NFL running back Adrian Peterson is it top physical form. His body fat has been reported by Kevin Seifert of ESPN as being 6%. He is shown mostly naked in many commercials – he is TOTALLY flipping ripped.
His Body Mass Index (BMI) is 28.6! That means he is overweight and on the verge of obesity! Yeah right! That is total bullshit.
Regarding BMI (from wikipedia):
It was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet during the course of developing "social physics".[1] Body mass index is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of his or her height.
1830 to 1850?? What the FUCK? We still use this archaic tool? Bloodletting, blistering and purging were common medical practices in the mid 1800s. Do we still think those are great ideas? NO!! Okay some fringe alternative medicine practitioners think bloodletting and leeching is still cool but you can keep those blood sucking parasites the hell away from me (both the docs and leeches!)!
It is confusing because most “trusted” medical establishments are guilty. Yes *gasp* even the US government is guilty:
Our healthcare professionals have NO idea what they are talking about when it comes to BMI. None.
''I think BMI is a very good and easy screening tool,'' says obesity expert, Cathy Nonas, MS, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.
Cathy – you should be stripped of your titles and fired. Then taken out back and shot. Really? What part of BMI is “a very good” … “screening tool?” It is SO “very good” that if Adrian Peterson walked into your office in a baggy sweatshirt and asked for dietary advice you’d tell him that he is nearly obese and that he needs to lose a lot weight, right? Why? Because you are TOO lazy to really pay attention to your patients. Too lazy to have their percent body fat tested accurately. Since when did it become okay to be lazy?
Even worse, when did it become okay for our medical professionals to become lazy?
I propose that standing in front of the mirror naked is a BETTER tool for assessing your fitness level than BMI. If you like what you see then wow you probably are not obese. If you don’t like what you see then get off the couch and do something about it!
Then if you want a truly accurate assessment of your body composition get your % body fat tested at a local BodPod! A test that was invented somewhere AFTER the medical dark ages!
In starting this new contest I’m trying to decide how to best invest my fitness dollars. On one level this seems so simple – I know the formula very well, just eat less and exercise more! I’ve lost seventy pounds by doing this so I know it works. It is simple. Almost too simple. Problem is that I’ve hit a plateau and actually gained back some weight. It ends here. It ends now. I will focus.
So it may very well be that I don’t have to spend any money above and beyond the gym membership, healthy food and supplements! I do feel like I need something this time though, something to kick me in the ass (besides the contest). I want to make sure I don’t gain any more, lose focus or plateau again.
In addition this time I really want to get down to a weight that I haven’t seen since I don’t know when… maybe 25 years? I really want to get my body fat down lower than it probably ever has been. I also want to do something I’ve never done nor felt fit enough to do. Race bikes. I can’t decide if I want to race track or mountain bikes. I honestly think I’m too big (tall, upper body, etc.) to race at any level on the road – hell I hope I can prove that statement wrong but in any case I think I’d like to start on the track.
So knowing that I want to raise my game higher than I ever have, knowing that I want to push myself harder than I ever have… I feel I may need help to achieve my goals.
Here’s what I’m thinking about investing in to help me reach my goals :
- Cycling coach – I’m seriously looking at Carmichael Training Systems (CTS) and Lofgran Coaching.
- New commuter bicycle – nothing in my current stable (of 6 bikes) would make a great commuter bicycle. I’m looking at something like the Trek Portland. Another option would be to build out my old 1984 Trek 610 as a commuter.
- Spinervals DVDs – wow there are so many choices! Over 30 DVDs… Yes I could spend a small fortune on these training aids! Of course CTS offers DVDs too. And These offerings from Saris also look pretty cool.
- PowerTap power meter– most dedicated cyclists swear by power meters. If I sign up for a year of CTS training I get a “great deal” on a PowerTap apparently – of course I have to call to find out what kind of “deal” I get.
Well there you have it. Boring post I know but I wanted to get some of these ideas typed and out of my head.
No idea what I’ll spend my money on, if anything but at the very least I’m sure I’ll buy some training DVDs to use while I ride my bike on my trainer – the daylight hours are too scarce to ride outside after about 5PM in Washington. I’m really tempted to pay for professional coaching – but the coach could turn into just another person that I ignore!
I hate to call what we’re doing “The Biggest Loser” because it seems whenever two or more people decide to lose weight and get healthy it becomes a Biggest Loser contest. One problem with a Biggest Loser style contest is that it favors people who are massively overweight. No one at Benchmark Plus is massively overweight and some people here are even in darned good shape! We wanted a way to involve everyone even the healthy folks. Here’s what we came up with.
The contest will run for one year. Each participant puts in $1200. At the start of the competition and each quarter each participant has their body fat percentage checked in a BodPod. The winner of the quarter is the person who has lost the highest % of body fat %. Confusing? Okay here is an example:
Beginning of contest:
- Steve is 25% BF
- Jeremy is 20% BF
End of First quarter:
- Steve is 20% BF
- Jeremy is 15% BF
Both competitors lost 5% body fat but Jeremy wins because he lost 25% of his total body fat whereas Steve only lost 20% of his total body fat.
Clear as mud now? Thought so! A winner declared for each quarter and that person wins 1/4 of the money in the pot but the contest does NOT reset every quarter so if you do amazing in the first quarter you are not punished.
Here are my stats from my test today:
Weight: 260.4
Body Fat: 25.4%
Interestingly I’ve used a Tanita scale that measures weight and body fat for almost four years now. I’ve always wondered how accurate the scale is… well I’m happy to report that this morning my scale read: 260.0 and 25.2% body fat. Not too bad. It will be interesting to see if it maintains it’s accuracy as I drop BF%.
I’m sure I’ll blog more in the coming months about health and exercise. I’m excited to start this contest now… hopefully it will keep me motivated through the winter!
How can you so easily lie to me?
Do you think I can’t tell?
Do you think I can’t smell?
How can you tell me that you are doing so great
when you’re obviously not keeping your promise?
You are so perfect when you away from your addiction
and so different when your addiction owns you.
I love you so much.
I know you so well.
Do you really think I can’t tell?
In Part I of this series I explained how my apartment was burglarized and how my first attempt to secure the place fell short for me in a few areas. I stated three goals that I had for the future:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my alarm and video surveillance systems.
In this post I’ll show you what I’m doing to fulfill the first of my goals, creating a backup strategy for all of my data. Sounds boring and well it probably is but honestly this took a lot of thought, research and work. I hope I’m covered – if anyone sees any holes in my process or has any suggestions please leave a comment!
I was REALLY lucky that the thieves didn’t take my Windows Home Serve (WHS) because I didn’t have a backup strategy. Yes I KNOW! I would have lost all of my digital pictures and home videos. I shudder to think about it. Makes me almost sick to my stomach. The losers DID take my laptop but I already use Windows Live Mesh to sync my documents between my computers (laptop, home desktop and work desktop) so I didn’t really lose anything on the laptop.
I have even more reason now to make sure my WHS is backed up offsite and in (close to) real-time. My video surveillance software, Blue Iris, records directly to my WHS. I was having a very hard time keeping everything straight in my head so I started of with a simple diagram:
Lets see if I can explain what I’m doing without writing a novel then go into more detail about each piece below: My documents are synchronized between my three main machines and my Live Desktop via Live Mesh. My home computers al all backed up (complete images) to my WHS. My work computer is backed up nightly to a WHS at work. My media (photos, home videos, music) are backed up to KeepVault Online from my WHS. My media and computer backups are also backed up to a rotating backup disk that I move to work once per month.
A little more detail about each piece of the puzzle:
Live Mesh
Awesome service. Keeps my documents synchronized in near real-time between my laptop, home desktop and work machines. I love being able to save a doc at work then come home and open it and work on it. No emailing work back and forth. It just works. If I have one complaint is that on occasion the “Mesh Operating Environment” or MOE process takes up quite a bit of processor cycles. This seems to become less of a problem lately – so maybe Microsoft has been working on the issue? Be warned that Mesh is NOT a backup solution. If you delete a file from one machine… POOF it vanishes from all of the machines that are syncing to that file AND it’s gone from your Live Desktop. Mesh is part of my backup strategy but only in that it syncs my documents on all my machines and allows the other pieces of the strategy to work effectively. In case I do accidentally delete a file and Live Mesh does it’s duty and kiss it everywhere I have several options to recover that file such as ShadowCopy and my mightly WHS backups. Mostly though Live Mesh provides an immediate fail safe in case one machine (or hard drive) dies, gets stolen or burns up in a fire.
WHS Computer Backup
My Windows Home Server backs up all of my home machines every night. WHS computer backups have saved many people’s asses… including mine when a hard drives in both my home desktop machine and my laptop died. Recovery was simple and painless. In addition the WHS backups allow EASY upgrades to new hard drives. Remove old drive, insert new drive, recover the backup to new drive. (No the drives do not need to be the same size.) Done! To augment the WHS backups I use a WHS add-in called WHS Backup Database Backup (BDBB) to backup my computer backups to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly).
Keep Vault
As of this writing KeepVault seems to be the only online backup service that officially supports Windows Home Server. I signed up for 100GB of online storage for $99 per year. Cheap really - $8.25 per month - skipping a couple lattes would cover the cost and the peace of mind it gives me is WELL worth it. I use the KeepVault WHS Add-In to backup my media (pictures, music, home videos) and surveillance videos directly from my home server. I also use KeepVault to backup my media to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly). Keepvault encrypts and compresses all information that is backed up to the cloud and to the external drive.
External Hard Drive
I have an external SATA –> USB hard drive dock (a Thermaltake BlacX Duet) connected to my Windows Home Server. I drop an extra hard drive in one of the slots and let KeepVault take over. The KeepVault WHS add-in has a tab for local backups… so I point it at this removable drive and let it do the work of backing up all of my media and WHS BDBB backups to the external drive. I have an reoccurring Google calendar item to remind me to swap out the hard drive once per month. Right now I move them to my work office (which is about 20 miles from home). I am considering a safe deposit box for more secure storage.
So there you have it my personal backup strategy! I’d love to hear any comments of criticisms!
As some of you may know my apartment was burglarized a few months ago. It really sucked to come home after a long day at work to find a hole in the wall where my TV used to be. A slew of things were taken, obviously chosen by a group of individuals with the mental capacity of 12-year olds – as in take the time to rip the TV off the wall and pack up the XBox 360 controllers but leave the Denon receiver and speakers! I guess I should feel lucky that more of my stuff wasn’t taken but somehow I can’t get over the inefficiency of these morons!
I have great insurance so at this point most of my things have been replaced. The one thing that you can’t really replace is your sense of security. I felt so violated and I am SO mad at these idiots who are too lazy to get a job and work for their money. I hope they are rotting in prison somewhere.
I did realize that I was pretty vulnerable so the very next day I started researching backup strategies, security systems and video surveillance systems. If these bastards come back I want to be protected and IF they come in I want to be able to give the police some good video! Okay really I’d rather just deter them from coming into my place at all… I bet the stickers that came with the security system will take care of that all on their own! I suspect that I could have saved myself some money and bought just the stickers!
Being the geek that I am (no, you don’t say, Steve? Really?) I knew I could leverage the computing power in my home for the video surveillance portion of the project and in the back of my mind I wanted to integrate my computers, alarm system and cameras together to be able to monitor the status of my humble little apartment across the inter-tubes.
After extensive research and some thought about what price point would be appropriate (Let me explain the “price point" comment – in my opinion it would not be worth spending thousands of dollars on security equipment when in reality my insurance is my real security blanket and safety net. Sure, some things can not be replaced but I’ll take measures to ensure those things are safe. In reality my apartment is fairly small and after my 
divorce I really don’t have that much stuff anyway so I want to be protected but not at ANY cost.) I finally decided on the GE Simon XT Home Security System for the base alarm. It is VERY simple to setup and use. It is wireless which in the alarm world means that of the sensors are wireless and it allows you to arm and disarm the system from a key fob remote much like a car alarm! A wireless alarm was extremely important to me since this is just an apartment I’m renting – no way can I drill holes and modify the place to run wires!
Once the alarm was ordered I switched my research to the video surveillance system. I really considered the WiLife system from Logitech but decided that it was 01) a bit too pricey 10) the cameras are HUGE! 11) it is too limited and proprietary for my tastes. After much deliberation I finally decided on the Blue Iris Video Security and WebCam Software yes it after some initial research it seemed like the right decision to pick the cam software before picking the cameras themselves.
Surprisingly this is a fairly small market. Blue Iris is the best that I tested and it works with almost every IP and webcam available (or ever made!). This was important to me because technology advances at such a rapid pace that I want to be free to chose a different camera next year or three years from now when I expand the system (Blue Iris supports up to 25 cameras). One feature I really wanted was for the camera software to email and text message me when any of the cameras detected movement since I could not find an alarm in my price point that could email or text. Blue Iris does this and a lot more. Setting up the software took a bit of work but all-in-all it wasn’t too complicated and now it is running very smoothly on my main office PC. Eventually I plan to build up a “security” computer solely for the task of running the surveillance software but for now running it on my main PC is not too painful. If anyone would like me to do a full review of the Blue Iris software, comment away!
Once I decided on the software picking the cameras was a breeze… I went to Best Buy *shudders* and bought two D-Link DCS-920 Wireless G Cameras because they were on sale. It was nice to not be locked into any one brand or any one technology. I am fairly impressed with these cameras but when I want to expand I’ll look at all brands and options for the best price-point.
So finally I’m getting to the good part of this post… or not because as it turns out this will be a series of posts. I’ve had this basic security setup working for the past few months and while I’m generally happy with it I’m not COMPLETELY happy… the biggest issue is that the alarm and cameras are not linked together as a whole system. The keyfob remote arms and disarms the alarm system it does not automatically start and stop the video surveillance – so every time I leave I have to go into my home office and start the video software and every time I get home I have to go into my home office and stop it, getting text message warnings along the way since I cross paths with a couple cameras on the way to my office.
I really have three goals to accomplish before I’ll be happy with my system:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data - from my computers and my WHS.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my systems so that when I arm my alarm system my video surveillance system becomes active and when I disarm my alarm the video surveillance stops. Seems like a simple request but since the systems are separate and dissimilar how will I get this to work? Stay tuned to find out!
A fourth goal that isn’t really necessary is building the aforementioned video surveillance computer to take the burden off of my main office computer. This is an extra-credit project and I don’t plan on accomplishing it any time soon.
I know you will find it hard to believe that my Windows Home Server (WHS) was running out of space since it has 3 terabytes of disk space which equates to about 2.73 TB of usable disk space. One day when perusing 
my WHS console I saw a scary sight… I realized that I was using over 2.5 terabytes of space or 92% of the usable space on my Home Server. Time to panic! Almost no room for error here! I was not happy with myself that I let my server get to this point but I took some solace in the fact that it is very easy to expand the server with external SATA (eSATA) or external USB drives.
I talked in my previous post about hard drive space about expanding my WHS with a four bay eSATA enclosure. I decided to bite the bullet and go that route. Even though it is fairly straight forward to remove a drive from the WHS pool to add a larger drive I was afraid that with my current capacity issues that none of the drives could safely be removed (since the data on a drive need to be moved to other drives in the pool),
I purchased a SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID TR4M-B 4 Bay SATA to eSATA enclosure for $169.99 – this is a nice inexpensive eSATA port multiplier unit that seemed to get descent reviews on NewEgg.
The next decision was the size of the hard drive to put in the enclosure. With the price of 1TB drives dipping below $80 and 2TB drives still tipping the scale at about $219 -- from a pure $/TB value the 1TB drives win. I weighed the $/TB value against the value of having double the space in one drive bay leaving me with 3 bays open for future expansion and decided to go for the 2TB drive, specifically the Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB drive – green uses a bit less power and runs cooler something that I thought might come into importance in the future in my inexpensive 4-drive enclosure.
Install and setup was simple and very quick. Take case off enclosure, insert drive, put case lid back on, plug into power, plug eSATA cable into enclosure and the back of my WHS, open a WHS console, add the new drive to the pool. Finished. I was honestly done in 15 minutes.
The next issue I had was that WHS didn’t seem to be balancing or evenly distributing the data across my drives. So even though I had added 66% more storage space three of my older drives were still at 97% capacity. Is this bad? I don’t really know – but I do know that it feels wrong. Even after a couple weeks of nightly “balancing” the same problem was holding true. The new 2TB drive was not being utilized. I found a WHS utility called Drive Balancer that seems to address this problem (or perceived problem).
My WHS is much happier now and so am I!
I mentioned that I was going to try to program a Monty Hall Problem simulator in my post yesterday entitled Losing My Marbles well it turns out that this is REALLY lame. Why? Well it is simple, there really isn’t much to it once you know the mechanics.
Pseudo Code:
Testing “always switch”:
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# where the car is hidden. Call this CarBehindDoor.
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# the contestant picked. Call this ContestantChoiceDoor.
- if CarBehindDoor = ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant loses and we add one to LossCount.
- If CarBehindDoor != ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant wins and we add one to WinCount.
- Go back to 1 (loop).
Testing “always stay”:
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# where the car is hidden. Call this CarBehindDoor.
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# the contestant picked. Call this ContestantChoiceDoor.
- if CarBehindDoor = ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant wins and we add one to WinCount.
- If CarBehindDoor != ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant loses and we add one to LossCount.
- Go back to 1 (loop).
Once this is written… it is painfully obvious that “Always Stay” results in a win 33% of the time and that “Always Switch” results in a win 66% of the time. *sigh* and I thought this would be a fun thing to write.
On a sad note I still wrote the test application and here are the results of a run of 100 million tests of “Always Switch”:
Wins: 66,667,053 Losses: 33,332,947
I was talking to my girlfriend, IrishGirl (@irishgirl31 on Twitter), about the now famous (or is it infamous?) Monty Hall problem:
Contestants on a game show are given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. After a contestant picks a door, the show’s host, who knows what's behind all the doors, opens one of the previously unopened doors, which reveals a goat. He then asks the contestant, "Do you want to switch doors?" Should the contestant switch doors?
If you haven’t heard about it or read about it you should, Jeff Atwood has a great overview or go to the source Marilyn vos Savant -- wow I bet a lot of those PhDs and math professors wish she’d take down their quotes! Wouldn’t it be fun to take a class from James Rauff, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics at Millikin University who said:
I have been a faithful reader of your column, and I have not, until now, had any reason to doubt you. However, in this matter (for which I do have expertise), your answer is clearly at odds with the truth.
and just heckle the hell out of him for being totally WRONG about this? Okay I shouldn’t pick on James… the exalted Paul Erdos didn’t believe the right answer either until a colleague wrote a computer simulation to prove it to him (Hmmm… that sounds fun actually, I think I might write a computer simulation in my spare time tonight).
To me the whole issue is an amazing study in how poor humans really are at understanding probabilities. Casinos know this fact VERY well and I’m sure this human flaw is a major reason casinos do so well, even in a down economy. People throw good money over bad in hope that the odds are NOW magically in their favor! Sorry chump doesn’t work that way!
Anyway I didn’t want this post to be a re-re-re-rehash of the original problem I really just wanted to say that it was a very nice intellectual conversation working through the Monty Hall problem with IrishGirl… because as I’ve learned you can’t truly explain something to someone else if you don’t fully understand it yourself. It took about fifteen minutes to convince her that you should ALWAYS change your initial choice after the host reveals the goat. Always. You will win 66% of the time if you switch and only 33% of the time if you don’t. Hurts the brain, huh?
All of this talk reminded me of how much I truly enjoy problem solving, logic, probability and statistics. I’m not very good at any of those things but I do enjoy having my mind bent on occasion. I’m not sure why but this simple logic problem has always stuck in my head. Yes I was actually asked this question back in the early ‘90s when I interviewed at Microsoft (it was a series of 6 hour long interviews to go from being an “a-“ to a “blue badge”). The answer is very simple but it makes you think a bit and you don’t need to draw a chart to solve it - and I guess that’s why I like it.
There are three sets of marbles: all white, all black, and mixed white & black
There are three velvet bags (think Crown Royal – as in you cannot see through them)
Each bag has a label attached to it: White, Black, or Mixed
Each bag contains one set of marbles
The labels on the bags are guaranteed to be incorrect
How many marbles do you need to pull to correctly re-label the bags? Explain your answer.
The full title of this post is “Alimony: The Gold Digger Tax and why I refuse to call it spousal maintenance” but I thought that was too long for a blog post title. Hell it’s almost too long to Tweet!
Washington state calls alimony “spousal maintenance” – I can only imagine this is because alimony has a negative connotation and this state is so god damned bleeding heart liberal and so politically correct that we can not possibly call something what it is… we must call it something less offensive so the that lazy gold digging sack of fat that receives the alimony feels better about extorting money from an ex spouse for doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
With child support and alimony combined I pay my soon-to-be-ex (STBX) $34000 per year. That means that for doing nothing she earns more than 37.71% of the US households! On top of that there is no tax on $16000 of that (the child support portion) so really <insert some math stuff here> she makes more than like 40% of US households. She does not work. She watches a LOT of FoodTv and eats a lot of bon-bons I guess.
So then STBX puts ME on the spot when my son wants to do things like computer programming camp this summer and tells him “if Dad can’t pay for it then you can’t go.” Unfair! I pay his mother $16,000 per year for child support (well a bit less than half of that is for his little sister but you get my point!). Son, if your lazy-assed Mom would get a JOB then she could use the money I pay her every month for things like computer programming camp!
Did I mention that this lazy, unemployed Gold Digger has an iPhone? Yep she and my son (he bought his with his own money, sure, but she pays the monthly bill!) BOTH have new iPhones. WOW.
We found a great post from the Small Business Server team on how to join a Windows 7 machine to a SBS 2008 domain. From that post:
This article details the known issues with using Windows 7 BETA as a member of an SBS 2008 domain. The steps in this article are for test purposes only. If you are using Windows 7 BETA you may encounter the following issues:
- Cannot join Windows 7 client to the domain using http:\\connect.
- IE 8.0 cannot open links on the SBS gadget.
- Cannot connect to Windows 7 client using RWW.
The only problem is that we migrated our SBS 2008 from a SBS 2003 install and in the process we’ve found that several GPOs are missing:
- Windows SBS Client - Windows Vista Policy
- Windows SBS Client - Windows XP Policy
- Windows SBS Client Policy
- Windows SBS User Policy
One of those GPOs “Windows SBS Client Policy” is mentioned in step 3 of the post mentioned above. Well I searched high and low for a way around steps 3-7 – trying to create the missing GPO, tried searching through all of the GP.XML files in \Windows\sysvol\domain\Policies\ to no avail. I spent about three hours trying to figure out how to complete these steps. Finally I just decided to “connect” the Windows 7 computer and viola it worked. *slaps forehead* I could have saved myself a few hours had I just tried it earlier!
In the end success and I’m happy the SBS team is blogging and posting solutions for Windows 7!
This is part two of Starting to Mountain Bike with my GF!
Saturday afternoon while eating breakfast and watching playoff Hockey (yes gentlemen IrishGirl is THE perfect woman!) I do the requisite pre-first-ride maintenance (reflectors--, water bottle cages++, GOOD lube on chain++, warning stickers--). We get dressed, fill up a couple water bottles and head to our local trail, Des Moines Creek Park. I’ll save a longer description of this trail system for another post but it IS the home of the Wednesday Night World Championships! The coolest thing is that DCP is about 10 minutes from our houses!
We get to the trail head and are ready to head out… I can tell IrishGirl has a few butterflies and I’m just trying to play it cool… truth be told I’m so excited (giddy?) to be there with her but I’m also a bit nervous – what if she hates it? Bottom line – and I think all my friends can attest to this - I am honestly just happy to be on a bike. The fact that she wants to be out there with me is SO amazing!
We ride for a little bit on a paved trail just to get the hang of things then we head into the woods and start the climb to the top of the system… at one point I had to tease her with “well after this last little climb we’ll be at the cemetery” but really she made it up with no problem! I’m very impressed -- for never having mountain biked before this girl has chops! Sure we stopped a couple times but remember YOUR first ride? While pedaling hard up a steep little climb/embankment hitting roots and exposed rock will STOP you if you’re not used to it! We take a quick break and look through the chain-link fence at the cemetery. I’ve always wanted to get in and look around (we both have a love of cemeteries) but I’ve never seen an opening in the fence. On this trip we decide that instead of exploring it was time for the down-hill! In the back of my head I’m hoping that, like the rest of us mountain biking freaks, that she’ll be addicted after flying top-speed down some nice single-track!
I guess you could say I was right! On the way down I hear all sorts of giggling, laughing and screaming (happy kind) from behind me! It was SO awesome to hear! I had a HUGE smile on my face the whole time. Once at the bottom she wanted to do more and more and more! I had SUCH a great time. We’ve been out three times so far (with more planned this weekend) and I can honestly say I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed cycling so much! I think IrishGirl thinks I’m humoring her but I am not… mountain biking with her has been so much fun! =D Maybe we should start on this list of tricks??
Here is a link to the details of ride number 2!
EDIT: I forgot to mention IrishGirl’s first mountain biking accident! SO we ride a little over 5 miles, some of which is pretty gnarly single track – no it isn’t a hard-core downhill but there are a fair amount of roots, rocks and mud. Irish comes out TOTALLY unscathed! I was so proud of her! We get back to my truck, lean our bikes up and she is SO excited she jumps into my arms… in the process really clocking her knee cap directly against the edge of the door jamb of my truck! OUCH! Honey – your FIRST mountain biking injury!
So Marti (@irishgirl31) and I have been talking for a long time about buying her a bike. We finally got serious about it a few weeks ago and me, being the “expert” asked her a few questions and proudly determined that she needed a cruiser or hybrid bike. So we headed to a few LBSs to get a feel for sizing and pricing.
So we leave the LBS to go run a few other errands and while driving my AWESOME GF says something like… “you know I think I’d rather mountain bike.” About a million things went through my head – not a single one negative mind you – I was stunned. Mainly I got this image of her and I in the woods all wet and muddy… but I digress! So we talked about mountain biking and basically I summed up road and mountain biking like this:
Road Biking = “you will fall a lot less often but when you do it will hurt bad. Falling at 15 – 50 MPH and hitting pavement while wearing spandex and you are going to get hurt.”
Mountain Biking = “you will fall a lot more often. Roots will jump out and bite you. But more than likely you will be going 7 – 20 MPH and you will more often than not land in mud, grass or a bush (just hope its not a blackberry bush!). You may get scratched up but you’ll more often than not pop up and go on with the ride”
YES there are exceptions. YES you CAN get hurt mountain biking. I do know this… but we’re not going to be doing any extreme downhill (at least THIS summer!).
So we returned to the LBS with a new goal… to find a nice entry level mountain bike suitable of my @irishgirl31! She stood over and sat on a nice mid-level offering from Specialized. The size was 15” and it looked like it fit pretty well (I’m NO expert on sizing others. I know what I like but I don’t know how to help others.) but we wanted the entry level model – mostly because it came in an AWESOME color scheme, black and lavender!
So we ordered away and prayed to the Gods that it would come in before the weekend (this was a Tuesday night, I believe?). Finally on Friday afternoon after a few days of saying to each other “God I hope we get to mountain bike this weekend” I told her to just call the shop – they might be busy and forget to call her – she did and her bike was in! YES… so I picked her up after work and we headed up the shop. We walked in and they had The Specialized Myka HT all ready to go! This really is a GREAT little mountain bike… aluminum frame, V-Pull brakes, solid components and most importantly a super color-scheme!
I had promised to buy Irish some accessories when we picked up her bike so we shopped around a bit and finally threw the new bike in the back of my truck for the ride home – of course as we’re backing out of the parking spot I realize I left the manual hanging from the handlebars so I hop out grab them and hand them to Irish. SIDE NOTE: Shouldn’t bicycle manuals really be called “don’t sue us books?” I mean really they contain ZERO useful information. All they say can be summed up as “Don’t ever ride this bike. If you do ride this bike and you fall off or even if it breaks because of our negligence you can’t sue us.”
Back to the story. Well Irish kinda looks at me while holding her manual and says shyly “I wonder why this manual has a big 17" on it?” OH SHIT… they ordered the wrong size? There goes our weekend plans! DAMN! We pull over a few block away from the shop and I have her stand over the bike… well it looks okay, really but I’m NO expert! Hmmm… we decided to head back to the shop. Luckily when we arrive the owner of the shop is inside (I’ve purchased a few bikes from this location and know the employees fairly well.) and we tell him our dilemma. He is AWESOME… he comes outside and watches Irish on the 17” (Yeah that’s a hard job – watching a HOTTIE ride a bike around the parking lot!) he then brings out a 15” (same model, wrong price-point, same geometry) and we both agree that she actually looks better on the bigger bike! This is where the customer service of a LBS comes into play… he promises us that if she rides it for the weekend and she doesn’t like it that she can bring it back and he’ll order her the 15” size no problem! Wow… that is awesome! The peace of mind knowing that we were free to try this bike out and NOT ruin our weekend plans and still be able to change our minds was awesome! Stay Tuned for Part Two tomorrow… our first few rides!
Allo Fuckers, for it is I, Irishgirl. Since Steve lost the Super Bowl bet, I get to post on his blog. And this is it!! In case you don't remember, let me do a quick recap for you. Steven lost, I won! Ha ha ha. Although the Steelers did win the SB, we were playing by points (yes, I'm a girl and I know about point spreads) and the Steelers did not, I repeat DID NOT beat the point spread. Which means that you lovely people get to read a post about ANYTHING I want and Steve does not get to edit OR delete it *evil laughter*. All I will say is that this IS NOT a geek post!! So here's your disclaimer: If you're looking for Geeky stuff, cum back tomorrow. If you're open to a new experience, please cum in!
I read a lot of diverse blogs. I read blogs by widowed fathers raising 1 year old daughters, by cyclists (Win Susan!), by same sex couples trying to conceive and by single Dads and Moms on the dating scene. Spring has sprung and one theme seems to be Universal in ALL the blogs I read....SEX!!! And not just your run of the mill vanilla sex, I'm talking about in the backyard, while hiking, under the stars, in the parking lot of Wal-Mart S-E-X. And even more specifically, oral sex. I, for one, am a HUGE fan of oral sex. I LOVE giving and getting. Have you noticed the tongue ring yet? DUH!!! Don't worry this isn't a post on tips and technique...although that would make a great post. I'm talking about warning signs.
Now some people (usually women) demand a warning before their "partner" is about to cum. IDK if its because they don't like the taste or just don't want the shock. I say screw you, there is nothing better tasting in the World then...U know what? Never mind. If you are really and I do mean REALLY intune with your partner, you know when its about to happen. And I, for one, find no greater pleasure then being able to bring my BF to climax with nothing more than my mouth. But, it begs to ask the question, should women start giving men a warning sign too?!?
I mean its the same thing isn't it??? What if HE doesn't really want to have to "swallow"?? Shouldn't He also have a choice in the matter? I think as women we take this for granted. We just lay back and let him do all the work without even a courtesy tap or a "Oh Baby, I'm gonna cum." Usually by the time we reach climax its too late for the poor Bastard.
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not some Irish Whore who goes around "going down" on every Lad I meet. In fact, I have to be pretty comfortable with my SO to be that "initmate". Coming out of a bad marriage, I can honestly say that there were 2 days a year that I dreaded, his birthday and Valentine's day. Seemed like those were the "BJ" days of the year and I dreaded them. Now, and possibly TMI, I can't get enough. In fact, that's pretty much ALL I want to do. *shrugs* maybe its because I've FINALLY met "the one" and I want to please him in any and every way. Whatever the reason, its Heaven.
So hit me up, what do you think? Do you require a warning? Do you give a warning? Or do you just let 'er rip???
I honestly try to NOT say disparaging words about my STBX (Soon To Be eX) . I truly do. I can’t shut up about this one.
I want the whole world to know my STBX is a selfish bitch. Period. There is no “oh there are two sides to every story” no “well I’m sure you’re not perfect, Steve.” She is selfish and controlling and manipulating and has NO regard for our children. Period.
Earlier this week my best friend (of 27 years) invited me to his granddaughter, Tayler’s, birthday. It is this coming Sunday. I do not have visitation with my kids this Sunday so I politely asked the STBX if I could take our 3 year old daughter, Zoe to the party. I’d be gone for maybe 3 hours. She said no. It is not just that she said no, but how she says it… here is our email conversation – yes I added emphasis and comments, sorry had to. Oh AND this is after I let her take the kids to a birthday party last weekedn… on MY WEEKEND!!
ME: Zoe has been invited to a birthday party at 1:00 on Sunday. I'd like to pick her up 12:30 and I'll have her back as soon as the party is over - plus 30 minutes for drive-time.
STBX: No
ME: Awesome... thanks so much. I let you take them Saturday and now you don't reciprocate. So you wonder why I never want you to take my time away... you NEVER give it back.
STBX: So Zoe will not be going to the party on Sunday I take it, because unless I go she won't be going.
ME: How can you do this? I let you take them Saturday. You NEVER reciprocate. NEVER. You wonder why I hate you SO much? Because you are a mean heartless bitch. You'd better never ask for time on my weekends again. Period.
STBX: I guess I should email your lawyer that you won't let me have the kids for their aunt's birthday then which happens to be on your weekend since we know you won't want to go to a family party. You see I am not forbidding Zoe to go to this party I just want to go with and I have every right to attend (every RIGHT… these are MY friends NOT yours. Wait – you don’t HAVE any friends. Wonder why?)
ME: You ARE NOT INVITED! Jesus so YOU ARE preventing Zoe from going. You can rationalize anything!
STBX: Besides is there really a party because I haven't seen any invitation? So I guess Zoe will miss out and be none the wiser since she didn't know about it to begin with. But she will know about her aunt’s party and she will not want to miss that. (what a manipulative BITCH!)
ME: You are not invited Brenda. Period. You are such a horrible parent. Who would do that to their daughter?
STBX: Where is the invitation and was it addressed to Zoe? Since she is with me I have every right to go. They will NOT be there unless I am with them. So you can make up any lie you want to I don't really care or you can be the bigger person. Without me there will be no party for our kids.
ME: OMG you don't even realize how selfish this sounds!
I can’t even begin to fathom the type of parent who would manipulate their sweet innocent 3 year old daughter in such a way. It is sickening. I just want to puke. She wonders why I left and why I want a divorce? WOW. Wake up and smell the coffee!
How can I prevent this? How can I make my STBX see what she is doing is wrong? I really think she has mental problems. This just isn’t right. I’m at my wit’s end.