Just wanted to take this occasion to share a workout tip I have been using for about a year now which lets me keep things fresh. I love to do this on months with 31 days, and since July and August both have 31, this is a chance to do this for consecutive months.
I like to take a movement and progressively add to how many I do each day of the month. It is tough to explain the progression, so here is a calendar for the month of July that shows how many to do.
For example, I’ll do 10 burpees on the 1st, 12 on the 2nd, etc. By the final day I’ll do 60. This is not in lieu of normal workouts, just an extra layer. In the beginning of the month, it is a nice little invigoration. By the last week or so it can become a slog, especially when also getting in 8000-10000 steps a day. Since this is in addition to your regular workout, you can spread it over the entire day. In May I forgot to do burpees one day when it was 22, so I just did 46 the following one. It isn’t that serious.
Burpees are my go-to workout for this, so I think I’ll do that again for July. I know there are many ways to do burpees, but my preferred way is an eight-count like this.
Drop into a squat with hands on the floor
Kick legs out behind you into a plank
Down portion of a push-up
Up portion of a push-up
Bring legs back under you into squat position
Stand back up
First half of a jumping jack
Second half of a jumping jack
For August, I’ll probably do explosive squats. Depending on your fitness level, you can choose any workout for this. Some suggestions:
Here is a calendar for August as well. Give ’em hell!
If this doesn’t float your boat I have one more thing to consider. I am not a Crossfit person, but I recently got into a specific Crossfit named workout called Cindy. It consists of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 air squats. I know Crossfit people do those weird looking pull-ups, but you can do regular pull-ups for this instead. You do those exercises in order for one round. A full Cindy is as many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in twenty minutes. A great full body workout in a short time with no equipment needed other than pull-up bars.
If that also does not float your boat, maybe you should stay on dry land.
Since I have been walking far more than usual I feel qualified to serve as an expert on being outside. Let me tell you, the outdoors has a lot of things going for it. One thing not in its favor is that it is boring as shit. When it comes to entertainment, indoors beats outdoors by KO in the very first round. Think Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano. Inside, I have my computer with blazing fast internet access. Streaming MLB Network and full audio for all 30 teams. Xbox series X. As Jimmy Buffet would say “an air conditioner for when I’m hot, a radiator for when I’m not”. All a person could ask for.
Outdoors has grass and sidewalks. Clouds and the relentless scorching sun and the outside of buildings that are temperature controlled only on the inside. All things that are fine the first few times you see them. But the three thousandth? Not so much. I never saw a tree that could play Disco Elysium or listened to Songs In The Key Of Life from a conch shell. The fact that being outdoors often sucks is making it tougher and tougher for me to properly train. I am in need of a solution. Something I can do outside that can compare in some small way to binge watching Abby Labar on Quick Pitch or DarkViperAU on YouTube.
After looking over some new outdoor hobbies for all of fourteen minutes I decided to take up birdwatching. You should have been able to deduce that from my post title. As with anything new I attempt nowadays, the first thing I did after making my decision was to head over to the r/birdwatching subreddit. Those guys don’t make birding seem that hard. You go outside. You see cool birds. You photograph them. You figure out what kind of bird they are. All you need to get started is the ability to leave your house (check), a pair of binoculars (check), and a camera phone (check). I can handle this.
So the very first thing I noticed is that birds are really fast. And jumpy. If you get close to one and then try to whip out your phone to take a picture they will inevitably get spooked and fly off at 100 mph. I searched on the internet for the best way to overcome this. I searched for things like “how to get close to birds and take pictures without them noticing you”. I found one interesting site by a British guy. It got kind of weird and pervy. Not much I could use in my birdwatching life, but maybe some pointers I can add to my everyday life as a weirdo.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a crappy photographer with a crappy camera on a crappy phone. It has only been since I took up birding that I realized I’ve been using my camera zoom incorrectly. The camera UI has a button that says “1X” for the zoom and when you push it the camera zooms in and it says “2X”. Push it again and it goes back to saying “1X”. Therefore, I logically assumed my camera could only zoom in 2X.
Not so fast my friend. It turns out you can use your fingers to unpinch the camera and extend the zoom up to “4X”. There is a trade off in quality at that zoom level. Considering how poorly my pictures normally look it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the pics I’m about to show you look like they were taken with a tiny hole cut into a shoebox. You have been warned.
First up we have to choose the humble pigeon. The most ubiquitous of all the urban birds. I was able to get lots of shots of these guys in their natural habitat like gas stations, power lines, and big puddles in parking lots. Because of their ubiquity, you’d be excused for dismissing pigeons as uninteresting creatures. But they are actually fascinating birds with a complex social structure and unusual quirks, as shown in this documentary from last year on PBS.
For example, both parents are able to feed their chicks a form of milk that they produce from a gland in their throat called a crop. Pigeons also are able to … WAIT, WHAT? Milk from a pigeon? I thought only mammals made milk. Do pigeons have nipples? Can Greg milk them?
Pigeons are one of a few types of birds that produce crop milk. Both sexes secrete this fluid which contains IgA and is high in protein, just like mammalian milk. Crop milk production begins just before the chicks hatch and it looks sort of like cottage cheese. There is no proof to the rumor that raw crop milk is a nutritional panacea or that it is a great way to wash down your daily dose of ivermectin.
These are some interesting shots I got of a white pigeon. I saw this one sitting in a doorway and expected it to fly away when I took my camera out. Far from it. This little birdie basically sat there and posed for me. They did their little turn on the catwalk and everything. I actually started to get scared that they were injured and unable to fly away. That was not the case though, as they eventually flew off after getting bored of hitting various poses.
Next up we highlight the grackle. This bird is also common in urban settings and fairly unfazed by human activity. This allowed me to get closer to these birds than any others. You’ll recognize this bird by its dark, shiny, iridescent coat and the fact that it sounds like someone started a jet-powered lawnmower in your yard. The big, dark ones are the males. Females have a more muted, brown tone and are significantly smaller.
Here is a group shot of multiple birds I captured in a picturesque urban setting. A Valero parking lot off of I-35.
Lastly here are some pictures of white-winged doves. If you are only familiar with these animals from Stevie Nicks lyrics it will surprise you to see that they are basically brown as dirt.
When they are perched you can only see a very small portion of their white feathers. Once they take flight, the white pops out and creates a staggering visual. Of course, I am not yet advanced enough to get pictures of moving birds so I’ll need you to take my word for it. Actually, never mind, I can just link to some pictures someone else has taken to show you what I mean. Much easier.
Thus concludes introductory birdwatching. I feel like I am now ready to start photographing some of the many jays, woodpeckers, and owls in central Texas. I need to continue improving in a hurry because fall migration begins as early as mid-August and should peak around October in this area. With any luck by then I will be able to apply everything I’ve learned and capture even the most elusive of birds.
It’s Abby Labar! From that joke earlier! What a bird!
I finally decided to try the viral running trend again. You know, the one where you run with a bag of cream and churn it into butter. Last time it did not work out very well at all. As promised, this time I made a few changes based on my previous result.
First, and most importantly, I got heavy cream that was free from preservatives and was low temp pasteurized instead of ultra-pasteurized. This was the most significant and expensive change I made. I bought this boutique stuff called Mill King Heavy Whipping Cream from Central Market. It cost an angina inducing $6.79 for one pint. That comes out to $54.32 per gallon.
And what exactly is all that money I’m spending for? The only ingredient in this stuff is literally just cow’s cream.
Last time, I got burned by preservatives like polysorbate 80. This stuff has none of that at all. It doesn’t make sense that not adding things to a product makes it cost so much more. For $50 a gallon I’d expect this to contain Love Potion No. 9, Invigaron, and Compound V.
This is like when you go to the modern gym with rows of treadmills and ellipticals everywhere and membership is $10 a month. Then you see another place that looks like some rando’s garage with rusty dumbbells in a corner and everything looks like it smells like ball sweat, and the price is $75 a week.
In addition to the change of cream I made lots of other changes. As you can tell from the amount of sweat on the bottle in the pics above, I left the cream out for about an hour to get close to room temp before heading out. I also ran 6.5 miles instead of 6 although my route was still entirely sidewalks and improved roads. I also added about 1/8 tsp of salt to the cream. Same as last time, I poured the cream into a double bag and put the bag in my hydration carrier and took off.
When I got back I knew instantly that I had a different result than before. Last time there was no real separation but this time there was a definite fatty residue all over the bag with a liquid phase all around it. A picture of the inside of the bag will show you what I mean.
I stuck a finger in there and scooped some up and it definitely tasted like butter. This means I got farther than I got last time. The next step from here is to scoop out your butter and dunk it in ice cold water. This helps wash out any buttermilk that is trapped in your butter (which can make it go bad faster). You put the butter into a giant bowl of ice water and knead it a little so the butter clumps together and everything that isn’t butter rinses out.
A picture of this would show you what I mean. If I had one. Let me say that scooping freshly made room temperature butter from a ziploc bag into a bowl of ice water is one of the messiest things I’ve ever done in my life. I instantly wound up with butter all over my forearms and the kitchen counter and everything. And warm butter does not simply wash off your hands. It just smears around all over the place. The last thing I was going to do was grab my phone to take a picture of this horrible mess. If you ever try making your own butter, make sure you have at least two sets of hands to help with this step and the inevitable clean-up.
Eventually, after many hand washes and towelings off, I got the butter fully rinsed. I formed it into a ball and placed it onto a saucer.
Eyeballing it, this made a total of about 3 or 4 ounces of butter. The only thing left was the taste test. A couple dabs on some toast and washed down with a Powerade.
OK, not to sound immodest or anything but it tasted great. It tasted like you imagine the homemade butter you will one day make with your own two hands will taste. Rich, creamery butter taste and mouthfeel.
Finally, the ultimate question to answer: was this whole thing worth it? Fuck no! Between the two tries I spent $9.75 on cream, ran 12.5 miles, and completely turfed my kitchen. And for what? Four ounces of butter? What a fucking joke. I guess I have the memes and the friends I met along the way, but the juice is not worth the squeeze as they say. I hope the next viral trend involves sitting on the couch reading sci-fi short stories.
This is the second post in what will be a series on this blog. In the series I highlight my “worst fears” that might happen while I traverse the Appalachian Trail. In my first entry I talked about my fear of alpha-gal syndrome and went into some depth about how his series will go. You don’t have to read that entry before this one, but if you do it helps my metrics.
The Stanley Cup finals begin today. Congratulations to the Carolina Hurricanes and Vegas Golden Knights, who won their respective conferences and will compete for the most famous piece of hardware in North American sports. My worst fear is that next year the winner will be the Boston Bruins.
At this point, I should mention that I am a big Bruins fan. I’m wearing my David Krejčí jersey as I type this. I wasn’t always a Bruins fan. I followed the NBA and college basketball as a kid and only really watched hockey during the Stanley Cup finals. I never quite learned all the different weird names of all the divisions and conferences. The Adams and the Norris winners play for the Wales trophy or some shit? Once I moved to Massachusetts for college I became much more invested in the NHL and college hockey. Going to a Beanpot is a New England rite of passage.
Since I never really followed a team as a youngster, I kind of picked up the Bruins as my team. This lasted until 1997 when the Hartford Whalers decamped and moved to Raleigh, becoming the Carolina Hurricanes. I am from North Carolina and felt like I owed it to the team that came to the state of my birth to pledge my allegiance. Despite still living in the Boston area, I threw my support behind the Canes. I bought a shirt and a hat and everything. The only problem was that I never really watched the Canes or followed the team because 90% of the hockey I consumed was on NESN. Nevertheless, I told myself and my friends that I was a Canes fan; even as I watched Bruins games multiple times a week.
This charade went on for almost a decade. I finally came to my senses on the night of June 19, 2006. That night the Hurricanes defeated the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 in game 7 to capture the Stanley Cup. The first and still only major professional sports title won by a team from North Carolina. And while the players were parading the Stanley Cup around the ice I felt nothing. I felt no real pride or satisfaction. I just kind of felt, “oh well, good for those guys”. That was when I realized that if I could not get excited for the team after winning the title in game 7 I was never going to. So the next season I finally admitted that I was a Bruins fan and started to act like it. I bought a shirt and a hat and everything.
Being a Bruins fan during that period was tough sledding. They didn’t make the playoffs in 2007 and barely made it in 2008, before losing in the first round. The 2009 team finished only one point away from the President’s Trophy before losing in seven games to the Hurricanes. 2010 was the year everything was going to be different. The year all those “we want it as much as you do” banners all over North Station were supposed to finally mean something. That was until the Flyers playoff series.
Boo this man
One day I’ll be able to see or hear the name Scott Hartnell without weeping like a small girl, but I have not yet reached that point. In the second round in 2010 Boston took a 3-0 lead on Philly in the best-of-7 series. Through bad play, bad luck, and general bad vibes they blew that entire lead and had to play a seventh and decisive game at home. I happened to have drill that weekend at Fort Devens, but we got barracks and the barracks had cable so after a day on the range everyone could catch hot chow and a hot shower before settling in for the game.
The game started as promisingly as possible and the Bruins opened a 3-0 lead in the first period. Milan Lucic scored twice. The day room in the barracks was jumping and everything was right with the world. The Flyers outplayed Boston from that point forward and by the middle of the third period it was 3-3. Then Boston took the worst “too many men on the ice” penalty since 1979 and allowed a power play goal to Simon Gagne that proved to be the series winner. The day room in the barracks was a mausoleum and the world deserved to burn to the ground. Hartnell had two points in the clincher and finished the series with 5 points and a +3 rating. The numbers themselves don’t paint the full picture of just how much of an annoying shit Hartnell could be over seven games.
So going into 2010-2011 the team was still wearing that frustration, but won the division behind captain Zdeno Chara’s league leading +33 rating and Vezina winner Tim Thomas in goal. They exorcised some demons by beating the Flyers on their way to the Eastern Conference title. That led to a Stanley Cup matchup with the Vancouver Canucks in June.
Being an Army Reservist meant there were lots of sacrifices you needed to make. One of which was that they sucked two weeks of every summer away for Annual Training. Of course in 2011 the Annual Training was in Fort Stewart in Georgia. Also of course, it was during the exact same time as the Stanley Cup. Unlike the aforementioned drill at Fort Devens, this training exercise was a full-on field problem. They took multiple different units from all over the eastern seaboard and dropped us onto a training area with GP larges and mediums as far as the eye could see. No creature comforts. There was barely any cellular service and even fewer locations to keep a civilian computer or wireless phone charged. We were only able to get the scores of each game the morning after when somebody made a run to the DFAC and grabbed hot chow for breakfast.
And by the way, in case you’ve never had the privilege, Fort Stewart in the summer is hotter than the Fonz is cool. Satan probably does his Annual Training drills for the demons in hell there. I’ve lived in Las Vegas and Austin. I’ve worked in the Mojave Desert and Caribbean jungles in the summer. Fort Stewart is far more miserable. Imagine the most humid place you’ve ever been in your life and then add 50% humidity to it while also well into the high 90’s the entire time the sun is out. Our wet bulbs told us it was heat category 5 every second from about an hour after sunrise to an hour after sunset. We spent at least half of everyday being prevented from training and just sitting in our tents sweating our balls off sucking down as much water as our buffalo could hold. In short the whole thing was horrid, and never knowing what was going on in the Cup Final was the coup de grâce.
Boston and Vancouver punched and counter-punched through six games and got set for a winner-take-all game 7 on June 15th. This also happened to be the last day of our actual training so the leadership let those of us who wanted take a GSA (minivan) and go to a bar on post to watch the game in civilian clothes. We were forbade from drinking and had to come back as soon as the game ended, but at least it was some kind of reward for a grueling exercise. There were reports of bad weather coming in that night, so we were told to be mindful that if the skies went sideways they would recall us. Of course, the skies went sideways.
Shortly into the second period, with the Bruins up 1-0, we got the call to leave the bar and cheese it back to the training area. We drove back through a pretty significant rainstorm. What we saw when we got back was crazy, though.
A microburst had come down right in the middle of our AO. Radio antennae knocked over, tents toppled everywhere, soldiers standing around in various different uniforms fumbling in the dark trying to figure out what was going on. Everyone briefly gathered whatever they had within arm’s reach and walked over to the Reserve Center about three blocks away.
The Reserve Center was in no way built to provide shelter for all of the soldiers from this exercise. We all had to stand basically nuts to butts in the basement waiting for the “all clear” in case any further storms came in. In my civilian clothes, I was so much more fortunate than those were in the training area when the microburst happened. Everyone was just dressed in whatever they had when the worst of it started. There were people in brown T-shirts and PT pants. ACU jacket and PT shorts with boots. One poor woman had on just a PT shirt and a towel wrapped around her. I guess she was in the middle of a shower at the worst possible time.
As we all stood there hot and cramped and cranky and miserable, some kind soul was able to get a radio feed of the game over the internet. So I listened to a staticky radio call of the final six minutes of game 7 as Tim Thomas closed out a 4-0 shutout of the Canucks. After the game ended we all stood there for about an hour until they bussed us to some auditorium somewhere or another. We sat in the auditorium until they procured us some barracks to use for the night.
The next morning we all went back to ground zero and fixed up the tents, collected our things, and got everything ready to tear down. Fortunately, since all of the tents fell straight down most people’s gear stayed right where it was left. A few people lost a few things that had to go down as “field losses” but nothing major like a sensitive item or anything. After packing up our area and spending one more night in the barracks we left on a jet plane back to Boston just in time for the victory parade.
So basically I missed the 2011 Stanley Cup and did not get to experience it the way I would have liked. Boston went back to the Cup final in 2013 and 2019 but lost both. And the less said about the 2022-2023 season, the better.
I figure at my age I’ll be lucky enough to see one or maybe two more Bruins championships before I die. Considering what happened in 2011, my worst fear is for them to win in 2027 and I wouldn’t be able to watch or enjoy any of the action.
Marco Sturm, if you are listening, do well next year. Make the playoffs and even win a round. Bonus points if you knock out Toronto again. But save the deep postseason runs for 2028 and beyond.
