See a Man about a Horse

"This is my happy face."

The BBC series "Sherlock Holmes" is finally on Hulu.  Last night I had the pleasure of watching the "Hound of the Baskervilles" episode and Hulu didn't freeze until there were about two minutes left.  So Benedict Cumberbatch, who recently played Kahn in "Star Trek: Into Darkness," is seen above in the movie "Atonement."  The movie was a WWII era drama, with no happy ending.  It was basically one big ball of rape, separation and sadness.  Apparently, both Roger Ebert and Wikipedia gave it rave reviews.  In any event, Keira Knightly is creepy skinny and here's a look at other creepy roles BC has had.

"Bloody hell, why does my mustache smell like horse dung?"

Tonight I finished my bench press; 1 rep at 245lbs.  That went up so easily I tried for 255 and then 250, but couldn't do it.  Friday I'll squat, probably at 345 or 350lbs.  If I am feeling sonsy, I'll give deadlift another shot.

I ate four pieces of steak, a pile of veggies and some eggs today.

I did some laundry and thought I'd get some clean sheets for my last week here.  After careful deliberation, the clerk at the laundry gave me this pillow case:

The pink really brings out the auburn in my 'stache.

Last night Sherlock told Watson, "I've got to see a man about a dog."  I initially assumed this was a singular quote from something way back, but found out it means "I need to leave now and want to politely say something before leaving, without telling you specifically where I am going.  I'm probably going to the toilet.  After that I'll probably meet a man in a back alley and commit a crime."  I'll give Hulu another try at Sherlock Holmes tonight and see if he uses any catchy phrases.

Woden's Day

Too bad Huginn and Muginn couldn't make the pic.

Yeah, Odin has a beard not a mustache, but today is/was (depending on where you are right now) Wednesday which originally was Woden's Tag or Odin's Day, Woden being Odin in Old English (not this old English).  Gandalf was based off of Odin, me appears as the main character in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods and he plays a role in The Dresden Files series of books.  In the The Wheel of Time novels, the character Mat Cauthon is based on Odin: both characters are associated with ravens, have a spear and lose an eye.  One of Odin's nicknames was Rauðgrani, translated as "Red Mustache."  It is interesting to think how the days of our week are named after Norse deities, whereas the structure of our calendar comes from the Roman Catholic Church.

Two weeks left here.  Made some progress on my out-processing items.  Guess I'll have to read a lot soon or take my borrowed books back to the library.

Had meals of steak tonight, one with veggies and one with a baked potato and three fried eggs.

Kelly Klein, the owner of Groennfell Meadery in Cochester, VT, posted today about the archaic legislation that affects professional mazers.  (If the "Beer Wars" documentary is true, then the same can definitely be said regarding the craft beer industry.)  Essentially, the definition of mead is pretty loose, which puts meadmakers into situations where they can't bottle their mead in certain bottles, must use or not use certain verbs on their bottles or can't call their products mead based on the volume of fruit used.  In the hopes that one day I might call myself a professional and not simply an obsessed, amateur meadmaker, take a look below at what I sent to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Barack Obama which says:
"Revise current TTB regulations with regard to beverages labelled as "Mead."  The current regulations do not lend themselves to a fair and objective standard for what can be termed "mead" and instead favors producers who use a higher % of fruit concentrate than honey."
Will you sign this petition? Click here.

Twelve hours ago another captain gave credit to my mustache by referencing it to belittle Sam's.  (I see a theme of other captain's giving me credit.)  Funny how something I can't even control is given praise.  It's as if people are saying, "Wow, you really tried to push those strands of dead protein through your pores.  I bet everyone else was just taking it easy while you were concentrating."  On the walk back to my room from breakfast, I could feel the sweat hanging out at the base of my 'stache trunks.  Guess it takes all kinds of mustaches to make the world go round. 

Patriot Day

Underneath that mask, well, there might be a mustache.  Probably not, though.

Happy Patriot Day!  That is the Iron Patriot, which, depending on how comic otaku you are, you may realize that IP could be different people, but not necessarily a patriot.  Anyway, red white and blue.  The following are Marvel characters with mustaches who one might consider patriots: Dum Dum Dugan (WWII vet), Corsair (NASA pilot) and Sgt Slaughter.

More geeking out: walking back from the DFAC tonight I overheard the words "Windows 7" and "solid state harddrive."  I turned around and then had a five minute conversation with the kid in question, using such suggestions as disk image, Norton Ghost, IDE cable, SATA connection, BIOS, Linux iso, Windows 8, terabyte, Western Digital gigabyte and Jefferson Airplane.  That was the most fun I've had since the great motherboard burnout of 2005.

Shift tonight was a little bit longer, but we get to do some new things (create new email templates!) so we stay busy.  I might get a night off before my apprentice goes TDY (to the Dagobah system for training).  Which reminds me:

That's right; I went there.

 
No pics of my tray of food tonight.  Suffice it to say I had four steaks, five eggs, mushrooms, onions, mustard greens, lots of butter, sausage, coffee, tea and some dried fruit...and some acetaminophen due to my twisted neck muscles.  Either twisted it sleeping or deadlifting last night.  Ah, painkillers: thank you for blocking my eicosanoid receptors.

Minimalizing

I know what you are thinking: "Minimalizing?  This guy's overseas, meals provided for, takes the bus to work, library full of books within walking distance, free movies if he so chooses and no bills."  However, consider the following:

- Clutter distracts from better things (a smiling baby, an engeretic four year old, wine)
- Humans parse the items in a room; more items -> more energy to parse - > more stress
- I keep a running list of Things to Get Rid of in my Google Drive

Questions I ask myself:
- Do I need six bookcases of books?  How many more times will I read that book?  If I haven't read it, do I really want to?
- How many extra USB, ethernet and speaker cables/wires do I need?
- How many life-sized Boba Fett sets of armor can a man have?  (Seven at last count)

A plan of attack - Yeah, I know you are thinking, "How much stuff does this guy take with him in one large suitcase and a backpack?"  Baby steps...

Not keeping
- Old emails: I don't need 3,000 "click here to download your monthly statement" or "you have a message from your bank" emails
- Old books: If they are mediocre fiction paperbacks, I'll leave them at the library for someone else to read.
- Hulu: I've watched a few shows while here, but haven't had success with it loading the last few nights.  Plus, there are free movies on the base theater and to borrow from the library...actually, Downtown Abbey episode 1 is working now.  We'll see.
- Extra chemicals: I don't need Clorox, Formula 409, two kinds of Lysol, Febreeze, Swiffer pads and baby wipes.  I'll stick to the last two.
- Crossword puzzles: Not doing the puzzle leaves more time to reading Batman comics and "How to get your wife to laugh at your jokes" self help books

Keeping
- The stache: First, if I shaved, I'd have to change the name of the blog.  Plus, I save roughly four Joules of energy each day by not shaving my upper lip.  Lastly, save the planet:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Green-Tip-Grow-a-Moustache-Help-Save-the-Planet-303625.shtml
- Old books: If my family will read them in the future, I'll keep.  If they are reference books, I'll keep.  Lastly, I have two books that I borrowed from family; these I'll keep.
- Furniture: I think if I post "bunkbed for sale" on the base classifieds, someone might have a problem with that.
- Luggage: Another officer has a suitcase in my room, in the event he might come here TDY.  Let's just assume he wants to keep all of his personal effects.

For more stuff ideas

I'm going to try the food & workout post by day.  Let me know if you have a preference for a weekly summary or a day by day review.

Warmup: Weighted chinups 27lb dumbbell-5, 5, 33lb dumbbell-3, 2; bodyweight-4

Workout: Squats: 5-245, 5-255, 5-265, 5-275, 5-280

Cooldown: Tricep extensions: 10-70lbs, 10-80lbs, 3-90lbs 

The second time since I've been here and they have steak and lobster for dinner!

The trifecta: sea, land and can't-quite-fly.

You're probably thinking, "Where are the eggs?"

I keep seeing tiny, pale lizards running around on the sidewalk.

Plates & Plates

Here's my summary of the workouts and meals I completed/ingested this past week.

30 July an in between "I'm bored day"
Warmup: 22lb dumbbells - 3 chinups, 7 dips, 4 chinups, 7 dips, 3 chinups, 7 dips
Workout: Power Snatch 5x5, 95lbs
Cooldown: 5x25lb plate lift

Pot roast, tater tots, corned beef hash and scrambled eggs.

Three cookies and butter pecan (which are nuts and good for you) ice cream.  This is a once in a month serving.

31 July an active rest day
3 x 50 air squats
3 x 25 pushups

Pot roast, eggs, sweet potatoes and salad.

1 August Rest

Pot roast, salad and potato salad.

2 August Shoulder press
Warmup:30lb plates - 4 chinups, 3 chinups, 2 chinups; 35lb plate - 6 dips
Workout: 5-140, 5-145, 5-150, 5-160, 3-165
Cooldown: 3 45lb chinups

Fourteen chicken wings and two sausage patties.

3 August Deadlift
Warmup: 10 weighted (45lbs) dips
Workout: 5-285, 5-300, 5-320, 5-340, 5-360
Cooldown: 7 weighted (55lbs) dips

Eggs, steak and sausage.

4 August Squat Cleans
Warmup: 5 65lb weighted dips
Workout: 5-135, 5-140, 5-145, 5-150 & 5-160
Cooldown: 5 70lb weighted dips

Eggs, sausage, ham and nuts.

5 August Rest day

4 beef spare ribs and a small salad.

Tried to eat I did the chicken sausages, but couldn't.  After I ate this, I drank the green tea and waited ten minutes while the cooks prepared more ribs.  I took three to go and ate them while my laundry dried.  

If you think I am crazy for getting so many calories from unfertilized chickens, steak and nuts, click here.

Coffee, Mr. Tulley

I've started a course at coursera.org titled "Maps and the Geospatial Revolution."  It's sort of a primer on GPS, maps, ecology and other information about the earth and a gateway into Penn State's Geospatial Intelligence and Geospatial Information Systems certificate or masters degrees.  Here are four episodes (about 15 minutes each) which are fascinating.  Even if you know nothing about GPS, cartography or ecology, these videos show how the technology has helped people during earthquakes, disease epidemics, foot shortages and other horrible situations

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

So CNN talked today about the Royal George and other famous George's: Curious, George Herman Ruth, etc.  Well, there are some not quite good and downright negative George's out there, to wit:

The Bad

• George Zimmerman - if you don't know who he is, then I am envious of your lack of "news" awareness
• George McGovern - Featured negatively in a Charlie Daniels song, as well as the dietary documentary Fathead, Senator McG also gave us the term "complex carbohydrate" in his McGovern Report.
• George Jones - alcoholic country musician; not the worst, but maybe not an idol for a newborn Englishman

The Maybes

• George Liberace - the famous pianist's brother; mentioned by Bugs Bunny in one of his parodies.
• George Carlin - incisive, insightful comedian who definitely pushed boundaries
• George Constanza - pretty much a schlub character from Seinfeld.  Demonstrated wimpy characteristics for the rest of us to not emulate.

Another simple workout tonight, followed by protein.

Warmup: 6 26lb weighted chinups

Workout: Shoulder press - 5x135, 5x140, 5x145, 5x150 and 3x160

Cooldown: 4 30lb weighted chinups

Evidence that I was in the gym, at least once, with a camera:

160lbs...for those of you not in America, that's about 73kg

this is my concentrating face

this is my "happy" face

I'm pretty unoriginal when it comes to free food from the dining facility.  Yep: tonight was steak, eggs and beef sausage.  Don't worry: I had a handful of mixed nuts for dessert.

Dear Lord, thank you for cows and chickens.  And salt.  Amen.

I heard the east coast has cooled off.  I guess that means my family will stop telling me how hot it is...I pretty much have A/C everywhere, but it's still funny.

Don't drink coffee...sometimes

Coffee is hard on the adrenal glands, depletes your bones of magnesium and has been known to run away with the spoon, but I decided to just have two cups of Earl Grey tea tonight, with some medium chain triglyceride (MCT) oil added in for fun.  We'll see if skipping the coffee and eating an earlier dinner help me get to sleep closer to around the time the sun is getting up.

...I haven't given coffee up forever, just avoided it tonight.

Apparently Styrofoam cups can't handle the heat generated by the kettle at work and the MCT oil.  A crack showed up in the cup where my plastic MRE spoon stirred and scraped away from foam and a globule of tea sprang.  I'll stick to my "eco-friendly" coffee cup and just pretend my tea doesn't taste like yesterday's coffee.

After finishing Sherlock Holmes last night, there is a definite theme of "19th century London stepdad's wanted their stepdaughters' inheritance and would lie to no end to keep it."  If Sherlock Holmes existed today in America, he'd be encountered with the denizens of Fox's "Cops."  As it turns out the final four short stories wound up as follows:

• "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb"; engineer loses thumb while programming a computer; Holmes snorts cocaine due to a counterfeiter's axe; they get away with some of their fake coins
• "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"; a woman is to be married to a young man; man is her father; Holmes does nothing an English Lord; woman was already married whose husband was presumed dead and is at the ceremony; woman flees with husband; Holmes finds the couple and makes them tell the Lord
• "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet"; Colonel Mustard steals a crown; Holmes in opium den Banker holds a crown in his home (already a dumb idea) while crown is collateral for a loan; boyfriend of his neice steals it; Holmes recognizes that banker's son did not do it
• "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"; Holmes stops the Nazis This was one disturbing...Man seeks a nanny for his son and requires that the nanny look like his sick daughter; nanny is forced to cut her hair, hired and then acts out scenes to ward off the daughter's fiance; eventually the fiance and daughter escape and the man and is wife are (slightly) reformed.  Holmes solves mystery, which was again, a father/stepfather wanting his daughters inheritance.  

I've finished David Sedaris' book Naked, which was very funny.  His career seems to be based on his own admitted laziness, description of casual drug and alcohol use and the absurd descriptions of some common things he's gone through in his life.

It's a rest day, but I did do 50 air squats at my desk.  I tend to slouch, lean to the left and crookedify myself in my office chair.

Very unoriginally (I know it's not really a word) I decided to have two pieces of steak, two eggs over hard and a salad.  The combination of olive oil, red vinegar, white vinegar and lemon juice, with a healthy raining of salt, is quite delicious.  No pictures tonight; decided to travel sans backpack and accouterments to the cafeteria.

This is the end of this blog post.  I had something else to add written in my notebook, but left that little red notebook at work.  Tomorrow!

Last night I updated my books read log in Google Drive using the notes I've kept since 2003.  Starting with the Silmarillion and ending today with Me Talk Pretty One Day, I've read 308 books in 11 years, counting ebooks and audio CDs.  If you are interested in genres or what I've read, comment or email me.

Men with beards

So I am finally getting into David Sedaris.  The past two nights I've been going to sleep crying as he talks about his sister Amy's nonconformist makeup ("make me look like someone beat the shit out of me") and describing learning French.  It was interesting seeing him interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart...I wouldn't be opposed to reading about Owls.

Tonight I got to play the game "How to understand what Blogger is telling me."  For whatever reason, Google's Blogger, or blogs hosted by such, show up with some of the menu options in Arabic.  I knew there was a way to fix this, but tonight I switched to French, then Spanish, then German then finally American English.

Again, keeping it short and simple, with 5:00 rests in between sets of squats:

Warmup: 6 15lb weight chinups, 6 bar overhead squats
Workout: Squats 5-225, 5-225, 5-230, 5-235, and 5-240
Cooldown: 6 20lb weighed chinups

I switched up my meals today as well, based on the intermittent fasting technique espoused by Martin Berkhan of leangains.com and others.  Basically I skip breakfast (my 4pm walk in the oven to the cafeteria) and eat around 8pm and 3am.  My fasting is while I sleep and for 4ish hours from when I get up till breakfast (at dinner time).  Working so far.

When I was younger, at dinner my dad used to say, "You should thank that cow (or chicken, or turkey or whatever); it gave its life for you."  So tonight, I thank you, dear dead cow, for the 2 inches of stacked roast beef on my plate.

After I ate this I went back and got two more slices.

Here's more alongside the road artwork.

I think this was after Loki took Thor's GI Joe action figures.

This has got to be the Saint of Killers.  After looking at that picture, if it's not the Saint, then I'm Sam Elliott.

The Gourds

My work cell phone here is from circa 1998 and has 13 digits.  It's weird and sad at the same time.

I just got back from saying goodbye to two guys, working out and eating.  It was my first time in the Fox Sports bar...I had envisioned drunken revelry and peer pressure to chug German lagers (not old German lager).  Instead it was rather brightly lit and quiet.  I said my well-wishes and then...

Warmup: 15 situps, 15 back extensions, 15 pushups, 15 bar overhead squats and 8 pullups

Workout: 15-12-9 115lb hang cleans and burpees; 10:04

Cooldown: 15 dips and 10 feet to bar

Post workout meal consisted of the 4 S's: steak, steak, sauerkraut and salad.  To wit:

On my way back from the dining facility, I saw a guy talking to a girl outside one of the Cadillacs (a concrete common bathroom).  He was trying to convince the girl of something and he looked at me and said, "...just ask him."  I recognized him from the gym, but couldn't imagine a scenario where they were arguing about dips: "Dips in the gym are when you lower yourself in a hanging position, not ranch, bleu cheese and barbeque!"  I stopped and said, "Ask me what?"  To which the female inquired, "Why are there cameras pointed at the Female's door to the Cadillac?"  The obvious answer is that some bozo(s) were caught going into the females bathroom or lurking outside...guys must realize this without thinking too much and women not so much.

The workers (I don't think they quite rank as baristas) ground another bag of organic whole beans for me.  For some reason, companies sending coffee to soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen must assume coffee grinders come in MREs or deployment bags or something.  

I'm sure the inside of your local Starbucks looks just like this door

Before I went in to work today, I regaled myself with the music of The Gourds.  The only song I know is their remake of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice."  Enjoy.