my friend craig just sent me a link to this video from when I was playing guitar for regatta 69, circa 1996. this was actually shot in some part of brooklyn (don’t remember where) while we were on tour. it was obviously a fairly low budget affair and my guitar wasn’t even plugged in.

kind of a blast from the past, I am surprised this even made it onto youtube, as far as I know it was only on a moon records videotape compilation and maybe once on super ultra latenight mtv (120 minutes)? anyways, I still have the guitar and the shirt I am wearing!

so I signed up for the crossfit nyc elements class, which is like an introduction to crossfit. basically, the workouts focus on variety, intensity and speed. almost everything is done for time, meaning the workouts are usually something like “do as many sets as you can of these exercises in 20 minutes”, or “do 5 sets of these exercises and record the time”. the idea being that the more fit you become, the better your time will be, etc.

we went over a basic warmup routine which is a samson stretch, 10 pullups, 10 pushups, 10 situps, 10 squats (bodyweight), 10 back raises per round. we did 3 rounds for time at the end of the workout, everything was doable for me although I lost a lot of steam on the pullups on the 3rd round which I guess is normal.

on a related fitness note, I also picked up mark rippetoe’s book “starting strength”. it’s a howto guide for how to do basic barbell lifts. it’s a pretty crazy book, in that he really only talks about 5 exercises in the whole book. squat, bench press, deadlift, clean, and standing press. his basic workout program is also super simple, there are two workouts:

workout 1 is squat, bench and deadlift. workout 2 is squat, clean, and press. you alternate workouts and don’t train on consecutive days. that’s it. I got the book because I’ve been in a serious lifting rut for the past 10 years or so and I wanted to learn basic exercises the correct way.

although I’ve been really busy with boxing training and that alone is a great workout, as much as I love it I’ve gotten a little nervous about hurting my hands training and the long term sustainability of it. I think it will be fine if I am careful, but I probably don’t need to be pounding on a heavy bag 4 days a week either. I guess I view learning some weight training and starting crossfit as a way to get in some great workouts on non-boxing days that will be a little more sustainable as I get older.

all this plus half marathon training means I’m spending a ton of time in the gym and doing physical stuff. I figure I am just on a health kick right now and should go with it until I decide to cut back and focus on something else for a while. I go through learning spurts like this with lots of things and I think it’s generally a good idea to just follow whatever I’m currently interested in.

this is going to sound incredibly ocd, but that’s mostly how I roll.

like most musicians with a day job, my typical after work routine involves practicing guitar, playing/writing music, etc. since I use my computer as a music player, and have a lot of cool software for composing, etc, I tend to sit in front of the computer when I practice. unfortunately this also leads to me compulsively and needlessly checking rss feeds and email every few minutes, and basically wasting time checking on random things that pop into my head: should I order new boxing gloves? what’s the weather going to be like tomorrow? how late is fairway open? not exactly pressing, need to know information.

I’ve tried a number of things to remedy this in the past: deleting browser shortcut from dock, turning off network connection, and good old fashioned resolve. unfortunately none of this has contributed to less browsing the interwebs.

so last week I just turned my computer off. I turn it on when I need it for something (like transcribing or whatever), and then turn it off when I don’t. if I need to do something on the internet, I sit down, fire up the machine and do it as opposed to interspersing it with practice time. this has really helped my focus a lot, and probably also helps reduce energy consumption. do I really need to have a computer, 2 external hard drives and a external sound card sleeping 24/7 when I use it less than an hour a day?

does warren actually write the berkshire letter himself? in any case it’s very well written as always, and has a ton of great info. It’s the best one I’ve read in a while, certainly better than the GEICO commercials we’ve been getting over the past few years.