Holy Crap. Update.
I am sore. In the arms.
I never thought I would be saying that. I was just sitting here at work, in pain, googling massage parlors, and realized that yeah, P90X managed to mangle my guns.
So, congrats, Phase II, you've really really worked me out.
Luckily, it's yoga tonight, so maybe I can relieve a little of this pain.

PHASE II
So, this week marks the start of P90X's phase II.
What is exciting is that there are some new DVD's. It's now Chest, Triceps, and Shoulders and Biceps and Back.
Chest and Shoulders:
Ok, the new chest dvd is insane. Not because it is hard to do. Well, it is hard to do in the sense that you are doing crazy things now, like one armed pushups. Just confusing stuff. I sort of miss the rather old-fashioned chest and back dvd. Just keep doing simple moves until you puke.
So, my strongest area has, yet again, been reduced to painful memories because I can barely understand these new moves. We shall see how next week goes.
Biceps and Back:
This DVD also straight out attacks my other strongest physical area, my arms. Damn. Either I lost all my strength or I was that tired that by the end of the workout, I could no longer curl my 40 pound weights, having to stick to the cable and the 20 pounders. Yup, I couldn't do more than 3 pull ups for the final exercise. Again, this is the mystery of P90X: I don't know how my arms and back got that tired, but I am in pain today and I couldn't do my normal weights last night.
Review of the new girls. Meh. So far, no one is beating the yoga girls or the leg girls.
Apparently the phase II diet changes too. I sort of didn't follow phase I to the T, so I regret that. The diet is probably more important that the exercise.
At least tonight, I get to do some nice, relaxing yoga.

Ok, I have friends and family. They are, for the most part, delusional. It's weird. They can go about their daily lives, driving cars and possibly engaging in productive work. However, they have a delusion about a certain part of American history known as the 90's.

Yes, apparently, Bill Clinton could and did no wrong. So, I hear delusions being voiced like, "we had peace and prosperity during Clinton," "at least when Clinton lied noone died," or "Clinton was a good president."

Look, as far as I can tell, Clinton was a pretty good republican style president at least with respect to NAFTA and Welfare Reform. Those two items, NAFTA and Welfare Reform are basically his two accomplishments.

Other than that, my liberal friends and family seem to think that Bill got stuff done and made things great through sheer force of personality. As in, ask them why they think we had peace and prosperity during Clinton. The answer will be something along the lines of "well he was smart and gave good speeches and fucked around on his wife." No actual policies, simply, "we liked him."

So, as we near the end of W's 2 terms, the time for navel gazing has begun. Being old enough, I remember when another 2 term president began leaving office, liberals were already writing him into the dustbin of history. Yup, Reagan didn't do too much to remember him by right? Liberal conventional wisdom of the late 80's - wrong.
Similarly, as history proves that liberals' conventional wisdom of the late 90's is also wrong, Uncle Bill is becoming more and more of a caricature of himself. Increasingly unloved by the minions whom he once fondled with impunity.

So, we can look back at Uncle Bill's actual policy choices, policy choices largely ignored by his sluts, er, I mean devoted groupies, who continue to flack for him (or rather, continued, at least until the choice between Obie and Hillary turned the libs away from Bill).

So, how about that price of gas, huh?

That is right, Leno busts on the the Democrat oil strategy. Let's not forget that about 10 years ago, Clinton vetoed drilling in Alaska. So, as the price of oil goes up and drives up the costs of doing business in America, and as the poor and the minorities get hit hardest, thank Uncle Bill, whose incoherent energy policies led to where we are now. No new refineries in 30 years, no new power plants, no new drilling in America. At least with W, you know, he is trying. He lost the Senate and the House because of high gas prices (and gay congressmen). But he would drill, if he could get the laws passed.

Remember, W has to deal with current smug assholes like Chuck Schumer who apparently believes that the oil from OPEC is somehow better than good old American crude. That is, he demands oil from OPEC to lower the cost of gas here, but dismisses the same amount of oil produced by ANWR as being miniscule and unable to affect the price of gas by more than a penny.

quote the ass from NY: "[that drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would] take ten years and reduce the price of oil by a penny.”
Yeah, if only someone, say the Republican controlled Congress in 1996 had taken a leadership role in getting ANWR online. Nope, Uncle Bill helped this current price spike.

Jesus!
That is something like 5 consecutive posts on working out.
Each one containing a bitch and moan about how I am not following the diet.
Well, actually, I have, my daily eating routine is small meals and snacks spaced out every few hours. I have protein bars, protein shakes, and other high protein goodies for work. I even switched the drinking from beer and wine to vodka and diet soda.
But anyway, that is boring.
Bitching about girls? Meh. Nothing interesting to report, or at least nothing that I am going to report. Although, I will hint that since happiness is dating hot girls, or at least girls out of your league (and stealing them too, right POSA?), I have found that hot girls don't kiss your ass as much as some other gals. dammit.

anyway...

The second, obligatory two year anniversary is coming up, how about that. yeah, yeah, POSEX, I am sure being married to a loser douchebag will be great.

Anyway, what about Hillary? She couldn't beat Obie. And as Hitchens points out, she managed to end her campaign as gracelessly as possible, failing to congratulate Obie as he prepares to explain what it is he did in Chicago that was so great anyway. I mean, the guy will be in the Senate for about four years soon, and he has spent most of that time campaigning. Ace has pointed out that Obie has pulled another NAFTA-style gaffe. What? You don't know to what I am referring. Well, a few months back, Obie promised to end NAFTA. When Canadians expressed dismay, it was leaked that his "advisors," told the Canadians that he was just lying to the hayseed hicks in Iowa and to not worry.
In this case, he either lies or doesn't understand what he was talking about. Here, Obie claims to have held the line on surrendering now on Iraq in a conference with Zebari, whereas Zebari said that he got through to Odumbo's skull, past his big dumb ears.

Al Gore continues to be an asshole. Hey, did you know that global warming causes hurricanes and rain? Well, no, but he thinks so. Then again, because MMGCC is like the tooth fairy to this idiot, MMGCC can be blamed for any weather event other than a nice, clear sunny day.
Science? Who needs it when we have selective empirical observations.

So, I finished week three of P90X and starting the fourth week of Phase One, the "rest and recovery week."
Well, it feels more like take a week off week and old bad habits are returning. Mainly, not sticking to the diet. That is bad because the diet is the key to P90X. I mean, I am already in shape, I can do about half of the exercises about as well as Tony's helpers, so it's a matter of reducing caloric intake. It was pretty cool doing 60 pushups to one badass participant's 40. But whatever.
The yoga dvd continues to be challenging. I think I had a karmic moment though, when I was able to focus on a movement without feeling the pain. Like I was transported out of my body. Or I had an aneurysm. I cannot believe how hard the "table" is. I think doing that could be my goal all by itself.
The leg routine illustrates to me how much further to go before I catch up to Tony's helpers. I can do 10 reps usually, compared to their 25.
I have also noted that I think the how aesthetically pleasing Tony's female helpers are is directly correlated to how hard the routine is. The yoga girls are body-hot, yow. The legs girls, damn boy! That dental hygenist is so cute.
I have also noticed that the helpers and I tend to take off our shirts at the same time (well, the chicks go to bras, really). This is a benefit of working out in your own home. I can go shoeless and shirtless. Really, all you need and want for the arms and chest days is a pair of gloves.
Anyway, the chest routine is completely doable, but be warned to pace yourself. This dvd can suck the will to live from you about as well as the leg dvd because it is easy to over do it, going from 50 push ups to 15 pull ups to 30 push ups without catching your breath. My last chest go through, I was still doing pushups when they were ready to move on to pull ups. You do that much effort in such a short period of time, you are gasping for air, and possibly feel ready to quit. Take breaks.
I also appreciate the different levels of Tony's commentary. I guess you listen to what you want to hear because in the beginning, all I heard were his comments that were introductory in nature. I now zone that stuff out and notice his more intermediate-fitness level comments. That is, I notice he says things that apply to my current level. That Tony is always talking about something and some of the time it applies to you, but over the course of the 90 days, each comment will probably be relevant to you. Pretty cool.
Ok, this being summer, you want the beach body, but actually going to the beach can be disastrous. Thus, at my last beach trip, I took a step back on the diet. A weekend trip to the beach, watching big brown lose in a bar eating wings...bad. But, I think up until that point, I could see results.
Phase two starts up soon, I am considering maintaining the phase one diet and maybe the phase one exercise routines. I don't know. I think I screwed up phase one diet-wise because I still drank and my fat shredding has suffered accordingly.
Nonetheless, the face is slimmer. I think I have dropped a pants size.

ok, not so fast.

Yeah, P90X legs and back, week II: Kicked my ass again.
My pullups this time was respectable. I would say, without actually counting, that I did about 100 throughout the routine.
But damn.
I hate this dvd. HATE!
The legs are big dumb muscle areas. They are easy to burn. They burnt.

Yeah, instead. I did Yoga-X tonight.
I reset the P90X routine to make my day off to fall on Friday.
The upshot is that I had a double arm workout week. The thing is is that I am almost as strong arm-wise as the workout group on the dvd.
That and the fact that my max bench is falling has led me to try to sneak in a real arm and chest workout in on the slow P90X days.
Today was Yoga. I was impressed. I managed to hit the crane for a few seconds. The yoga mat made all the difference. Wow.
I also hit the old bench press. This stupid push up based work out has whittled down my max to about 275. So, that is something else I have to add in to my routine.
I just wish I could diet more to make this whole system more effective, along with the phase I diet advocated with the dvds.