Day 41 – “blood letting,” tidying, Clic-readers, and (surprise!) Crossfit

This morning I had to go to the Kaiser lab to get tests run – it’s a long story. Anyway – I got there right at 7:30 (because H had a conference call at 7:00 so we were up) and I was surprised to only have like 5 people in line in front of me. Usually at that “pre-work” time there are around 30.

They took – NO LIE – 9 VIALS of blood. OMG. I don’t think even when I was doing intake for the Marines I have had so much blood taken!

I”m back home now, and it just turned 9:00 a.m. I have to admit it really is nice to be up “early” – so much more “day” that way ;-)

I have some law work to do, plus it’s That Day I get all the bills into Quicken/etc. I don’t particularly like doing it but I actually ~do~ really like it when it’s done (very satisfying). That reminds me of one Episode 2 thing that happened near the end – the Afghanimals didn’t pay their taxi driver enough money. They were super cavalier about it, and it cost them. They hit the mat and Phil made them go back.

Time and again, folks mess up the $ bit. I know that you’re given a certain amount of $ (in this case, the bills were actually in the first trip envelope), and that you have to “husband” (wife!) it – but you also have to be SUPER DUPER cognizant of actually PAYING your drivers. I am not sure if it was because they didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand, were being arrogant, or … ? The interesting thing is that the more “annoying” of the two (the one with the big hair) wound up blaming his cousin, who was “responsible for keeping track of the $” – immediately threw him under the bus, and told Phil that they were “enemies.” It seemed like that cousin actually could speak Spanish, and just got a little flustered and was being pushed to “hurry up hurry up” by the other guy.

I’m not quite sure how to forestall something like that. Perhaps ask the driver at the outset “about” how much the trip will cost – so that you have at least that amount of $ ready? I know that in for example Cambodia, you have to negotiate for the cost BEFORE you get in the cab (Vietnam and Thailand, too) – and that’s what it’s going to cost. Not sure how many countries do it that way, but my supposition would be that if you negotiated on the way “in” in ANY country, you would get there FASTER because the driver would want to get you out of the cab faster (since you had “fixed” the amount he would be getting, at the start). A thought.

So today’s Crossfit workout is:
CONDITIONING
For Time
Run 400M/40 Box Jump/ 20 Toes 2 Bar
Run 400M/ 30 Box Jump/ 15 Toes 2 Bar
Run 400M/ 20 Box Jump/ 10 Toes 2 Bar
Run 400M/ 10 Box Jump/ 5 Toes 2 Bar
Run 400m

Box jumping is not that bad – I’m doing it now on I want to say 2 of the big plates? (I remember it was 8″). Toes to bar I SUCK AT. It is just what you think it is – you hang from the bar with your feet off the ground, and “however you can,” you try to touch your toes to the bar that your hands are hanging from.

I guess I could try doing it with my hands in chin-up position and see if that makes any difference – in all honesty, I can just barely get my knees up bent at all, much less to even a “hanging sitting” position – WAY-HAY-HAY less toes forward! Bo is doing this training, and I know that he doesn’t have a “scale” for toes-to-bar. In looking at various videos, it looks like the ‘scale’ is to go for “knees to elbows” – which is what I’m going to try today.

I did go to yoga yesterday – YAY! I was very proud of myself. There were very few folks in the class and I just concentrated on not “going hard” (which sounds odd when applied to yoga…) but rather on really “stretching.” I was able to get my hand lower in triangle than I’ve ever been able to – not sure if that was just “that day” or if Crossfit is helping. My arms were really sore – it was hard to keep them up in the poses in the beginning set before Savasanna. I know that’s the Crossfit for sure. My arms are pretty much always sore!

I posted on Pinterest a photo of my knee from yesterday’s workout – Anthony kept emphasizing how important it was in the deadlifts to get the bar close to my legs – and so one time when I was putting the bar down I whacked my knee hard enough to bruise. So beautiful ;-) I did the orange bar with 2 5 kilo plates – did the parallel bar dips on the green band. I probably said that already.

R and I have been “Facebook Messenger-ing” today about various things for our “laundry list” – one of hers is to get her eye that got botched in the cataract surgery to get fixed. That was awful (a couple years ago, in my memory). Once I get the LASIK done (that’s on my list for today actually – I have to schedule it), I want to get a pair of “Clic-readers” like Steve C has. He is pretty “hard on” stuff so I know that these would be “rough and ready” – but I can’t get any now, because my prescription will change (sadly, for the worse – that’s the trade-off for seeing better far distance) after the surgery.

Okie dokie – time for bills…

POSTSCRIPT: I did the WOD in 18:58 – okay, sure, I was lifting my knees up as hard as I could (though the last 5 I did get them to the “I am sitting in a chair” position, AND I was able to swing back a little a la a kip) – and my box jump was up on 2 25 kg plates (Bo said next time to add a 5 in between the two – moving up…moving up…) – but I felt SUPER DUPER proud of myself – and I was the first one in! (The next guy was at like 19:50, then Jay – the big NFL guy – and his wife, and then another super fit blonde cutie grown-up-Barbie nurse who was really nice – were all after that. The nurse gal was about my age, I think her name was Susan. She’s done some form of Crossfit before I think – or something close – though none of them knew how to use the rower or do the toes-to-bar). Warmup was 1000m row, then 3x (10 lunges across the floor, 10 V-ups (I still can’t understand why I can’t do these?), walking the parallel bar across with your hands) then 50 double unders (I did 100 singles). As for the parallel bar – all I could do was boost myself up onto my hands, then basically rock back and forth like R2D2, without forward momentum. Another challenge….