You gotta know when to hold em...

OK, so I'm in Las Vegas, down about $150 to black jack, and staying at dumpy Circus Circus. But things are looking up...

I played the most excellent golf course yesterday. I definately need to thank my father in law for the suggestion. We teamed up with a pair of sales guys from Richmond. Small world huh? I shot a 107 which really blows because from the 3rd to the 10th hole I was hitting them great. I really fucked up the back 9. =( Sean beat my by 1 in strokes but I beat him by 1 in holes so he owes me $1. We played the mountain course which has a couple of small canyons, lots of desert scenery and hundreds of rabbits. They were everywhere. It also had one par 4 over a small lake that looked like an infinity pool. I'm very pleased to have played this course in my 50 state golf challenge. I can now add Nevada to my list.

Florida (I don't really count this one because it was the first time I played and it was a dog track)
Virginia
North Carolina
Ohio
South Carolina
Georgia (I list this one but I'd rather replace it with a better course. That one kind of sucked)
Nevada

We're moving to The Flamingo today which is down on the strip near the nicer casinos. Now hopefully my luck will just change. Maybe I should just stick to playing the ATMs. I can't seem to lose on those as long as my bets are small.

BTW, my workouts have been shit for the last couple of days. I'm going to have to start over when I get back I guess. I'm very disappointed. There just isn't anywhere to do pullups and it's too <insert blaspheme> hot here to go jog.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

Just finished packing my trip to Las Vegas. No posts til Monday. I'm leaving the internets behind. I'm probably playing golf at Angel Park tomorrow. I picked up a travel case for my clubs last night. The price to rent clubs was about half of what I paid for a really decent hard shelled travel case. Since I'm planning on playing in every state I figured it would be a worthy investment.

I'm feeling kind of bad about ditching the guys at work but we seem to be in rather good shape at this point so we'll be all right. I know they'll miss me. =)

BTW, I did my jogging last night but I only made it 10 minutes before I got these really weird cramps in my lower back and had to quit. =( Hopefully the hotel has a gym or something, but I doubt it. Maybe I'll just run up and down the stairwells. Hah!

See ya on Monday!!!

Day Seven and Eight

Sunday was rough, I did my 20 minute jog but I'd say the amount of fast walking outnumbered the jogging. I was hurtin. This time I actually got to jog down Azalea Garden rd. rather than doing laps around the pool. I think I enjoy going around the pool more though. There is the additional anticipation of whether this will be the night that I fall in.

Last night I did my rounds of 1 pullup, 3 pushups and 4 squats. I found this great video that has the proper technique for doing squats. I think I'm in love with the girl with the green shirt. =)

I'm faced with a dilemma for the next couple of days. I'm going to be in Vegas so I don't know whether I'll be able to get my workouts done. I'm pretty sure I can do the pushups and squats. I'll have to find some place to do the pullups and jogging. We'll see.

Game day

A good bit of Saturday was spent finishing Lego Star Wars on the 360. What a great game! The kids both loved it. Trystin helped me out quite a bit getting through some of the levels and Tanner was very content just watching the story unfold. There were many humorous things about this game that make it so compelling. Some of my favorites:

• Chewbacca "killing" stormtroopers by pulling their arms out with a distinct popping sound.
• C3P0 and R2-D2 getting plugged into dirt when they get stepped on by the chicken walkers.
• Gamorrean guards rocking out on a disco floor to a heavy version of the Imperial Theme song.

I've heard that there is going to be a Batman version. Now if they'd just do one for Pirates of the Caribbean...

Days Five and Six

Friday night I did the level 2 day 3 workout from simplefit.org. So far it's actually been kind of fun. After reading over the workout again today I realized that I kind of did it wrong so I'm not going to post the time because I don't think it would be valid to compare against next week.

Saturday was a pretty interesting day. We decided to do some yard work and I figured I'd try to clean up the swamp/swimming pool. I was skimming this brown muck from the top that I can only assume to be algae when Trystin informed me that there was a frog stuck in the skimmer. After what was probably a hilarious sight to any onlookers we got it out of the skimmer and onto the other side of the safety fence. As I was skimming the top of the pool I looked down and noticed something that I thought was a forgotten pool toy which actually turned out to be a hibernating baby turtle. I scooped it out and stuck it in a bucket. For a short time I entertained the idea of letting the kids keep it as a pet , I had kept quite a few turtles as a kid. I decided that it would be better to just let it go, the kids barely take care of the fish and hermit crab they have now and I didn't want to have to purchase the tank and all of the other pet paraphenalia. He sure was a cute little guy though.

I did my 23 minutes of jogging last night around the pool once again. It's actually kind of fun so long as I can keep myself from falling in. I found the PodRunner podcast where each roughly 1 hour episode is a different BPM so you can pick a beat that suits your workout.

Day Three and Four

Last night I finished my workout in 21 minutes with between 2 1/2 and 3 minute breaks in between each round. The "pullups" I'm doing do seem to be getting a little easier now. They aren't necessarily true pullups, more of a hop up and then slowly lower myself to hanging but those are definately getting easier.

Tonight, I was considering modifying my off night goals a little however after some gentle prodding from my blogging counterpart I decided to go ahead and jog some laps around the pool since Julie is working. I grabbed some tunes and headed out back. I ended up lasting about 24 minutes, 3 and 1/2 of which were walking. I made it through the first song, walked the second and then picked it back up with Linkin Parks new song Bleed it out which was a great beat to be jogging to. I didn't think I was going to last 10 mins but I just kept resetting that song and made it the whole time. I know there is software that will determine the BPM for songs but I haven't been able to find anything that works on Windows and will analyze the songs directly on an IPod.

Day Two

OK, so I suck. It was raining and the prospect of jogging around the pool in my backyard for 20 minutes just wasn't doing anything for me. I had a feeling when I said I'd jog on my off nights that it wasn't going to work. My wife just isn't home enough at night for me to be able to really get into doing it. Besides my legs still hurt from Day One but I need to suck it up because there may be a challenge being issued at work. I'd link directly to the post but apparently his blog doesn't support that. Go figure. I do have to thank him for the link tho. Thanks Chris.

We had our first work-related golf outing tonight. I played with Jason, Athens and Jen. I was very happy with my driving and fairway play. I still need to get out to the putting green and practice. I definately need some improvement. I'm hoping we can get enough people to play every Wednesday. It was great fun.