Happy Birthday to Me!

Hello blog! 

I'm back!

For the past couple weeks, I've been without internet…well, that's not true. I've been without a laptop that can connect to the internet. I've had a phone, but if you've ever tried doing anything useful online with a phone, you know that it's pretty much impossible. It's like trying to get a toddler to drive you to work when you're drunk. For so many reasons, there's no way it's going to happen. 

Today, I got it back.

And you know what the first thing I watched was? Dancing robots. And the second thing? Also robots. Later, I will get on stumbleupon and probably find a thousand pictures of cute baby animals and landscapes.

Damn if I didn't miss the internet. 

So, I'm back online. Now I just need to get my vehicle back, and I'll be pretty much back to the standard American baseline that I had finally arrived 3 months ago. Yay.

Seriously, though. This is probably the best thing that could happen to me today. I now have so many opportunities for entertainment and employment that I didn't before. 

Not that being disconnected has forced me to be much more productive. I had to skip the last couple gym sessions because of a lack of car/need to return the rental car and still catch the bus back home. (There are only four in a day, and the last one is at 1600, so if you miss that one…try to have a backup plan that doesn't involve a homeless shelter). So my current numbers for a 5*3 are: 

Squat: 115 (original 75)

Press: 55 (original 45)

Deadlift: 150 (original 120)

Bench: 75 (original 60)

Row: 75 (original 55)

Chinups: -50 (original -65)

My personal favorite is the Deadlift, because you can just move so much weight around with it. I hate that Rippetoe (the guy who wrote the program I'm doing) put it at the end of the workout, because it leaves me feeling like I have the ability to tear a small village in half, but then I have to get back into jeans and catch the bus home before it gets cold outside. 

The bus also makes it so that I end up going to the gym at strange hours. So I go in, there's no one there but me and maybe three other people. There's a math to this, that I've noticed. Some things are almost always guaranteed. Given that there are three people at the gym, then:

Two of them will probably be competent, and they'll probably be there together. 

A third will inevitably be the only person who is there to spot you in case you fail the bench press, so that you don't crush yourself.

That third will also, inevitably, be a jackass. That's why he's there alone. (But so are you, try not to think about it).

So I ask for a spot on the bench press, and sure enough the guy walks over, and starts grabbing my bar like he's trying to lift the weight himself, completely negating any benefit I might have gotten from the lift. 

"If you could, don't touch the bar unless it starts to go down, please" 

"Okay"

But bench press assistant man is ALWAYS a lying, undermining weasel of a spot, and soon you're bench pressing 50 pounds instead of 80, while he is doing 30 pound rows. 

Bench press spot guy? Why?

Why? 

My quote of the day, from TED Talks, which is a video featuring A Monkey That Controls a Robot With its Thoughts 

(but why do we want a robot that can crush a human like a tin can to have an insatiable desire for all things fruit related?)

"Any monkey will do anything you do for a little drop of Brazilian orange juice." 

Really? Anything?

Can it be my spotter? 

Because that would be great.