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| well, i am a week away from the tournament, and while i have not lost a ton of weight or anything i am certainly a lot healthier and i have been eating a lot better. well.... i should clarify- i have been eating healthier several days a week. this weekend was UFC 100, so i was all about the pizza and beer, and that probably does away with all of the work i had done for the rest of the week. but i have been doing a whole lot better about eating breakfast and stuff like that. i have been cooking 3 eggs for breakfast every day, eating two pieces of wheat toast and then a banana and and orange sometimes, along with a glass of orange juice. its actually a pretty cheap meal and eggs cost next to nothing- when a dozen eggs is $2, that's nearly 50 cents each time i eat them and thats the main part of the meal.
things at work are going pretty well, i am always trying to refresh myself and work harder, but sometimes it is difficult to do. i have talked to lots of people and gotten lots of advice of what is the most important thing to do, what people notice, what impresses people at your job... i dunno, everybody has an opinion, so its hard for me to know exactly who is right and who is wrong. i guess you just try to take parts of the ideas everyone else uses and make it work for yourself.
watched the movie pineapple express on sunday night- the movie was very weird. it was kind of funny in certain parts, but i just couldnt figure out where exactly the movie was trying to go. sometimes it seemed over the top and had funny music, but other times it was completely silent while some characters were fighting and came off as being kind of cinematic and serious. to just blow it off as a stoner movie is kind of over simplifying it in my opinion... i cant say i would really recommend it or plan on seeing it again.
i have been working really hard on my takedowns and stuff at jiu jitsu, and it is pretty damn tiring and exhausting. hopefully some of it will really work saturday and i can actually do something impressive. my ground game is really good and i think i can do pretty much anything i want from there at this level, but my stand up and wrestling to get takedowns is really really lacking, partly because we never do it and partly because i dont like doing it. takedowns rely a lot more on strength rather than technique to a certain extent- at the level i am at, you are not going to get the technique perfect because you dont practice the moves enough, so you have to use strength to get things to work. some day i will hopefully get the technique down and then i can do the work without wearing myself thing.
everything else is going good i suppose. leah is studying for a test right now because she is going to try to get a teaching certificate from mcneese this next year so she can be able to work, she has been having a really hard time finding a job this year. pretty frustrating for both of us, but we will fight on! i know we are going back to kansas in september for her brothers wedding, i am not sure what other plans we have for the rest of the year. i basically have 7 days of vacation left and i am not sure when i am really going to use them... i would like to just go on a trip somewhere with leah, but we dont really have much disposable income right now. always trying to save, but its hard. i am always saving in the 401k for retirement, but that money will not be seen by anyones eyes for a very long time.
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| so much for regularly updating this thing huh.
been back from the hawaii and kansas trip for 3 weeks now, but getting back in the swing of things here makes you forget it all so fast. when i look at my credit card bill for the month and i see all the things on there i am kind of amazed at everything on there. oh yea, i did go skydiving last month! and i went and ate at that on restaurant there! and i went to those bars in kansas city! i think looking at my credit card receipt is a good way to judge how exciting my month was, and this past one looks pretty cool. once i get back in lake charles of course... walmart, kroger and gas stations. that is where all of my money goes. that, and all the bills i get to swallow at the end of the month.
i told myself that i would start my training for the next jiu jitsu tournament starting monday and i suppose i have kept up on it so far. went running on monday and we did some hard training last night at jiu jitsu. the tourney is on july 18th, maybe there is a chance i could get in better shape than i am right now by then and maybe even lose a few pounds, but i really doubt it. i dont think much of anything changes about my body anymore regardless of what i do, but that is probably because i am not committed enough to anything. i have started eating breakfast, however, and trying to eat a lite dinner. maybe that will help some.
i guess leah is going to take her cousin karly to missouri on july 1st and come back around the 5th, so i will get some time to myself for the week. i guess i can bond with the dogs more and enjoy the hot ass weather we now have in louisiana. my electric bill this past month was not nearly as bad as it has been in the past, it was 2/3 as big as the same bill last year for the same month. i have not been having the ac turned down quite as low for reasons i wont mention, but it is certainly saving some money. and maybe the new ac unit is more efficient and works better as well, who knows.
leah has also called it quits on the insurance thing, it was just to damn hard i guess. making house calls and never making sales sucks, and after everything she has done she has yet to even make a dime. that's pretty crappy. now she is looking into trying to teach down here, get a teachers certificate, but that will take 27 hours of classes at mcneese so it would be another year. i just wish there were ways for her to get a job down here, i feel pretty bad because there is not much that i can do to help. we shall see.
my job is going ok, my boss has been gone all last week and this week too, so i am kind of floating around doing my own thing. i do have work to do and i am staying pretty busy, but sometimes i wonder if anyone even notices. when you work in a refinery, downtimes are really downtimes and uptimes are really really busy. so when everything is running and nothing is broken.... well, i could probably hide in my office with the door closed all day and nobody would know any different. but if you do crap like that, eventually it will catch up on you and when they are looking for fat to cut, your ass is grass. i am not the type, however, to suck up all the time and try to be a 'teachers pet', so it can be hard for me to find a balance in the workplace.
anyway, im gonna go back to my job. i was 214 this morning, we will see if it is any lower when i post again!
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| i finally took the time to post all of my pictures. you can look at them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrbagdt/5June?authkey=Gv1sRgCPvKrKGyqJrvWQ&feat=directlink i will try to take the time this week to start labeling them and saying what was going on in each shot. i am just to lazy right now and seem to be keeping myself pretty busy in my first week back. me and leah came home on monday night, i went to jiu jitsu on tuesday, caught up on all the ultimate fighter episodes i missed on wednesday, jiu jitsu on thursday and we hung out at my friend ira's and played catch phrase, stayed home and actually went to bed at a decent time on friday, watched the strikeforce fights on saturday night and watched the wec fights tonight. the days are just packed and i am loving it! i even went to church this morning. how crazy is that. i will try to provide more thoughtful posts in the near future. i am considering upgrading my phone to one that has internet and all that jazz, then i might be posting all the time and become one of those tools who uses twitter non-stop. actually, no, i will never do that. | | |
| its been a pretty stressful couple of days.
right now i am working a turnaround, which means that one of our units (specifically, our sulfur recovery unit) is shut down and we are doing lots of maintenance and inspection work on it. this means that i spend a lot of time crawling around, looking in drums, looking in towers, watching work being done, following jobs, and providing assistance (such as drawings, hydrotest pressures, equipment history) to whoever needs it. i have to get in about 5:50 in the morning and leave around 6:15 after our 6:00 changeover meeting. so then i come home, try to spend some time with leah, watch some tv, pet the dogs, just do something to decompress a bit. but then i have to try to be asleep between 10 or 11 and start all over again the next morning. i dont see how people can do these kind of shifts for weeks at a time- but i could see how you could start to become numb to it all. honestly, when you are spending this much time at work, everything else just sort of seems like a blur. after operating at a high intensity all day, i pretty much come home and shut off. i know it bugs leah some because i sort of turn into a zombie, but it won't be for to much longer.
i need to start cleaning up my diet and everything for the tournament this coming weekend. i cut out the rockstars and dont have anymore burritos to eat in the morning, and instead i am just drinking water and eating some peanut butter granola bars. i weighed 210 last night and i have to be below 214 come thursday, so i think i will be good. if i was really brave i would want to weight 202 or so, then i could make the weight for the next lowest weight class in the gi division. it really doesnt matter, since the division i care the most about is the absolute division where there are no weight classes. winning in your weight division is good, but for me, that means i won maybe 2 matches since its rare to have more than 4 people competing at the same weight as me. doing well in absolute means you had to beat 4-5 people, and do it all within a relatively short amount of time. it is the best way to test yourself for sure.
after that, the turnaround will be finishing up and i will be packing and preparing for my two trips at the end of the month. i leave for hawaii on the 21st (sorry leah) and get back on the 27th, where leah will pick me up at the airport and we will go up to kansas for my brothers wedding. then spending 5 days up there, coming back on june 1st. it will be nice to have a good break after this turnaround.
thats all i think i will write about for now. feeling kind of strange this morning... my dreams are mixing up with my realities. i think that is another side effect from working to much and not getting enough sleep- your dreams start to become more and more real and it becomes harder to determine what is real and what is not. i need to watch 'waking life' again, that is a good flick.
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| to start with i will say this was actually a really good weekend! i only drank maybe 9 beers total on friday and saturday night (and thats pretty good for me) and i finished all the beer in my fridge without buying any more. so hopefully that will keep me from drinking any during the week and i can see how long i can hold out without buying another case. i really want to try to keep from drinking so much, and cutting it out during the week is pretty easy for me since i am so busy and dont go out, but weekends are kind of tough. i think one of the hardest parts is that when you are around other people who drink, trying not to drink is TOUGH. but i feel like i am getting better at stopping when i should and not being crazy.
friday night i went to bed at 1030 (WHAT) and saturday morning i took leah to jiu jitsu and showed her a few things. she said she enjoyed it and i think she learned a lot, and by showing her stuff i think it makes her appreciate how exhausting grappling can be and how much of a workout it is. i kind of forget now how tiring all this stuff was for me when i was first beginning and how sore my muscles would get because i didnt know how to do moves correctly and it makes you tired, or you just dont have the muscles to do moves and it makes you tired. after working with her for about thirty minutes i rolled with my buddy garrett (i think he is about 240 right now, and way stronger than me) and we worked for almost 20 minutes until i tapped out. got me in a kind of arm triangle choke while i was in his guard, which is not a choke you get caught in to often but if you are exhausted and someone catches you in it, it is pretty damn painful. i think for the last minute or so i was rolling and not really thinking- you just get in this mindset where you are doing nothing but reacting to your opponents moves, everything you are doing is completely automatic, you kind of forget where you are and whats going on. it is a kind of strange thing to happen, and i have had it when i was super tired in tournaments, but i dont get it often during a normal grappling session, so that was interesting. me and garrett work pretty well together- i push him and he pushes me, so they are even matches that usually last til one of us gets really tired or does something stupid, and most of the time it winds up being me.
today we took the dogs to the dog park for an hour and a half. after being there for about 40 minutes another couple showed up with 3 beagle type dogs and just brought them right in with the boxers. i brought my camera but i dont think we took any pictures of all of them- everybody behaved great and acted like a normal pack of dogs. i get nervous with keenan sometimes- he is so big and he gets excitable really easy, and while he is not aggressive i dont think he really realizes when he is annoying the shit out of another dog until they get pissed and growl or snap at him, and things can escalate from there. but it as good today, so i was happy. its rare that i see anyone else there so it was a kind of new experience.
watched a cool boxing match last night, and watched a really small show mma card on HDNET which is always interesting. mma and boxing are both things that i think are difficult to appreciate because stuff always looks easy, but in reality they are not. i just think its hard to appreciate all the smaller aspects of the game, so to speak, and i am getting there in mma of seeing what is going on all the time, but not many other sports. i still have to ask paul stupid questions about baseball because i am still a dope on the subject.
well, thats all from me for now. i have a big turnaround starting this next weekend, so i will have to start working on saturdays and sundays and wont get much time to decompress. i will probably buy a ticket to visit rob in hawaii soon too- i have been putting that off while watching my back account and making sure i have the money for all the trips coming up in the next month.
good night!
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