Compared to most Americans, I’m pretty sanguine when it comes to minor inconveniences. Like being assigned a center seat on an airplane. There are a couple thoughts that run through my mind when this happens:

1. My chances are doubled I’ll sit next to a cute, single girl. (And after my two prior failures following up with girls I’ve gotten numbers for, it stands to reason the third time will be the charm.)

2. My chances are doubled I’ll sit next to someone who needs to take some of my seat space.*

This time around, my neighbors were a portly old man and an old woman playing sudoku. Neither had to use any of my seat space.

I suppose we can call that a draw.

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* I don’t put very much blame on the airlines or the big and tall for seat overflow situations, but that’s a discussion for another time.

So it’s been four months. I don’t look any different shirtless yet…I think. (Follow-up on “Here’s your chance to see me shirtless”)

For a few weeks after that post, I was fairly good about keeping up the workout regimen, but completely faltered in December and January. And if you’re not in good shape, it’s very easy to lose any gains you’ve made. It’s much easier for an elite athlete to pickup after a few months of not training; for Mr. Sedentary, he’s essentially starting over.

Now in February, I was very consistent in keeping to the regimen (I wonder why?) so that’s good. But instead of having four months of workouts like I should, I essentially have one.

The great thing is that I am noticing strength gains. After starting the bench press with a 10 pound weight on each side, today I will use 25. Instead of struggling to complete 1 rep of 12 crunches, I can get through 2 reps. Similar with the 90 pound deadlift (I would have started lighter with the deadlift, but they have no dumbbells between 25 and 45 pounds. So that meant the next lighter level would have been 50 pounds…way too light)

Cardiovascularly, I don’t feel I’ve made any significant improvement. Recently, I discovered something called interval training. The plan is to stress the body as much as possible for 4 minutes, then 4 minutes of rest. The theory is that the body will change faster by being pushed to the limit for short periods of time, rather than not being pushed to its limit for long periods of time. We’ll see.

My weight’s oscillated between 152 – 160 pounds over the past month, currently at 152. My high school weight was 130, but I don’t really want to go back to it. Sworn Enemy’s parents saw me for the first time since high school on Sunday, and commented that I looked “healthy” now.

A while back, I proudly posted on the so-called Fail Garden. And…it was mostly a failure. Got a few herbs, some lettuce, and an unknown vegetable because I forgot to label it.

But now I’m trying container gardening again. Since it’s winter, I only have lettuce and carrots going (should have done spinach as well) and it’s actually turned out pretty well. In fact, now there’s much more lettuce than I usually use, so some days I cook stuff that needs it just to start using it up. Or, I could actually make a salad, that would work too.

Yep, no more milk jugs! They are cheap, but not they can’t hold enough soil for all the stuff I want to grow. And don’t look as good. So I started buying plastic containers. Until I calculated that building my own wooden containers is not only less expensive, but is a good excuse to hone home improvement techniques (like not hitting my thumb with a hammer, or not sawing through my own hand)

Due to my low carpentry skill, I’ve avoided posting photos containing clear closeups of the wood containers.

Annie had this idea that if I were to start an exercise regimen, having “before” and “after” pictures would be a good idea.

Today, I post the “before” pictures. In deference to those of you who are eating, you’ll need to click the link to see the pics.

Shirtless from the front

Now I know what a few of you are thinking. “Donnie, it’s not that bad. You could be worse off — you could be me.” Yes, understood. But it feels like when a 1300 rated chessplayer admires my 1600 rating. Sure, it’s OK, but it’s not that good.

Even though my weight is not a problem, my overall living is not that healthy. I don’t exercise and vegetable consumption seems weak.

A side view makes my lack of conditioning more obvious:

Shirtless from the side

My stomach is bigger than my chest, and I have a rather ample “office butt”. Plus it’s obvious my arms have one or maybe two muscles total.

Fortunately, my new apartment complex has a gym handy, so I’ve dived into an exercise regimen. Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday for weightlifting, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for running (or other aerobic activity).

Will I get yoked like Carrot Top? Well, OK, maybe that’s not something to shoot for. In any case, I’m not doing this not for appearance, but for health. A changed physique will be a side-effect, though. And if I end up with a six-pack, that’s nothing to complain about.

Besides, it would be nice not to have to buy clothes at Kids Gap to make my arms look bigger.

What a disaster.

So Monday night, I came back from a business trip only to find that I lost my keys. Maybe I’ll tell the whole story later, but in short, I saw Sworn Enemy much more than usual (who was very helpful!), got more than I bargained for walking to a bus stop, and realized how nice it is living within walking distance of Houston’s light rail system. And now I’m sick.

Make sure to have spare keys! It was a lifesaver for me.

I see that letting the eggs take care of the blog was a disaster.

Mr. E (C+): He wasn’t supposed to say that the Monday Fighter! wasn’t funny, but learning that his wife enjoys getting spanked was an unexpected bonus.

Egg Fu Yung (D-): He did no work. But he did have a comment countering the Mascot’s inanity.

Mascot (F-): He denigrated Jerry Hanken’s memory, insulted Dino Mom, and threatened to beat me up. Here’s the rule about making fun of dead people one day after they die: the joke has to be funny.

So recently I’ve been having blog-related dreams:

Dream 1: Blunderprone announced that he was going to stop his chess history posts because there wasn’t any history left.

Dream 2: I was about to meet Dino Mom in person, but was too nervous to walk to the front door.

Dream 3: Jeremy Silman listed Liquid Egg Product #1 on his list of “Most worthless chess blogs”.

I have 3,071 rollover minutes if anyone wants to use them.

Again, LEP fails to pay the bills, leading to a brief downtime. But it wasn’t completely due to incompetence.

Sometime last month, Bank of America was contacted by some company I’d used my check card at. The vendor thought some transactions may have been compromised, so they advised BoA, which reissued new cards to everyone affected.

Overall, I’m pleased that they did this rather than not. But it did affect any autopayments, and it’s taken a bit of time to take care of all the loose ends.

But even that has a plus side: I’ve eliminated $80-$100/month of payments on superfluous stuff.

$2.87 left in the checking account on Thursday night. Paycheck deposited on Friday.

(Fortunately, not a normal occurrence. A large bill and a preference to keep money just about anywhere instead of a checking account conspired to bring about this circumstance.)

As far as the theme change, Ye Olde Pirate reigns again because I felt the new look had readability issues. Work has prevented me from finishing the new, home-grown LEP theme. (The prior theme was Sliding Door.) EDIT: Pirate is gone for even more old-school theme.

• So the last three days have actually been interesting and different. Last week, I was in Miami, which included spending about 18 hours last weekend trying to setup a firewall. I failed, and someone else managed to get it to work. Not afraid to say I don’t have the best grasp of this stuff.
• A co-worker died over the weekend as well, and HR spelled his name wrong in the notification e-mail. (I only dealt with him sporadically, so it’s not as hard-hitting as it might have been.)
• On the plane ride back, had an interesting chat with a girl, centerpieced by…an AutoCAD 2009 presentation she needed to finish for today.

So I got home, about to relax when I hear someone bang on my door. 10 seconds later, I hear “HELP!!!!”. Rushing outside, there was a woman lying on the grass outside my patio, hands over her face bawling. A shirtless male was close-by approaching her, and she told me to call the police.

I ran inside to get my phone, and came back out to make the call to make sure nothing else was going on. As it turns out, Shirtless Guy had two of his friends with him, and as I dialed 911 they all surrounded me, telling me not to call police. (Shirtless Guy was well-muscled, a second guy “T” was significantly larger than me, don’t remember much about the third guy. Yes, I probably should have been scared ****less at this point.)

I told the guys I wouldn’t call police, and walked calmly back inside my apartment. THEN I called 911.

After the call, I ran back outside to see what was going on. The two friends weren’t around, but Shirtless Guy and the woman were across the parking lot. He was restraining her with a bear hug from behind; she was bent over trying to get out. At this point, I ran back inside with the idea of grabbing my cell phone to take pictures or grab video. I started thinking “Should I go back outside? Should I stay inside so they can’t see me?” By the time I went back out, they had separated, the woman walking away towards the gate to the apartment complex, still sobbing.

At this point, “T” came up to me, smoking, and asked if I’d called police. I responded affirmatively, and he went on about how she always exaggerates stuff, and it was a household matter that wasn’t any of my business. And of course, complained that he’d have to deal with police now. (He also referred to me as “nigga” every other sentence, much as a white guy might use “dude”.) I told “T” I had a responsibility to call police in that situation, didn’t really want to deal with them either, and if it was true nothing was going on, he shouldn’t have any problems. He still wasn’t happy, but oh well.

After 5 – 10 minutes of waiting for the police, I decided to go out to the gate by the main road since it’s not that easy to find. On the way, the woman was walking back still upset. I tried talking with her, but very little got through. She started talking about how I’d understand if I had a sister or mom who had to go what she did. It took a while to figure out she was pissed because she thought I didn’t call the police. I had to assure her that I did and was going to wait for them. She seemed to acknowledge, but just kept walking; I told she could wait in front of my apartment or whereever she wanted. Then I stood outside the gate to await police.

The first policeman arrived, and I brought him to the area of the incident. But it was empty, no woman, none of the three guys, none of the neighbors. A second policeman showed up a few minutes later. I explained and described as much as I knew. Then another neighbor came by–he was even driving his truck around the complex to find the woman, with no luck.

The police told me they couldn’t do anything if the woman wasn’t there to press charges, and that was that. I should have stayed with the woman until police arrived, but this whole incident just ended up wasting their time.

(As I side note, I talked with a couple neighbors afterwards who were observing from their balcony. Apparently, my vegetable garden has garnered some notice.)