40g of Protein in a Bottle

So, yesterday after my swim workout, I got on the scale in the locker room and it said I weigh 135 pounds! That's at LEAST 10 pounds TOO light. I told Glenn. He suggested that I might have worms. Kind of scary to think about. Parasites devouring my body mass.

Good news: Today Glenn reminded me that the scale in the locker room is off...it says different things if you stand on the front or the back or wherever else. I bought a scale today. Much to my relief, I weigh 150 lbs. That notwithstanding, I bought some protein powder to supplement my daily caloric intake. It seems like I just can't eat enough. Dude at GNC told me I should take 3 shakes daily. I spent a couple extra bucks and bought stuff that doesn't taste like red-hot monkey anus.

I'm not trying to bulk up, but if I could get 5 more pounds, I don't even care if they come before the triathlon.

Party @ My Place

It's going down, March 24th, 9pm until the wee hours of March 25th.

Come represent your favorite foreign country by bringing food or drink (or both) from that country to my house. Preferably, wear something that is typical of a group of people from that country.

Pick #13

Clipse - "Gangsta Lean" off the Lord Willin' album. Star Track, Star Track...

Good flow, tight beat, catchy hook...

Rapping About Steel Reserve

Clipse's song "Famlay Freestyle" makes reference to Steel Reserve. The lyric is:
This shit is like 2-11 mixed wit coke.

...Why would you mix Steel Reserve with anything? As if it needed help with the flavor....ppssshhh

Doin' Things

I less than three to do stuff.

Pick #12

The June Spirit - Prologue off of the Testing Superstition album.

Early to Bed

At the beginning of this week, I was sick. As such, I needed my rest. Since I have early classes, that means that I had to go to bed early. I've kept going to bed at unreasonably early hours (before 11:30, 10:30 even). It is nice to wake up in the morning after getting roughly 8 hours of sleep and to proceed through the day without wanting to fall asleep in class.

I might try to delude myself into thinking that I can continue this early to bed thing as a course of habit, but I know otherwise. All it will take is one late night to throw the whole thing out of whack and I'm back to being a night owl.

...but the cool thing about being really tired is that you can lay down and be in the middle of REM sleep within 15 minutes! (I know because my alarm woke me up in the middle of a powernap-dream).

(so, if you've tried to call me later on, I haven't been ignoring you...I've been asleep).

B&W Photos

I was talking to Sarah a couple days ago about black & white photos & why people like them. I think that maybe it's because they are able to represent the world in a way in which you can't see it.

For most color pictures, you can stand in the same place as the lens of the camera and see the same thing (assuming that it's not a picture of a dynamic setting). But, since we don't have b/w vision, we can never visually replicate the scene of a b/w photo. It makes the image simpler and perhaps more appealing.

Personally, I like b/w, but not in all contexts. I mean, a bunch of stuff is better in color.

Pick #11

Amos Lee's song, Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight, off his self-titled album is this week's pick. It's hard to pick just a single song off that album...you should listen to it in its entirety...but you can start with this one, just insert disc and press play.

Splashes

Warning: talk of excrement in this post.

I hate it when my pee splashes out of the toilet. Actually, I don't know if it's the pee or if the force of the stream causes water to splash out of the bowl. Either way, it's a little gross when it comes out & lands on you. Not as bad when it lands on the rim of the toilet. I wish I could figure out how to keep my pee from making splashes, but nothing seems to work. You can aim for the middle of the water or the sides or back of the bowl above the water level. You can impart extra force or try to pee slowly. Nothing consistently works.

What's even worse is when this happens at a urinal. As if a public toilet wasn't bad enough, you get some serious splashback off of a urinal's porcelain sometimes. One solution to this is sometimes feasible...stand back farther, out of the splash range...but you can't always do that. Sometimes, I think urinals splash less if you aim for the small pool of water in the bottom.

Maybe even grosser than the pee splash is the poop splash. Especially if the water is already a bit soiled. I think the poop splash is worse because the volume of water in the splash is larger...and it's more likely to have non-pristine water when you get a poop splash than a pee splash.

If anyone has a splash-stopping trick that they think works consistently, let me know about it. Stay dry.

Sick

one of my least favorite things is being sick. but i guess it's better to be moderately sick instead of bed-ridden. still no fun. it could always be worse. having someone to take care of you makes you feel a little better. i don't have that.

Immodium

Ever take more than the recommended dose of Immodium AD only to be frustrated 3 days later when you can't squeeze one out? Oh, Ecuador!

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

Ben Franklin said that a penny saved is a penny earned. When I was in school, I was taught that this meant that putting money in your piggy bank was earning money...or perhaps your bank account, where the money would accrue interest. Just like a lot of things they teach you in school, I decided that this was a load of crap upon later reflection. What Benji was actually telling us became apparent after I spent some time in outdoor markets where items don't have UPCs. Ben meant that if you can lower the price of an item through negotiation, then you have earned the extra consumer surplus as a result of the lower price. Maybe this has been lost on us because of the radical differences in market structure in America between the 21st century and the 18th.

Swahili

For a while now (about a year and a half), I have been thinking about picking up a third language. For the past year, I have narrowed it down with Swahili being always on top of the list. Yesterday, I decided to make Kaswahili (what Swahili is called in Swahili...like español) my 3rd language.

Jack helped me make the decision. He speaks at the very least: English, Spanish, Swahili, and Mandarin. He said that Swahili is relatively easy to learn if you know Spanish. Today, Mkunde gave me a "teach youself Swahili" book. It's not a phrase book, but more like an introductory text. Lots of examples. I read the intro tonight. Rock.

Time Flies

I have been finding that time starts to fly the second I take my eyes off a clock. Tonight, I looked at my watch and it was 10:30. Next thing I know, BAM!, it's 12:15. What was I doing? Economics. Normally they say that time flies when you're having fun. I haven't even been having fun when the hands accelerate around the clock. Maybe it's because I've been wearing long sleeves and my temporal vigilance is impaired...who knows...

They say a watched pot never boils (but it does when its vapor pressure equals the atmospheric vapor pressure). I've never heard anybody talk about the opposite end of that saying, maybe it's implicit. I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes on the time.

Normally I wouldn't mind time getting away from me (not like I can control it), but I've been meaning to get in bed earlier when I have 8am and 9am classes. Sorry about the rambling, but my brain thinks it's late now.

Pick #10

Ben Kweller - "In Other Words" off the Sha Sha album. I mean, how great is it that he says that butterflies are passive aggressive??

Triathlon

People have always told me that I should do a triathlon. They didn't know what they were talking about. Although I was a decent runner, I was a slow, if not inept, swimmer. Not to mention that I had NEVER been on a road bike, let alone possess the kind of bike-strength needed to do one of those 3-event races.

Recently, all that has changed. I've been riding my bike to school every day and using it to ride trails on the weekends (sometimes). I learned how to swim in college (I mean, I learned how not to drown when I was a child, but I mean swimming for distance/time without mask & snorkel or flippers). I started going to the school pool this semester, swimming once a week for an hour.

My neighbor behind me told me that there's a triathlon put on by a local running group. I looked it up, and it's a "sprint" triathlon. You swim 1/3 of a mile, bike 16 miles and run 3.107 miles. I can totally do that. The worst part is going to be the swim in COLD water...the race website recommends wearing a wetsuit!!! That and the entry fee is $55.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to this new thing to do in my life. I'm working on the swimming end of it. The rest should be fine. Last week, I timed a 600m (roughly 1/3 of a mile) at 12:44. We'll see what kind of progress I can make before the race starts. I'm not going to even try to place in my age group or anything, I'm just doing this race to finish it (and for the experience).