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

Welcome to Yellowstone

"What do you want to do Trey?"

"I want to see Grandpa J."

So, now we're in Island Park, Idaho gettieng ready for a trip into Yellowstone today.  Well, everyone else is getting ready.  I'm trying to at least get a short blog entry in before the day starts since the weekend has been too hectic for me to get anything up.

I'm sure I'll have pics when I get home.

Hey, I have a tech question for anyone that knows laptops.  How do you make it so that the little touchpad mouse thingy isn't so sensitive.  My wife's laptop is a pain to type on because the cursor gets moved all over the place when the pad at the bottom of my right thumb barely touches the pad. 

Besides the fact that it's my turn in the shower, that's another reason this is going to be a short post.  I don't like typing on this machine.  I'm trying to teach myself to really tilt my right hand up while I type but it's not working out so well so I'm going to end this post now. 

Mark, this was the best picture I could do for the day.  My wife has a serious lack of soft porn on her machine.  =)

Transformers II

Second movie at a movie theater this year.  We may be on track to set a new record because it's likely we'll go see Harry Potter because Trey loves those shows.  That would tie our record so if we see one more, we're there.

Here's my very abbreviated movie review:

1.  Trey loved it.  All of it.  Tia and I were discussing the things we didn't like and Trey yelled, "I liked all of it!"  That's all that mattered because that's the only reason we went.  Trey likes Transformers and so as a treat for him, we took him to the movie.

2.  For the dads in the theater with the children, there were plenty of scenes of the hottie above running in slow motion in her spaghetti strap shirt and lots of jokes about testicles and humping (like a chihuahua humping a bulldog and a small robot humping the hottie's leg).  Some of the jokes got old but the running never did.

3.  Some of the battles between the robots were filmed in such a fashion that you couldn't actually make out what was happening.  Flashing metal, loud clangs, a blur.  No idea.  For the final hits, they would slow things down to slow motion so you could see that part but the rest was just confusing.  Maybe the kids get it or maybe they just don't care. 

I will add that Shia has come along way from his Even Stevens days (not that I'm complaining because I thought he was great in that show).  I think we'll be seeing much more of him in the future.

Trey liked it enough that I'm guessing we'll end up with the DVD.  We buy fewer DVDs than we go to movies but this is one that he'll probably want to add to his collection.

My Yard, Amazon, UPS, and a Memory

It has rained here for 2 to 2 1/2 weeks straight.  Every day some rain.  May is historically the rainiest month but that hasn't held true this year.  Global warming isn't all about heat, it's very much about a change in patterns.  It's supposed to be in the 80s and dry in June in West Wendover.  Instead it has been in the 60's, windy as hell, and wet.  It's been very unusual.

Tuesday, that pattern broke and it was warmer so I spent most of the day working in my yard.  I mowed the lawn, smoothed out some dirt around my palm tree (that's what I call it) that's been on the back of my mind all year, did some weeding, trimmed all but 2 of my roses and ran the weed eater around my back yard and around most of my front yard.

The spool ran dry when I had about 10 feet to go.

I went to the local hardware store to see if they had a replacement.  No luck.  They said that if I could give them the make and model of my weed eater, they might be able to get a replacement by Thursday.  I went to lunch with Tia and the sargent for the county on the Utah side.  The sargent said that if I couldn't find the part, he would get one for me when he was in town and get it out to me on Friday.

On the way back from lunch, I stopped at the hardware store and gave them the make and model.  The make is actually a Weed Eater.  I thought that was good but they can't get a replacement through their distributor.  I gave the make and model to the sargent.

Then I decided to check Amazon.com.  I have prepaid 2-day shipping so I thought it was worth a check.  Bingo, they have the part.  I did the 1-click order and had it on the way.  I called Tia and told her to pass the word on to the sargent to 10-22 (cancel).

That all happened yesterday.

Today, around 5:15, Jeff (my UPS guy) stopped outside.  I was installing new lights in my garage and heard the truck.  I went around to the front door in time to see him running up to the door.  I opened the door.  He handed me the package with a "Here you go" and ran back to his brown truck.

What has brown done for me lately?  Between Amazon and Jeff (my super UPS guy), they delivered my new spool of weed eater twine the day after I ordered it.

How absolutely cool is that?  I told me wife and we just smiled in amazement.

We live in such a wonderful time, as far as technology goes, and it reminds me of my favorite story when this technology was sinking in.  It was back before the time of text messaging, where much of the technology was fairly new.

I was sitting in my cop car on a completely quiet week night running radar and IMing Rick on my in-car laptop in between the occasional car.  A song came on the radio that I thought he would like.  It just sounded like something that he would enjoy.  I asked him if he had heard of it.  Nope.

A quick search of the net and I found the video.  I sent him the link.  He said that I was right and that he did like the song. 

Another search and I found the CD on a site that accepted PayPal.  I didn't have a debit card back then.  They weren't as common as they are now.  I ordered the CD and had it sent to his house.

All from my cop car, while watching for speeders. 

It totally blew my mind where technology had taken us.  Now, we are 10 years past that point and it still just amazes me when you can run out of twine, go online, and have it on your doorstep the very next afternoon.

I love the time that we live in and look forward to what life has in store for us in the future.

***

FaceBook has made it easier to find people.  If you want to link to me on FaceBook, click HERE.

A Double Serving of FedEx and UPS

We spent the weekend in Mesquite Nevada and had a great time.  I uploaded a bunch of pics to FaceBook and have absolutely no idea if this link will actually work but here it is: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/album.php?aid=81309&id=776044816

The second day there we decided to get some ice cream.  Trey and Tia ordered baby scoops in waffle cones.  I haven't had any ice cream since Trey's birthday and decided to splurge with two scoops of orange sherbet.

"A double," the girl helping me asked.

"Yeah, a double," I answered thinking that a double is the same things as two scoops.  You know what they say about assuming.

This is a "double", which has enough ice cream in it to build an igloo.  An orange igloo, mind you, but an igloo nonetheless.

I actually ate it all and eaten my yearly allotment of ice cream now.

This was just the tip of the huge orange ice cream cone as far as food went for this weekend.  We completely just went with the flow eating what ever we wanted when ever we wanted.  If it counts though, this ice cream cone was lunch.  I can't imagine eating it for dessert.

The story about FedEx and UPS actually has nothing to do with ice cream.  It has to do with my medicine ball.  You may recall that I was headed into town a couple of weeks ago and I was going to pick up a medicine ball during that trip.  No luck.  I couldn't find what I wanted.

So I ordered it online.  We order tons of stuff online and have paid the yearly fee to Amazon.com for prepaid 2-day shipping because we order enough stuff to cover that.  That even covers a 15 pound medicine ball.  How cool is that? 

Well, it didn't show up after a couple of days.  I checked the tracking and it said that the wrong address had been put on the box. 

No chance.

My address is on file with Amazon and between my wife and I, we get at least one package a week (not all from Amazon) and most of them make it here (except for one from UPS, which I'll get to).  When they put down that my address is wrong, it means their driver couldn't find my house.

I called them to tell them that and give instructions on how to find my house.  Drive down the main road.  When you get to my road, turn left.  Second house on the right.  It really is that easy.  You can see my house from the major artery.  I'm amazed when I hear that they can't find my house.

The FedEx people were much nicer than the UPS people that I had to deal with a couple of weeks ago.  Nicer but I still don't have a medicine ball.  It's supposed to be here today.  We'll see.  I have taken some extra steps to help the poor guy out.

This is a picture of the numbers on my house.  They are probably medium sized letters and match the light fixture nicely.  The gold on white doesn't seem to subtle to escape the attention of someone whose job it is to drive around and find addresses.

Apparently it is for a couple of people.

A couple of weeks ago, UPS called me to say that the address on the box was wrong.

Side note: At least UPS called me to let me know.  FedEx didn't do anything.  After a few days, I called them to see about getting my package.

** We interrupt this blog to announce that the medicine ball has arrived.  The FedEx driver said that it was a relief driver on the initial delivery and was shocked to find out that FedEx threw my package into the warehouse and didn't bother to call me.

When UPS called me, I verified that they did indeed have the correct address and gave them instructions on how to find my house.  A couple of hours later, some guy from UPS calls and essentially calls me a liar and says that my address can't be right.  Yes, well, I've been here for 5 years, at the very same house with the very same numbers and every one except your relief driver (they had a relief driver as well that day) can find my house.

I told rude-guy to just put the package in Jeff's hands and it would get to me.  Jeff is the not-relief driver.  Jeff waves to me whenever he sees me out and about.  Jeff has delivered packages to me at my house, at my wife's work, and even gave packages for my dad when he saw me at the grocery store.  Jeff knows me, my family, where we all work, and can even find my house. 

They gave the package to Jeff and Jeff gave the package to me and he couldn't understand why they had marked on my package that it was the wrong address.  I explained that the guy couldn't find it.  Jeff didn't understand that either.  It's easy for him as often as he comes here.

I don't know the name of the regular FedEx guy.  He's part ninja, I'm sure.  He hits my house very early in his route, by 8:15 am.  I don't know if he knocks or anything.  Just slips in, drops off the package, and he's gone.  I step out the door to go to work and there's a package.

Today's FedEx driver wasn't the local guy but he knew where my house was and said that the numbering system is different on this side of the main artery.  I did not know that.  Still, he knew where my house was.

To help out relief drivers in the future, today I put up some much bigger, not so subtle, black numbers on my white house, up high so that bushes can''t conceal it from the main road, dead center on the garage.  If this doesn't work, the next step will be to get some neon from the casino and go that route.

Or they can just give the packages to Jeff and the FedEx Ninja and I won't have to worry about it.

Where were these when I was a kid?

We spent the day on the road today.  Tia, Trey, and I are traveling with my parents.  Their van has a built in DVD player with headphones.  Oh my gosh!  Do you know how much I could have used this as a kid.  I have driven across the entire United States several times. 

Today's trip went like a breeze.  Trey picked Wall-E for the first movie.  After that, I did some reading and then watched a little bit of Dirty Dozen.  Great show.  Didn't get too far into it.

Now it's late and I'm going to bed.  Just wishing they had portable DVDs when I was a kid.

What is the message that Dragonfly brings?

Over that last week or so, dragonflies have been appearing around me.  Not like "poof, suddenly there's a ninja" kind of appearing and not all of them real dragonflies but they or their likeness has been popping up in various places.

It all started with a very lovely card from Mrs. Chili.  The card had been made for her and was beautiful.  I also like how sturdy it was.  It really felt substantial as I held it.  In today's disposable world, it's an odd and nice sensation.

A few days later, as Trey and I were headed for tee-ball, a dragonfly flew in front of the car for a while.  I just cruised along as it hovered just ahead of the windshield like he was leading the way.  Trey thought it was pretty cool.

A couple days later, my parents invited us over to their house for dinner.  I was sitting there eating quite a weird combination of foods (I think we were invited over to share left-overs) and I looked across the table to the base of the wall.  There was this huge (probably 3 foot wingspan) dragonfly wall decoration.  It hadn't been hung yet and was just resting against the wall.  I didn't ask about it but thought it was out of place. 

A couple of days later, I sat down at the buffet at work to talk to someone about something work related.  The person was to my left.  Across the table and just to the right, there was a woman wearing a grey shirt with a dragonfly pattern on the chest.

So, I decided to find out what it means when Dragonfly shows up in your life.

It has a lot to do with the changing of perceptions, seeing through illusions, using the power of light (more in the context of The Force than actual light), and all of this culminating in some kind of life change.

Very, very, interesting, Mr. Dragonfly.

The Engine 2 Diet

I just finished reading The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds.  It's written by a tri-athlete (Rip Esselstyn) turned firefighter who changed how his fellow firefighters eat to turn them into lean, mean, low cholesterol, fire fighting machines.

Rip promotes a plant based way of eating and says that if you follow this diet, your cholesterol will most like be in great shape after 4 weeks.  By great shape, he means under 150.

Most doctors are fine with a cholesterol level under 200 but Rip states that 35% of heart problems occur in people within that 150 to 200 range.  It's better to get under 150 if you really want to protect your heart.

My cholesterol has always been right around 200 every time that I have had it checked so I'm going to give The E2 diet a try and see what happens. 

I tried going raw not too long ago and I felt great but made a great tactical error.  I didn't research any recipes so I got bored rather quickly.  That and my bodybuilding-trained mind couldn't get over the fact that I wasn't eating sides of beef while training.

This time I'm going to compensate for those short comings.

First, my goal right now is to get lean and quick.  I want to pick up my running pace.  This is a great time to drop the extra protein and pick up the extra plants.  My running was nearly instantly transformed when I went raw (which kind of sounds like I was running naked and *that* would definitely transform my running experience).

Second, I've started looking for recipes online and will probably purchase a couple of cookbooks.  The E2 Diet comes with over 100 recipes too so that's where I'm trying to start.  A lot of it looks very foreign to me.  I haven't been much of a vegetable and legume kind of guy but I'm willing to give it a try.

If you want a quick rundown on the benefits and instructions for a plant based diet, I can recommend this book.  It's a quick read since half of it is recipes.  Rip makes his points quickly and moves on and even made me laugh in a couple of places.  There are little stories that go along with many of the recipes, which is kind of fun.  I think this is a great gateway book into a new way of eating.

Heat + FUEL + Oxygen = Burned Calories

 

Continuing the discussion (and unfortunately it's going to have to be very short tonight), the next ingredient for burned calories is fuel.

Way too many people are putting sugar in their gas tank. 

It is possible to be overweight, exercise like a madman, and not lose weight (guilty as charged).  With today's calorie bombs, it's very easy to put more calories into your body than you expend.  Not to mention that with our wonderful brains, we are also figuring out how not to do things.  As our technology increases, it becomes more and more important to watch what goes into our bodies.

What goes into the body is more important than exercise but for a high quality of life, I wouldn't leave either one out.

Three of the most important fuel sources are water, fruits, and vegetables.  By increasing the amount of these foods, you will automatically decrease the stuff that may not be as good for you.  This is, in fact, one of the big problems with the Western diet.  It's not just that Big Macs are not good for you (or poisonous in my case), it's that by eating them, you are choosing not to eat something healthy.  Every choice you make is a decision against everything else.  When it comes to food, this presents a double whammy.  By eating cancer causing french fries, you take up space in your stomach that could be used for cancer curing vegetables.  By drinking soda pop that causes symptoms of MS, you are not drinking cleansing and hydrating water.

The good news is that we get to choose.

***

Please remember to support my college efforts by visiting my BeachBody site.

HEAT + Fuel + Oxygen = Burned Calories

  Check out the size of his . . . carabiner.

  You need three things to burn calories: heat, fuel, and oxygen.  Today, we discuss heat because it's the easiest.

Humans are heat generating machines, just like we learned in that great documentary, Matrix.  Everything we do creates heat.  Just being alive creates heat.

We can create more heat by exercising, specifically with resistance exercise.  Aerobic exercise creates heat but ironically, burning calories may not be the biggest benefit of aerobic exercise.

Me, I like to do both at the same time.  Today was a seriously killer plyometric workout.  Do not try this at home if you don't have a strong heart and great knees.  This thing was intense.

I really need to get my video downloading ability fixed because words are not going to do this justice.

We did five exercises with 30 seconds rest between each exercise and we did that 4 times.  It was looking seriously pathetic by the 4th round.

The first was box hops where you hop gently off of a box or other sturdy structure of about chair height.  When you land, you go all the way down until you touch the ground, then spring up into the air.  Step on the box and do it again.  As many times as you can in 60 seconds.

Next we flipped the box on end so that it formed a diamond and we hopped to the corners around the box and the changed directions and went the other way.  Keep going for 60 seconds.  Much harder than it sounds.

Third was what I call knee-touch lunge-jump switches.  A long name for a quick exercise.  Lunge out with one leg and then rest your back knee on the ground (if you have a soft surface).  Jump up in the air and switch your feet and go back down to a knee.  Try doing that for a minute.  I did it for 20 seconds and finished the last 40 seconds by stepping instead of jumping.  Quad burner.

Fourth was jump knee tucks.  Jump up in the air bringing your knees as high as you can in front of you, touching your hands to your legs.  No time limit.  Do as many as you can.  After everything else, I was only able to get 30 per set on these.

Last, and by no means least, lateral box cross-overs.  Stand sideways next to your box (or sturdy chair height structure) and put the closest foot up on the box in the middle.  Jump to the other side of the box so that the foot that was on the box lands on the ground and the foot that was on the ground ends up on the box.  Now go back and forth as fast as you can for 60 seconds.  "As fast as you can" starts to look pretty pathetic around the 40 second mark.

Take 90 to 120 seconds break to wipe the tears sweat out of your eyes and then repeat again.  We did two sets 2 weeks ago, 3 sets last week (when I had food poisoning and was seriously on the verge of heaving it all up), and today we did 4 sets. 

I promise that you will find muscles over the next couple of days that you never knew existed.

Now, I have a special plea for help.  I'm going to be going back to college for the fall semester, probably full-time, which is going to be quite the struggle in so many ways.  One of those ways is financially so I'm going to be asking for help from my readers.  Please support my cause by purchasing something (anything) from my BeachBody site.  They have their great DVD programs, exercise equipment, and nutritional supplements, and all proceeds help me avoid getting a student loan (a worthy cause if I ever did hear).  Thanks.

A Blog on the Fringe

I've been doing some soul searching for the last couple of weeks and this blog has suffered as a result.  I've been trying to figure what to be if I ever grow up.  I haven't come up with any solid answers but I do know what I'll be doing for the next 3 months and how it will relate to this blog:

1.  When time permits, I'll find a pic for Mark (alternating with some eye candy for the women) that in some way relates to the blog.  "Fringe" was an easy excuse.  You're welcome Mark.

2.  Get to work overtime on getting my personal trainer certificate.  I haven't done a thing on it because I've been on an extended break since the college semester ended.

Btw, the class that I was worried about not getting an "A" in, I received an "A".  So how cool is that?  I got by Associates with a 4.0 gpa.  A huge difference from my pitiful attempt at college 20 years ago.

3.  Continue to read about spirituality, the psychic world, living in the right brain, and post any thoughts to this blog.  Right now, it's really caught my attention ("Look, something shiny!").  I will probably have to slow down on the reading but it has been a wonderful break for that.  I have to memorize a lot of stuff for the personal trainer certificate so that's where my attention will have to be for 3 months (I'm hoping that I can complete it in 3 months anyway).

4.  Continue blogging and hopefully put more than 50 words in my posts.  I was considering just giving up on my blog but that doesn't feel right.  I'm going to post what ever strikes me for that day but considering #2 and #5, don't be surprised if a lot of this blog is centered around fitness and health.  I had been posting each night at 8 mst and that will end.  Posts will go out if and when they are done and may even go out a couple of times a day if the mood strikes.  The bottom line is that I feel I need to write but I won't make any promises on consistency.

5.  It's time for me to dive back into some fitness craziness.  I'll be continuing with my early morning classes but I'm going to be throwing in another session in the afternoon on a pretty much random basis from my growing DVD collection.  I'm sure some days will be pretty tough and other days will only be mildly tough.  I'm also going to be faithful to my running, which has been hit and miss because of stuff and weather.  I'm going to be adding sprints in on Saturdays.  It's time consuming but every time I do one of these little self-challenges, I feel so energized.  I'm going to be out of town today so this will start tomorrow.

6.  Today's trip to the city is for the sole purpose of getting better lighting for my garage.  In the next 3 months, I'm going to get some of my workouts online for those of you that are interested to see what I'm doing at 6am every weekday.  The first hurdle is lighting.  The way that I finished my garage to cut down on the echo factor has made it very dark.  I need to get it lit up.  Second, I have to figure out how to get my video easily from my camera to a website.  I was able to download and upload the video of the donkey basketball but I tried to do the same a month ago for some karate techniques and it was a complete fail.  I need to be able to do it consistently and without consuming too much of my time.

There are a few other minor things in the plans but that's the general plan for the next 3 months.  Now, I'm off to get some lighting and a medicine ball.  I'm going to be adding some medicine ball work in every once in a while.  It's on one of my DVDs.