Lunchtime update
Last night Michelle and I had a restaurant review just off of Castro and Market in San Francisco. The food was great, and so was the service, but one of the things that struck me was the gay population density. I went to college in Santa Cruz, so it's not like being in a gay-friendly environment is odd to me, but I think it would be safe to say that there were more gay couples at that restaurant last night than straight couples. After listening to Amanda complain that there's not a very large gay community in San Jose, I think I understand her desire to move up to SF a little better. It's nice to be surrounded by people who are, for lack of a better term, similar to you in one form or another. In my case, I think Michelle and I are one of the few white couples living in our apartment complex. That's not THAT odd to me, having grown up in LA, where I was the minority at my high school. I just get now the appeal of living in a community where you're not the odd-man (or woman) out.
Our internet was acting kind of wonky on Sunday night. Lag spikes from hell, dropped connections and the like. Which kind of sucked, 'cause I knew that there was a Karazhan run scheduled for at 7. At least, I THOUGHT it was scheduled for 7. Michelle and I had been running errands and tried to get home in time, but the best we could manage was 7:30. We logged on, hoping (somewhat) for a repeat of last Sunday, where the raid didn't start for an hour and a half. Much to our combined chagrins, the raid HAD been filled, and had started a full 20 minutes before we got online. I checked the guild info, and there I read that the raid was supposed to be scheduled for 6:30! Interesting... because I had been on at 3 that afternoon and saw NO mention of a raid time change. In any event, I understood our getting bumped from the run because we were late. In my old guild, I always made sure to show up 30 minutes ahead of time, so a half-hour late (or an hour late, depending on how you look at it) was understandable. What is BULLSHIT, though, is the fact that they filled 3 DPS slots with non-guildies. A tank or a healer, that's fine. But when 80% of our guild is DPS, and you KNOW that people are going to show up, I think the proper etiquette would be to wait. Just because you CAN find DPS outside the guild doesn't mean that there aren't DPS people IN your guild who want to go. I'm half considering speccing healing just so I can be viable in a group/raid. But, I know that once we start hitting 25-man content, my being Shadow will become much more viable, since I'm basically a mana battery for all the casters. Still... it would be nice to feel needed in the game.
I've been going to the gym for almost two weeks now and I'm feeling the results, even though they're not yet visible. I'm doing circuit work three days a week (preceded by some light cardio) and then 30 minutes of cardio the other two days. Unfortunately with the weightlifting, I'm still in the stage where things are getting bigger before trimming down. I'm not doing any super-heavy lifting, though. Basically my routine is 10 reps on a nautilus machine, with the weight set to "however much will have me tired after 10 reps". Then move on to the next machine with no rest. It works up a good sweat, but I've gotta figure out how to make it so that I'm getting a more intense workout WITHOUT bulking up. Think Edward Norton in American History X, not Vin Diesel in anything he's ever done.
Speaking of food, I've found that my switching from a Chipotle burrito to 4 crispy tacos was the right move. For example, the tacos I had today total 668 calories, whereas a burrito with the same ingredients (plus rice and beans) top out at 1138 calories. Even though I love their rice, I'm not missing the extra calories. Plus, for whatever reason their beans have been SUPER salty of late. So I'm not missing that, either.
Our internet was acting kind of wonky on Sunday night. Lag spikes from hell, dropped connections and the like. Which kind of sucked, 'cause I knew that there was a Karazhan run scheduled for at 7. At least, I THOUGHT it was scheduled for 7. Michelle and I had been running errands and tried to get home in time, but the best we could manage was 7:30. We logged on, hoping (somewhat) for a repeat of last Sunday, where the raid didn't start for an hour and a half. Much to our combined chagrins, the raid HAD been filled, and had started a full 20 minutes before we got online. I checked the guild info, and there I read that the raid was supposed to be scheduled for 6:30! Interesting... because I had been on at 3 that afternoon and saw NO mention of a raid time change. In any event, I understood our getting bumped from the run because we were late. In my old guild, I always made sure to show up 30 minutes ahead of time, so a half-hour late (or an hour late, depending on how you look at it) was understandable. What is BULLSHIT, though, is the fact that they filled 3 DPS slots with non-guildies. A tank or a healer, that's fine. But when 80% of our guild is DPS, and you KNOW that people are going to show up, I think the proper etiquette would be to wait. Just because you CAN find DPS outside the guild doesn't mean that there aren't DPS people IN your guild who want to go. I'm half considering speccing healing just so I can be viable in a group/raid. But, I know that once we start hitting 25-man content, my being Shadow will become much more viable, since I'm basically a mana battery for all the casters. Still... it would be nice to feel needed in the game.
I've been going to the gym for almost two weeks now and I'm feeling the results, even though they're not yet visible. I'm doing circuit work three days a week (preceded by some light cardio) and then 30 minutes of cardio the other two days. Unfortunately with the weightlifting, I'm still in the stage where things are getting bigger before trimming down. I'm not doing any super-heavy lifting, though. Basically my routine is 10 reps on a nautilus machine, with the weight set to "however much will have me tired after 10 reps". Then move on to the next machine with no rest. It works up a good sweat, but I've gotta figure out how to make it so that I'm getting a more intense workout WITHOUT bulking up. Think Edward Norton in American History X, not Vin Diesel in anything he's ever done.
Speaking of food, I've found that my switching from a Chipotle burrito to 4 crispy tacos was the right move. For example, the tacos I had today total 668 calories, whereas a burrito with the same ingredients (plus rice and beans) top out at 1138 calories. Even though I love their rice, I'm not missing the extra calories. Plus, for whatever reason their beans have been SUPER salty of late. So I'm not missing that, either.