Competitive Success: VR

Saturday morning I found myself in a competition. This was a race to the finish line with some twists.

The race started in the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas from the low elevations up to the higher ones. I did rather well considering my past record of ability (or lack thereof) to run any distance without feeling it even at sea level. Anyway, by the time I got to the next portion of the race, I was third overall.

At this point, the race continued into a tower where we had to climb a ladder. I was unsure if I was to bring the tools I had with me or not so I asked. Luckily, I didn't have to take the pickaxe and shovel with me (they were heavy steel and that would have slowed me down). The race officials told me that I could put them in my car... yeah right, my car was at the bottom of the mountain so I just set them against the outside wall of the tower and ran back in to the ladder. While I was doing all this, I lost my position to another guy with black curly hair.

So I get back inside the tower and crawl into the compartment where the ladder was. This turned out to be some sort of piping/wiring trunk that went up to the next level some 100 feet up. I was fortunate that I still had enough energy so I climbed the entire distance just with my arms allowing my legs to rest limply underneath me. I think I did a personal best time on that climb as well.

The second level of the tower turned into a big warehouse space with boxes and stuff forming a sort of maze. By this time, I could see (but not see) two guys in front of me so I followed their trail making up time at a full run dodging through the course.

I finally come to a room that was at one side of the warehouse and could hear the scramble of the guys on the metal roof overhead. The trail, a white extension cord, led to a window so I jumped out and scrambled up to the roof with ease. The metal was pretty slippery and one misstep would have seen me slide off and fall the long distance to the ground. I navigated it superbly and made it to the top of the curved roof in no time flat.

The two guys were nowhere to be seen but I notice that there was an open skylight a ways off so I ran over and jumped through it. This put me back near the ladder that I had climbed up earlier. Great, I lost the trail. I start to look around for a direction to run and come to a room with monitors, computers, and people in it.

I walk up to Pamela Landy but before I can speak, she hands me a PLR-16 Pistol. Don’t ask me how I knew what it was since I’ve never seen that in real life; kinda scary actually that my subconscious knew though, and yes, it looked just like that in the dream (if you hadn't figured it out by now, this is a recount of a dream I had Saturday morning). Anyway, she hands the pistol to me and tells me that I am number two behind Mr. Architecture guy. It turns out that the room I happened upon was the start of the next stage of the competition and only the first two competitors to find it would move on to the final phase.

On the monitors were live and recorded camera feeds of some members of the mob. I was to locate Mr. Architecture guy and team up with him. The two of us would then hunt down and take out those members. How this was to result in one winner I don’t know because it’s at this point that I woke up (3:38 AM PST).

Now that was one exciting dream where I actually had an abundance of energy. Usually, I can barely run and stay ahead of danger but this time, I actively sought it out.

Fucked Up!

Here we are again! Frankly I’m starting to get a little pissed off about the whole thing. The weather is starting to turn around; hey, they are even predicting 71° tomorrow (that’s Fahrenheit not Celsius), I’m getting damn close to five days at the gym again, I even have a cool new Fossil watch to wear out and about, but what does this cheep knock off of a brain that rents out the space between my ears do? get down and depressed. BASTARD! KNOCK IT OFF!

It seems that the cycles are getting shorter and shorter where not a week goes by without feeling melancholy now. Summer is just around the corner and I cannot afford to get sick (depressed) again.

I was thinking of a way I could use this to my advantage. Normally, when I get down, I just sit at home and turn inwards… maybe I should “punish” myself with a long run every time I get down. At that rate, I’d be running almost everyday.

Unfortunately, the fitness issues are not the root cause and taking care of them is just treating the symptoms and not the disease. I still have not figured out what the disease is though.

Signs and Portents

This morning I experienced an unusual set of dreams; something I really don't recall having before. They started out as your run-of-the-mill dream but then moved into more of an Armageddon style. I'll pick it up there.

The setting was a city or town laid out similar to some European towns with steep narrow streets... we were at a gas station in some sort of SUV/mini van type car. My sister pointed out an interesting cloud formation so we all looked up. It was in the shape of a skeletal hand. Soon, more shapes appeared in the form of skulls. At first, we thought it was just a coincidental act of nature but then noticed that new puffs of cloud were being created as we watched (similar to when someone takes a drag on a cigarette and then blows out the smoke).

Anxiety starts to take hold of everyone just as a new form appears. This time, it was streams of smoke that divided into multiple branches, each one ending in a blue spark similar to a small firework. This started repeating itself all over the sky with the skulls continuing to appear in the background. Pretty weird eh?

Anyway, being the realist that I am, I get on my cell phone and start chatting with a friend analyzing what we were seeing and how it was really being done; in other words scientific, not spiritual. The only solution I can remember that we talked about was that it was holographic. All the while, I'm walking down one of the steep streets in the town with lots of other people in market booths, in doorways, or just milling about talking about the sky.

I finally come to a square that seemed to be at the edge of town with a view of Mt St Helens. It's then that I notice the volcano was about to erupt since its crater was entirely filled in as if a bubble of magma had pushed up the crater floor to its original, pre-1980 eruption height. Soon the bubble burst and flung rocks, lava, and ash into the sky.

I knew I was dead since we were too close and rocks were falling all around us so I just stood and watched debating on whether I should film it with my cell phone camera. It's then that I noticed some of the rocks were alive and had loosely formed monstrous humanoid shapes, all walking around...

...beep, beep, beep went my alarm clock.

Fashionably Gay Shoes

You've heard of a bad hair day? Lord knows, I've had my share. But have you ever heard of a bad clothes day? If one exists, it happened to me today.

After showering at the gym, I put my clothes on and started to fuss with my hair in the mirror. This is the point where I notice one of my sleeves (it was a short sleeved Polo shirt) had several large holes between the trim and the rest of the sleeve. Yikes, how tacky.

I did my best as a typical guy and put tape on the inside to close it up as best I could. During my lunch break, I went shopping at Nordstrom where I found a nice replacement shirt. But wait one minute, this shirt was nice enough that it no longer went with the black tennis shoes I was wearing (yes, my sense of fashion is rather lacking most of the time). Well, now I had to upgrade my shoes. I finally found a pair at Macys that I liked.

With bags in hand, I walked back to work thinking about other combination of clothes that I could wear. Suddenly, I noticed that I was thinking I had to get a pair of shoes to fit this outfit, and another to fit that outfit.... WHAA!!! Since when am I interested in shoes?!

Oh my god, I'm turning gay... oh, never mind.

Battlestar Galactica The Last Supper

Alright, this is WAY cool! The SciFi Channel has this picture on its site. Even though Season 3 was rather lacking, I am looking forward to the last season. We'll see how it goes.

Early Morning Success

Enough of this kicking myself when I'm down; it's time to point out a bright spot in an otherwise gray bit of posts.

Friday, I had a conference call that started at 7:30 in the morning. Normally, I am on the bus heading to the gym at that time, still over an hour away from actually going to work. Well, determination won out and I made it to the gym at 6:15. I bet you noticed that the universe came to a complete halt on Friday. That's because the universe was totally in awe at my early morning waking and couldn’t stop staring. *grin*

See, not everything is bad, I just find it easier to bitch about the bad stuff than compliment myself on the good (yes, I was raised religious; original sin and all that guilt).

Talk Is Way Too Cheap

All that talk about the weeks conspiring to keep me from the gym and what do I do? Sleep in this morning. Bah! I think my momentum is definitely slowing way down.

It's been a relatively good past 6 months but now I'm not seeing any changes. I appear to have plateaued in recent weeks. In fact, to me, it seems that old Michelin around my waist is actually getting larger; so much for a six pack. All this is combines to suck the enthusiasm out of the whole exercise thing and threatens to usher in an onslaught of depression.

Not to be left out, I discovered my brain has concocted an additional lovely disorder designed to compliment the plateau. It seems that guys I’m interesting in don’t even see me; they are looking at the other guy. Where’s my cross?

Yup, you read right. Somehow, in my twisted screwed up brain, I think that just because I’ve gone from 220 lbs down to 200 lbs and increased the size of my biceps, guys should immediately be falling all over themselves asking me out on dates.

I think it’s time to go look into electroshock therapy.

Silly Rat, Crunches Are For Abdominals

It seems that every week conspires to keep me at only four days in the gym. This week was no different.

It all started last Friday when I was working legs at the gym. I pulled some weight off the rack and start to do straight leg deadlifts since these offer a great stretched position for the hamstrings... well, on my second rep, I noticed my form was all wrong and I was actually curling my back on the lift (think the part of an abdominal crunch where you lower your neck and shoulder blades back to the floor again; only standing). OK, fine, I noted it and continued with the determination to fix the bad form on the next rep. You'd think I'd listen to myself after all this time, but "no," what do I do but repeat the same bad form.

I knew it didn't bode well for me. Sure enough, Saturday, my back told me in no uncertain terms that it quit; nice sharp pain in the mid part. After icing it all weekend, the muscles figured they had punished me enough and stopped their little jihad.

Just to be safe, I gave myself another day off to let the muscles fully forget that I was not nice to them... today was the first day back.

Note to self: Remember the notes to self.

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. "

- Helen Keller

Shadow In Shadow by Alex Mukensnable

This is an awesome view of the lunar eclipse as seen from Hawai'i within the shadow cast by Mauna Kea on the distant atmosphere. I found it on Astronomy Picture of the Day.

And the full movie from Alex's site. Very nice.

Shadow In Shadow from Alex Mukensnable on Vimeo.