Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

So how about those freaky jeans on guys?

A thong with a zipper?

Want a good laugh?  Read this article by Michael Scherer about why Congress voted the bailout bill down.

I'll give you some of the highlights in case you don't want to read through all the bullshit yourself.

There were two main reasons why Congress voted the bill down:

1. The American People have lost confidence in the government's decision making abilities and therefore, millions of people called and emailed their representatives and voiced their opinion.  According to Scherer, people are supposed to "take a leap of faith" and let Congress decide which laws should pass and which ones shouldn't.  They aren't supposed to actually voice any opinion of their own.

2. Several of the representatives are up for election this year and so they actually listened to the people who dared to voice an opinion.  Bush said that even though this bailout bill is not popular with the people, congress is supposed to pass it anyway.  They aren't representatives, they are caretakers.  Scherer said that all of us that voiced our opinion don't understand the complexities of the issue and we should just leave it in the hands of Congress to decide.

I don't know about you but anyone that says that Bush has a better understanding of economics (or warfare or the English language) than me is an idiot that shouldn't be voicing his opinion on complex issues or how our government has been set up.

If you would like to read the truth, read what Kucinich has to say about the bail out.  He admits that the way we create money into existence is confusing but doesn't think it's so complex that we can't understand what this bail out is really about.

No Weight Trainng

I know this blog has become hit and miss (with more misses lately) but I'll keep coming back.  It's been busy so let me cut straight to my Gratitude Journal:

1. My friends, many of whom I have never met face to face yet, for all the well wishes for Tia and her friend.  Her friend is out of intensive care, last I heard but has many more surgeries ahead of her.

2. My workouts.  Last year, two of my black belts and I did a 1 rep max bench press just to see where we were.  Yesterday, a year later, we did it again to see what had happened over the last year.

When I was the stud cop, my bench press was 225 and I was quite pleased with that.  Last year, it was 255.  Yesterday, it was 285.  That's pretty cool but not the coolest part.

One of my students benched 165 last year and that was the last time he did a bench press.  He doesn't do any weight lifting.  My karate class is his only source of strength training.  Yesterday, he benched 235.  That is so cool.

3. The bail out bill didn't pass.  More and more, the media is calling it a rescue plan in an effort to sell people on this bad idea.  I'm not fooled.  How 'bout you?

Last week, Tia called me and she asked what I was doing, as she usually does.  I think she worries about interrupting me during something important because my schedule is kind of hectic.  Anyway, I told her that I was writing my Congressman.

"Now what did they do to piss you off?"

Later, she asked if I thought it would do any good.  "No," was my answer but several articles cite the phone calls and emails from people as one of the reasons that the bailout bill was voted down.  Maybe they do listen once in a while.  We'll see on Thursday when they come back to try again.

Both McCain and Obama are pushing for the deal to go through.  I guess we know where they stand.  I suppose that to become president, you have to be a complete sellout.  It's too bad.  What's even worse is that so many people have been tricked into the Republican vs. Democrat pointless debate that I'm going to get stuck with one of these traitors as my president.

But for now, we won.

Not one to just fire off an email when things are wrong, I sent a thank you to Rep. Heller for listening.

4. Trey's allergic reaction has completed its course and all is well.

5. Our cats that were new editions to the household this year have proven their hunting ability by killing several scorpions.  Very nice.

Getting Over My Cold

Here's another look at those freaky jeans.

I am pretty much over my cold but I've been a tad busy.  Here's what Friday looked like then I'll get to my gratitude journal:

Up at 4:45 so that I was ready to teach my women's fitness class at 6. 

Home, shower, and off to a 3 hour ordeal at the dentist.  Holy crap.  The good news is that for the first time in my life, the gas actually helped me relax.  The bad news is that it gave me a headache.

Straight from the dentist to a short lunch with Tia at my dad's restaurant where I had soup.  Most of which ended up on my napkin because the dentist had numbed both sides of my mouth.  I couldn't even drink out of straw.

Met with a yoga instructor there and introduced her to my dad.  She is going to use his building for her classes, which have been on hold since she lost the use of her last place.

Came home for a nap to try and get rid of the anesthetic headache and get some rest for what was likely to be a long night.

Got in about an hour before Tia came home with Trey.  He was sent home because his forehead was starting to swell up.  Allergic reaction to a mosquito bite.  Gave him some benadryl and Tia took him to work with her.

I went to the city office so I could do evaluations on the police chief, public works director, and city secretary.  Visited with the city manager for a bit about all three.

Came home in time to get ready for karate.  Insanely, did two of my killer workouts back to back.  Yikes!

Came home, showered, and was off to work.  Checked in with my crew.  Had a guy not show up for work.  Some problem with HR or something.  Went down to do security for Engelbert Humperdink but called back to the casino right before the show started because a big Samoan (is there any other kind?) wanted to prove how tough he was.  Got to watch the smallest police officer in the city tase big Samoan. 

Got him off to jail, and gave a few instructions to my officers, and got a text from Tia.  Trey was worse and she wanted me to come look at him.  Went home to find that his head was much worse and his eye was nearly swollen shut.  Loaded up the family for the 120 mile trip to the ER where they gave Trey some steroids to control the swelling and sent us back home.

Got back to town at 2:30 and called work to see how things were going.  Everything was going fine so I went home to get a few hours of sleep before Saturday had a chance to start.

Gratitude:

1. My women's fitness class is going great and after 3 weeks, we took measurements and they are getting smaller.  All of them are much stronger all ready.  Amazingly so, at least it seems to me.

2. Tia.  One of her best friends was out riding a motorcycle with her husband last night.  They were hit by a semi.  The husband was killed instantly and Tia's friend is in the hospital.  She will live but she has lost a foot.  It can all change that fast.  I'm lucky that I'm married to my best friend.

3. Trey is doing much better today.  The treatment is working or the allergy is running its course.  His face is almost back to normal.

4. My karate students.  Man, they push me hard and I love it.  We did the first workout Friday like usual but one of my students who really wants to get into good shape for his wedding was late.  We were done when he arrived.  He asked if we could workout instead of practicing karate.  No one objected so we did the workout again.  The two that did the workout the first time did their best but ended up dropping out.  I kept on going and even do a few more reps the second time than I did the first time.  It was great to have the challenge.

5. The $700 billion bailout (which is undergoing a name change to "rescue" because "bailout" is too truthful and harsh).  Yes, I'm just kidding but oddly I'm very much at peace with the government bailing out billionaires.  I understand that we've lost complete control over the government and this next election is a farce just like so many before it but I just feel like everything will work out.  It might not be pretty but it's all going to work out.  The American Illusion is slipping and hopefully with each new day someone else turns off Survivor and seeks out the truth.

Taking My Own Advice

I have had a nasty cold for a week now and it's been dragging down my mood as well.  So, for the next bit of life, I'm going to use this blog as a Gratitude Journal.  This will have the dual accomplishment of getting me blogging daily* as well.  With any luck, some of it will be interesting, funny, or helpful to others.

1. First and foremost, I am starting to feel better today.  It's been a miserable week where sleep was difficult to come by.  I slept decently for the last 2 nights and today, my symptoms are showing signs that I may be over this soon.

2. Second and not foremost but almost, I am off from work today.  What I'm trying to do today is catch up a bit on everything that I have let slide over the last week (you know, like this blog).  My progress so far has been much like a tugboat.  Nothing is getting done quickly but I just keep moving forward slowly making what progress I can.

3. I am grateful that I understand the following quote (especially the last line) and consider myself lucky that I started learning about money a couple of years ago. The quote is from an article on the trillion dollar bailout being planned so that people who took crazy risks don't have to pay the price for their stoopidity, dragging the rest of the world down with them.

Paulson and President Bush have argued that the alternative would be credit markets that remain frozen, meaning that businesses will fail because they can't get the loans they need to operate and the economy will grind to a halt because consumers, who account for two-thirds of economic activity, won't be able to get the credit they need to keep spending.

4. My Attack buddies on FaceBook.  We keep two games running at a time and it's been fun with each game taking on its own dynamics based on luck and how each player is feeling.  You can lose the game in the first turn, just cuz.  So much of my life is spent working on different goals that it's nice to sit down and just play a game for a few minutes.

5. Back to #2 because I think this little tugboat is going to need a nap after getting some kind of lunch.  Tia's grandpa is going to be visiting from California this afternoon and Trey and I probably need the extra boost for the night.

I am unbelievably kind

Out of the goodness of my heart, I am taking part in an $85 billion bailout of AIG.  I know they've made poor choices and that this constitutes moral hazard in the worst way but I just don't care.  I'm way too concerned to just let them go under because they were idiots.

Oh, and the government is going to take my tax money by force to use to pay back the interest to the Federal Reserve for yet another bailout.

Other than their threat of taking my house, my cars, my back accounts, and garnishing my wages, the rest of the decision is because of my unending generosity.

Our government sucks ass.

The Illusion Continues to Slip

Lehman Brothers is filing for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is getting bought out by Bank of America.  Other banks and our wonderful precious Federal Reserve are tossing in more than $70 billion into the system in the hopes of stopping the domino effect these two failing giants could cause.  At best, they can only delay it.  The market is never going to correct itself in the amount of time available before more companies go under.

Long time readers of my other blog (now sitting dormant while I focus on fitness) know that I predicted that the whole charade would be limped along until November of this year and then it would be allowed to fall apart and heaped on the next (presumably Democratic) president.  Today I found the first MSM agreement with my prognostication:

"If we don't get ahead of this, we are going to face a run on the retail banks by election day," he said.

He being - Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, a research firm.  What doesn't get implicitly mentioned in this quote is that if we do get "ahead of this", we just buy ourselves another month or two.  They're bailing out the Titanic using dixie cups.

Being an MSM propagandist would be hard, I think.  You have to lie up to the point where too many people see the truth and then switch your story and come up with some kind of trigger you can blame for you position switch.  Or maybe it's easy because not enough people pay attention to notice the lies or they believe this trigger-point blaming.

Anyway, with each huge failure, it gets harder and harder to push this huge lumbering economy system running on empty toward November.  Maybe we're close enough that it doesn't matter at this point. 

An Interesting Side Effect

In June of this year, I radically changed the workout that we did in my karate class.  Changed it to a different type of workout principle and designed several different individual programs.  My intention was to help students get lean.  It's not meant to build mass.  We just use resistance bands and body weight for the exercises.

I thought it was unique and effective enough that I used the same type of workout and started teaching women's fitness classes this month.  The women's class is toned down a bit from the killer karate workouts but I think they're still going to be very effective.  Again, the goal is to change body composition by putting on a little bit of muscle and stripping off a lot of fat.

Last night, we had to kick out some late night swimmers from the pool that had been closed for a couple of hours.  4 of us had responded on accident.  2 from 2 different directions.  Anyway, on our way back through the spa area, we decided to try out the bench press machine.

Last time Z and I had tried it a few months ago, I benched 250 and he did 170.  He's bigger and younger than me so he vowed to improve his bench press.  I didn't do anything other than my karate workouts and now 2 weeks of women's fitness workouts.

Z started at 190 and put it up.  He moved up to 210 and then 230.  He couldn't quite get 250 all the way up.  Still a 60 pound increase is great.

I did 190 and 210 and they were very easy so I jumped it up to 270 and put that up as well, making it look easy.  I tried 290 and that went up smoothly.  And that's the most the machine has on it so that was the end.

It's a machine so I don't know how true to weight it is.  We just use it more for comparison purposes.  The most I've ever really bench pressed is 255.  I've invited one of my students over to spot me in a couple weeks so I can see if that has changed now.

The whole point of this post isn't to brag about my bench press because they're are people out there who can lift up VW Bugs.  I was just very surprised that my workouts had increased my strength by that much.  I'm looking forward to the true reading when we bench in a couple of weeks to see if I have a new personal best.

***

If you have a fitness goal and want a support partner, I'd love to help.  I offer my ecoaching service at no charge for people with fitness goals.  If you want to take advantage of this offer while it lasts, sign up at my Team Beach Body site (again, no charge) and drop me an email and get started creating a healthy, fit you.

If you have any questions you would like answered, you can ask in the comments section or you can send me an email and I'll get an answer to you.

If you would like to take it one step further and become a coach yourself, I can help you do that as well.  If you're committed to your own fitness and would find it rewarding to help others achieve their fitness goals, you'll love fitness coaching.  Visit my Team Beach Body site and click on Be A Coach for more information.

I have a confession to make

My brain has shut down for the day and I really have nothing to report for the day that is out of the ordinary.

I need to get biceps like this.  Does Harrods sell them?  I heard that Harrods sells everything.  I've shopped at Harrods but I don't recall seeing biceps on display.  I wasn't really looking for biceps at the time so I may have missed them.

Here's today's headline, which should come as no surprise from long time readers of this blog:

Exercise trumps obesity gene in study

And that's all I have to say about that. -Forrest Gump

Extreme Low Ride Jeans?

Would you say this may be taking things a bit too far?

I was looking for pictures for karate and came across these.  What do these have to do with karate?  They are a Japanese creation  That's the only link that I can find.

I haven't done the headline of the day for a long time.  How about this one:

"Obama accuses Republican rivals of dishonesty."

Really?  Is this some sort of revelation?  Politicians in a presidential race are lying?  Wow!

Back to the main course of this filler post designed just to get me back in the habit of typing one up at night.

Do these even count as pants?  They look more like leggings and a thong.

Stocks rallied today since the government is gong to pump as much fiat money into Freddie and Fannie as it takes to keep them from going under despite the fact that they really should.  Everything is good now.  Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke are here to save the day.

I still think that the entire plan is only to save things long enough for Bush to get out of office so that the complete destruction of the country's economy falls on the shoulders of the first black president.  Sucks to be the convincing liar this time.  I hope he's getting fair compensation for his troubles.

***

If you have a fitness goal and want a support partner, I'd love to help.  I offer my ecoaching service at no charge for people with fitness goals.  If you want to take advantage of this offer while it lasts, sign up at my Team Beach Body site (again, no charge) and drop me an email and get started creating a healthy, fit you.

If you have any questions you would like answered, you can ask in the comments section or you can send me an email and I'll get an answer to you.

If you would like to take it one step further and become a coach yourself, I can help you do that as well.  If you're committed to your own fitness and would find it rewarding to help others achieve their fitness goals, you'll love fitness coaching.  Visit my Team Beach Body site and click on Be A Coach for more information.

Big Brother Just Got Bigger

The Government has decided to lay claim to Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae "Effectively, the federal government has now become the nation's mortgage lender."

Bush, McCain, and Obama back the plan.  Of course they do but my favorite quote is from Palin.

Fannie and Freddie "have gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers. The McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need help."

Too expensive?  Estimates are that the government is going to have to put in $100 billion of tax payer money to keep these two disasters afloat.  I think it's also safe to assume that under McCain or Obama, our government is not going to be reducing in size.

The plan is supposed to make it easier for people to borrow money.  I'd like to point out that this whole economic mess was caused by the fact that it was easy for people to borrow money.  I don't think that a problem caused by easy credit is going to be fixed by handing out easy credit but that's just me.

Speaking of not borrowing money, my brother and I went and played disc golf yesterday in Riverdale.  The course is a difficult one.  I base this on my vast experience in disc golf (this is the third course I've played in my life).  There were a lot of trees and lots of tall, thick shrubbery and lots of cussing.

I had to buy some new discs (which I paid cash for) and it showed during the first game.  I lost by 5.  For those that don't know, golf discs each have a distinct flight path and it took me the whole first game to figure out how to throw my driver.

I lost the next game by 1.  My brother can out drive me.  That's saying something because I'm no slouch when it comes to chucking a Frisbee. 

The last game, I was down by 1 going into the final hole.  I actually out drove my brother and put a beautiful first shot on the fairway.  He shanked his shot way off to the left and was stung by a bee while walking out to get it.  My second shot had to go around a tree and I couldn't see the basket.  I arced the disc out and around and it came to rest within a foot of the basket.  I was on my way to a tie.

His second shot fell well short of the basket but somehow he made his putt in order to keep his lead and win the game.

I'm going to be looking for a rematch in a couple of weeks.

Next time, I'm going to take my camera so you get an idea of what these holes look like.  Several of them, you have to know where the basket is beforehand because there is no way to see them from the tee.

We spent the whole afternoon in an activity that didn't require a second mortgage, the use of a credit card, a federal bailout at the tax payers expense, or more of Palin's hypocrisy.  We also got some good exercise too.

***

If you have a fitness goal and want a support partner, I'd love to help.  I offer my ecoaching service at no charge for people with fitness goals.  If you want to take advantage of this offer while it lasts, sign up at my Team Beach Body site (again, no charge) and drop me an email and get started creating a healthy, fit you.

If you have any questions you would like answered, you can ask in the comments section or you can send me an email and I'll get an answer to you.

If you would like to take it one step further and become a coach yourself, I can help you do that as well.  If you're committed to your own fitness and would find it rewarding to help others achieve their fitness goals, you'll love fitness coaching.  Visit my Team Beach Body site and click on Be A Coach for more information.