The Wednesday Update
It's been a long week. On the bright side I haven't missed a day of exercise this week or last, and my blood sugar was down a little from the last two measurements. It was in the 150s instead of the 170s. Hopefully it'll be back to below 125 this Sunday, however, as long as it's lower again I'll be happy. Me weight was pushing 300 pounds (136 kgs) on the other hand which is not good. My ideal weight, based on my lean body mass estimates is around 200 lbs (91 kgs) so I've a ways to go. Hopefully I'll start going in the right direction soon.
My workout is very simple, at least "on paper". I start with a cardio/warm-up three sets of thirty seconds of jumping jacks, three sets of thirty seconds of side-to-side hops and two sets of ten squat jumps. I super set them so I do a set of jumping jacks immediately followed by a set of side-to-side hops immediately followed by a set of squat jumps. However I can't do ten squat jumps in a row yet. I can do four to five before I have to pause. Also by my second set of jumping jacks, I'm having difficulty going for the whole thirty seconds. My goal is to go for a minute per set on the jumping jacks and side-to-side hops, but I've a ways to go.
After the cardio/warm-up I move to the strength exercises. I super set these too. This continues working cardio while I'm doing strength training. First is three sets of ten crunches, one set of ten donkey kicks (per leg) and three sets of five push-ups. The crunches and donkey kicks are okay, but the push-ups are a mess. Even on my knees I can't do a proper push-up, but I keep trying, going down as far as a can and still get back up, and trying to keep the best form I can. I'm hoping with time and work I'll eventually be able to do proper push-ups. Next is thirty seconds of the plank. Ideally it's supposed to be two minutes, but I can't even manage ten seconds before my gut sags to the ground. So the plan is to work at it until I can manage thirty seconds then work my way up to two minutes. This is immediately followed by three sets of ten sit-ups, and three sets of fifteen bridges. The bridges I can do fine, but I can't do a full sit-up. If I go more than about halfway down I can't get back up. So right now I'm doing half sit-ups. As with the push-ups I'm hoping that as I continue exercising and start losing abdominal fat I'll eventually be able to do full sit-ups. Lastly I do two sets of fifteen lateral leg raises each side. I can make it through those without too much difficulty. There's four more exercises I should be doing, but for various reasons don't I'm going to add one next week, but right now can't decide between three sets of twenty bicycle crunches or three sets of fifteen v-ups. I'm leaning towards the bicycle crunches so I'll probably add the v-ups a week or two after that. Then a week or two after that I'll add three sets of twenty side lunges. I'm gonna hold off on adding the three sets of sixty seconds of plank-jacks until I can actually hold a plank for sixty seconds. Now between each super set I allow a thirty secondbreak.
After the strength training I do stretches. I do thirty seconds of each stretch without breaks. I do the cobra stretch, the child pose, the seated torso twist, the inner thigh/butterfly stretch, the knee squeeze, the triceps stretch, the sitting side bend, and the chest stretch. I've got four more stretches I'm going to add starting with the warrior Next Week. I may also add burpees to the cardio once I can manage sixty seconds of each without too much difficulty. Originally the plan was to do this workout for two months then switch to something else. Instead I'm gonna stick with this workout until I can do the whole workout. If you're curious I got the workout from here and the additional stretches from here. I've found other body weight (ie. no equipment) workouts on YouTube, but they're all geared to someone in much better shape than I am. The one I'm doing now was geared towards beginners. After I can manage this workout I'll try one of the harder workouts. Once I get my body fat percentage under 20%, I'll switch focus more towards strength and shaping my body.
In the world of Pathfinder I haven't had much chance to work on it. I've got the ruins/sewer encounter table done. Well the ruins. The sewer table has two additional monsters on it. I'm also making a dent on populating the city. Mostly this means going through the various bestiaries and decide which creatures, other than orcs and mongrelmen, and how many of them will be there. I've worked my way through Bestiary 1 through Bestiary 4, once I've decided I can start locating them in the city. I haven't touched either of the net guides I'm working on lately but I have managed to get about a quarter of the entry for Eresu done. I just haven't had time to work on them.
Largely this is because Cha has been keeping me busy. For example we spent a large chunk of Monday shopping. On the bright side I did find a slightly use copy of the NPC Codex at 2nd & Charles along with a few other choice items. We also got a new printer to replace my old one which no longer feeds on its own. I had to force the paper to feed any time I printed something, which was REALLY a pain when doing a multi page document. In addition the new printer is wirelessly connected to both our computers. This means I no longer have to drop what I'm doing anytime Cha needs something printed. We also got new bed sheets and curtains at Marshall's (amongst other things) the curtains I had to put up when we got h OK me which took another half hour. So with all that going on I haven't had much time to work on Pathfinder.
We've given up trying to find a house this year. Because when Cha graduated she lost her job at Texas Tech, and it was two or three months before she got hired at Odessa College. In the meantime we fell behind on our bills, especially rent. Even when she started at Odessa College, she didn't get paid until the 25th and rent was due on the 1st. My own paycheck was nowhere near enough to cover all our bills, so for nine or ten months we were late with the rent. Consequently when we applied to rent a house, and the landlord checked with Ashton Point about our history, they were told we were consistently late. Despite the fact we ALWAYS paid, and have been on-time the last few months. So we're gonna stay at Ashton Point for at least another six months, then try again. In the meantime I want to stay current with our bills, save up some money, and pay off some of those outstanding debts that are dragging our credit rating down.
The later is something of a point of contention between me and Cha. She thinks she can improve our credit rating just by talking out new loans and paying them off on time.I've repeatedly pointed out to her that doing that won't help our credit anywhere near as much as taking care of the outstanding debts on our credit report will. Not only have I pointed this out to her, but so have other people. I don't know whether she's agreeing with me yet or not, but I at least have a tentative agreement with her to start paying off some of them.I'm thinking if we put aside $100 a month to pay off these outstanding debts we can make a nice dent in them by the time we're ready to try to rent a house again.
I think I may have lost my job. I'm apparently no longer classified as a student at Tech. Probably because I haven't taken a class in two years. My financial aid ran out and my last semester of classes left me owing Tech $6000 or so. I figured this would happen eventually but was hoping I'd be able to start taking classes again before it did. Of course as things stand it doesn't look like I'll ever finish school, and I was doing so well in economics. All my economics classes were A's except for two B's. And no the military won't help me out with tuition. So anyway now that I'm no longer officially a student, I don't think I can still hold my position as a student assistant. The other job I was hoping to get doesn't require one to be a student, but with the Covid19 panic, they're not currently looking to fill that position and probably won't til fall. In the meantime I can apply for unemployment and/or work as a delivery driver for DoorDash or something.I doubt it will pay what Tech was paying me, but at least it will be some income.
Well, there is another job opening I'm looking into. The office of Jodey Arrington, the local state representative to Congress is hiring. I'm going to pay for that tomorrow. Who knows, I might get lucky.
My workout is very simple, at least "on paper". I start with a cardio/warm-up three sets of thirty seconds of jumping jacks, three sets of thirty seconds of side-to-side hops and two sets of ten squat jumps. I super set them so I do a set of jumping jacks immediately followed by a set of side-to-side hops immediately followed by a set of squat jumps. However I can't do ten squat jumps in a row yet. I can do four to five before I have to pause. Also by my second set of jumping jacks, I'm having difficulty going for the whole thirty seconds. My goal is to go for a minute per set on the jumping jacks and side-to-side hops, but I've a ways to go.
After the cardio/warm-up I move to the strength exercises. I super set these too. This continues working cardio while I'm doing strength training. First is three sets of ten crunches, one set of ten donkey kicks (per leg) and three sets of five push-ups. The crunches and donkey kicks are okay, but the push-ups are a mess. Even on my knees I can't do a proper push-up, but I keep trying, going down as far as a can and still get back up, and trying to keep the best form I can. I'm hoping with time and work I'll eventually be able to do proper push-ups. Next is thirty seconds of the plank. Ideally it's supposed to be two minutes, but I can't even manage ten seconds before my gut sags to the ground. So the plan is to work at it until I can manage thirty seconds then work my way up to two minutes. This is immediately followed by three sets of ten sit-ups, and three sets of fifteen bridges. The bridges I can do fine, but I can't do a full sit-up. If I go more than about halfway down I can't get back up. So right now I'm doing half sit-ups. As with the push-ups I'm hoping that as I continue exercising and start losing abdominal fat I'll eventually be able to do full sit-ups. Lastly I do two sets of fifteen lateral leg raises each side. I can make it through those without too much difficulty. There's four more exercises I should be doing, but for various reasons don't I'm going to add one next week, but right now can't decide between three sets of twenty bicycle crunches or three sets of fifteen v-ups. I'm leaning towards the bicycle crunches so I'll probably add the v-ups a week or two after that. Then a week or two after that I'll add three sets of twenty side lunges. I'm gonna hold off on adding the three sets of sixty seconds of plank-jacks until I can actually hold a plank for sixty seconds. Now between each super set I allow a thirty secondbreak.
After the strength training I do stretches. I do thirty seconds of each stretch without breaks. I do the cobra stretch, the child pose, the seated torso twist, the inner thigh/butterfly stretch, the knee squeeze, the triceps stretch, the sitting side bend, and the chest stretch. I've got four more stretches I'm going to add starting with the warrior Next Week. I may also add burpees to the cardio once I can manage sixty seconds of each without too much difficulty. Originally the plan was to do this workout for two months then switch to something else. Instead I'm gonna stick with this workout until I can do the whole workout. If you're curious I got the workout from here and the additional stretches from here. I've found other body weight (ie. no equipment) workouts on YouTube, but they're all geared to someone in much better shape than I am. The one I'm doing now was geared towards beginners. After I can manage this workout I'll try one of the harder workouts. Once I get my body fat percentage under 20%, I'll switch focus more towards strength and shaping my body.
In the world of Pathfinder I haven't had much chance to work on it. I've got the ruins/sewer encounter table done. Well the ruins. The sewer table has two additional monsters on it. I'm also making a dent on populating the city. Mostly this means going through the various bestiaries and decide which creatures, other than orcs and mongrelmen, and how many of them will be there. I've worked my way through Bestiary 1 through Bestiary 4, once I've decided I can start locating them in the city. I haven't touched either of the net guides I'm working on lately but I have managed to get about a quarter of the entry for Eresu done. I just haven't had time to work on them.
Largely this is because Cha has been keeping me busy. For example we spent a large chunk of Monday shopping. On the bright side I did find a slightly use copy of the NPC Codex at 2nd & Charles along with a few other choice items. We also got a new printer to replace my old one which no longer feeds on its own. I had to force the paper to feed any time I printed something, which was REALLY a pain when doing a multi page document. In addition the new printer is wirelessly connected to both our computers. This means I no longer have to drop what I'm doing anytime Cha needs something printed. We also got new bed sheets and curtains at Marshall's (amongst other things) the curtains I had to put up when we got h OK me which took another half hour. So with all that going on I haven't had much time to work on Pathfinder.
We've given up trying to find a house this year. Because when Cha graduated she lost her job at Texas Tech, and it was two or three months before she got hired at Odessa College. In the meantime we fell behind on our bills, especially rent. Even when she started at Odessa College, she didn't get paid until the 25th and rent was due on the 1st. My own paycheck was nowhere near enough to cover all our bills, so for nine or ten months we were late with the rent. Consequently when we applied to rent a house, and the landlord checked with Ashton Point about our history, they were told we were consistently late. Despite the fact we ALWAYS paid, and have been on-time the last few months. So we're gonna stay at Ashton Point for at least another six months, then try again. In the meantime I want to stay current with our bills, save up some money, and pay off some of those outstanding debts that are dragging our credit rating down.
The later is something of a point of contention between me and Cha. She thinks she can improve our credit rating just by talking out new loans and paying them off on time.I've repeatedly pointed out to her that doing that won't help our credit anywhere near as much as taking care of the outstanding debts on our credit report will. Not only have I pointed this out to her, but so have other people. I don't know whether she's agreeing with me yet or not, but I at least have a tentative agreement with her to start paying off some of them.I'm thinking if we put aside $100 a month to pay off these outstanding debts we can make a nice dent in them by the time we're ready to try to rent a house again.
I think I may have lost my job. I'm apparently no longer classified as a student at Tech. Probably because I haven't taken a class in two years. My financial aid ran out and my last semester of classes left me owing Tech $6000 or so. I figured this would happen eventually but was hoping I'd be able to start taking classes again before it did. Of course as things stand it doesn't look like I'll ever finish school, and I was doing so well in economics. All my economics classes were A's except for two B's. And no the military won't help me out with tuition. So anyway now that I'm no longer officially a student, I don't think I can still hold my position as a student assistant. The other job I was hoping to get doesn't require one to be a student, but with the Covid19 panic, they're not currently looking to fill that position and probably won't til fall. In the meantime I can apply for unemployment and/or work as a delivery driver for DoorDash or something.I doubt it will pay what Tech was paying me, but at least it will be some income.
Well, there is another job opening I'm looking into. The office of Jodey Arrington, the local state representative to Congress is hiring. I'm going to pay for that tomorrow. Who knows, I might get lucky.