"Pump" at the Gym

Monday, I went to my first class (Pump) at Star Fitness with Janel. For a while, she's been trying to get me to go to classes like Zumba and Boot Camp with her. Pump seemed more doable because it starts at 5:15pm, so I can go right after work, and it was described to me as mostly muscle building, not extreme cardio. In other words, something I'm more used to.

Well, you might not call it cardio, but my heart beat harder than a 30 minute session on the elliptical at max level. It started off easy enough doing what I'm going to call "military presses with dumb bells." Janel grabbed me the 10lb because I bragged about using 25lb dumb bells for curls during my unsupervised workouts. Ten pounds was okay at first, but I was not expecting so many reps!

We worked about every muscle in the body, and on the second go-round of curls, I had to switch to 8lbs. I couldn't lift my arms anymore, hard as I tried. The description of "Pump" on Star Fitness's website is: "This 55-minute workout challenges all your major muscle groups by using Free weights to perform exercises like squats, presses, lifts and curls!" That list doesn't include step, planks, side planks, push ups, lunges, 5 types of cruches, and whatever else I've forgotten.

Now don't take this as complaining. The class was a lot of fun, much more than exercising alone. Following the instructor also pushed me way harder than I would have ever pushed myself. I followed along and did everything that the instructor did until about halfway through when I got that terribly nostalgic feeling of nausea from pushing so hard. I haven't felt that since basketball in high school! I had to slow down a bit, let my heart slow some, and (attempt to) regain some stamina.

I continued doing all that I could, but that ended up being about half (if that much) of what the instructor was doing. I'm not used to all that step, floor touching/squats, and OMG the cruches!

I definitely intend to do that class every week on Tuesday now. I might even go so far as doing Zumba (I'm looking at you, LD) on Wednesdays. The only downside of Zumba is that the class is at 6:30pm, so it's not as convenient for me as Pump. Once work's Biggest Loser contest starts, definitely expect to see me at many more classes.

After the class was over, the instructor asked me how my first class went. I told her how it started off easy, but I lost all my energy halfway through. She encouraged me to keep coming, and I'll get better. Very nice lady. I joked that I wasn't used to all those crunches because I only have one ab - one very large ab.

As we were picking up, the instructor was setting up for her next class, Spinning. How she can do spinning afterwards is beyond me, but that'll be a (distant) goal of mine.

Next time I will grab a towel beforehand. I didn't realize how much I would sweat. Pretty sure I've never sweated that much in my life. The sweat was dripping off my nose - imagery that I associate with my Dad. My hair was soaked. When I went to change my shirt in the locker room, the mirror showed my shirt was just about completely wet.

All of this being said, it was lots of fun. 55 minutes flew by way faster than working out alone. If any friends that live in the Covington/Mandeville area want to join, memberships are pretty cheap, or you can even pay by the class. Let me know if you're interested so you can use me as a referral!

Nier

I beat Nier on Sunday. It was enjoyable, but I had to read the wiki to fully understand what happened with the story.

The music and story were great, but the game is lacking modern graphics and creative gameplay. It boils down to a hack and slash with minor puzzles here and there.

Also, what's up with Kaine's nearly pornographic outfit? It was amusing that the characters made fun of the outfit during the game, but really, why? There's no logical reason to go fight monsters in lingerie. I skipped reading the Kaine novel after beating the game explaining her story. Hopefully somewhere in there they explain her clothes.

The game plays in SD, which doesn't make sense since it was made in 2010 for ps3 and xbox360.

It took me about 20 hours to beat, and that's because I was doing all the side quests. I stopped at 70% completion because they're really effing repetitive and boring. At that point, I looked up the side quests on gamefaqs and found out they (95%) only give a money reward. Playing the game without doing the side quests makes it more of an 8 hour playthrough. The side quests do add some neat story, but they're completely skippable. If they weren't as repetitive and had significant rewards, I'd be much more likely to do them.

The game has 6 different areas: the Forest of Myth, the Aerie (high up), the Village (where you start), Facade (desert), Seafront (water), and the Lost Shrine. All of the areas are neat EXCEPT the Forest of Myth, which I loathed. The story for the Forest of Myth is that everyone is trapped in their dreams and you have to rescue them by joining their dream. Fun? No. The screen turns black and for the next 30 minutes, you're reading white text on a black screen and answering multiple choice questions. It felt like the game creators ran out of money but wanted to throw another level in at the last minute.

Even though not original, the gameplay is fun. You learn a number of magical moves, and I used most of them throughout the game. The monsters get progressively harder as you progress, but playing in Normal mode meant none were ever terribly difficult. I would definitely recommend starting on Hard even as a beginner.

The boss monsters were all exciting and fun to fight, so if I were to play through it again, I would most likely burn through the game and not worry about any upgrades or side quests. Weapon upgrades really don't make much difference.

I recommend Nier to anyone who is not striving to get all the achievements; otherwise, you'll turn something fun into a big chore.

Who remembers anniversaries anyway?

Zane and I have two anniversaries: January 1, 2007 and June 16, 2007. The first is our first date and the second is when I asked him if he wanted to be official. After getting burned in a few relationships, I was very wary of committing to anything.

That being said, June 16th came and went last week, and neither Zane nor I noticed. New years is way easier to remember, which is usually the one we count by. I called him Saturday night after realizing that our anniversary was either coming up soon or already passed.

When he picked up, I made him promise to not be angry, to which he always replies, "I'm already angry, so tell me." I first confirmed that I remembered the right date for the anniversary and then asked if he forgot too. Surprisingly, he admitted to forgetting, but now he keeps pressing me to bring him out to dinner. I told him I brought him to the circus for our anniversary (even though that was the day before I called). Sarah, my coworker, also agreed that she gave me the tickets for our anniversary even though she didn't know when it was.

I keep telling Zane that we can't go out to eat so that we can save for our Disney trip in December. This makes Zane unhappy, but he's just got to deal with it!

Zane would also not appreciate my posting a picture of us from 4 years ago, so here it is!

Circus, Afghan, Losing Weight

Thanks to my most fabulous coworker, Zane and I went to the circus Friday night for free at the New Orleans Arena. It was my first time (that I can recall) going to the circus. It was more fun than Cirque du Soleil but not as professional. I was excited to see live tigers, but they didn't actually do much. Whatever happened to the flaming hoops? The elephants and ponies were much more entertaining, and oh-my-god elephants have large poop. The circus was READY with many a pooper scooper.

They fell a number of times during acts, something I never saw at Cirque, and it didn't take away from the awe of everything else. My favorite part was definitely the seven dirt bikes riding around in the steel sphere. I'd put pictures up from it, but Zane wouldn't let me use his phone!

For Father's Day, my sister got Dad a gift card to Lowe's and packaged it in a mini tool box. I'm still working at the afghan and will be for at least a month. Last night I got bored of making squares, so I started stitching them together. After I took the picture, I made a quick mock up in Photoshop of the finished pattern. Thankfully, I did that before finishing because I made a change to it!

I was contemplating making a time-lapse video of some of the process, but I need to see if my camera has that option. I'm not going to go through the process of editing normal footage. That's more work that I'm willing to put into it.

Speaking of WORK, one of the great things about my place of employment is their encouragement to live a healthy lifestyle. Starting July 11th, they're going to do a "Biggest Loser" campaign pitting teams against each other for weight loss. I joined, but I'm also not actually interested in losing a ton of weight fast. It's just a fun incentive to keep things interesting and is a good motivator to keep going to the gym. I'm content with the progress I've made so far: about 20 pounds in two months.

Finishing my Grandmother's Blanket

I learned to crochet because I wanted to make a couple friends flowers for their hair a couple months ago. Why, you ask? Long story short, one friend likes flowers for her hair, didn't have one one day, so the other friend made one from paper. I showed that friend up with my own paper flower. Then I jumped ship and moved, so I wanted to do something nice for them both.

I planned to learn to crochet after Mom, my sister, and I cleaned out my parents' attic and found my paternal grandmother's lot of unfinished crochet materials. She died before when I was too young to remember. The picture on the left is only a portion of her granny squares. I moved them into a separate bag to organize. I thought it would be nice to finish her blanket some 25 years after her death, and I knew my Dad would really like the sentiment.

Some of the squares aren't in great shape from being in the attic so long, so I decided to make an Afghan and just incorporate some of her granny squares into it. Plus, this way the blanket won't be that wonderful 1980's cacophony of color and will better match the room it'll be in.

Well, I started the work last Friday, and as is everything I do, I completely underestimated the time it would take. I'm using the SunRise pattern shown in Theresa's Art of Crochet tutorial on youtube, and it's taking me over an hour per square (but I'm getting faster).

I'm using 17 of my grandmother's squares that I'm adding a black double stitch border on and making 60 other squares from scratch. This will most definitely not be done for Father's Day.

This picture shows the two different squares I'm making from scratch and the two different color of squares I picked from my grandmother's stash. Hopefully I'll be done in the next two weeks. Twelve squares down, 65 to go!

I'll have no desire to ever crochet again after this.

SEO is Magic

There are no shortcuts to getting your page rankings up. Researching for 3 months on how to do Search Engine Optimization will land you with half of the experts saying to do one thing and the other half saying it doesn't work.

The only thing that is consistent is having daily, fresh, and engaging content and getting back links by putting your site out there with PR and social media.

Voila.

You can stress about keywords all you want, but the best way to do SEO, in my opinion, is to focus on making what people - humans - want and are interested in. When you write/design for SEO, you're doing yourself a disservice.

That being said, I'm continually looking for the magic method to increase Google page ranks in order to get more traffic. The thing is, if I find that magic method, everyone else is going to find it too, and then it becomes moot.

Theme of the Blog

I started blogging on Livejournal in high school and then stopped during college. I lost interest in it. I had gained a group of about 40 friends through blogging, mostly from the DC area.

At the time I thought it would be nice to more or less catalog the events in my life because I'm clearly just so damned interesting and would one day like to go back and see what I was doing.

Today I decided to see if I could get in the habit again. The temporary title is a lyric taken from Electric Six's Danger High Voltage. I tried to figure out what theme would be the focus of my blog, but it's really just going to be things that interest me: web development, SEO, video games, my family, and the gays.

Speaking of the gays, my office houses myself and two others, one who is a wealth of knowledge about the gay culture and the other who shall learn many things in the months to come. This afternoon I explained what a bear was and how Zane (my boyfriend) and I fit into this category.

The walls on my side of the office are pretty barren. Perhaps I should put the oh-so ugly bear flag up. That and/or pixel art of Link from a Link to the Past. Well, it's either that or I keep the default pictures in frames I get from Walmart and tell people they're my family.