Tag: workout app

Vocals are Done

Last night before bed I added quick and dirty lyrics to two of the four outstanding songs. This morning, after exercising, I went out for some car music. I recorded the vocals for those two songs and then improvised a vocal part for a third song.

That’s it. I’m done with the vocals. I mentioned a few days ago that I was thinking of dropping songs before they are finished. That’s what I am doing with that last song. Song #3, if you must know. It’s just too crappy to continue. That’s going to leave me with 14 songs which, years ago, would have given me a complete FAWM. I don’t do FAWM anymore, but it’s still as good a goal as any, right?

The exercise this morning has a funny story to go along with it. Last month, thanks to walking for hours around Disney World, I doubled my 30 minute exercise goal nine times. This month, my Apple Watch activity app challenged me to do the same in February. On Friday I doubled it for the seventh time. That gave me four days to do it two more times. I had every intention of making yesterday the eighth but I failed miserably. This morning I decided to get it done right away and not leave anything up to chance. I ran for a full 60 minutes. I set a bunch of personal work out records on the various Watch apps. I need to do it one more time over the next two days. I mean… I feel pretty lame getting worked up about stuff this stupid but… there you have it.

Episode seven of The Last of Us airs tonight. Three more to go. The serious is stellar. Absolutely fantastic. The Mandalorian season three kicks off on Wednesday. I started watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 from the beginning the other day. As I am typing this I am eating breakfast and watching the first episode of The X-Files. I guess you could call it binge watching season now.

Back to music, but this time guitar gear, I have spent the last couple of years trying to find a suitable replacement for an overdrive pedal that I removed from my board because the designer/owner of the company that makes it is a racist piece of trash and I can’t in good conscience use his products anymore. I have two pedals that are damn close and I think I found another one that I want to try out. It’s a very small pedal builder somewhere in Canada called KO Amps. How much is 140 Canadian dollars in US dollars?

Okay. Let’s finish breakfast, let’s finish this episode of The X-Files, and then get some serious work down on the ol’ RPM Challenge. Three songs complete, between seven and 11 left to go.

179/365
179/365

Week 29 Weigh In

Hello my friends and loyal readers! Welcome to the official Week 29 Weigh In post!

It’s amazing how gun shy one less than impressive week has made me. It’s also amazing how stupidly unpredictable weight loss can be. Yesterday I stepped on the scale as soon as I got out of bed. I was down about two pounds since last Wednesday. I did not record my weight, I was just paranoid about having a bad weigh in this week so I snuck a peek early to get a glimpse into the future. The number was good, but not spectacular.

I did it again today, but this time it’s official. I got out of bed and stepped on the scale and I am down 4.2 pounds for the week. Wow! That means I lost about two pounds yesterday. How ridiculous is that? Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining at all. It’s just that losing two pounds yesterday implies that I could gain two pounds today. I need to stop stressing about this and just go back to one scale moment each week.

We’re in a state these days where three pounds a week feels epic. Now we hit four pounds and it’s like, Wow! I now weigh 263.6 pounds which seven months ago was absolutely unimaginable. I have lost 167.8 pounds since the surgery on May 4, 2022. I have lost 188.4 pounds since the first visit to the clinic on January 19, 2022. My BMI is down 0.5 points this week to 32.1. Like I said, ridiculous.

I was thinking of a sort of mini goal of seeing if I could hit 200 pounds overall by the time we go to Disney World on January 4, 2023. That’s only 11.6 more pounds. That’s an average of less than two pounds per week for six more weeks. That’s doable, but the real goal should be hitting 200 pounds by the anniversary of the first weigh in. That date is eight weeks from tomorrow. If I somehow manage to average 4.025 pounds per week for those eight weeks then I could hit 200 pounds since the surgery by that date. I’m not holding my breath on that though. Four pounds per week is not happening, despite hitting four pounds this week. We’ll see how close I can get.

My exercise routine got weird yesterday and it continued to today. I stopped at 30 minutes because my pace was all screwed up. The first mile was faster than eight minutes. I kept the pace consistent and the second mile pace was almost 20 minutes. It wasn’t that extreme today but it was just as dumb. I stopped at 30 minutes again, then watched the second half of Andor while eating breakfast and then ran for another 30 minutes. Same thing happened, but the two trots-in-place were enough to close my Move ring (calorie count) so I’ll take it.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Back in the pre-surgery diet days that would make tomorrow a massive cheat day. Not this time. Those days are over. I am going to have about four ounces of food and that’s it. Last night I had more than that for dinner because I was WAY behind on my protein goal and it made me sick. It wasn’t due to a mistake like eating too fast or not chewing enough (which are my two common mistakes), it was just because I was completely full and my new little stomach didn’t like that. So I am cutting myself off despite the holiday. Four ounces is all you get, Robert.

That doesn’t change the fact that Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday of the year though. I just love it. Food or no food. It’s almost time to punch into work, and the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally the slowest, most agonizing day of the year… so duck and cover, kids. Good luck to you all, and may you all have a happy Wednesday is Weigh In Day today.

Sweaty

You know something? Running in place for 45 minutes is a whole shit load more difficult than walking in place for 45 minutes.

I upped my workout settings from 40 minute indoor run to 45 minutes yesterday. The reason being that I wanted to guarantee I close my move ring, which counts calories, at the same time I close the exercise ring. The exercise goal is 30 minutes. I think we’re getting to the point where that needs to be increased to 60 minutes. I actually hit 60 minutes the last two days. Maybe December 1st. Maybe January 1st. We’ll see. My move/calorie goal is set to 1000 calories. I haven’t missed that goal in over 150 days. I think the time is coming to raise that goal too. Maybe raise it to 1500. I had it set to 1250 for a while last year. 2000 seems too high. 1500 might be a better challenge. January 1st. Maybe. Anyway, jogging in place for 40 minutes wasn’t getting me up to 1000 but it was getting me close. 45 minutes today gave me 1020. Perfect. We’ll stick with this setup for a while.

What else is going on? I still haven’t played the guitar since the end of September. I do have a couple of song ideas going for national solo album month though. I haven’t given up yet. I just need to find the time to play. The calluses on my left hand are gone, and there is something wrong with my left arm that is causing me a lot of pain. I don’t know what it is. I don’t remember doing anything to cause it. Is it tendonitis again? Last time that was in my left thumb. I don’t know. I haven’t been lifting the dumbbells since it started. Maybe I should? I don’t know. I don’t think it will stop me from playing, but we’ll find out at some point.

I started a time lapse video of a candle next to my desk today. I figured you all missed that stuff. You do, right? Wait… don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Let me remain deluded.

Okay. Time to go make breakfast. Assuming my post-running legs can still move.

Saturday Morning

I slept late today. I didn’t get up until almost 8:00am. The temperature outside at that time? 31 degrees. Shit. Winter is here.

I did my morning exercise before breakfast today. Over the last couple of weeks I have been walking in place for a bit then running in place for a bit and alternating until I hit about 5k in simulated distance. Yesterday I just ran the whole thing About 32 minutes, I think. Today I did the same except I actually used the indoor run workout in the workout app instead of the indoor walk setting. I went a little over my distance goal so that I could get up to 700 calories. I ended up at four miles (simulated). My feet and my calves are hurting, but I feel like I accomplished something.

The plan for today is another small kitchen improvement project, a visit to my mother, and a visit to my father. Beyond that, I don’t know for sure. Guitar, I hope. Bond movies, I assume. I want to watch yesterday’s That Pedal Show but the topic is a Boss pedal and I don’t really like Boss pedals, generally speaking.

I just stumbled over the new clock app in the new MacOS. I opened the clock on my phone and it came up on the laptop as a handoff. Sweet. Now I can track my time between bites on my computer instead of my phone.

I started a Bond movie while doing my faux running today. A View to a Kill. The last Roger Moore. It’s better than I remembered it, but it’s not very good. Christopher Walken as the bad guy. Can he play the bad guy in every Bond movie going forward? That would be fun.

I haven’t done my pick for the World Series post yet. Game one was last night. No spoilers on my pick, but the Phillies won and I am happy. I’ll do the real post later today. The UMass Lowell Riverhawks won too, and the Bruins are off to their best start in 10000 years at 8-1-0 after another win last night. I failed to watch/listen to either game, but I followed the scores as best I could. It was the first time I didn’t listen to at least a few minutes of either team’s game. Oh well.

Last night Jen and I both threw our names into the hat to be beta testers for Jack Dorsey’s new social network, Bluesky Social. Over the last year or so this page has been the only sort of social networking service that I’ve really been using. Actually, that isn’t entirely accurate. I stopped using Facebook and I’ve nearly stopped using Twitter, but I still use Flickr and lately I’ve been using the Flickr Groups more than normal and all of that counts as a social network. I have no idea what Bluesky Social is going to entail, but if it lets me thumb my nose at Musk and Twitter a little then sign me up.

Okay, time to wrap this post up. Bond and Tanya Roberts just stole a fire engine and jumped a draw bridge and that’s not cartoonish at all, right?

200%

While I was waiting for people to show up at my parents house in Tewksbury this morning, after taking all the pictures, I had nothing to do so I started doing my morning walkies. I had two minutes left to go in the 30 minute walk when the first person arrived. That put me in a bit of a pickle. My exercise ring was closed (I had a couple of minutes logged from walking up and down stairs) but I did not make the full 30 minutes. I’ve mentioned before that I have a bit of a streak of 30 minute workouts going.

Would today be the day that I break the streak?

Nope.

I started another 30 minutes in the 34 minutes before the start of my work shift. It wasn’t even 9:00am yet and my exercise ring was already over 200%. Now that is dedication for you. It’s also stupidity because now my legs feel like dead weight. Oh good!

Happy Friday, everyone!

Workout Streak

I think it was June 1st. That was the day I went nuts on my walking in place exercise and did the full 30 minutes in one shot. Every day since then I did the same. On 3-4 days I even pushed it to 45 minutes, but prior to today I was on a streak of 59 days doing a single workout of at least 30 minutes.

Today the streak was in jeopardy. I closed my 30 minute exercise ring without doing any specific workout at all. Most of it came from walking around Boston, but there were a few minutes from walking up and down the cellar stairs and from following my mother around the nursing home while wearing a mask.

The exercise ring was closed. I didn’t need to do any more. I could call it a day and consider it a win, right?

Wrong. Jen fell asleep around 10:00pm tonight. Harry got home from work at about the same time and camped himself in front of the tele to come down after a stressed out shift. I took the opportunity to go down to the cellar, pop on this week’s episode of That Pedal Show, and do my 30 minutes of walking in place.

Sure my 30 minute exercise ring is at 60 minutes. That’s cool and all, but the important thing is that the single 30 minute workout streak continues. 60 days down, effectively infinity to go! WOOHOO!

Distance and Social Media Stupid

Yesterday I used the Distance function on the Indoor Walk setting on the Apple Watch Workout app for the first time. It said my longest indoor walk was 3.20 miles so I set my distance at 3.20 miles and off I went.

Today I went to do it again. This time, however, the default distance it gave me was 3.21 miles. Well honk my hooter, it wants me to set a new record? Off I went. I did it. 3.21 miles of walking in place. It took 45:07 seconds. My legs feel battered and weak, but I will be okay after I rest up a bit. I haven’t had any protein yet today so I think I’ll need some breakfast soon, yeah?

I expected to get an award from the iPhone activity app for setting a new distance record. I did not. I am sad.

So I reblogged a couple of pictures from the new film-only-photos page I started last night. I don’t know how long that page will last. I’ll probably either get tired of maintaining two pages or I’ll just forget that it’s there and post everything here like I’ve been doing for almost 14 years. You know, habits and all.

What I didn’t mention is that I did the same thing with Instagram. I started a new account there too. I already forget the user name so I’ll cross post something later on so I’ll have a record of it. Forgive me for being lazy, I just faux walked five kilometers.

Anyway, I was sitting in the car last night, waiting for Jen and Bellana to come out of the airport. The attendant at the parking lot told us not to leave our car unattended. Otherwise I would have gone inside too. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll make that new Instagram right now. It was amazing how idiotic the process was. For example: I did all of the setup for the new account and then clicked the final “create” button and… I got an error message saying I could not create a new account at this time. What? I started over and went through it all again and when I hit create again it told me there was already an account for that email address. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before? Also, who hacked my email and started an account with it?* So I made a new email address and did the whole process again and it errored again! This time instead of clicking the create a new account link I just logged in with the email that had just failed and… It said I was locked out due to a violation of the terms of service, or some shit like that. What the hell? How could I have violated the TOS when I haven’t even logged in yet! Ugh. I disputed the accusation and all it asked me to do was do a captcha and a two-factor authentication and then I was in.

I mean… really? Assholes? I know you’re facebook and I know that facebook is the root of all evil, but give me a friggin’ break.

Whatever. Yet another social media account to lose the password to and never log into again. Probably.

*After the second failed account creation I realized that I wasn’t hacked and I didn’t already have an account for that email address. Instagram is just fucking stupid.

Here’s the new Instagram account: