Book 4: Der Blutgott

This book was my "on the train" book. Pretty much the only time I read any of it was while I was travelling from place to place. Of course, this means I got sleepy and fell asleep on it time and again. That also means it took me a long, long time to get through the whole thing.

For a book supposedly about the blood god, it doesn't really get around to it until almost the end of the book. I was hoping for a lot more story on the blood god himself, but mostly got a big battle in a huge city. Sure, battles are great - and the Soul Drinkers (Seelentrinker) marines were well portrayed. Their struggle to battle for the Emperor, even after excommunication was intriguing. Would be interesting to build up a force of them.

The story itself, wasn't much more than expected from a story about marines. Battles, both large and small. Lots of things blowing up, and lots of things getting shot at quite a bit. Personally, I had a lot of issues keeping track of the many characters. Something about similarity of name, purpose and the German dialogue structure made things harder than it should have been.

Still, for an in-world fiction, it's not too bad.

Gym, issues, pushing through

I have been going to the gym. But each deviation from the schedule causes me to have to push myself again to go there.

I went in the mornings all last week, and other than the first time, no issues. Then, this week, I had a schedule swap, and I've been going in the evening instead. Means I had to push myself along again to get there.

I get the same excuses all the time from my brain. Too tired, too late, too hungry. None of them are good, or even reasonable excuses. The whole point of exercise is to make me tired. And it can't be too late to go to a place that never closes. And too hungry? I can eat after! Suck it up!

Still, it's a bit of an issue with me and self-motivation. Takes some kicking, and some effort just going there. But once I'm there, it's all business.

McFit

Totally pleased with this gym. Open 24/7 (have yet to test if that is true or not), and stocked up with all the things a gym-goer needs. There are two locations near me. One in Käfertal, and one in Almenhof. There are some differences between the two locations, but they are almost entirely limited to building layout.

In either gym, there is enough cardio (Ausdauer) equipment to let a good number of members work at the same time. There is a lot of machines. There are at least two of most machines, and sometimes three or more. For those few machines where there is only one, there does not seem to be high demand.

If this was all the gym had, it might be enough to make me go. Weight machines aren't my favourite, but the open hours is helpful. Of course, the real clincher is the gym has a well stocked free weight area. No lifting cages, but enough racks to fill in the gaps for most exercises. The only thing I have missed about the lack of a cage is that there is no good place for a deadlift spot. So far, deadlifts seem to be something that is just done near a rack. No proof of that, though, since I have not seen anyone do any deadlifts.

I am slightly thrown off by the metric weights. While they come in 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10 and 15 (maybe higher values too), they are clearly not the same as pound weights. I was used to adding a pair of 10s to the bar to go up in difficulty, but with kilos, it isn't the same thing. It's much more like throwing 25s on the bar. Much harsher.

So, I have to pay better attention to the weight I grab from the stack.

I have been enjoying the gym so far. Hopefully my day off won't throw the process out of whack.

Is it bike time yet?

All winter long I have been thinking about my bike. Getting back out there and riding. I guess I did a good job of getting myself interested in riding the bike last year. Even if I did wuss out after my big overnight trip.

But, I digress. I have been looking forward to biking season around here. Of course, in Germany, every day is biking season. But, for me, biking season starts once the threat of snow is gone, and the weather doesn't require a coat, mitts, hat and scarf. We are nearing such conditions now. With luck, it will be reasonable riding weather sometime this week, maybe this weekend.

McFit

Hit the gym yesterday and today. Just gotta keep it up.

Workout yesterday was the standard weight lifting stuff. Squats (20kg+bar), bench (20kg+bar), then 3x2 assisted chin ups.

Workout today was a program available at the McFit. A 2-day split program. It goes like this:

10 minutes warmup on treadmill, low speed (5.2kph) and 2% incline.

3x15 Leg press (35kg) superset with 3x15 Leg curl (35kg)
3x15 Incline dumbell press (6kg per hand) superset with 3x15 Chest pulldown (35kg)
3x15 Captain's chair leg lift superset with 3x15 Laterial raise (4kg per hand for 2 sets, 3kg per hand for last set)
3x15 Straight bar pushdown (25kg) superset with 3x15 dumbell bicep curl (4kg per hand)

10 minutes on recumbent bike

Quite happy with myself. Now I just need to eat, and get some sleep. Workout again tomorrow.

3EUR days 7 & 8

I'm sticking with the 3EUR Experiment. I had 0.05 carryover from day 6, and didn't spend any money on day 7. This was possible because I stayed with friends. So, I didn't need to buy food for myself there. I'm there again on day 8, which left me with 6.05 in the account.

I did some shopping today, though. I bought some chicken schnitzel, 100g of chocolate (0.35), and 6 baguette style Brotchen (also 0.35). The chicken was discounted, which got me it for cheaper than I'd expected. At the end of the day, I'm still left with 3.27EUR.

That will roll over into tomorrow.

A couple of things have come up in my mind since the last post.

First, I had planned to go out to a friendly meetup on day 7. But, I couldn't decide whether I would have to count any food bought there against the 3EUR limit. On the one hand, it is clearly eating out, which is covered by the experiment. On the other hand, it is almost like school, which is exempt. In the end, I didn't go, so I don't have a good answer for it.

Secondly, I'm starting to feel like the experiment is inauthentic. In some ways, I was looking at the experiment as a real experience. Working from a limited budget (with a hard limit), and preventing myself from overspending within the month.

I did say I could take advantage of free stuff, but I find that I'm doing that quite a bit. Eating food from friends instead of things from my own kitchen - even when I have enough for myself and have planned a meal for myself. This strikes me as dishonest. I mean, would someone really living with extremely limited funds be able to rely on friends feeding them day after day? I don't think so. Not without coming off as a huge mooch.

So, the whole experiment is starting to ring pretty hollow to me. Which bothers me, and I'm undecided on whether or not it should. On the one hand, I'd like the experience to be authentic, and on the other hand, this is the reality of my life. It's quite possible for me to eat several meals for free each week, with no significant drawback or backlash against me. So, why not take advantage of it. Maybe I could view that as supplementation via soup-kitchen or something like that.

3EUR Experiment

The easy days of day 3 and 4 left me with a balance of 9.19 going into day 5. And, unfortunately, that kinda went to my head. A miscalculation saw me purchase 9.28 worth of groceries.

I hadn't worked out a proper process for overspending. I hadn't expected to. But, I figured that a positive balance carries over, so a negative should do as well. Ultimately, the budget being drawn against is for the entire month (90EUR total), so really, an over-expense comes from that pool of money.

Thus, today, on day 6, I was working with 2.91, instead of 3.00. I managed to make it up though, and spent only 2.86, leaving me with 0.05 carryover for tomorrow.

One of the things I've realized in the short time I've been doing this experiment is that I really don't give enough thought to what I've been spending on food before now. Every time I think about getting a snack or something from the shop, I have to remind myself that it'll count against my food budget. That were I really limited in the total money I have to spend, that I'd be seriously hurting myself later in the month because I wanted something sweet early on.

The other thing I've noticed is that I have to do a lot more meal planning now. I can't simply go to the store and buy everything I might need for a meal on one day. I have to ration it out, and buy things that I can spread over a couple meals, or buy things today so that tomorrow I can buy the rest of the ingredients. Living limited requires me to really consider what I need, and avoid that unnecessary items.

BFS: Writing for January

One of the 12 goals of Big, Fun, Scary 2011 is to write more. 250,000 words this year, in fact.

To accomplish this goal, I need to write an average of 20,834 words per month. That's 685 words per day. 685 words a day is not that much. The real difficulty is simply writing each day.

Over the month of January, I managed to write on just 16 days. That's a tiny fraction more than half of the days. Fortunately, I managed some 18,781 words in those 16 days. Just 2,100 shy of the goal. I'll have to do a bit better next month, so I don't fall farther behind.