What Makes You Angry?

Spring Flowers Adorn Fence

This morning I got totally frustrated with my iMac - HTC DNA file transfer capabilities. Frustrated to the point of getting quite grouchy. My last HTC phone, an Incredible, just plugged into my iMac and popped up a query if I wanted to attach as disk. But the HTC software team decided to disable direct access of the drive and provided an application to transfer files from device to to device. The problem is, it doesn't work on an iMac. I have found several work-arounds but they all failed to work this morning adding to my anger at not being able to perform such a benign task as transferring these photos from phone to iMac.

Melissa and Christian Bluebonnet Pose

 Thus I write this blog and reflect being mindful of what makes me angry. What are the things that trigger angry responses? Well, as you can see, technology that doesn't function seamlessly often raises my ire. In general, I don't get angry very often and think my trigger point is pretty high. Inge's trigger point is a bit lower and is usually related to people not behaving as she expects. I worry about this a bit because her high blood pressure could be aggravated by reacting with anger to things people do that she has no control over.

That said, I responded with anger at not being able to control technology under my fingertips. So in the end I need to evaluate whether the anger response is something I enter mindlessly and see if being mindful can help to lessen the anger.

Even I pose with Bluebonnets

Yesterday we went out to the land, which threw off my exercise regimen. I knew I would be doing a bit of garden work so I excused myself from Kettlebell training. I hoed, raked, trenched, and planted Black Eyed Peas, Green Beans, two types of cucumbers, and carrots. We also watered both the orchard and garden (170 Gallons worth) both with siphon and a new pump. Finally, we walked the trails in the woods. So I know I am not lacking exercise - to the point of feeling sore this morning.
 

Christian Embraces Prickly Pear Cactus (Dreaming of Melissa)

This morning I traded my Tuesday Kettlebell swings for the missed Monday strength session. I enjoyed the workout but it is hard to start a workout when taking vacation - daily routines get messed up and it's easy to make an excuse not to exercise when off routine.

Melissa and Christian Unite Over Thorny Patch

Family Reunion Brisket Celebration

Primo Grill Installed in Mosaic Grill Table

Melissa arrived from Germany with her boyfriend, Christian late last night. To celebrate her return I put an 8 lb beef brisket on the Primo Grill at around 9 p.m. to allow it to slow cook at 225 degrees Fahrenheit for around 18 hours. I've eaten many briskets in Texas BarBQ joints, but the briskets pulled from my Primo consistently come out better.

Because smoking a brisket produces a large feast, we've invited our Gruene Weide neighbors, Kenneth and Darallenne and my brother Ken, and our daughter Janice to help celebrate Melissa and Christian's visit. Inge also baked a German Strawberry cake and a Cheesecake for afternoon coffee time. It will be fun to have so many friends and family around (but not too many!)

UPDATE - Added photos from Melissa's camera with Jalapeno Poppers and the Brisket we feasted upon.

Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Popper on Primo

Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Popper Platter

Platter of Primo Smoked Brisket

Short post for today.

Woodworking Mindfulness

Cherry Library With Desk

Returning to the topic of mindfulness for a post, the picture above shows a cherry library I built in our home in 2006. I have a strong passion for woodworking and will in the near future "retire" from engineering to a career in woodworking.

No two woodworking projects are the same because wood, as a product of nature, never repeats the same fine level characteristics from piece to piece. Yes, wood as a whole has repeatable characteristics for which man produced a plethora of tools designed specifically to create wood products. But for me to create a product from wood, I must be wholly mindful that this piece of wood, in my hand at this moment, tells a story about its grain direction and hardness, its suitability to purpose, and most importantly, how it can be best displayed in a product to accentuate its inherent beauty. 

Mindfulness in woodworking though, goes beyond the task of being present in mind about the wood itself while designing and creating a wood product. An extra level of mindfulness arises from applying tools to wood because virtually all woodworking tools can injure a mindless operator. From the throbbing thumb of misplacing a hammer blow, to the potential to loose that thumb to a tablesaw, mindless woodworkers risk debilitating injuries with virtually every project.

In a way though, I think my strong attraction to woodworking arises from the  mindfulness required to create and build wood products. For example, I always approach the table saw with both terror and respect which induces an intense focus on how to accomplish this cut at this moment in the safest manner possible. I find fulfillment in those times I intensely focus in safely performing the task at hand.

As a computer engineer I must also become absorbed in the task of the moment, but the risk of danger to myself is missing and I produce a program on a computer screen that tests a product I can't easily see. The work challenges me mentally and eventually I may see the resulting computer chip, but for me, beholding a minuscule piece of silicon doesn't produce the same level of joy engendered when I behold the warmth and beauty of a table or box or bowl I created from a piece or pile of wood.  

Will Adding Cute Labrador Puppies Drive More Traffic

Cute Lab Puppy Ear Flopping During Run

I primarily write this blog with the intent to serve as a personal goad to continue the fitness and weight loss regimen by publicly affirming the goal. So far, it has worked quite well to that purpose as I am now almost at the end of the third month of exercise and writing and I can see and feel the effects of the program. In another week or so, I'll even snap the two month photo for the before and after comparisons.

However, even as this blog meets the intended goal, there is a small side of me that wishes that other people found what I write about food and fitness interesting or affirming. Thus I try to write about different fitness and food related stuff nearly every day. I have been surprised that nearly three months in I've managed 37 entries (including this one) without repeating myself.

That said, I found the audience of people reading the blog pretty small. I researched why this is so and found that in the world of blogging, the ability to get search engines like google to list a blog in the first page or two of results requires a lot of work to make the blog pop. This falls under the topic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and after reading what it takes to get listed, I decided that the extra effort (hours of work) isn't necessary given my primary goal for the blog. I'm not in it to be a world class blogger.

Just for the fun of it though, I have posted a picture of Penny as a puppy, looking super cute running with floppy ears across our land, The Sometimes Green Pasture. Isn't she soooo adorable. You just can't say cute in strong enough terms to describe Penny as a puppy. Below is a photo of the litter Penny came from. Aren't little puppies so adorable? Now that I have overloaded today's blog with cute Labrador puppies, maybe I'll get more traffic!

Litter of Chocolate Labrador Puppies

Not Your Average Physique

Cowboy Statue Texas Capitol Grounds

The book, "Counterclockwise" (subtitle omitted) discusses the fact that all medical studies base results on statistical averages. The medical field then uses the statistics to arbitrarily choose dividing lines to provide prognoses with the result that one person may be diagnosed with cancer because a test came in a smidgen above the arbitrary line and the next person whose results came a smidgen below that same line would be diagnosed as healthy. The mental impact for the two receiving the news (cancer or healthy) differs significantly yet the difference is statistically insignificant from a test results standpoint. In any case each individual differs from the norm in ways that the prognosis may not be applicable. Another statistical example is the BMI (body mass index) that purports to define obese vs overweight vs normal people. BMI, however, grossly over-reports people who, through strength training, have high muscle mass vs body fat content.

 I got involved in this train of thought because many different areas of my body don't match what should be "normal" for my height. As an example, my arm length is shorter than should be for my body height. I inherited this from my maternal grandfather as he too had problems where long sleeve shirts always needed adjustments because they were too long. Some basketball players appear to have abnormally long arms - I inherited the opposite trait.

The picture above shows something that relates to another abnormal body feature of mine that impacts my exercise. The cowboy above shows a fully extended and locked at the elbow arm. I have never been able to "lock my elbow". My wife is double jointed and goes beyond locked. There are lots of exercises with weights and Kettlebells that call for a locked elbow that I don't do well since I can't lock my elbow. (That is, my elbow always appears bent.)

Where I notice this is in tasks like shoulder presses or Turkish Get Ups where I am supposed to hold the weight above my head with a locked arm. Since there's no locking my elbow, I have to rely purely on arm strength to support the weight. Tuesday when I performed TGUs, on the last round my arm tired to the point that my elbow collapsed and the weight descended to be supported on my shoulder while I finished the get-up.  But, even with my defects in physique, I choose to do as Clint Eastwood said in "Breakheart Pass", "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome."

Weight Fluxuation and Diet

Blazing Trail Through Brambles

If I had maintained a modicum of self control over the weekend, I might have reached my goal of 180 lbs this coming weekend. However, three days averaging over 2500 calories resulted in a four pound bounce up this week. It peaked at 185.5 lbs yesterday and today subsided a pound.

Mathematically, an excess or deficit of 3,500 calories should result in a pound of gain or loss. However, as someone who has weighed myself daily for years, the math doesn't consistently add up in short term observations. Take this weekend for example. I consumed, for three days, around 2100 calories above my 1800-per-day goal. Yet I gained 4 lbs over those three days. What's up with that?!?

There are two things I've found  in my many years of weight watching that almost always results in a spurious weight gain. The first case occurs if I perform some work or exercise so strenuously that I have very sore muscles on the following day. Every time I've come away from physical exertion to the point of being sore, I see a two to three pound gain that lasts two to three days. I've done some research on this but found nothing conclusive that describes a mechanism whereby sore muscles creates weight gain.

The second observed way I gain more than expected from caloric intake is when I eat or drink something with a lot of sugar. During the weekend my brother offered, and I accepted, a bottle of Gatoraid to quench my thirst. I drank two of such, each of which contained 200 calories, and each of which contained 21 grams of sugar. Also, I drank six beers over the three days and each beer contains 13 grams of carbohydrates, which get processed to sugars by the body. Therefore, I consumed what I call, "a sugar bomb", over the weekend and as I have always observed, my weight jumped far out of proportion to the actual calories I consumed.

I have observed this effect when eating ice cream, cakes, chocolates, you name it! I haven't done more than a cursory search on this effect, but from a sample of one who tracks weight daily, there is no doubt in my personal experience that sugar bombs increase my weight far beyond strictly counting the calories consumed.

The Hacker's Diet explains the fluctuation as water gain or loss, which certainly has an impact. But the sugar and sore muscle fluxuation observations always occurs in my data.

Dealing With Sleeplessness

Tarp Shelter for camping in pleasant weather.

This morning I woke at 4 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. As a result, I trained a bit weakly during Kettlebell swing session. I accomplished all 240 swings but needed to bull my way through the last two 30-count sets. I only executed 3 of the follow-on Turkish Get Ups instead of the 4 TGUs I performed last week.

A lot of people have trouble falling asleep. That has never been my problem with getting enough sleep. My issue is waking after five to six hours and not being able to go back to sleep. It started about four years ago when I woke every morning at 3 a.m. for weeks on end. I went to the Doctor but he had no solution other than to suggest trying an OTC sleep aid.

One night I woke a few minutes before 3 a.m. and at the top of the hour I heard a tiny persistent beeping in another upstairs room in the house. I was too tired to hunt it down and it took days to track down the source. When I found it I blamed my sleep problem (perhaps unfairly) on my ex-son-in-law. Because about four years ago my daughter bought her husband a watch as a gift. It was one of those inexpensive black plastic button-laden watches and SOMEONE set the alarm for 3 a.m. and put it in a shoe box in a neighboring bedroom. I am a light sleeper and every day for months on end I woke to that distant beep. When I found the watch I threw it in the trash because I didn't want to deal with finding out which of those annoying buttons disabled the alarm.

Without the alarm, the wake time shifted over several months from 3 a.m. to somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. Taking the advice of my Doctor, I tried using an OTC sleep aid. The first two times I took the sleeping pill, I slept through the night but woke up groggy and that grogginess persisted for hours after waking. Then it dawned on me that I could cut the pill in half and I found I could sleep through the night and wake refreshed.

The problem with sleep aids is that people become addicted and I have no desire to be addicted to any man-made substance. In a related vein, I suffered from the usual Austin allergy problems (ragweed in fall and Oak in spring) and tried using Zirtec to help, but found myself falling asleep at work when I took Zirtec. Aha! Sleep solution! I switched to taking Zirtec at bedtime and found I could sleep through the night! Now, to prevent becoming addicted to sleep aids, I mix taking half a sleeping pill a day or two, with a day or two of taking Zirtec, with two or more days of taking nothing (and waking up at 4 a.m.).

I have often wondered if the 5-1/2 hours of sleep is sufficient to not need the sleeping aids, however, on the days I wake at 4 a.m. I find myself seriously dragging at 2 to 3 in the afternoon. I usually have a full day's worth of energy when I get 7-1/2 to 8 hours of sleep.

Camping Fun Equals Eating Excess

Sundown Ribs and Beans

The weekend of camping and drilling on Gruene Weide this weekend lead to eating food such as the ribs and beans pictured above and other "manly" fare to the detriment of my goal of eating light and loosing weight this year. Fortunately, I don't indulge in many weekends like this.

I consumed over the weekend, starting Friday evening, a rib-eye steak accompanied by potatoes sliced, cooked with bacon, peppers and onions and accompanied with three beers spread over the evening. Saturday breakfast consisted of two to three scrambled eggs with sausage, peppers and onions folded in. We ate two bratwurst rolls with mustard for lunch.

We ate the ribs and beans for dinner and I drank another three beers, again spread over several hours. I cooked bacon, sausage and two fried eggs for breakfast and for lunch we bought and ate 3 pieces of dark meat fried chicken while on a fuel run for the compressor.

In the time lapse video embedded below of some of Sunday's morning drilling work, you can see that we're moving and working, but I've certainly worked harder, for example, when digging the garden. I wonder how many of the excess calories were consumed by the fact we worked 9 to 10 hours each day, including activities like gathering firewood. Time will tell.

Friday morning I weighed in at 181.5 lbs - the best this year. This morning I weighed 184 lbs so I have work to do to get back on track after the weekend of campout feasting. To add insult to injury, I have to leave in a few minutes to return the compressor so I won't get an exercise session in this morning.

Rearranging Wardrobe

Sun Splashed Roofs and Rainbow, walking through neighborhood in Speyer Germany

Have you noticed you look better in clothes than out of them? I do anyway. I look a lot better since I've lost weight and improved my definition through Kettlebell training, but nice fitting clothes still hide a lot of defects that exist in my physique. In particular, though my tummy and love handles have shrunk considerably, they're a lot less visible hidden under nice fitting and nicely cut clothes.

This past week, as I was looking for a pair of dockers to wear, I kept stumbling across 38 inch waist trousers, which was what fit in December. Now they look increasingly baggy and the 36 inch waist trousers fit quite comfortably. I had moved all the 36ers out of the way late last year because they just pinched too tightly. So Wednesday, I had the joy of moving all the 38ers to the side. I learned though that I am short of 36 inch waist dockers so I need to go shopping.

Back in 2006 when I lost 40 lbs, I actually fit and bought two pairs of 34 inch waist pants. However, that was briefly lived as they got too tight too quickly and I ended up giving them to our usual clothing charity, Texas Paralyzed Veterans. As a veteran, I am honored to be able to support a worthy veteran's cause by donating clothes and other items they can use for the cause.

I took the day off to prepare for the weekend of camping and drilling out on our ranch, Die Manchmal Gruene Weide. My brother and I will spend all day Saturday and Sunday drilling a water well I started working on almost two years ago. It is a two person job and I seldom have the second person to help on weekends. By my calculations, we should drill below the water table this weekend which would be an exciting thing. We won't be able to tell though because we have to add water to operate the drill. There's a good bit of arm strength and endurance required so there's some exercise aspect to the work.

Because I'll be off the net, there won't be a new post until Monday.

Pushing Over the Plateau

Inge and I on a Piedmont Plateau at Ranch 63, Montana

The above photograph was taken by our trail guide on a plateau in Montana. We spent a week at The 63 Ranch near Livingston, Montana. We rode through forested mountain passes, along rocky ridges, over grassy plateaus, and through the flower bedecked valleys between, constantly awed by the beauty that surrounded us. Every night I braved the fall chill to stare in awe at the Milky Way, which shone brilliantly in black skies unsullied by city lights. We drove cattle twice, encountered moose and bears, and once I cast flies for trout in Mission Creek. Daily we ate hearty ranch fare and nights we slept in a rustic, but comfortable, cabin. Inge and I both rate the 63 Ranch experience as one of our best vacations and we hope to repeat the experience soon. If you're interested you may visit my 63 Ranch Flickr Photo Set to see more pictures of the beauty we encountered.

But I put this photo here to relate to the topic of plateaus because I have plateaued for two weeks in my weight loss goal bouncing within 2 lbs of 184 lbs. I set the goal to be at or below 180 lbs before my daughter arrives to visit from Germany on March 23rd. However that date rapidly approaches and I am not certain I will reach the goal before she arrives. I believe I may be able to reach it while she is here - if I can manage the self control to withstand the feasts Inge will put on in honor of her (and her beau's) visit.

Recognizing my stagnation, I set out yesterday and today to go dinner-to-dinner (about 24 hours) on a severely reduced calorie regimen, but not to fast. I wrote about fasting earlier and decided that I would rather avoid the discomfort and grouchiness I get by the end of the fasting period.

Therefore, I decided to try a new approach to pushing over the plateau - low calorie nibbling. Yesterday I started the day with a single-egg ham, cheese, and bell pepper omelet of 210 calories. For lunch and snacks I brought one ounce of beef jerky (80 cal), one tomato (22 cal), and 16 green grapes (~64 calories) to work. I nibbled on the grapes twice - late in the morning and around 3 p.m. and I ate the jerky and tomato for lunch. In all I consumed 376 calories dinner-to-dinner. By dinner time I felt hunger, but the day's light nibbling appears to have prevented the usual fasting induced grouchy or irritable moods. I ate normally for dinner with the good fortune that our dinner of beef and bean burritos with salsa facilitated good portion control.

Today I ate two small slices of bacon and one fried egg for breakfast, and plan to eat a lunch of an avocado, a tomato, and 16 grapes for a dinner-to-dinner total of 596 calories. (Avocados contain a lot of calories!) I hope the two days of nibbling helps bust through the plateau. However, a future hazard exists because I will be camping out with my brother this weekend which almost always leads to calorie bombs in the form of drinking three beers instead of just one. Maybe I can maintain some self control while camping?

Nah! Sometimes it's necessary to let loose and have fun!