Day One
You know the bathroom scene in some movies and tv shows, where water comes shooting up out of the back of the toilet? I always thought that was just cinematic exaggeration, bathroom hyperbole for comedic effect.
Yeah, I was wrong about that.
So I woke up this morning in a less than great mood, but I decided that I was going to be productive nonetheless. After all, it’s the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the liturgical year, and, despite my continued irritation at certain factors of mass last night, it was not the worst I’ve attended. The rest of the night went mostly downhill from there, but we’ll not get into that.
POINT BEING
I was going to get stuff done today. I did some cleaning and reorganizing, made a note to myself to remind my housemate that putting a water bottle on the coffee table isn’t a good idea when the home is occupied by two cats who regularly jump on there and sometimes get into fights with one another while doing so. Especially since all the remote controllers are on that table as well; a pint of water and electronic equipment are not the best combination.
Still, they seem to be functional.
I then took it upon myself to make some brunch- a good protein start to my week. Two eggs, some leftover chicken, sour cream, salsa, tortilla. I even put on another stereotypical Christmas movie while I ate. I told myself that, give it an hour after eating, then I can hit the gym, or maybe wait til the start of the Niners game and watch it from there. Either way, right? If I wanted, I could even start my free trial of Fubu so I could watch the game from home; I mean, Eagles-Niners, this is the game to watch, right?
While I pondered (weak and weary, over an unoriginal and forgettable volume of Christmas lore), I heard the upstairs toilet running. Odd. It had been a long while since I’d made use of the facilities; what was going on? So I stepped up to inspect.
I’ll spare the details, suffice to say that I took off the lid, and saw that the float was not rising all the way, thus continually pumping and draining water. I fiddled around with it, and the top of the fill valve came off.
It took me a moment to find the water shutoff; come on, I’ve lived here over four-and-a-half years and never had to use it before! By then, the geyser had completely soaked a towel, probably ruined a book, put about an eighth of an inch of water on the floor, as well as wasting an entire roll of paper towels and half a roll of toilet paper. And a notable spot on the bathroom ceiling.
Thankfully, experience teaches enough that, as I attempted to put that top back on, I thought, yeah, better idea would be to put the lid back on before I kick the water back on. Glad I did, as that gusher just kicked back in.
Third time’s the charm, I did finally get the top back on, the water’s not running anymore, and my bathroom floor has been mopped quite extensively. So there’s that. I imagine the carpet in the hallway will dry out, eventually.
So, instead of watching a cheesy Christmas flick and trying to recover whatever holiday mood I might be able to muster, I’m sitting in bed, attempting to not feel grossed out by that experience. I’m glad I ate first.
If you recall my recent addition of a new workout app, called Caliber, my first reviews are in. Every Sunday, at 3 am, Eastern, the app updates what it calls your strength score and strength balance. The former is fairly self-explanatory- just an objective assessment of your overall strength-, while the latter is a comparative assessment of the strength of different major muscle groups, in an effort to ensure that you are not overdeveloping one part to the detriment of the rest. Really, rather clever, that.
My scores were… not as pleasing as I’d expected.
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I was not expecting, for example, to still be bagging beginner status on my strength score. After all, I’ve been working out on a regular basis, and for a while now. Granted, I’m knocking on the door of intermediate, but I rather thought I’d be there already, if not well on my way to higher rating.
Frankly, this was, at first, discouraging. What have I been doing all this time?? Then I looked through the details and started to draw some conclusions.
My highest scores were on arms (not surprising, given I’ve been focusing on those) and back, but my lowest? Legs.
LEGS??
Come the fuck on! I can leg press three hundred pounds easily and repeatedly, I could crack walnuts with my calves! What the hell does this app think it’s pulling?? If there’s one part of my body that DOESN’T need work (really, the only part of my body that doesn’t), it’s my legs.
And thus, Sunday being my wild-card workout day, I will be focusing on upping those leg scores today. I’ll show that app.
I suppose the app has done well by me after all- it’s motivating me to push forward, to prove it wrong. My previous app would tell me what I did last time, but nothing like this; this thing keeps long-term records. This app wants to push me.
My scores as to my chest and shoulders could use some work as well, so I may also put a couple of focus points on those today, if I feel I can fit them in.
As always, my disclaimer persists- I am in no way associated with the company that owns this app, I make no money in any way from my reviews of it, and, to my knowledge, I have no personal connections, direct nor indirect, with anyone who is associated with that company.
That having been said, Caliber- it’s a free workout app, though there are apparently two levels of paid options as well, one for $19 a month, one for $200 a month. The lower level of paid has group coaching, the higher gives you one-on-one, but, honestly, unless you’re seriously in need or are that advanced that you require it, I’d stick with the free version. There are a lot of other bells and whistles, and, if you’d like, you can read a very good review of the app here.
You should know, in case I haven’t already said it in posts prior, that this is most certainly not an app to employ if your focus is solely cardio; this is a strength-training app. That having been said, if your focus has been mostly cardio before, I’d still advise checking it out; you never know, it might help you out in other ways.
I’ll keep you updated about the app and my progress with it. Still, it’s frustrating to see those scores.
So there’s the news. December continues to take its toll, but I’m continuing to try and find some good of it. Which leads me to my Advent goals from the last post.
Amid the disasters of the day, I am choosing to be thankful that I was able to fix the bathroom debacle, as I certainly can’t afford a plumber, and our landlord’s maintenance crew is understaffed and backlogged, so it’s a major relief to not have that hanging over me. And likewise I’m glad that it gave (or forced upon) me the opportunity to do some major cleaning in the bathroom. Likewise, I’m thankful that the disappointing current scores on my app have driven me to step up my workout game, and shown on which muscle groups I need to focus a workout or two. I’m also thankful that I believe I figured out a strange and disturbing noise my car was making; long story short, it was sounding like something was hitting my driver’s side door, and that kind of freaks you out, especially as I don’t have the money to get repairs done. I believe it’s just a thing with my automatic door lock; I can no longer lock the driver’s side remotely, which is kind of a pain, but is much more minor than it could have been.
As for the rest… meh. I’m waiting on a package that was supposed to arrive yesterday, or else waiting on the housemate to get home so there’ll at least be someone here when it comes. I’ve hung my wreath on the door, and that’s about as jolly as I plan on getting/being.
Also, for the education of the reader- the twelve days of Christmas do NOT start on the 13th! For starters, if they did start on the 13th, they’d end on the 24th, and that doesn’t really work. The twelve days of Christmas begin on Christmas, day 12 being the fifth of January, with Epiphany being the sixth.
Don’t even get me started.
