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Day Job; Gym Perspective; Dinner Report
Mar. 20th, 2024 03:31 pmYesterday was nice and easy. After complaining about not being able to get to my QC work because of reopening tickets, my boss gave me a break from the queue so I could focus on it. I used the time to get through four orders -- I think that's about 25-30 certs between them. After a while it just got easy to fall into the rhythm of the work, to the point that I was hustling a bit to finish my last order at the end of the day. It's been a while since I felt good about the work I did, so that's something to celebrate.
We hit the gym after that for a chest workout, which wasn't so bad. The last few exercises we do -- DB raises -- are meant to be burnouts I guess, but boy howdy do they wreck me. The side raises especially, where you're just extending your arm out to a 90 degree angle while holding a 10-pound weight, are just murder. I should use a smaller weight for those until the support muscles are strong enough, but for some reason I never do this when I have the chance.
I tend to have my best time in the gym when I'm fully grounded in my body and have no ego about how much I can lift. Treating it as a movement exercise where the form is the most important thing is the perspective I want, but it's a little hard when you see the gains that R. and K. are making. I always feel like the fat asshole by comparison, so there's this unspoken burden on myself to lift at least half of what K. is doing at any given time, even if my form suffers.
But that's silly. I've made good progress over the past few months and as my diet improves I'll continue to build muscle and shed fat. And honestly, it's not even necessarily about that; the delight I felt coming back to the gym was the pleasure of feeling my own body at work. It's a weird way to frame it, but accurate. Imagining the 10-pound weight is a 10-pound bag of flour I'm lifting at the store makes the whole thing feel a lot less silly. And it's a lot easier to get up from the seiza bench after meditation. My core feels like it can actually handle a bit of stress now. Just feeling capable of doing stuff, of being active, is more important to me than losing weight.
Though I'm not gonna lie; it *would* be nice to have a wider range of clothing options, to be able to wear stuff without feeling too self-conscious about my belly.
Dinner was flank steak w/ hot honey biscuits and roasted asparagus. I was kind of excited to try a few new tricks picked up in a YT video from Brian Lagerstrom(sp?) featuring 9 kitchen hacks that will make you an instantly better chef. One was just simply making sure meat was flat against the pan for at least 30 seconds in order to get a good sear. With the cuts we get, the steaks tend to get a good char around the edges with a bubble of grey/brown meat in the middle where (I guess) the steam forms. I tried, but I'm not sure I have the right spatula for it. The bubble happened anyway.
Another was "dry brining", adding salt on the meat and letting it sit for about 15-20 minutes. THAT worked *really* well; the meat was good and tender, seasoned throughout but well-balanced with the glazed shallot topping. It's such a simple thing to prep the meat first, then process vegetables. And it pays such dividends!
The third was not something I wanted to mess with since the biscuits were baking while the asparagus roasted and...mismatching that timing wouldn't be the best thing. BUT Brian strongly recommends keeping your sheet pan in the oven as it gets up to temperature, then putting your vegetables onto the ripping hot pan. It starts the caramelization process almost immediately, helps prevent sticking, AND it should shorten your cooking time by 5 - 10 minutes. Huge, if true. But next time.
I'm back on FFXIV. :) Sun Gura, my Hrothgar Bard of Light, defeated his first Lightwarden in Shadowbringers and bought the first dark night to the Crystarium in 100 years. It was such a neat moment, all the townsfolk coming outside to see the stars, with that haunting vocal music over it. I also hooked up with R. and K. on the next two fights in Sigmascape, opened up Role Quests for the expansion, and learned a bit of worldlore about Umbral Calamities. Productive evening!
Still no writing or reading, though. :(
We hit the gym after that for a chest workout, which wasn't so bad. The last few exercises we do -- DB raises -- are meant to be burnouts I guess, but boy howdy do they wreck me. The side raises especially, where you're just extending your arm out to a 90 degree angle while holding a 10-pound weight, are just murder. I should use a smaller weight for those until the support muscles are strong enough, but for some reason I never do this when I have the chance.
I tend to have my best time in the gym when I'm fully grounded in my body and have no ego about how much I can lift. Treating it as a movement exercise where the form is the most important thing is the perspective I want, but it's a little hard when you see the gains that R. and K. are making. I always feel like the fat asshole by comparison, so there's this unspoken burden on myself to lift at least half of what K. is doing at any given time, even if my form suffers.
But that's silly. I've made good progress over the past few months and as my diet improves I'll continue to build muscle and shed fat. And honestly, it's not even necessarily about that; the delight I felt coming back to the gym was the pleasure of feeling my own body at work. It's a weird way to frame it, but accurate. Imagining the 10-pound weight is a 10-pound bag of flour I'm lifting at the store makes the whole thing feel a lot less silly. And it's a lot easier to get up from the seiza bench after meditation. My core feels like it can actually handle a bit of stress now. Just feeling capable of doing stuff, of being active, is more important to me than losing weight.
Though I'm not gonna lie; it *would* be nice to have a wider range of clothing options, to be able to wear stuff without feeling too self-conscious about my belly.
Dinner was flank steak w/ hot honey biscuits and roasted asparagus. I was kind of excited to try a few new tricks picked up in a YT video from Brian Lagerstrom(sp?) featuring 9 kitchen hacks that will make you an instantly better chef. One was just simply making sure meat was flat against the pan for at least 30 seconds in order to get a good sear. With the cuts we get, the steaks tend to get a good char around the edges with a bubble of grey/brown meat in the middle where (I guess) the steam forms. I tried, but I'm not sure I have the right spatula for it. The bubble happened anyway.
Another was "dry brining", adding salt on the meat and letting it sit for about 15-20 minutes. THAT worked *really* well; the meat was good and tender, seasoned throughout but well-balanced with the glazed shallot topping. It's such a simple thing to prep the meat first, then process vegetables. And it pays such dividends!
The third was not something I wanted to mess with since the biscuits were baking while the asparagus roasted and...mismatching that timing wouldn't be the best thing. BUT Brian strongly recommends keeping your sheet pan in the oven as it gets up to temperature, then putting your vegetables onto the ripping hot pan. It starts the caramelization process almost immediately, helps prevent sticking, AND it should shorten your cooking time by 5 - 10 minutes. Huge, if true. But next time.
I'm back on FFXIV. :) Sun Gura, my Hrothgar Bard of Light, defeated his first Lightwarden in Shadowbringers and bought the first dark night to the Crystarium in 100 years. It was such a neat moment, all the townsfolk coming outside to see the stars, with that haunting vocal music over it. I also hooked up with R. and K. on the next two fights in Sigmascape, opened up Role Quests for the expansion, and learned a bit of worldlore about Umbral Calamities. Productive evening!
Still no writing or reading, though. :(
