we’re going to puebla for a week, taking the following

books:
“sin in the second city” - steve levitt, the author of freakonomics, recommended this highly. about prostitution in chicago
“the count of monte cristo” - this is a classic and by many accounts a real page turner. trying to read more classic works of fiction since it’s an area I haven’t read much in.

movies:
“the italian job” - the classic 50s version, not the remake
“pirates of the carribean” - never saw it, ppl say it’s good, it’s a good way to kill 2.5 hours
“dial M for murder” - classic hitchcock.

I’ve been gravitating towards older movies since watching “the sting”. it’s worked out pretty well so far, I figure if it was made in the 50s or 60s, and you can get it on itunes, there must be some redeeming qualities to it. plus, so much of what comes out these days is just trash, moviewise. look who sounds over 30, eh!?

music:
too much to mention, notable stuff includes tony rice and norman blake’s duo bluegrass record, miles davis and charlie parker’s early quintets, sonny rollins’ prestige stuff, mahler’s 1st symphony, and sting’s “nothing like the sun”. hiram bullock, who passed away recently, played awesome on this album.

did the wod fromcrossfit virtuosity today because it looked fun and it’s a rest day on the main site. added 15 burpees/round to it because I like burpees.
3 rounds for time of:
15 Situps
15 Back Extensions
15 Knees to Elbows
15 Good Mornings
15 Burpees

the whole thing took me 12:48. also did weighted pullups, 3×5 w/30lbs, and deadlifts @ 255lbs.

did modified “michael”: 3 rounds for time of:
row 800m
50 ghd situps
50 back extensions
22:38

I skipped the crossfit total on monday, so did squats/press/deadlift today. work sets were 205, 105, and 295. squats were pretty tough, press was surprisingly easy. really amazing how fast muscles can grow and adapt, just a month ago doing 5 reps of 105 press would have been a lot tougher for me.

currently reading “good calories, bad calories”, really good read so far especially considering the subject matter is pretty dry (the correlation between dietary fat and heart disease). although my diet is by no stretch of the imagination low in carbs, I have pretty much stopped eating a lot of refined carbs like bread, pasta and rice. of course, it’s particularly easy to do this time of year with all the great produce in season.

I’m finally getting my act together and signing up for a composition class at juliard in the fall, very excited about doing this! been thinking more about how music and composition fits into my life, I think I have a long emo-ish post on this somewhere deep down.

two crossfit workouts back to back today. numero uno was 7 1rep sets of weighted pullups, I did:
25,35,40,55,60,65,65(fail). failed the last rep because I didn’t give enough time between sets. immediately afterwards, pounded through:

as many reps as possible in 20 minutes of: 15 pushups, 12 dips, 9 push press (I did 75lbs because shoulder was feeling a bit weird). this was a lot harder than it looked, I thought I would get at least 7 rounds, but I ended up getting 5 + 15 pushups.

I’m trying out eating a bit lower carb than usual, we’ll see how that goes. also planning to read “the china study” and “good calories, bad calories”, both highly recommended nutrition books. almost finished the last harry potter book last night, 1 chapter left. sarah didn’t like this, but I don’t think it’s any better or worse than any of the others.

I’m really excited about picking up “a boy named shel” from the library on monday, it’s a shel silverstein bio. I’ve actually searched for info on him before, and there’s not a lot out there, so it will be very cool to read about his life. his books were a pretty big part of my childhood, I read “where the sidewalk ends” many many times as a kid. now that we have awesome bookcases I should pick up a hardcover copy of that to have.

so, I’ve downloaded a bunch of apps to my iphone. I got a metronome, a tuner, a flashlight, a iphone light saber, and an ear training program. the really nice part about some of these apps is it allows you to get rid of random things that just do one thing (alarm clock, tuner, metronome). maybe this isn’t as big a deal to most people as it is to me, but I love having less clutter and stuff just laying around.

tuesday: squats, work sets were 195. standing press, work sets were 95.
wednesday: deadlifts 5×5, work sets were 255, 275, 265, 265, 275.

used a switched grip for the first time with deadlifts yesterday, it was much easier on the grip and I’m guessing I’ll be able to pull a lot more than with using a matched grip.

yesterday I did the “crossfit total” workout, which is 1 rep max of squat, press (standing press, not bench), and deadlift. my score was 665, breakdown was:
squat: 235
press: 130
deadlift: 300

I feel like I could have deadlifted more, but I definitely maxed out on the squat as I barely got it up and stalled out halfway there. press was difficult but doable, it’s probably damn close to my true 1 rep max. I was very happy with the deadlift, as deadlifting 2x my bodyweight (which would be 340 if I stay at 170lbs) is a goal of mine for the year. weight is a strange thing, I remember weighing 185 and thinking that was my ideal weight, now that I’m at 170 I’m wondering if I shouldn’t drop a few more pounds, although I can’t see myself getting below 165, and could easily go up to 175 with all the lifting I’ve been doing recently.

today I did the crossfit workout of the day, “angie”:
100 pullups
100 pushups
100 situps
100 squats

25:50. the pullups ate up most of my time, took me about 12 minutes to do 100. part of this was I was trying to be strict about locking my elbows out at the end, and it was hard to get into a good rhythm doing this. anyways, not a terrible time but I can do a lot better.

in other news, I saw “the sting” this weekend, such an awesome movie. probably one of my favorite movies ever actually.

I was thinking recently that since I stare at eclipse all day, maybe I should look into making it a little nicer to look at. unsurprisingly, there aren’t a ton of eclipse skins out there or anything, but I did find a niceexported prefs file that looks pretty nice. the only changes I made were to change the font back to courier new, since I need a monospaced font.

also, the kempelton icons for firefox are nicer than the default icons and make things a bit more pleasant as well.

today’s workout of the day was, with a timer, do 1 pullup the first minute, 2 the 2nd minute, etc. I got up to 13 minutes, keeping very strict on form (full extension on my arms at the bottom, no cheating). also did 15 knees to elbows, 20 thrusters, 15 dips.

yesterday I did the classic squats/bench/deadlifts, work sets were 190/175/225. going to try and move these up a very small % next week.

in other news, one of the trainers at crossfit brooklyn, jacinto, turned 69 yesterday, and they did a brutal workout in his honor. it was:
Run 620 meters
69 Squats
69 Push-ups
69 Pull-ups or Jumping Pull-Ups
69 Wall Ball Shots
69 Kettlebell Swings
69 Deadlifts 95lbs/65lbs
Run 620 meters

and he did the whole thing! I hope to be in half that good a shape. jacinto taught me overhead squats the other day, very cool interesting guy who has done a lot of things in life.