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It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, December 28
Oh baby, the gym was good to us this morning…Or, more accurately, the work we put into our workout was good, because we upped weights on everything and upped cardio for the final three sets, up one from last time.
Weights were upped because we were at the point where failure was eleven or twelve reps on the last set and regular readers of this crap know ten is the standard…This includes the tricep cable pulldowns, which were at the weights they used to be and we didn’t use the sleeve, either, and there was only very minimal discomfort…It wasn’t even pain, really, it was merely something and it certainly didn’t affect the work itself.
We did make two changes today: to the battle ropes and the sprint bike sets…For the battle ropes we went from alternating each hand to moving the rope with both hands because we saw it on a battle ropes palcard (BRP) in the cardio room and thought we’d give it a try…This was hard, harder than alternating hands, so we decided to incorporate it.
The sprint bike change came about from watching some Amazon women in some fitness competition on YouTube…Part of it involved work on the exact same bike we do bike sprints on and the criteria wasn’t time but how many calories they burned: when the requisite amount of calories were burned – 30, I think – they could move on to the next element.
Well, that sounded intriguing, so we gave it a go…Now, 30 calories is a lot and they’re chicks who are fit for a living, so we tried for ten calories, but that was easy and ultimately we settled on burning twelve calories…The beauty of this, as opposed to sprinting for a minute, is if you put some work in you can get twelve calories burned in 50 seconds and less time on the bike is good for morale, tho it should be noted you’re really working your keister off…For the last three sets we upped it to 14 calories.
Kayla The Houskeeper came by today…We had found her on Faceplant – highly recommended by several in the small town – and she wanted to come by to get acquainted and see exactly what in the hell she was getting herself into…We got along well and she she didn’t flee immediately after walking in – my greatest fear – and we looked at her calendar and the insane hours we keep and we agreed a Monday would work…She’d let me know which one when she got her January schedule transferred over.
The cat was not pleased with her intrusion into our day off together, tho…We were both at the kitchen table when she knocked on the door and the cat knows a knock on the door generally means a non-approved human is coming in and she fled to bedrooms, where she stood watch under the bed…She was hissing when she came out after the all-clear had been sounded, but she got over that within an hour.
$145 at the retailer in the next county today…And not all of it was blown on the cat, either, because we bought some stuff for ourselves, including some more winter socks…Rather heroically if you ask me, we stayed away from the Mexican joint, preferring to eat well today, to maximize the work we did in the gym…Part of that included the leftover prime rib, which is excellent post-workout nutrition…You take a hunk and cut it up and put in the frying pan and BOOM a darn near perfect meal.
So almost perfect we’re thinking keeping the prime rib going…Key is the cost…Our holiday prime rib at the grocery store is always half-off with your value card, a great loss leader because it gets you in the store for the rest of your holiday meal shopping and we don’t know if that deal is good year-round…We’ll have to check and see…If it is, we could make that work, because beef provides really good nutrition.
There was a funny incident at the town hall today…We’d stopped in to pay the utility bill because it was past due and we offered our debit card and Sharon, the town clerk, noted how we’re not paying by check anymore, a long-time and apparently treasured small town tradition…Well, we noted, we tend to pay our utility bill when we think about now – or when the small town sends us a late notice, like today – instead of when we actually get the bill and we don’t keep our checkbook on us…We added we somewhat missed this because they’re the only checks we write nowadays…She finished the transaction, noting the total included the usual $2 fee for using the debit card.
Sparrow: Oh…I don’t pay that charge with a check, do I?
Sharon shook her head.
Sparrow: So if I pay every other month instead of every month, I save twelve dollars…
Sharon’s pretty funny and laffed.
Sharon: Yeah, but then you’ve got the $1.25 late fee…That cuts into your savings,
We made a sound consistent with exasperation and shook our head before laying it on the counter…We were completely defeated…Sharon thought this was funny, too, which it was.
Sharon: You should probably go back to paying by check, Sparrow…Save the fees…And use that green ink, too…It livens things up around the office.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1730 Wednesday until 0200 Thursday…8.5 hours for the day and 32.5 hours for the week, both satisfactory totals.
This was a great rest, too…Consistent with recent trends, we only got up once to use the can and we dreamt vividly and pleasantly and when we woke up – with the cat already on our back – we felt triumphant, ready for whatever our hard-earned day off had for us.
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The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
