even though today might have seemed just like any other, there are things worth mentioning.



i came into work at 9am this morning because erik said we had a meeting at 9. and when i got there, neither nguyen nor erik were there. turns out the meeting had been pushed back. i didn't feel like i was sleep deprived even though I had only gotten 6 hours of sleep last night. then after the meeting, and the walk to rimac field today, i got really tired. at one point i even told diem i was going to rest today without thinking too much into it. all i could think about was going home, turning the lights off, and taking a nap. but as i thought more about it, i realized that if i take today off from the gym, if would be the first time i would break the streak of choosing to rest instead of work out on a day i was planning to work out. here's my logic.

currently i work out mon, tues, thurs, friday, and rest wed, sat, sun. if i take today, off, i would just push back everything one day, and and get only one day of rest before monday hits again. the problem with trying to work out on a saturday is that it usually takes me about 4 hours of convincing for me to drag my ass to the gym. i always get there, but i start by planning to go in by 1, and get there by 5. that might be okay, but tommy might be in town, so the chances of making it to the gym are much harder on saturday. also, i've realized how valueable rest days are when you are building muscle. one day rest is good. 2 day rest is better, especially when you do high intensity workouts. also, it lets me enjoy the weekend, rather than spending all day thinking about the gym. so if i chose not to go to the gym today, it would be the first day that I would have made a choice on behalf of me feeling lazy/tired rather than choosing the better option. so it was a fight to get to the gym, but i made it.



so what i did was i put my head down on my desk at 4:30 and tried to take a nap. i must have taken a short nap (woke up at 4:45), even though i didn't feel all that much better, it was still an improvement. then just letting the time pass by till the work day ended, i had run into a problem. i knew i had to be taking hydroxycut by 5:30, but was hungry, and had a serving of glutapro left. so i took my glutapro with a half pb sandwich at 5:10, took my hydroxycut at 5:30. but i also had to take creatine. last time i mixed the two and got a headache so i knew not to make the same mistake again. so i waited until about 6:05 to take my creatine and i was off.



even though i could have rested, i know myself too well, that if i made the wrong decision today, it would just give me an excuse to slack off in the future because i had already broken my streak. but to this day i haven't yet. and not that i'm worried that if i break the streak one day that i'll stop working out completely. but to tell you the truth, even though there is probably less than 5% chance, i can't promise that it won't happen (me stopping working out completely). and i just can't take that chance. it's that important to me. it's that high in my list of priorities. i'm too old to start something, dedicate myself to it, and give up half way. that's what someone that hasn't fully matured does. and that's not what i'm about.



i also know my limits. if i knew i had the potential to be the best DDR player on earth, even if it took me years, i would still be playing it today. but i know i can't. so after i accomplish what i hoped to accomplish, i seem to move on to my next obsession. working out is different. say i accomplish the body i wish to have one day. i can reap the rewards for a long while (eating bad foods and not work out) because having a body that burns calories like a SUV burns gas will definitely give me room to splurge and not take too much of the damage. and even if i did get a little out of hand, if you had the muscle before, it's much easier to get back what you once had, rather than build something you never had before (which is what i'm doing now.) but it's not like i'm planning to go out in these all night binges or something. i don't crave a whole medium sized pizza from pizza hut, or a bucket of chicken like i used to. my tastes of changed. and this is one of the most important factors of taking pounds off, and keeping it off. even when i binge now (like i did at the bellagio buffet), my selections were different, and there was probably a world of a difference on the protein to fat to carb ratio, along with the healthier stuff i always thought were a waste of money eating at a buffet.



so anyway, work out went pretty well, only legs today, and no abs, so i got out of there in about 40 minutes (warmup, stretch, lift, stretch). and i got home, and did my laundry and tried to finish before smallville came on. which leads to my next story.



my roommate said he was gonna be back around the 22nd. and he still wasn't here yesterday. so i thought he might have decided to stay an extra week. and what i don't have anymore is cable. so i watch broadcast now. and the only antenna we have for 3 tv's in the apartment is wei's. thinking he wasn't gonna be back today either, i didn't worry about the tv antenna. then i get home today, and he's back. and i had moved his antenna to the dining area, and was watching stuff on the side, and i went to go do my laundry, and damn, he took the antenna back to his room! 15 minutes before smallville was on and i was going to start panicing. first thought i had was to call wendy and make sure she was recording it. then i calmed myself down and started thinking more clearly.



what these bastards at time warner do is that if you cancel the cable service, you can't use the coax line as a regular antenna. you'd think it would work, but it's directly the opposite. either they feed noise into all broadcast frequencies to that wire, or it's just that insulated. i like to think that they like to feed noise in just because they are evil that way. and i knew from previous experiences that long insulated coax cables are just about as good of an antenna a hot dog is connected to the coax jack on the back of the TV. then i remembered about the crappy non insulated coax cable i once bought at UCSD during freshmen year at the bookstore. i miraculously found that in one of my boxes, then had to go dig for the setting to make my TV tune to UHF/VHF instead of trying to pick up cable signals (on my RCA tv, it's burried somewhere, and you have to go through the Guide+ setup to access it, and no where else.) so with about 3 minutes to spare, i got WB tuned, with a makeshift antenna, with a Letherman clipped to the end of the wire for support and ground.



even though that is not a good example of me brainstorming under pressure, i think i can really perform when i need to make very important decisions and troubleshoot problems when i'm called for duty. i think my ultimate test was when it was 11pm, 150 miles away coming home from a vegas trip last year when my car broke down. we had 2 cars, and 7 people that needed to get to ontario, san diego, huntington beach, and torrance. also, it was sunday midnight, and people needed to get back to work on monday. the end result was that i was able to manage to get everyone back home soon enough that they'd be able to make it into work the next day, have my car towed on a flatbed to escondido from victorville, and do it with wasting the least amount of everyone's time. everyone that was there tells me that they think it was a miracle on how they were able to make it to work the next day, but i know the real story. i'm not just about troubleshooting computer related problems.