Mixin’
Been hell of busy. Three kids, man. Three.
That being said, there’s been much going on. Our good friends Sarah and Zak got married over the weekend; my own personal Sarah was the matron of honor, and I did me some singing and guitar strummin’, and also got a small group together to sing an arrangement I did of “Seasons of Love” from “Rent,” a show that I have not seen and will endeavour to avoid seeing forever because I figure if I want to see La Boheme I’ll go damn well see La Boheme, but I shall admit that the song I arranged is catchy and fun.
The wedding took place at Sweetwater Farm, which I cannot recommend highly enough and which I hope to visit again at some later date and stay at the bed and breakfast. Grace Winery is on site, and the wedding actually happened in a renovated barn that also contains most of the vintnering equipment. There are little cottages and several acres of extremely pretty land to admire, ideally while drinking a nice glass of pinot noir and/or Scotch.
And now, we find ourselves in the holiday season. Thanksgiving is, in case you haven’t recently checked a calendar, merely 2 days away, and Advent starts on Sunday, even if most commercially made Advent calendars will not recognize this fact until December 1st because Advent calendar-makers are bloody HEATHENS! As usual, my holiday season is spent either singing in concerts and services or rehearsing for concerts and services, so my wife will spend most of the month single-handedly trying to corral all three of our semi-truculent children. This means that I had better come up with one hell of a spectacular Christmas present for my wife, because no matter what it costs, the inevitable divorce will be more expensive.
Since I’m all over the place anyway, might as well throw in a little fitness update. As of a few weeks ago, I’ve switched over to “bulking” mode, which I like to pretend is “clean” but which consists of large amounts of meat and the occasional Twix bar. As a result of deliberate weight gain, my lifts have been progressing nicely. Today’s workout I squatted 290 pounds for three sets of 5, failed spectacularly to overhead press 137.5 pounds (5 reps, 4, and 3), and successfully power cleaned 155 pounds for 3 sets of 5 (all this with warmup sets, obviously). The other day I also bench pressed 192.5 pounds (I expect to get to 200 next week, woooooo) and deadlifted 370 pounds, which is 1) really bloody heavy and 2) not far from what’s going to be the maximum for a while because I only have 390 pounds of weights.
Another pair of 45 plates will be needed, but my options there are either to spend $100 on a set of brand new plates, or to call the guy I know downstate and go get a used set for $50. I’m leaning towards the latter, but don’t have the 3 hours to get down and back. Plus, if I do that I’m leaning towards getting TWO sets so I’m never likely to run out of weight (I’ll keep progressing as long as I can, but I highly doubt I’m ever going to need 570 pounds). Maybe the next time we go to the beach I can stop en route, but we probably aren’t doing anything like that until January, so I suspect I’ll just get to 390 and then keep adding reps and/or sets so at least I make progression in volume if not weight per rep.
I hope that your Thanksgiving is chock-full of tryptophan and red wine, and that you enjoy parades and football all the live-long day.
