The usual "what I et today"
Calories: 1359. 120g protein, 134g carbs (20g fibre), 27g fat.

Dinner was 6 ounces of zucchini and an ounce of onion, grated up and mixed with 2 tablespoons soy protein as I did with the kohlrabi, and cooked into little brown cakes. With tofu mayo on them, and 4 ounces (frozen weight) of ocean perch beside them. Then 2 tablespoons Quark, Jello pudding powder, and a quarter-ounce of walnuts.

I suspect that what I should do, rather than introducing the carb-ups at this early date, is instead dump the toxic white pile of Splenda from my diet. Only the thought causes me so much pain that I am trying to evade it. Things will become so much more boring in the eating department, without my sugar-free syrups.

Still, I really should bite the (tasteless, sad-on-the-palate) bullet and do it, and see what that does, before abandoning my hypocaloric diet so soon.

Sprints, with Dog
I only got nine sprints this time, because Onyx got bored. First, he started dragging the leash around the field, and plopping it pointedly at my feet as I was mid-dash.

Then he took off, and into the open door of a portable where a couple of guys were setting up desks. So I had to stop sprinting, get him out, and then play Kill the Leash and Swing the Dog.

Today's workout: Arms. It is the second day of Rep Range week, rests a pretty consistent 60-90 seconds, tempo 212.

I shuffled up tris and bis this time for a change, alternating. So some things were encouragingly strong, others not so encouraging, depending.

Weighted Bench Dip
WU b/w x8
Work 35lb PB (in lap) x8, 8, 8

Alternating DB Curl, reverse grip
WU 5lb DB x8/8
Work 15lb PB+Add x8/8, 9/9

Cable pushdown (rope attachment)
WU 10lb x8
Work 32.5lbs x3 + 30lbs x6, 25lbs x9
Notes: Yep, it is harder with the rope attachment than the short bar. How embarrassing.

Cable curl
WU 5lbs R8/L8
Work 10lbs R10/L10, L8/R8
Notes: I can never believe how lousy I am with these. Assists on upward portion of last rep, each hand, both sets. (Is that "concentric" or "eccentric"? I can never recall.)

Tricep Kickback
WU 5lb DB R8/L8
Work 15lb PB L12/R12, R12/L12
Notes: I did these standing, legs triangled, other arm braced on same leg, and that seems to be much more stable, oddly, than the bench. I think, and have thought before, that our bench is a bit too high for me.

Incline DB Curl
WU 5lb DB x8
Work 15lb PB x9+3, 7+1
Notes: must do these at highest incline. Tried them before, lower, and they hurt my shoulders. Odd. They felt really easy until the "+", then suddenly, boom! Had to pause, just to squeeze out that one extra rep.

Total lifting time: 40 minutes. Soundtrack: mostly hitting Repeat on Ludacris' Stand Up. A workout goes pretty fast when you are boogeying.

Postworkout snack: mixed my lemon juice with a bit of stevia, pectin and unflavoured whey protein -- oh, and some lemon extract -- for a Lemon Shake, shot cider vinegar (whoo! ecchhh!), and am having 4 tablespoons of 8-grain cereal, cooked up, with a bit of almond syrup, therein.

I thought of having a half-cup of Kashi Crunch. Then didn't know if I should go there.

Doctor, doctor, give me the news
Today's weight: 129 pounds. Temperature: 97.3?F.

The results of my blood tests are in. Apparently I have the hormone levels of a prepubescent girl. The doctor now wants to refer me to an endocrinologist, but I told her to wait until November. (She was none too impressed with the notion of me cutting down my bodyfat again, let me tell you.) I'm also interested to see what the bone scan will have to say, now that I'm doing less distance running and more weights.

Three meals either down or ready:
Meal one: one cup egg sub with a couple tablespoons of salsa, and 4 ounces sweet potato done up as oven fries and dipped in the sauce that shall not be named. Green tea. Sour shot.

Meal two: smoked spaghetti squash frittata with tofu mayo and syrup and flax, again.

Meal three: salad with 1.5 ounces of chicken, tomatoes, roasted red peppers and basil; half an oatcake with Quark/Jello pudding icing.

A lot of green tea drunk down, and a mug of coffee. We'll see if adding some carbs back into lunch helps with the afternoon workout bonk problem; mind you, today is Arm Day, so it's not much of a test. I do plan to do sprints afterwards, though.

I'm brooding on the notion of switching up to a calorie cycle perhaps next week. I hadn't planned to do so until four or five weeks in, but jeesh! I'm tired of watching the scale just sit there. Or I might just do a modest carb-load in the next couple days, temperature or no temperature. I've certainly been feeling a lack-of-carbs kind of drag the last week or so.

Maybe I'm being too impatient. That was my trouble the last time, impatience. Hm. I will consider further.

One day, chewed away by a dog
Feels like I've done nothing much at all. Leg workout, big deal. Spent the rest of it sitting on the porch going through a heap of books and trying to keep Destructo-Boy from doing too much damage. As it is: pansies growing in one urn, eaten, and railing of porch steps decidedly more rickety than it was. And I finished Thomas the Rhymer, Sandy Johnson's The Book of Tibetan Elders, and Scion of Gil, the third book of Rebecca Bradley's series.

(Now that whole series can go in the Books to Sell pile. I sort of almost like them, but not quite.)

Now, for some reason, I am rereading Swiss Family Robinson, or, Prigs in Paradise.

Dinner was a pile of broccoli, three and a quarter ounces chicken, teriyaki sauce and quite a lot of habanero sauce, followed by a pumpkin/flax/sugar-free syrup mash with a quarter-ounce of walnuts on it.

Which brings the daily totals to 1341 calories. 145g protein, 124g carbs (25g fibre), 27g fat.

Feeling most discouraged today. Muscle? I have muscle? I must be mad. Why am I doing this again? And why am I not losing any fat yet? I've suffered for over two weeks here -- I should be positively wraithlike by now!

Go legs go
I have no idea why that picture of the dog isn't showing up. I've deleted it, I've re-uploaded it, I've done that again... it shows up in the main directory... pfeh.

Legs done, for another week. It is Rep Range week, rests about 90 seconds. Tempo, honestly, varied.

Bulgarian squat warmup, bodyweight, 10/leg

Squat
WU Oly+20lbs x6
Work Oly+50lbs x6 +60lbs x6, 6, 6, 10
Notes: thought I'd try something new today, more sets. No failure, but at least I was going down to full parallel on all reps. I've got to move my tail to the gym for leg day soon.

Stationary Lunge
WU bare Oly, alternating to rear, 6/6
Work Oly+50 started alt. 3 ea. then R9/L9, R12/L12, L12/R12
Notes: thought I'd try out the alternating, but I just can't keep my knee stable with a working weight.

Leg Extension
WU 50lb x6
Work 130 lbs x10, 10
Notes: Finally, something good! back up to 130, and no protests from the joints!

SL Deadlift
WU SOly+40lbs x8
Work SOly+75lbs x10, 10
Notes: barely made the last rep of second set. Just when my back was recovering from the deadlifts, too!

Lying Leg Curl, toes pointed
WU 30lbs x6
Work 60lbs x7.5, 8
Notes: oo ow! I still cannot believe how much these hurt, or how they knot up a calf muscle. Still, I feel them much more in the hammies, which is I expect a Good Thing.

Hyperextensions off bench (legs of bench raised on step), bodyweight
Work 2x15

Total lifting time: 50 minutes.

Now eating the Post-Workout Meal: vanilla protein shake, 3T steelcut oats with chocolate pudding powder. Steelcut oats always seem like such a good, wholesome idea, but in practice I don't like the slimy, gruel-like texture -- and I always forget that.

Other meals today have been pretty dull. Meal one was pancakes again, same as yesterday. Meal two was -- what was meal two? Oh, yes -- smoked spaghetti squash frittata -- same as yesterday. Meal three was 1.5oz chicken breast in a salad, and half a spiced oatcake with coffee/Quark icing -- yawn. I've also been drinking a lot of Crystal Light, because I found a few boxes of it stashed away in a cupboard.

Now I must off to have a bath, I suppose.

Expansion of the Sucker Sign
Stray cats have always known that whatever their straits, let them come to our house and they will be succoured, fed, coddled, and probably given a home where, yes, they will sleep under the covers if they so choose.

Well, apparently now dogs can see the neon sign too.

Lookit what came dancing by our house at eight this morning. No tags, just a slightly-too-small collar. So we caught him (he seems the sort of big galoot who'd run in front of some churchgoing car otherwise) and he's been tethered to the porch all morning. Behind him, you can see the destruction he's wrought; I also had to move away everything else within his reach, as he tried to kill the broom and eat a Rubbermaid full of sidewalk salt.

At one, I can call the Humane Society, and get Destructo-Boy taken away.

Weight this morning: 129.5 pounds (drat!). Temperature: 97.6?F (drat again; was hoping I'd have an excuse to eat a few more carbs today. But no.)

A. and I went running this morning (we were just back when Destructo-Boy showed up). A little short of 5K round the cemetery -- without Onyx, who got left behind. We brought him out with us in the morning, and then he took off after a squirrel and nearly ran in front of a car, then didn't come when A. called him. So he got put back in the house, because Bad Dawgs don't get to go running in the cemetery. Poor l'il guy; the presence of this large stranger on the porch is upsetting him.

Of course vacuuming is exercise
Especially when you share space with four cats and one dog. The house is more or less clean. The bathroom is clean, and smells fresh. Ahhhh!

Today's tally: 1223 calories. 136g protein, 123g carbs (40g fibre), 25g fat.

Meal three was a salad with a can of tuna. Meal four was all about the Lots of Food for Little Calories: a package of shiratake, a quarter cup of edamame, and a cup of frozen broccoli, with teriyaki sauce, followed by half an oatcake with Quark, Jello pudding powder and instant coffee frosting. The new batch of oatcakes is nicely spiced with German honeycake spices, and coffee is often used as an ingredient in honeycakes, so... Meal five, currently being eaten, is a third of a cup of cottage cheese, a package of chocolate protein powder, and half a tablespoon of peanut butter.

I must speak to my butcher. I cooked up my second batch of chicken breasts -- and they wizzled up into nothing, just like the very cheap chicken breasts one can buy at the supermarket, all pumped up with water solutions, rather than the plump, juicy (expensive!) grain-fed chicken breasts I have come to love. I thought when I bought them that these ones didn't look as fine as they customarily do.

The other day I was in a bookstore, and I spotted a new paperback by Ellen Kushner -- Thomas the Rhymer. I was so excited -- Ellen Kushner! I restrained myself from buying it, simply because I've been feeling very poor lately, and there have been a lot of other goodies -- CDs and tarot cards and whatnots, and paperbacks are so stupidly expensive now -- this particular slender volume was $10.99.

Well, as it turns out, lucky I didn't. Further book pruning, today, and as I was going through the F/SF shelves, what to my wondering eye should appear -- but a copy of Thomas the Rhymer, with one of those lovely cover illustrations by Thomas Canty. It's been reprinted, it would appear... So I am re-reading it.

Clean sweep?
Today's weight: 129.5 pounds. Temperature: 96.3?F.

Thus far I have eaten a batch of buckwheat pancakes (1/3 cup mix, 2 tablespoons Quark, 2 tablespoons egg sub, water), with Jello pudding "sauce" on top mixed with a tablespoon of protein powder, and sugar-free pancake syrup on some of them, and sugar-free jam on some others. That was Meal One, with green tea and sour shot.

Meal Two was a concoction of mine own, which became a standing feature of the last half of last competition diet. The flavour idea comes very distantly from a recipe for Sausage Pancakes I made once, but other than that, it is very much changed. It's another frittata affair, made with a sauteed onion and a scoop of baked spaghetti squash, seasoned with Korean hot pepper flakes, a shake of poultry seasoning, and a very generous sprinkle of liquid hickory smoke. Add a tablespoon of ground flax seeds and a cup of egg substitute, and bake until set; serve with tofu mayonnaise and sugar-free pancake syrup.

I know, I know, gentle reader. You are reeling back in horror. I would say "don't knock it till you've tried it," and maybe that would be true -- but I also like apple-and-Brie omelettes. It is tasty, in a bacon-with-maple-syrup sort of way.

I've mostly been cleaning house today.

If I could have just one wish, at this particular point in time, it would be that the Renovation Elves would come in the night, finish off the bathroom and do the kitchen for me. (The plans are all in the filing cabinet, Renovation Elves! It's ready to go, if only there was the time and money.)

I am sick of this place. I hate my house. I hate the two half-bathrooms, both with ripped-out walls and neither with a complete set of functioning fixtures. I hate my stupid, awkward kitchen with no place to work and no place to store things. I hate the fucking lengths of drywall which have been hunkering in the front hallway for what? a year now? I hate that all of our towels and sheets are stacked up higgledy piggledy in the basement because the linen closet in the upstairs bathroom is half ripped up and half full of tools and sandpaper and other shit. I hate the holes in the walls. I hate the fact that there is no ceiling in the front hall -- and hasn't been, for two years. I hate that there is no storage, no place to put things away, and that it's impossible to keep a place in this condition anything like clean.

And I don't know when, or if, or how, it's going to change. I want to do something, but I never have consistent lengths of time to do it in. A. wants to do something, but he's as tired of it as I am, and unmotivated, besides being now unemployed, so there's no spare money at all for even the little extras (drywall fill, more sandpaper) that would get things further ahead.

I want it all over with. This could be a nice house, but right now it exhausts me to be here. There isn't a single room which is peaceful and relaxing to be in, without stupid reminders of the fact that this is a hole and a dump.

Urgh. Rant over with. Now off to clean the functioning bits of both bathrooms, and put another load of laundry in the dryer.

No clever titles here
Today's workout: Chest and Shoulders. Still Power Week; rests 2-3 minutes.

One-arm DB Bench Press
WU 15lb PB+Add xR6/L6
Work 35lb PB+Add xR6/L6, L6/R6, R6/L6
Notes: First workset absolutely rotten, as I tried to find my point of balance. Interesting, doing them one-armed -- certainly feel it a lot more.

DB Decline Press
WU 15lb PB+Add x6
Work 35lb PB x6, 6, 6
Notes: Very odd, how easily these seemed to go up. I recall struggling last time.

DB Flyes
WU 15lb PB x6
Work 25lb PB+2Adds x6, 6, 5
Notes: Felt these too.

Military Press (parallel grip)
WU 15lb PB+Add x6
Work 25lb PB+Add x5, 5, 4
Notes: That certainly sucked rocks. Worse than last time. I think I must switch chest and back next Power Week, as I felt the effects of yesterday's deadlifts in echo during many of these exercises.

Upright DB Row
WU 15lb PB+Add x6
Work 25lb PB+Add x6,6,6
Notes: The blithe repetition of numbers cannot convey how much these hurt my shoulders. I'm not even sure if it's the muscle or something else, or both.

Lean-away Laterals
WU 10lb DB xR6/L6
Work 15lb PB x R6/L6, L6/R6
Notes: Haven't done these in a cycle or two, and was surprised at how "easy" they seem to have gotten.

Entire workout: yech. Every time I picked up a weight, this shudder would run through me: Oh, man, this is sooooo heavy! I can't lift this much, can I? I could, when I got into the groove of the motion, but still, the initial surge of feebleness was hardly encouraging. I've felt rotten all day. Came home, and was so exhausted I decided to have a nap instead, so ate 2 ounces of chicken and a tree of broccoli with some fish oil and went to bed. I couldn't sleep, of course. First the dog had to lick me all over, then William came and sat on my chest, huffing catbreath affectionately into my mouth and curling his sharp little claws in ecstasy in my bosom, and then -- well, I just couldn't sleep. Felt I should be doing something.

So I did; I went off and cleared out about a hundred volumes from the bookshelves and put them in the Sell/Donate pile. This drop in the bucket makes absolutely no difference, and doesn't even make space for all the books stuffed in the gaps on top at present.

The other thing I did was call and book appointments for all the test nonsense my doctor requisitioned at the last checkup. Next week will be a whirl of allopathic medicine: appointment to discuss blood test on Monday, bone density scan Wednesday, ultrasound (yuck) Thursday. I'll enjoy this, I can tell already. Not to mention, supposedly there is an order in to Toronto to get an MRI done on my knee this month.

Then I had supper; again, motivation not stellar, so I made the last kohlrabi into the same thing as last night, and had the other half of the lemon oatcake. Same as last night. A. was watching a tape of cartoons off YTV someone lent him, and I watched a couple of Darias. Then things moved off into something to do with the Debbies who live in the hills and the mutants who live in the valleys, which was entirely too close to my own high school experience to be remotely watchable. Besides, I don't feel like working out tomorrow. I want my rest day.

After lifting, I did sprints again. Same as yesterday, yes. Dull, very, though it was considerably darker. Total lifting time: 50 minutes.

Sixth meal: one microwaved sweet potato with butter sprinkles, and a sample pack of Orange Creamsicle Whey Gourmet protein. It made a nice change; however, I think I still prefer my own syrupy concoctions.

Today's total: 1392 calories.
134g protein, 126g carbs (27g fibre), 28g fat.

Curiously strong
I am addicted to the Altoids breath strips, particularly the cinnamon.

The trouble is, the only place round here that sells them is Sugar Mountain. As you can well imagine, this is dangerous.

I only wish that I could think of something to do with the very nifty little trapdoor tins the strips come in.