I totally forgot to tell you guys some other biggish news -- we got a new dog! This was my anniversary present to Rebecca, and a friend for Leeroy so he won't be alone outside.

Meet Preacher:


They're quite a pair.


Preacher testifying.


We adopted him from Pets & People in Yukon. He's "about" 2 years old. Basset hound + ?? mix just like Leeroy. They didn't know hardly anything about him -- no name, no exact age, whether he was housebroken, etc. He was already altered, and they gave him all his shots and made sure he didn't have heartworm (and gave him a preventative). All that for $65.

I called him Preacher because he's quite a talker. He's got quite a vocabulary of sounds he makes to let you know how he's feeling.

Anyway, Leeroy LOVES him and they get along great together. They've been wrestling constantly trying to determine who'll be the boss, and I think Preacher is coming out on top. Leeroy has just been so much more calm and happy-seeming since we got him a friend to play with. Preacher's a real good dog with absolutely no food aggression toward us or Leeroy, even if I reach my hand into his bowl while he's eating, and he's pretty chill. If you go outside and sit in a lawn chair, he'll just flop himself down beside you and go to sleep.

RIP, DRE

By the great rstevens of Diesel Sweeties / lolbots fame.

So Rebecca and I joined a gym two weeks ago.

We've been going 6 days a week, taking off Saturday or Sunday, alternating pure cardio days with light cardio + resistance training days.


I've lost 14 pounds since we started this just less than two weeks ago.


It goes like this (all are free weights -- no sissy machines -- except the chinups/dips, still need a machine assist with that). Rebecca is doing the same exact program as me:

Week A:

Monday (A) =
10 minutes cardio (elliptical trainer)
5x5 High Bar Squats
5x5 Pendlay Rows
5x5 Standing military press
As many chinups as we can do
50 abdominal crunches

Tuesday =
20 minutes HIIT

Wednesday (B) =
10 minutes cardio
5x5 HIgh Bar Squats
5x5 Bench Press
1x5 Deadlift
5-8 dips
50 abdominal crunches

Thursday =
20 minutes HIIT

Friday (A) =
10 minutes cardio (elliptical trainer)
5x5 High Bar Squats
5x5 Pendlay Rows
5x5 Standing military press
As many chinups as we can do
50 abdominal crunches

Saturday or Sunday =
20 minutes HIIT

And one day off. Week B has the same exercises but the weight program is B-A-B instead of A-B-A.

Not really dieting in the sense of saying "no" to anything except fast food/horrible junk, and making sure I eat about 3000 calories a day. I've learned a lot preparing for this -- especially that a lot of what I'd heard as "fact" about fitness was hogwash. Like I'd always heard as gospel that if you want "tone" or "definition", do many reps of low weights, and that lots of weight and low reps is for getting big. In fact, definition and tone comes more from your diet than your exercise. You can do all the crunches and bicep curls you want, if you have high body fat %, nobody's going to see it. The only real difference in what gets you big versus what just makes you tight and strong is how much you eat. If you eat more than you need and lift heavy weights you'll get bigger. If you eat slightly less than you need, you'll lose fat but still get stronger. If you starve yourself, you'll be miserable, lose all your muscle, feel like shit, and you might lose a ton of weight and still look like a flabby sack of flesh. Everything I've read from people who really know bodybuilding also says that those non-intimidating, easy isolation machines are a waste of time for almost everyone -- compound exercises (like barbell squats that use 80% of your body's muscles in one exercise) are a lot more efficient.

Anyway, in just a few weeks I've noticed a HUGE improvement in all areas of my life. I feel great, I walk taller, my mind is clearer, I have more energy.. and not to get too personal, but we've even had the best sex of our whole relationship in the last few days -- going a lot longer, a lot harder, and in more interesting positions without 'getting a cramp' or 'going soft'. We had a round on Saturday night that left us panting and looking at each other like "HOLY SHIT". And then we had two more.

So it's been six months since I quit caffeine and smoking, and I hope this will be as successful.

Have any of you ever listened to John Cale's solo work after the Velvet Underground? I hadn't until a few days ago, shockingly. It's incredible, and the not the sort of screeching art-noise you'd expect from what we know of his contributions to the Velvets.

I recommend you check out (I.E. download):

Paris 1919
and

Vintage Violence

Also, been catching up on some TV lately -- on the menu: Doctor Who (10th Doctor series), Torchwood, Battlestar Galactica, and Rome. I'm really into Rome and Battlestar Galactica. Rebecca likes Doctor Who more. She also likes Galactica and Rome, but, in her words, "they make [her] sad", so she has to be in the mood for them. Dramas with great characters, excellent writing, and fine acting make you really care about the characters, and that *is* sort of draining if you sit down and watch five episodes of it at once. It's like when you leave the theater after watching a really suspenseful, nail-biting movie, you're exhausted -- Children of Men comes to mind recently.

I think a lot of people here have never seen a real picture of me. The picture in my albums is from like five years ago before I gained a lot of weight. To be honest, that was intentional. I didn't want people to see what I really look like now, because I wasn't fat for most of my life.

But now I realize that whether I like it or not, this is what I look like. And there's a lot of fatter bastards on the internet than me. Anyway, so we accidentally took a pretty decent picture at the zoo the other day, and I thought it might be a good time to show my face.

So here you go. My wife Rebecca and I at the Oklahoma City zoo last weekend.

You HAVE to watch this.