at least three hours after your last meal of the day. (There are many opinions both ways on this, but it doesn't hurt, and some people find it really useful.)
• Weigh yourself twice a day. (Doesn't work for me, but whatever floats your boat.)

And all that's cool. Some good advice, some kind of iffy, better than most I've found. Good reason to keep going, right?

     Then... suddenly, in the same post: Good advice, useful strategies, insightful tips on ... how to hide bulimia and anorexia from your family and friends.

Wot?

And now, my friends, we're in crazy town. As always, researching on the Intarwebs is like panning for gold. You'll find gold, but you'll also find a lot of gravel and beaver crap.

     That's it for the moment. Off to do a VO2 max test, and see if it detects life. Next time, the melodies of Wm. Byrd, and the making of chicken salad from chicken, um, feathers.




    

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!