Kategorie: Recap

Recap Week 2012-23

Lessons of this week:

  • If the schedule for the plumbers visit to the flats in the house tells you he’ll be there somewhen between 10:00 and 14:00, it’ll be 13:45. And that was just the vague schedule for our floor with five flats. (Of course, if I had predicted that and would’ve gone shopping or to the barber, he would’ve been knocking at my door at 10:01.)
  • Phone calls and cooking don’t always mix up well. And instead of experiementing on a new dish, I’ve been experimenting on how to get that braised plastic from my cutting board off my stovetop. The fricking thing was even burning.
  • If you’re unsure about that next rep and don’t have a spotter, don’t do it. At least with bench pressing. Even missed the right lower buck of the rack and kissed the barbell. Ouch.

Fitocracy points: 851 – Just one workout last week and the result is noted above. ’nuff said.

Recap Week 2012-22

Wednesday night, I noticed some flashing from my window. A thunderstorm, yes!!! I tried to collect my photography equipment as fast as possible (not fast) and went onto my balcony to camp for it. I’ve been waiting for it to come closer, experimented with the settings, waited for it to come closer, got my remote shutter to work again, waited for it to come closer… waited for it to… AH DAMMIT!!! The frickin‘ storm wandered along the horizon (behind some hills to be even more precise) mocking me with some lonely flashes every once in a while.

I assembled the few lightnings I could capture into this picture. Sorry ‚bout the crappy quality, but I moved the camera around a bit, zoomed in and out, so it was hard to get them into one clean image. Well, at least with the effort I was willing to put in.

Thunderstorm 2012-05-30 (© Oliver Kuka)

I got my foam roller. Well, I got it almost two weeks now, but this week was the first time I used it and it’s quite nice, could really get used to it, even though, I have to „train“ a bit to use it effectively. I also had a gift coupon for a massage lying around for over two years. On Sunday I finally used it. I regret that I didn’t use it earlier. Damn, that was good, even though it was quite painful at some muscle tensions in my back. But I really should really get this more often.

Fitocracy points: 3931 – My new push-up max is now 50. Half the way to the real century push. For not training it, I’m happy with those results. Oh and speaking of calisthenics, I did 20 pull-ups. Also started my leg training again. Did lunges to start and OH MY ASS, I really do feel the break.

Favourite quote: Some people say… good things come to those who wait. Truth is, good things come to those who work. Who work later. Who work harder. You’re willing to go father than anyone else to get them. If you are waiting for good things to come to you, you’ll be waiting for pretty long time. – from a Crysler 300 commercial

Recap Week 2012-21

I should really take notes over the week to remember the stuff I wanted to write here. Seems like my age is taking it’s tolls. Then again, since I’m not that old, I guess I just have bad memory  to start with. It’s like my classic problem that I already forgot on Tuesday, which movie I’ve been watching on Monday’s sneak preview. Just that I got better at that. (But I still suck with names and faces.)

I have to correct myself a bit btw. I said one should destroy racism, but not be like a panda. Well, sometimes, you should be like a panda!

Panda Dance (origin and copyright unknown)

In another, semi-related note, I’m going to asia this fall again. More information about that another time.

I’m now two weeks of movie reviews behind, so better get back to writing! (These long weekends really do kill my flow.) So just as an info what you can look forward to (or not): Act of Valor and Safe

Favourite quote: „Why do people keep insisting that I join the 21st Century? I *LIVE* in the 21st Century! I just don’t want to be bothered by the shitheads on the internet!“ – Harlan Ellison [unsourced]

Fitocracy points: 3,258 – After altering my routine a bit to doing more sets of the more complex movements, my upper body workouts yield more points. Now am I doing this for being the better workout or just for getting more points? Tough question.

Recap Week 2012-20

According to my original plans, I would’ve had a long weekend, with four days off, only „interrupted“ by a bar job at the Kelterplatzfest (Wine Press Square Festival) on Saturday. Buuuuut, of course that didn’t work out. Already on Wednesday evening I got an emergency call for a broken car, which resulted into half a Thursday of driving around and changing tires.

Killing over half of the weekend (instead of the planned few hours) were the computers of my parents. Upgrading their old workstation didn’t work out too well, since the current support of Gnome in Ubuntu is crap. After working around a bit, the best solution was to switch to a fresh install of Xubuntu, which came as an obvious choice, since I’m using Xfce on half of my boxes as well and the project got quite good in the last few years. And then there’s this really old notebook my old man brought back from a flea market several weeks ago. I’ve been avoiding to work on it, since the machine is crap (for some reason I can’t get him let me get him a decent notebook). But now, facing the scenario that the workstation might be off for a few more days, I also got the notebook running. I would’ve preferred to run Xubuntu there as well for consistency, but since the machine is too old, I even had to step even further down (prerequisite-wise) and use Lubuntu, which is running LXDE. Missing some features, but hey, it’s working. Now both machines are running and the workstation already has been „shipped“. Let’s see how that’ll work out. So far, my phone hasn’t been ringing.

And then, there was the Kelterplatzfest. A festival on a day with semi-bad weather forecast and the Champions League Final with a German team. Fat chance! I have to admit, though, I was expecting less people around. The weather wasn’t so bad and the square didn’t clear out at half past eight. But business wasn’t that good. Customers only coming once in a while, no rush demand. A tightrope walk between being an easy and being a boring assignment. My co-workers could spend a lot of time talking and smoking. Maybe I shold work on my bar mixing skills again and add cocktails to the menu next time.

So, in the end, I only had a few hours for myself on Sunday evening, which I spent playing Assassin’s Creed till 4am. Not a good choice for my timetable. Wait, that’s not entirely correct. I could also count cooking and eating as time for myself. Made some real nice pasta with chicken breast and a parsley-ginger sauce. I might do that again and post a recipe with pictures. The sauce also used some mascarpone and I got some good looking strawberries, so I even made dessert for a change, which was also great.

In other news, my knees are quite good so far. Will consider to start the stabilizing training soon.

Favourite quote: America fears the unshaven legs, the unshaven men’s cheeks, the aroma of perspiration, and the limp prick. Above all it fears the limp prick. – Walter Abish

Fitocracy points: 1,751 – Been busy at the end of the week and thus declared it a rest week.

Recap Week 2012-19

Not much to report. I’m a bit worried about my knees, though. Not really painful, but slightly hurting and creaking. Maybe I messed up somewhere with the squatting or the leg extensions I did for a few weeks hurt them and heavy squatting didn’t make it better. (I assume the later.) I’ll see what I can do about that. For starters I will rest the legs a bit, till they are okay again. Maybe I’m a bit too careful, but I don’t want to damage them, since I think I need my legs. I’ll post my recovery plan, once I wrote it down. But for some reason I guess it will include saying goodbye to my gains for a while.

And I’m a bit in a dilemma about my movie reviews. I write them in English for a wider readership (as if) and for practice. But the movies I review are usually already long out in the English speaking countries and are just about to be released in Germany. So I actually should write them in German, so they are not as out-dated and more suitable for the appropriate target group. Okay, I shouldn’t use the term „target group“, since I know not many people are even reading them. And if I would like to tackle that, I would need to set up several topic-oriented blogs, which would lead to several untended blogs and/or would kill too much time. Nah, I think I’ll just leave it like it is for now. Only reason to reconsider the language choice for the reviews would be some other place to write them for, like a newspaper or something. Which I won’t do I guess.

Favourite quotes: „Target goal: Leave a good looking corpse.“ (Goth girl on Fitocracy.); „Train like your stronger, fitter, evil-twin is plotting to kill you.“ (Also seen on Fitocracy.)
The last quote is interesting, since I tend to say that I am my own evil-twin, because of the beard.

Fitocracy points: 2874 – Resting the legs, just upper body and back exercises… if you don’t count the squat coaching I did on Tuesday for three guys in a row.

Recap Week 2012-17 & 18

The long weekend really threw me off. Missing Tuesdays training, was drowsy and not well enough prepared for Wednesday’s D&D session, didn’t write the movie review till Friday and also missed the recap (hence two weeks in one post).

But I got my new wardrobe on the last weekend, 4 weeks earlier than announced. Now I can put my cloths in there, instead of having them in three different rooms. That’ll free up some space to clutter up again.

I also posted my first movie reviews to IMDB, which can be read there. But of course that’s not necessary, since I also post them on this site.

Oh and on the long weekend, there was also the medival festival on Stettenfels. Has been nice, as always and I got myself a bunch of arrows. I really should take the time and finish my longbow, so I can disgrace myself participate in contests.

But of course I should also finish my scabbards and finally work with all the leather I gathered over the last two years. Then there was that soldering iron, I wanted to use to decorate some horns. And let’s not even think about the leather armour I wanted to make for sparring. (That protective jacket for fencing masters may be strong enough, but kills a lot of the agility I need for 3-dimensional fencing.) Well, I won’t get bored.

Favourite quote: I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world. – Muhammad Ali

Fitocracy points: Week 17: 2955 + lvl2 squat achievement + level-up to 28 – Not much time on Friday and Sunday, but still kinda good. Week 18: 2418 – No gym on Tuesday, but doing a bit more on Wednesday and on Sunday I only did One-Arm Push-ups. Oh yeah, I can do them now!

Recap Week 2012-16

I think I can now add baking to my skill list (even if just on a low level). Of course, a lot to improve, but after making cookies for Christmas, helping to bake a cake and glaze it (only mentioning the glazing, because it was a penguin and thus a bit more complicated) for New Year’s Eve, as well as baking one just by myself now, I think I can try to bake something now any time (quality of the results are open to speculations). I guess I have to dig out all those /fit/ baking recipies and give them a try.

Fitocracy points: 2973 [50 from quest] – My upper and lower heavy routines weren’t that good this week.

Zitat: Ballistische Experimente mit kristallinem H2O auf dem Areal der Pädagogischen Institutionen unterliegen striktester Prohibition! [Can’t really translate that quote well into English, so just in German this week.]

Recap Week 2012-15

You just want to do your car something good and take it to the car wash and what’s the reward: Car won’t start afterwards. Oh great. And what was the problem (after checking out more obvious things)? The ignition coil had a crack – again – and got wet. Thank you creepage current! Well, it’s been a few months since I had to work on my car, so of course it felt neglected.

Aside that, I can’t remember anything from that week, except my regular stuff, stuff I already posted and spending too much time at work. And I’ll have to focus a bit more on RPG not, since I’ll be the game master again. Oh sweet playing time, I’ll miss you. It’ll be a loooong time till we’re finished with that upcoming part(s).

Fitocracy points: 3051 + lvl2 deadlift achievement – Feeling way better again and training went mostly good.

In other news: 6-digit

Recap Week 2012-14

On the long easter weekend I’ve been trying some stuff in the kitchen again. One of the conclusions is, that asparagus shouldn’t be boiled in water, but rather in it’s own juice in the oven. Tastes so much better. Also, investing in meat thermometer has been worth the money, the roast beef I cooked was perfectly medium to well-done.

Sneak flick was a predictable, semi-funny German movie, which I didn’t watch to the end. Wrote a semi-review in German about Einer wie Bruno.

Favourite quote: Cursi, extuli, ostentavi. (I ran, I lifted, I posed/showed off.)
We were trying to find a quote similar to „Veni, vidi, vici.“ on Fitocracy. After some debating (none of us is really fluent in Latin), this is the result we got so far. Quite a bit with my own research and memory of that one year I took Latin in school.

Fitocracy points: 1179 – First real training after my sickness. I plan on going back to normal and breaking some personal records again this week.

Recap Week 2012 -13

Still being sick this week, thus not a lot to report. No sneak preview (looks like I missed The Grey), no training.

But I finally got around to play through the Special Edition of „The Secret of Monkey Island“ and starting the SE of „Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge“. I do like the remake of MI1, but the one of MI2 is really great. The graphics are way better and they included audio commentary by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Really enjoyable and enlightening. And very interesting that, even though I haven’t been playing these games for ages, I still can remember every solution… eventually. I wonder when I will find the time to play the rest of MI2. Maybe after that I could replay the other Monkey Island games. And maybe that’ll be even this year… yeah, as if.

Favourite quote: Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. – Jef Raskin

Fitocracy points: 55 [no real training this week, trying to recover]

Regarding this Blog: Well, I did post several older posts (more than I originally planned) and will probably also post some from the first blog, as well as the movie reviews I wrote years back. After that, I might do some SEO, just for the heck of it.