Vay-Cay-Shun

Yay!! We're going on vacation in 2 - count'em - 2 days!! This will be our first "extended" (i.e. longer than a single overnight) vacation in OVER THREE YEARS. Can you say "we deserve it"?? I sure can! We're not doing anything too fancy - just renting a cabin at the coast - but 3 nights away from city and work and bills and customers and business sounds pretty...damn...awesome. Add to the fact that the Oregon coast is literally one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and, well, let's just say we're pretty stoked. A big bonus is that we've made time to go to a place called Cape Perpetua, which I haven't been to in over 10 years. I've been to the coast many times since then, but the Cape is a good hour and a half south of the usual spot we go to (Cannon Beach, which is a straight shot about 2 hrs west of Portland), so we've never made it back there. However, it's one of the most inspiring, amazing, incredible places I've ever been. Maybe THE most inspiring, amazing, incredible place I've ever been. Anyway, I'm super excited to go back there - and super excited to just take some time off. I don't think our cabin has Wi-Fi, so this may be the last post for awhile. We'll be taking most of our food with the intention of making most of our meals ourselves (not many dining options in the teeny little beach town we're going to). Hopefully we'll bring enough. As usual, finding a spot to jump rope may be a challenge, but I'll figure something out.

On the jump rope tip, yesterday I had kind of an interesting experence. I put off jumping until the evening because I had too much stuff to do in the morning. As I trudged to the park with wife and kid in tow, I was totally dreading my jumps. I was tired, worn out and just did not want to do them. However, once I got going, I actually had the best jump rope sesh I've had in a long time. Sure, there were trips, but I knocked out 1800 jumps with the majority of the sets being in the 100-300 jump range. After I was done, I was definitley tired, but felt surprisingly good considering how I felt before starting!

Today I didn't have time (or food prepared) to pack a lunch, so I visited my favorite food market like I usually do. For some reason they had a "Southern Sunday Dinner" theme going, with fried chicken, buscuits, hush puppies, pork roast and collard greens. I decided to go with the least offensive option (which was still fairly offensive, on the PCP-meter, anyway), a slice of pork roast and some collards. Of course, the greens were done up "southern style" with bits of bacon and god knows what else. They felt greasy when I ate them, and now the whole meal is sitting like a goddamn lead anchor in my gut. I still have to do my jumps and workout for the day so hopefully that will make me feel a little less yucky.

Oh yeah, I posted some new pics. Look, ma, I have abs! Sort of. Furry abs. But at least we're getting there.

PCP Brekkie/general update.

This was my PCP Brekkie this morning (although I had already eaten my 100g of carbs - Bob's Red Mill Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal has become a daily ritual). 150g "Squa'ash" (squash hash - recipe to follow). 30g sliced heirloom tomato. 2 fried eggs (use just a skosh of cooking spray). 80g flank steak (leftover from dinner the other night). The cool thing about this meal is that you can either eat it all mixed together or one thing at a time, and it's equally good.

For some reason while typing this, I just got the craving for BiBimBap (which, if you've never had, is the best thing to ever come out of Korea short of Bulgogi). It must have been the pic of the fried eggs.

Anyway, here's the deal with the Squash Hash: take 2 or 3 of your favorite summer squashes (zucchini, yellow squash, flying saucer squash, whatever) and dice them up very finely. Do the same to a medium size red pepper and half a red onion. Throw some garlic in there if you feel so inclined. Fry the mixture up with a little olive oil, until the veg has softened and is starting to brown. Season with lots of black pepper and a little salt. Voila! Great for mixing up with fried eggs.

In other news, I finally had a good workout today. Jumps were still off, as usual - but I figured out how many jumps are in a 4-minute set. I counted my last 2 sets and logged 450 and 420 respectively. That was including QUITE a few trips, so I imagine that for someone who can actually jump rope competently, it would be 500+. My problem has been that I don't have a timer, nor a watch. I want to get a watch, but I'm super fussy about what kind of watch I want...and I haven't found it yet. I should just go buy a kitchen timer, but I haven't gotten around to it. So, the upshot is I've been counting my jumps this whole time. I usually do at least 1600, sometimes up to 1800 - which it looks like is what I should be doing to equal out to the timed jumps.

I was able to complete most of the exercises today (plus I threw in bicep exercises which I had skipped yesterday because I didn't have my resistance band with me when I went to the gym), with the exception of a few pull-ups, which started to really bother my wrist after the 3rd set or so.

Anyway, it's late and I need to go to bed. Gonna make another attempt at this whole "getting up early and exercising" thing.

Anniversary Indulgence, etc.

So it's been a few days since I've written, and boy have they been action-packed. I won't get into too much detail, 'cos most of it is work related, suffice to say I've been busy busy busy. Overall my workouts have been OK - I had two truly great jump rope days in a row (I did 475 jumps in a row yesterday! I could hardly believe it!), although today kind of sucked. My main problem as of late is that the leg exercises are almost universally making my bad knee very unhappy. Last week when there were lunges on the menu, I did them all, but the next day my knee was feeling super wonky and kept threatening to give out. It didn't, but I also didn't do my jumps that day. I'm waiting for Patrick to give me his feedback on the problem.

So, then, on to the main topic of discussion - the indulgence! I didn't really have my indulgence last time (although I did have a few "mini" indulgences - like a few spoonfuls of Tapioca pudding, etc), so this time needed to count. Or something like that. It was our 5-year wedding anniversary on Friday, but we didn't quite have it together enough to get a sitter and actually go out for dinner, so my wife had the great idea to get take out from a local Tapas place called Lolo. Now, Portland has a few Tapas joints that are supposed to be as good as any place in Spain, and consequently have a line out the door constantly. Lolo, while still really good, for some reason has not caught fire like these other places, the upshot being that you can always get a seat, or order take out! We got 5 plates:

From L to R, they were serrano ham & manchego cheese croquette w/ smoked paprika aioli; sautéed octopus w/shaved celery, farga olives & piquillo pepper confit; chorizo & marinated figs; fried almonds w/ espollette pepper, sea salt & lemon wedge and chicken skewers w/moorish spices & sherry syrup.

All the dishes were pretty great, but I will give a play by play.

I really had no idea what to expect from a "serrano ham & manchego cheese croquette w/ smoked paprika aioli", but I was not expecting the intensity of this dish! I think that if the devil were incarnated in a foodstuff, he might become one of these delicious little balls of salt and fat. They were fried crisp on the outside (but not greasy) and had an incredible creamy, cheesy soft center, with tangy, salty, spicy aioli on top. Did I mention that these were SALTY?? But oh my god they were so good. My wife couldn't eat these because the crust was breaded and thus had gluten, so I was on my own, and I think they were my downfall. I only ate one, but that was more than enough!

The octopus was amazing - tender, meaty, perfectly spiced. The shaved celery added an interesting dimension, I actually thought it was fennel. Octopus is like the kobe beef of seafood.

It's pretty hard to screw up the pairing of fresh figs and salty cured meat, and thus the figs and chorizo were total winners as well.

The fried almonds were yummy, not too salty and perfectly spicy. Perhaps a touch on the oily side, but still damn delicious.

The chicken skewers, while still quite tasty, were maybe my least favorite dish. They were basically doused in Indian/African spices and roasted. Very good, but not as good as the octopus or that devilish croquette.

It had been so long since I'd had food this mouth wateringly good, I definitely ate too much. I couldn't stop munching on the almonds. After we finished eating, I sat back and thought "well, I feel like I ate too much, but apart from that, I feel fine". UNTIL...about 1/2 hour later, after my wife had left to get some work done and I had put the kid to bed...when I was sticken with the worst gas pains I've ever had in my life! They were so bad I literally passed out for a second and ended up on the bathroom floor, somehow managing to split my bottom lip in the process! Fun and exciting! It was seriously the weirdest thing. My wife is convinced that it was actually a gall bladder attack. I have no idea, but after it passed, I felt OK for the rest of the evening (apart from my lip, that is!).

However, it's DEFNITELY not a scenario I wish to reproduce, so I shall be taking it VERY easy on the fried-salty-cheesy-hammy items from now on!

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I don't know how to embed a video into my blog, but just click on the link and be terrified. I've never eaten this way my whole life, so to see America's eating habits called out like this is totally disturbing.

http://healthyfood.idatablog.com/abc-news-how-to-get-fat-without-trying.html/

Cross Blogging

So yesterday evening I wrote a short post called "Refund". It said this - "So I'm not going to bore you with the gritty details of why my day sucked so hard. I'm just going to say this: "I. want. a. refund."" I posted it and went to bed. The thing is, as I realized a minute ago, I was in the wrong browser, and accidentally posted it to my STORE blog (janushomevintage.blogspot.com) instead of my PCP blog! Er....OOPS.
So, anyway, yesterday sucked ass in a myriad of different ways, which I'm STILL not going to get into. Today was better, but still iffy. I got most of the things done that I needed to do, the glaring exception being the majority of my PCP workout. I got up too late and only had time to do my jumps in the morning before I had to go in to work. Then this evening we staged a 3000 square foot house (loaded furniture on to truck. Drove to house. Unloaded furniture into house, up a minimum of one long flight of stairs. Moved furniture around house), after which I was pretty much completely spent. No juice left.
Tomorrow, for real, I'm going to get up when I wake up and head straight to the park.

Back in action

Today was pretty good. I woke up in a foul mood, feeling tired, defeated and totally overwhelmed. I waited too long and didn't get to the park until about 10 to do my jumps. As I rode my bike to the park I thought to myself "jumps are gonna suck today 'cause I'm in a bad mood. Just make the best of it". And while they could have been a lot better, my jumps weren't too terrible today. Most importantly, I got through actually feeling BETTER than when I started, a distinct change from the last few days when they've just made me mad. Went to the store and had another crazy nonstop day, but good. Hit the gym on the way home and rocked about a workout and a half (to make up for the days I missed in Seattle). Decided that if I'm going to exercise in the evening, I MUST go before I get home. If I get home and sit in my chair and take my shoes off and start interacting with my family, it's all over. Going on the way home worked well, though. I STILL have not found something the proper height to hold onto while doing pistol squats. Very frustrating. I did, however, find a little corner of the gym that had something the perfect height for me to hold onto while doing lunges, which made them about 100x more tolerable. Wish I'd figured that out a month ago! Did the kung-fu situps, and felt more like Tarzan swingin' thru the trees than anything else. At the gym they have these elbow harness things hanging off the pull up bar that you can use in lieu of hanging on to the bar. I dunno if this is cheating, but if nothing else, I think it's much easier on the hands.
More tomorrow...

PCP Vacation

Er…a vacation FROM the PCP, that is. In the last few days, I found out exactly how hard it is to keep up with the PCP when removed from the safe, familiar confines of one’s own home. The Seattle trip was good and productive, but most PCP activity, sadly, went out the window. I did manage to do my jumps every day, and it’s not like I ate BADLY, but I didn’t exactly have egg whites and fruit for dinner. The first day, I took the train up with my bike (see last post), with the intention of riding my bike from the train station to the old house (a good 10 mile ride at least). When I got into Seattle, it started drizzling lightly. I rode my bike to the antique mall (a mile or two), browsed around for 45 min or so, got ready to leave, looked outside, and was greeted with a TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. I hung around for a little while thinking “maybe it will stop”. It didn’t stop. So, I called my friend Kirk who I had planned on seeing, and he rescued me and my bike with his pickup truck. Here’s where things started going awry. Since I just got into town, I obviously hadn’t had time to go to the grocery store, but I was super hungry, and the plan was to go grab a bite to eat. Kirk wanted to get a beer, which I ordinarily would have been happy to indulge in…but not this time. Anyway, we ended up at the Elysian Brewery, where I had a grilled chicken sandwich and green salad. Not exactly what I was supposed to eat, but a far cry from the big sloppy burger and fries that Kirk ordered! From there, Kirk drove me back to the house, and I walked to the grocery store to procure some more PCP-friendly fare. Hot cereal for breakfast, eggs, milk, fruit, some collard greens, zucchini, and some chicken breast. I realized when I got back from the store that I had forgotten my scale…but I think I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing portions at this point.
The next day started out alright, I went to the park close to the house to do my jumps (had to jump on concrete – not much fun), then back to the house for a proper breakfast. Unfortunately it was pretty much all downhill from there. I managed to get about half of the day’s exercises in before the running around commenced. Snacks didn’t happen, and once again I was with a friend around dinnertime and we ended up getting Thai food. I had duck curry, and I have to admit it was one of the more satisfying meals I’ve had in a long time! Saturday was all about packing the truck, and at that point I had started running out of some of the necessary food items, and once again resorted to restaurant food – Mr. Gyros (best Gyro in Seattle)! Drove back to Portland on Saturday evening, got home a little after 10pm. My wife had made curried rice noodles with pork, which at that point I was in no position to argue with, so I ate some of that.
Today was unloading the truck day (and the first day at work for my new assistant), so things were just crazy. I ate half a lunch at home then jetted off to work, picking up some veggies and meat at my beloved Sheridan Fruit Market. Later in the afternoon I was feeling super tired, and cursed that all the coffee shops close to the store were already closed. Then I happened to look in my bag and realized that I never ate the rest of my lunch! Maybe THAT’S why I was so tired! I scarfed it down, and whaddya know, my energy returned post-haste. What with one thing and another, today ended up being another day of jumps but no exercises. Tomorrow I will get back on track, for real, as right now I'm too tired to even THINK about exercise.

Seattle bound - on a train.

I’m writing this on the train from Portland to Seattle. No wireless internet on the train, of course, so I will have to post it later today. This will be my first “time away from home” on the PCP. I have to go clean out a house that we used to own up there – long story. Anyway, there’s a bunch of furniture in the house that I need to pick up and bring back to Portland. So instead of renting a truck and driving both ways, I decided to take the train up and bring my bike with me. It will end up being a whole lot cheaper (a grand total of around $250 for the train ticket, truck rental, and gas home vs. over $500 for a round trip truck rental for the time I needed!), plus I get the added benefit of the bonus exercise of riding my bike all over Seattle. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. So far it’s been partly cloudy all day, but no rain. Hope it stays that way!
This morning I actually got out of bed early, drank about half a glass of smoothie (left over from last night’s nighttime snack) and hit the park for my jumps and pull-ups. Once again, my jumps were total crap! Not as bad as yesterday, but considering the fact that I was in a decent frame of mind, wasn’t feeling rushed, was basically alone on a cool morning at the park, I just don’t get it. One the plus side, I rocked the pull-ups pretty well. I did one set of 10, then one set of 8, then did my jumps, then went back and completed a set of 9 and then 7. So, not all in a row, but hey, I did a set of 10 pull-ups! Just that in and of itself would have seemed impossible to me just a month ago. When I got to the park (around 7:15 am) there was an impromptu aerobics/training class going on under the pavilion, which was kind of bizarre. 3 women and a trainer doing their exercise thing to the tuneful accompaniment of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. Which begs the question, why do all exercise routines or music played by personal trainers to “pump you up” have to be absolutely horrible? I mean, really, people, there’s GOOD music out there that energizes and inspires. Anyway.
Getting my PCP on in the next few days is definitely going to be a challenge, what with all the work I have to do (and friends I want to see – I have the feeling that at least one alcoholic beverage has the potential to be consumed – no beer, though!). However, I will do my best to keep it on the straight and narrow. I have all my accoutrements with me (rope, resistance band, door anchor), and there’s a park pretty close to the Seattle house, so I’m not really all that worried, but still it might be a challenge to fit everything in. Wish me luck!

My j-ropes were utter garbage today. Rubbish. Another "couldn't get through 50 jumps without tripping" deal. I was honestly surprised, because the last 2 days have been pretty good (even one day where I went to the gym to jump because the park was overrun with kiddos), and I was even in a pretty good frame of mind. Regardless, around jump #1050, I got so frustrated that I actually stopped counting. This worked OK for a little while, and I got maybe 3 sets of 50 in before I started tripping again...and I basically just said "today is not my day" and quit. That's actually the first time I've ever gotten fed up and quit before I reached my number. I then tried to make up some of my leg exercises from yesterday by doing the creep around the park, but I was so irked from my jump ropes that I couldn't even do that right...so I pretty much gave up and went home. Tomorrow is another day, yes?
I interviewed 4 people for my assistant position today. I really don't like interviewing people.

Confession time

I have to admit, I've had a HELL of a time getting my leg exercises in in the last few days. Not because I can't or don't want to do them, it's just that they require special apparatus. I still haven't figured out a good solution to my "Pistol Squat Problem", or what the hell to hold onto while I do the damn things. Couch arm - too tall. Chair seat - too low. Chair back - too tall. Dining table - too tall. Ottoman - too low.
Get the picture? I mean, I own a furniture store, fer Chrissakes, you'd think I'd be able to come up with SOMETHING? Even at the gym, the only thing I could fingure to use was a moveable pull-up bar, but it spins around when you lean on it! So...any suggestions?

Apart from my workout (the rest of which I did), my day was entirely consumed with people handing me resumes. I had probably 50 people drop them off today in person, and got another 80 or so via email. All this for a $10/hr, 20-hr/wk position!

Bad PCP Day.

Today was pretty much a big FAIL as far as PCP activities go. Started out OK, with the family accompanying me to the park for my j-ropes. My wife then started on a rant about our financial situation (which is currently a bit of a downer), which kind of got me down, and threw my jumpropes completely off. It's amazing how much your mental state can effect physical things. I also did pull-ups at the park, but that's where it ended. I am, however, feeling stronger on my pull ups. I've been doing 2 sets before j-ropes and 2 sets after, and both times today I did a set of 8 followed by a set of 5. Better than a set of 6 followed by a set of 2!
Lunch was not particularly PCP-friendly either. I was out running around with my boy and decided to stop for lunch at my favorite market with the best hot-food case in the city. Unfortunately their weekend selection is not nearly as good as the weekday, and the best I could do was a shrimp quesadilla (which, in addition to shrimp and cheese, featured cherry tomatoes, rice and avocado). My intention was to share it with Asa, but he only ate a little bit, and was much more interested in the pint of blueberries I bought for him.
Evening came and went and exercises did not happen. It seems like if I cross the 9pm threshhold, the exercises just aren't gonna happen. Tomorrow I think I'm gonna try the whole roll-out-of-bed-with-a-jumprope-in-hand thing, see how that feels.

In other swell news, my fabulous assistant gave his notice today. I can't say as I blame him, as he got offered a full time job at Nordstrom making 50% more than I can afford to pay him. However, I'm more than a little bummed. So we have the stress of finding a new employee added on to the stress of possibly moving, and we're shaping up for an interesting month.

Gratuitous photos of fruit...and RATATOUILLE!

If you ever see a nectarine that looks like this,

EAT IT.

Seriously. I have never had a nectarine that looked like this, all golden red and freckly, taste like anything less than nectar of the gods. Amazing.

Now, it should be noted that my hands are pretty small. Still, these raspberries are frickin' GINORMOUS. The size of small strawberries.

This is not fruit. This is a big pile of ratatouille that I made last week. My mom used to make it all the time, but I've never made it myself. I kind of forgot about how good it is til I saw a small jar of it at Trader Joes for like $4, and thought "shit, I could make this"! I've been eating it for breakfast practically every day mixed in with my eggs (and lots of Parmesan cheese!). I put one container in the freezer, and I'm only halfway through the first one!

How to make Ratatouille:

Take an eggplant. Chop off the top. Chop it into 3/4" cubes. Put in a bowl and sprinkle with 1-2 teaspoons of salt. Stick in the fridge for 1/2 hour. Pour off the liquid that gets extracted, and rinse the salt off the eggplant. Chop up a few zucchinis or yellow squash, a few peppers (green or red or both), an onion (preferably red but whatever works) a shallot, and some muchrooms if you like. Saute the onions and shallot in a big pan for a few minutes, then add the other veg's and cook for 5 minutes or so more until browned and cooked down. Add a big can or two of diced tomatoes (depending on how tomato-ey you want it), and 1/2 a small can of tomato paste,and a few good glugs of red wine. Simmer for 15 minutes or so. Finish with a few dashes of red wine vinegar. Serve over rice, pasta, or grain of your choice. Also really good mixed in with scrambled eggs and parmesan cheese (and lots of pepper!).

Life Gets In the Way (again)

So as if our lives weren't hectic and stressful enough, we have decided, rather abruptly, to move. See, we're one of those families you read about. We bought our house at the exact wrong time, about 2 years ago. It has gone down in value about 10% since we bought it. While it's a cute house, it's tiny - not nearly enough room for us to really be comfortable in. While technically we can afford the mortgage payment, if we were renting, we could have a house that was twice as big for a little more than half of what we're paying now. Also, if we kept the house, we would probably have to live in it for at least another 3-4 years before we could sell it and merely break even. So, we have decided to "let our house go", and become renters again.
Consequently, the last few days have largely been spent trolling Craigslist looking for places, and going and looking at houses. I'm kind of a house junkie, so I actually enjoy the process, but it still takes a significant amount of time...that usually I would spend at least some of exercising. However, in the last 2 days, I've only been able to do my jumpropes, and nothing else! At least I got those in, but I REALLY don't feel good about missing 2 days in a row. I'm going to get up early tomorrow and make sure to get the whole circuit in before 10AM.

Pistol squats are motherfuckers. No other word for it. It's not even so much the exercise that's hard for me (which, gon't get me wrong, is hard as hell), it's more the balance. My balance totally sucks - I can hardly do lunges without falling over. So these are practically impossible. It would help if I had a table or something that was the right height - something in between the height of a chair seat and a sofa arm! I'll probably just go to the gym tomorrow and find something there and trrryy again...

My jumps have been pretty good for the last few days, but today they SUCKED. I haven't thrown the rope for a long time, but today I flung it mightily after tripping after less than 10 jumps like 7 times in a row. I mean, COME ON. I don't know if it was because my head was preoccupied with moving stuff, or because I was wearing a different pair of shoes than I normally do, or WHAT, but it was a mess. Oh well, c'est la vie.

11:29

This morning when I was doing my jumps at the park, I tripped on jump #1129 (among many others, but those aren't important). Just then, I happened to pull my phone out of my pocket and check the time. It was 11:29AM. Cue spooky music. ...ooo-weeee-ooooo.....

Much more to talk about, but I should have been in bed an hour ago, so it will have to wait til tomorrow.

Causing a Spectacle

Today I had the interesting phenomenon of not being able to keep track of my jump ropes because people kept coming up and TALKING to me! There were a lot more kids & moms out at the park today than usual, and people kept commenting, things like "hey, where'd ya get that jump rope, that's great!" or "So you jump rope while your son plays? That's great!" The most entertaining was this little 4-year old boy who just talked my ear off for about 5 minutes, saying how he had a jump rope but didn't really know how to use it, asking me how old my son was (almost 2 1/2), then saying that his brother was 2 also, is your son older than my brother, etc etc etc. It was simultaneously funny and annoying (just 'cause I was jumping the whole time, trying not to be a jerk and ignore the kid completely, but trying to keep track of where I was in my head)! Eventually I just gave up and let it be. So I did ABOUT 1350 jumps today.

In lieu of floor jumps, Patrick told me to do jumps out of a squat, which seem to be working OK. They also have the added benefit of being EXTREMELY amusing to my boy. Seriously, last time I did them in front of him I thought he was going to fall out of his chair from laughing so hard. My mom thinks he is a reincarnated Bhuddist monk because of how much he laughs. There are worse things.