Halloween brunch

Took the kids to The Brunch at The French Kitchen in The Grand Hyatt. Awesome as always. Supposedly it was a kids' Halloween special, but besides the pumpkin salad and bag of cookies the kids got, I didn't really get it. Then again, the brunch is so awesome it doesn't matter.

Before brunch I slept in late, then went for a run in the sort-of-rain-and-kind-of-cold. Wondering how crappy the weather will be for my 10k next weekend...

Also wondered, as I ate all the yummy brunch food and mindfully consumed to much french toast and dessert, how it was I wasn't way, WAY fatter back when I used to over-eat like this all the time. I mean, seriously, how did I manage to NOT weigh 90 kilos?!

Then again, I find it really hard to get fat eating piles of raw vegetables and fresh fruit. Of course, I find it easy to get fat if I slather my fruit in honey, chocolate sauce and maple syrup, and/or if I drown my vegetables in mayo, ranch dressing, and salted oil.

Interestingly, I had a small thing of chocolate and it was: mediocre. First of all, I am a total chocolate snob to begin with. Really only enjoy properly bitter dark chocolate; 87% is just right. Secondly, it is just too much sweet. Not sweet like Golden Kiwi Fruit or Jona-Gold apples, but sweet like piles of cane sugar. Can't handle that kind of sweet anymore, if I ever could to begin with.

Also really feeling the sugar high and crash. Couple hours after eating I could barely keep up with my kids screaming all around the slide park, and when we finally got home and I took a break on the couch, it took real effort to remove myself from the horizontal.

Wow, unstable blood sugar sucks. Would rather regulate with a banana or a cucumber anyway!

Freezer food lunch

Corn and veggies, eggplant, mixed seafood, pumpkin.

Don't-get-much-simpler dinner

Half carrot, three bell peppers, potato, two figs, bagga maguro.

UPDATE: The potato was nasty; all brown and gross, so I chucked it. The bell peppers were juicy and sweet. The half-carrot good and crunchy, the bag o' fish squishy and delicious.
One fig was meh, the other was an explosion of sweet.
Since I killed the potato, I replaced it with one small, thin slice of dark-chocolate-with-white-mint and one sea salt potato chip.
It was a test: can I eat ONE piece and chocolate when confronted with a full box, and ONE potato chip when confronted with a full bag?
Answer: yes, I can. Especially since I just got back from running 6 kilos and cranking my workout at the dead-empty-on-a-Friday-night-at-the gym.

liquid cleanses

These fad diet liquid "cleanses" generally sound incredibly stupid.
What's wrong with eating yummy, healthful, wholesome, actual FOOD?

Salads bento

From the salad place downstairs.

Small plate breakfast

Leftover pasta, tofu cubes, bell peppers with egg and tomato spice.

intercepted!

Subtitle: how small children can assist in strict diet maintenance.

I have already blogged, back in my PCP days, about how my kids love to help / torture me whilst exercising.
And now I have figured out how they can assist in maintaing the diet as well.
To wit: Attempting to eat breakfast with a lap full of children is not conducive to over-eating.
Also note my son's hand and mouth position; the piece of food in my left hand, currently shown as in his mouth, was in fact intended for MY mouth, but it got intercepted and redirected, with a liberal application of force and baby teeth.
It was probably delicious. I will never know.
Also note the utterly unreachable distance between my hands and my food; the spoon taunting me from the bowl of Cheerios. The plate of tomato eggs tantalizingly out of reach, the fork just DARING me to attempt to grab it, thereby knocking my daughter's face into her cereal bowl and tossing my son onto the floor.

Dinner @ desk

Shrimp and veggies, side of fruit snack that didn't get eaten yet because I was too busy.

happy birthday

Realized it was our desk assistant's birthday today, so I quickly arranged for flowers and cake.

Massively uncool of me to not eat a piece of cake. So I guiltlessly ate a piece.
The cake itself was tiny, and my slice of it even tinier.
And it was AWESOME.
What is up with fancy-schmancy cakes in Japan? It smelled of roses and sported a few decorative rose petals. It was ringed in raspberries. The upper and lower pink crust was macaron; crunchy on the outside but delightfully squishy, almost doughy, on the inside. And the creamy cake filling hid sweet, juicy pieces of lychee.
Yeah, eating it was Not Appropriate for KFB, and it will add measurable millimeters of fat to my gut. But as we are fond of saying: FTSP. Life is for living. Tomorrow I will run a bunch extra and do pull-ups until I can't lift my arms. The universe will return to harmonic balance. And I will go on a hunt for my new love: macaron!

Scallops lunch

With veggies and corn soup.

Thursday breakfast

Cheerios with soy yogurt and figs, bell peppers with egg and curry spices.

Desk dinner

Working late : bell peppers, carrot, fake crab, spicy sprouts, garlic rayuu, corn soup.

Onigiri bento

Matsutake onigiri, steamed veggies and satsuma - age.

One plate breakfast

Eggs with spinach and tomato, tofu cubes, bagel with bananacinnamush schmear.

Simple bento

Chikuwa, steamed veggies.

Simple breakfast

Bagel with no-Mayo egg salad, veggies, chikuwa.

kharma

Subtitled: I Gets What's Coming To Me

Another reception at work -- Big Boss transferring to Singapore so his farewell party. I am doing well; lots of fresh seasonal veggies, so I stuff myself with baked sweet potatoes, salad leaves, carrots and onions...and pizza.
WTF IS UP WITH PIZZA?!
I don't even like it that much, and yet there I was eating it...and being as how I am quite allergic to and intolerant of dairy products, on the walk home I started feeling worse and worse.
Got into the shower just after taking the below photo. Chest and back and neck covered in big red itchy hives. Should have seen my head: felt like all the skin was stretched three times normal, ears were red and puffy, eyes itchy, nose running...
Sat in the shower for about twenty minutes alternating between dry-heaving and puking...wow but with my newly strengthened core and abs dry heaving is seriously painful! My jaw still hurts.
Finally crawled out of the shower and lay on the couch for a few minutes with my lovely wife giving me pitiful looks before I dragged myself to bed.

This is a good thing. Sometimes, it takes a huge smack of reality to remind me of the innate laws of nature. To wit: eat junk => feel like crap.
And here I was mouthing off all proud that I was going to have discipline and resolve. FAIL.
But a good, painful, disgusting fail. The kind that reminds me that I used to feel like that all the time, because I used to eat like that all the time.
Trust me, I now have NO desire to go anywhere near pizza for a long, long time. So, mission accomplished. Lesson learned. Again. For the umpteenth time.
Did yesterday's missed workout this morning. Feel like ass, it being The Morning After.
So completely Not Hungry. Maybe drink some tomato juice or something.
Will head to Patrick's this evening for my weekly well deserv'd humiliation; probably gained more fat and lost more muscle, being as I was sick last week and a slob all weekend. *sigh*
OK, so starting TODAY I will rip and kill and at will to get ready for my 10k run...

Allergic hives

yet another reason...

...to be healthy. Because when you are fat, you don't fit.

Bento

Pile of steamed vegetables (carrot, onion, potato, pumpkin, eggplant, bell pepper), various satsuma age protein, corn soup... and forgot my amazing matsutake mushroom onigiri!

two weeks

In two weeks I will run my first official 10k for charity. Fortuitous timing, as I am now over my feeble seasonal cold, which I used as an excuse to slack, especially on meals.
No. More. Slacking.
From now on I will be significantly more anal about what I eat, and I will attempt to run every day, even if it's just a mediocre 3k. I also don't want to do anything injurious, so I will take it nice and slow.
Luckily the KFB exercises are getting more interesting, what with free-stylin' kicks and punches.
Plus I can definitely feel my core strengthening; Kung-Fu sits are much more doable; my arms get tired before my abs are done.
My weight is still bobbing all over the place; spent a few days really sick and hardly eating, then was ravenous and over-consumed as if making up for lost time. I guess it will all even out, and even when I binge it's generally on fruit (persimmons! apples!) and veggies (pumpkin! cucumbers!) so I don't feel too bad. Need to get that inner-gut-fat down I suspect. Funny, I still have a bit of a gut sticking out...but I can see the 6-pack over it. A most curious state of health!
Also all the kicks and punches are showing some sinewy progress on my limbs; all kindsa thin definition carving out muscles that back on PCP just got bigger.
So good progress all around, and I will rip and kill at will for the next two weeks, and then take it into the final weeks of KFB!

Autumn dinner

Pumpkin in tofu, various mushrooms and pork, mushroom misoshiru .

Leftovers breakfast

Carrot, cucumber, mikan, hard-boiled egg, chikuwa, bagel with bananacinnamush.

Spinach nabe

Spinach and pork with various side veggies.

Krispy kreme

After a lunch of Korean food, a little dessert. I paid but refrained.

Breakfast

Spinach and eggplant, smalla bowla granola, eggs and tomato.

Bento + bento

Wild rice with shrimp and veggies, steamed veggies and satsuma-age.

Spinach breakfast

Eggs and spinach with little shirasu fishes, small bowla granola with bananacinnamush.

salad salad

Lunch meeting today. I had the foresight to make sure my boy arranged a proper lunch, so I had him contact my buddy Miri at Cravings and hook us up with a salad bar. It was primo: huge bowl of mixed greens with all kindsa toppings: mini tomatoes, croutons, tuna, boiled eggs, celery, cucumber, carrots, shrimp, bell peppers...and she also provided grilled chicken and some awesome meatballs. We feasted.
Then I busted-ass all day and finally got to the dojo in the evening to train with my man Elvis.
Came home late but was starving so piled in to a bowl of baby greens with spinach and amazing black vinegar onion dressing. Microwaved a couple of bell-peppers and grabbed a cucumber to dip into the garlic miso, and finally topped the salad with wife's stupendous sautéed konnyaku noodles, carrot, and bracken fern. Seriously could eat a kilo of that stuff.
Oh and a persimmon on the side.
Murphy's Law dictates that the week I order way, way too much food from the co-op grocery delivery service is the week I am sick and hardly eating AND have many meal meetings so don't bring a bento.
Needless to say, fridge is bursting with food so tomorrow I will GeMyStOn*!

* Get My Steam On

Temptation

Is crunky ball nude with a silky black chaser.

I managed to abstain.

Over under

Over cooked broccoli, under cooked eggs, side of fish.

weak week

Still sick...have been struggling to keep from getting sicker for several days now. So far so good, I reckon. No fever, throat is a bit better, though now my nose is runny and my head's a bit stuffed. Already at work several folks have been out with a fever.
Did a half workout with Patrick yesterday, felt alright this morning so did a full workout, but lost energy going into the back kicks.
Had a good breakfast, and at my lunch meeting had a fine bowl of tantanmen, but instead of black sesame I should have gone for spicier red.
Meetings and busy all afternoon so finally had a late dinner of kimchi, fish meatballs, an a couple small steamed onions and garlic cloves with edible rayu spicy sauce.
Way over-doing the salt I am sure, but the spices help I think. At least my theory is: eat spicy food to keep the body warm and the blood flowing; keep the nutrients moving around and everything will be good.

Think I am getting too skinny, in a bad way. I will probably lose more muscle mass before I get better and gain it back. Nice six-pack showing, though for entirely the wrong reasons. FTSP! I want my head to clear, my nose to stop running, my ears to stop stuffing every time I get in an elevator.

Anyway time for the nightly shot of Nyquil; it does wonders. I sleep sound and solid every night!

Proper breakfast

Small bowla granola, Persimmon, eggs with broccoli and bell peppers.

how being sick sucks

The numbers say it all. Weight is down two kilos, good right?
Wrong. I'm burning muscle. Or actually, I'm not rebuilding torn-up muscle when I sleep. Instead I am cranking out white blood cells to fight the sickness.
This is why I need sleep when I am sick. And why I need to get back on the program! Body needs protein to rebuild muscle and calories to burn for making white blood cells, instead of burning all the muscle I've spent the past month building.
Must. Be. Healthy!

Amazing bento

Wild rice with various vegetables and steamed shrimp... forgotten in the fridge. So instead, a banana and decaf.

r e n : droid cellphone

Prison eggs

Salsa and beans, egg and egg white.

Biggest damned pear I have ever seen!

more kids

Two food-and-kid-related, from my lovely wife.
First of all, my two bundles of awesomeness showing off their mad knife skillz. Actually my son is just CRAZY for knives, and takes his little kiddie butter knife to town on everything: the table, the carpet, the wall, chair seats, your leg...

Secondly, size comparison: 9 kilos of toddler vs Bag of Kirkland Lightly Salted Potato Chips. One of these will give you a heart attack...the other one will give you a heart attack AND pee on you in the shower, then try to cut off your toe with a green polka-dot handled butter knife.

But seriously, one of the most awesome things about my family, and specifically my lovely wife: she is not just an amazing cook, but she considers the kitchen to be a truly important place in everyone's lives. Kids are not banned from the kitchen because it is full of danger. Quite the opposite: they are encouraged to participate in the preparation of meals. Best way to learn respect for the stove, oven, and toaster is to burn your fingers a couple of times. Nothing monstrously Spartan like dousing our kids in boiling water, but my 1 year-old understands when we say "Hot! Don't touch!" now that he has tried touching a couple times and figured out what it means. And learning respect for "dangerous" kitchen utensils like knives is all about learning the proper way to use them. First thing my daughter got was a kid's knife -- basically a dull steel knife that can be used to cut soft things like bananas and veggies but can't do (much) damage to fingers.
The way my apartment is arranged, it is a continuous loop from living/dining room to kitchen to laundry room to front hall and back to living/dining room. So both kids spend huge amounts of time tearing through the kitchen on various wheeled contraptions, on foot, pushing toy strollers, carrying various bags full of whatnot, and generally making kiddie mayhem. With liberal stops to open cabinets, dump cereal on the floor, etc.
Both kids also know how the fridge works: son can reach the lower trays and loves pulling out ice, daughter gets her step stool, climbs up and opens the main door to get herself some apple juice or attempt to snag some snacks she knows she shouldn't have.
Both are starting to learn the joys of snacking on fruit, though my son benefits more since his whole exposure to real food started when I was on PCP. But they both get some grapes or a banana every day in their bento, and my son, teething with itchy gums, loves to pull various vegetables and fruit down and gnaw on them. I often find a half-chewed cucumber on the floor, and a tell-tail trail of slobbery cucumber bits leading off into the bedroom.
Daughter has developed a taste for fine chocolate (of course!) and other crappy sugary snacks that are unavoidable given that she goes to pre-school with a bunch of other 3 year-olds whose lunches seem to consist entirely of cheesy puffs and food-in-a-wrapper, but in general she grooves on the green seedless grapes, orange-pink salmon in her onigiri, and grilled pumpkin.
In all, having good eating habits is good for me and good for my family and good for the universe.
These consist of, in their entirety:

1. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
2. Chant Five Reflections before every meal

Cafeteria salad

With sides of greens and lotsa tofu for protein. Weak protein I know, but it's good with the onion dressing (much better than the cream-loaded sesame dressing.)

Grillin

Bunch of friends came over, so we got our grill on!

Pumpkin, whole bell peppers, sweet potato, whole onion, garlic cloves, eggplant, cucumber, potatoes, white and green asparagus, huge slice of salmon, beef, beef, and beef, lamp chops, pork loin, shrimp and scallops, wife's infamous salsa and guacamole, herb wild rice, and onigiri.

I indulged in a couple of potato chips (wasabi-beef flavor: wasabeef! only in Japan) and for dessert we had fresh persimmon, pears, grapes, figs, prunes, home-bottled sweet peaches from a friend's farm, cinnamon, and finally some of the finest taiyaki ever made.
I ate too much, but was happy to have my appetite back after being not hungry for several days due to this random throat thing, which btw is completely failing to develop into a proper cold.
Eating lots of fresh grilled vegetables and meat, followed by fresh fruit, surrounded by friends and kids, is definitely the way to indulge mindfully. From starting the fire to cleaning the dishes, pleasant conversation never distracts from making sure the pork stays juicy, the salmon is pink perfection, the bbq rubbing on the steaks crystalizes just right, and the pumpkin is crispy on the outside and squishy on the inside.
Plus I now have a fridge full of leftovers for most excellent bentos the next few days!

Nap time

Couldn't quite make it to the bedroom

snot and side kicks

Son had quite the fever last night, coughing and sniffling and generally miserable. Luckily, I am male, and therefore after two kids I am perfectly capable of sleeping soundly right through even the loudest upset toddlers.

Plus the shot Nyquil really helped. I am getting better, but when I went to bed last night my throat felt all phlegmy and nasty and my head was swimming a bit, so I took a shot and was out cold. Even got to bed by 10:30pm and didn't wake up until 6:30am.

Felt okay this morning so did my jumps and exercises. Snotty-dribbling son was hanging out next to me doing the kicks.

And then both my kids showed off their mad Yoga skillz.

Still not hungry, but I do loves the tomato juice! Beautiful day today, so will do some grocery shopping with the family to prepare for a grillin' tomorrow.

friday night at the gym

Managed to eat some food for dinner, and combined with pleny of liquids and some modern traditional herbal cold medicine, I went to the gym after work. Love it on Friday nights, actually: completely empty, except for the true-fans who would rather be in the gym working out on a Friday night than anywhere else.
Couple of dudes who seriously looked like they didn't spend much time anywhere BUT the gym. A couple of salarymen who looked like they were doing their penance before their planned Friday night debauchery.
And then me.
Did an easy 30 minutes on the treadmill, techno on the headphones, nice and slow 7.5 clicks pace, tv off, staring at myself in the window-turned mirror.
Knocked through the rest of the workout ok; didn't kill me, but also didn't score any massive lifetime achievements either. Aerobics studio was empty by the time I got to the kicks and punches, so I was pleasantly alone when I did my feeble-ass jumps kicks. Managed to cramp BOTH calves, first the right, then the left. Patrick once explained a cramp as muscle-brain confusion; wrong signals sent and interpreted, causing a muscle to tighten up right when it's not supposed to. Felt like a rock about the size of my fist shoved into an artery just below my calve. Was pleasantly surprised to see lots of nice sinewy definition on my calves and legs, though. That much muscle tension really brought out the definition. So that's a plus, I guess.
Worked out the cramp in my right leg, did my feeble set of jumps, then did exactly the same thing in my left leg: first jump, nice cramp, sit down, exhale deeply, slowly massage, unclench teeth...
Also did about 8 minutes of zazen sitting in the studio, facing the mirror. Never done zazen facing myself in the mirror; always just facing a wall. Interesting to watch myself breath, see my chest and stomach expand and contract, watch my shoulders lift and fall, and also watch myself slowly fall out of and regain balance over and over again. Usually to my right, because I sit full lotus with my right ankle crossed over my left, leaving my left knee more firmly on the ground than my right. Dunno but it's just easier to do full lotus this way than the other. But it also means my right knee is just a wee bit floaty, and therefore if I don't pay attention I tend to drift down to the right. Kinda neat to feel it and watch myself doing it at the same time. A new thing in zazen for me.
Throat still feels like ass, but slightly less so. Lotsa warm fluids all day helping immensely. Will get much sleep tonight and kick it tomorrow!

Simple dinner

Small salad, fish sausage, banana.

feel. like. ass.

Some throat thing going around. Son is a snot-and-coughing machine, but thankfully no fever. Secretary at work was out for two days with a sore throat and fever. One of my bosses has a sore throat and fever...so far I just have a slight fuzzy head and a sore throat. No fever yet. Also no appetite. And because my throat hurts I don't really want to eat food anyway. So I am on liquids today.
Woke up at 5am as always, tried to lift head off of pillow. Failed. Woke up at 6:30 when my son came storming in screaming for his sister to wake up. She is SUCH a miserable grump in the morning, especially when she is woken up instead of waking up on her own. And I was so not in the mood to deal with a whiny 3 year-old, so I just drank my coffee and ignored her until she and her brother got in a little sibling tiff, as is bound to happen, so I put her in the bedroom and when she freaked I sat her down (formally, in seiza, facing me, sitting in seiza as well, hand on thighs, direct level eye contact) and gave her the ultimatum: act like a baby and get treated like one, or stop crying, apologize to your brother, and come have breakfast. She opted for the latter.
I had coffee and tomato juice for breakfast. (No, not mixed together.) She had some sausages and a bowl of Winnie-the-Pooh cereal.
The co-op that delivers my groceries has some amazing tomato juice. Contents list has one item: tomato. No added salt, no added anything. A damn fine juice, in a little 190g can. 30 cans to a case.
I think I could live off of little cans of tomato juice for a few weeks at least.

Wanted something for my throat by the time I came to work so I got a nice hot chai tea with soy milk. Probably a bit overboard on the calories, but I haven't eaten anything yet and at this point I need to be healthy before I worry about being kung-fu-y.
Obviously did not do my exercises this morning. Will probably leave work early and knock out a minimal set this evening. Don't want to overdo it, and want to have a decent weekend, too; planning on having friends over for some grilling on Sunday.

dinner...success!

Another reception this evening, with finger foods. This time I did well: loaded up on raw veggie sticks by the handful, a few dainty meatballs and several scallop-on-toothpicks for protein. As Jen says, I always gets me some interesting proteins. That's the key to rounding out a veggie-centric meal: don't use carbs as filler, use various proteins. Key is to mix up textures. Seafood is always a top choice. Got the weekly delivery of groceries yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to remember that I ordered a whole bunch of canned tuna, scallops, and crab meat. Simple and delicious: pop open a can, don't even have to weight it because it's a set 80g, drain and dump into a pile of veggies. Maybe top with a dash of spicy rayu or some furikake or something.
And now, off to the dojo!

sore

Left shoulder is pretty sore. Not sure what I did; maybe just fatigued from all the elbow strikes and pull-ups and push-ups. Definitely feel it all around the shoulder; back on the shoulder blade, under the armpit, up on top near the clavicle...whatever I am doing, it is definitely working the shoulders!
Good thing it's the left, since my right shoulder is the old and busted one.
It also stopped me from going to fighting today at lunch like I usually do on Thursdays, which means I have  energy left to hit the dojo tonight and smack some wood!

Did a quick 5k run this morning. 5:15am start so near black when I started, gray when I finished. No music. Mind wandering around some potential presentations at work and a book I just finished read (first part of a trilogy.) Rained last night so was cool but not too wet.
Really, REALLY like running early in the morning...we'll see how long that lasts as it gets colder and colder! In preparation I got a cheap, light-weight wind-breaker top and some long runners leggings/spandex clingy tights thingies. Suppose they will help me stay warm but not overheat when I run in the cold...IF I run in the cold.
Running didn't bother my shoulder, don't imagine swinging a sword tonight will bother it much either. Being sore is good; forces me to relax!

Lunch +

Veggies and satsumaage, egg from breakfast allocation, corn soup, tea, mushroom onigiri.

Raw breakfast

Bananacinnamush with soy yoghurt, carrot, cucumber.
After my too-much dinner last night, I was not even close to hungry this morning. So sought out the comfort of raw veggies and touch of sweet. Borrowed liberally from my AM fruit snack, and will consume my allotted eggs and protein later...not the best way to manage my food, but it will do for now.

dinner...fail?

At the last minute, got invited to a dinner buffet reception for some college student potential recruits. Didn't have a dinner bento, so I went in search of a free meal. Indulged in a lovely salad with sashimi (some kind of tasty white fish) and seasonal grilled veggies. This being October, lots of starchy sweet potato, pumpkin, and rencon. Interspersed eating with various chats amongst the students whilst sipping a couple of iced teas...and eating three slices of pizza...WTF?!
I could try blaming my brain, but that's kind of ridiculous given that it is in fact MY brain; not like someone tied me down and force-fed junk food into my mullet.

This is what happens when I let a little slack into my discipline; a long weekend of a bit too much at dinner, an extra snack here and there...and before I know it I am eating pizza.

I don't necessarily consider it a failure and there is no point in feeling guilty or beating myself up.
In fact, it makes me re-assess my goals on KFB. 10 pull-ups is a cute way to measure...something. But why not eight? Or fifteen?
I think being a really "skilled person" for me means coming back on path. I stray often, sometimes badly, but there really is no back-tracking, no lack of progress. For I don't have a destination per se; there is no end-game of perfection, of healthy enough, of fit and done.

My goal is to pace entropy; to stay at least even with, if not out beyond the bleeding edge of the ever-expanding event horizon that is the universe's unceasing progression in four dimensions towards chaos.
Basically: keep moving.
Forwards, backwards, it is all relative to here and now. Stay balanced, focused, strong, lean, hungry, motivated. Or become bloated, lethargic, insensitive, laggard.
The point is to be moving stillness. To be balanced and yet in constant motion, action.

It is not about a perfectly executed jumping kick, 100 punches a minute, or a rock-solid crane stance.
It IS about running five K and knocking out the day's workout before a healthy and fulfilling breakfast, then getting the kids fed, dressed, and to school, adding value and doing good at my desk for 12 hours, then cracking wood in the dojo, getting 6 hours of sleep, repeat, and spending the weekends keeping 25+ kilos of children engaged, entertained, and happy without having any mental nor physical breakdowns.

THAT is my skilled life.

So FTSP! Today I blew it. Now I sleep.
Soon I wake up, put on the running shoes, make some effort and expel some sweat and keep moving. Balance is not a static state. It is constant flux, over-compensating one way or the other. Life is a pattern, like the potential orbits of an electron; not a place, an action, with a stable mean. There is no wrong, nor fail, nor bad, there is only movement, adjusting, correcting, over-compensating, striving for the asymptote that is: skilled balance.

Cafeteria salad

With various side veggies, etc.

Bowl breakfast

Veggies with egg and egg-white, seafood, bagel.

update

Checked in with Patrick at the mother ship, after a relatively non-KFB 3-day weekend. As suspected, the ridiculously awesome gains from last week have been reversed a bit, but in general the one-month trend is good.
Lots of new stuff this week, too: elbow strikes and push kicks and good yoga-stretches. I think I like the stretching exercises the most. They really force me to calm down, slow down, and feel the progress. To me, stretches are much more about talking my muscles into agreeing to go deeper and farther, as opposed to some of the speed and power moves which are just bullying my muscles to MOVE! GO! HARDER! COME ON!
Also enjoying the As Many As You Want (AMAYW) veggies for lunch and dinner; two fewer portions to measure, and given how lazy I am that's always a plus.
Thigh doesn't hurt any more, either. Ran last night and it was fine, so will go for a long run tomorrow morning and see how it goes.

Yummy dinner

Steamed veggies with crunchy grasshopper, fish sausage.

Forgot my carbs lunch

Satsumaage and steamed veggies...and I forgot my carbs.

onsen weekend

So spent the long weekend at Myojinkan onsen in Nagano.
Short version: totally awesome.
Long version: probably ate way too much fruit, but it was all so good; amazingly juicy grapes and apples especially. The family enjoyed the soba festival, but I refrained from partaking in that carbo-fest and instead had crunchy grasshoppers and big juicy apples and oyaki...plus the food at the onsen was typically amazing kaiseki-ryori (a million tiny little plates of a bunch of different stuff) and it's all fresh veggies and fishes and meats...skipped most of the rice but probably overdid it on everything else.
So I predict whatever gains I had from last week I ruined by over-eating. I did however walk about 5k a day, carrying an extra 15 kilos of child and child-stuff, so that probably helped.

One bowl breakfast

Veggies with mushroom rice, egg and little fishes and garlic rayu.

Grandma cooked dinner!

Lunch on the train

Veggies and kimchi, seafood with veggies.

Big pre-onsen breakfast

Eggs with tomato and mushrooms, herb chicken, kimchi, fruit and soy yoghourt smoothie, real coffee!
Got me some actual caffeine -- daughter woke up at 4:30 all excited to get on the train and go to Nagano. So we got up and she had some cereal whilst I did my workout. WTF is up with jumping sidekicks? I distinctly remember doing these Bruce Lee bad-ass, knocking 50 kilo heavy bags into the wall...20 years ago in college. Ow. Oldness...
So this three-day weekend we are heading up to Nagano to stay at an onsen and check out the local castle and crafts and whatnot. Will bring my rope to do Sunday's jumps and can stretch easy enough. Will do Monday's workout after I come back to Tokyo. Food will be all traditional Japanese, so I'll just skip most of the carbs (white rice) and have reasonable quantities of fish and veggies. Plus Nagano is Apple Central for Japan, and it's harvest season.
It's also pissing rain and will do so all weekend. Should make logistics tricky, but then again going anywhere with two kids, a stroller, and an army's worth of luggage is "tricky". At least grandma and grandpa are coming with; helps with the kids immensely.

snack time

Decaf, bag of spinach. Yup. Spinach.

Chikuwa for

With veggies and kimchi

Lunch time lunch

Pork with long onions and chestnut, veggies and kimchi, corn soup, genmai onigiri.

and now for something completely different...

...lie. I am eating a fruit snack. Like always. No photo, so that's different.
How to make an awesome fruit snack:

• Something hard -- nashi, apple
• Something soft -- fig, banana
• Something sweet -- prune, grape
• Something tangy -- blueberry, kiwi fruit

Chop all fruits into smallish parts.
Dump parts into ziplock bag.
Shake bag.
Clean fruit parts off of shirt and counter top.
Close ziplock bag.
Shake bag.
Put bag in refrigerator, on the high shelf that 1 year-old son cannot reach even if he uses the step stool to open the refrigerator door and pull out all the pudding cups and terrorize the carpet with the ketchup bottle in the door shelf.

crappy blackberry photo of breakfast

New Android phone is recharging, so photo this morning by my work blackberry.

Wheat bagel, pork and little shirasu fishes with egg and veggies.

diet FAIL

So had a bit of a crazy day; spent the morning at the local cell phone shop trying to return my brand new Android phone which simply did not work. Lovely lady put up with incessant ranting, upgraded the firmware, and fixed the damn thing! So then I spent the rest of the AM trying to figure out how to use it; what apps to install, how to maximize battery life, etc.
Went to fighting at lunch, no AM snack besides a bucks decaf, then rushed back to the office due to frantic harassment from my assistant. Turns out it was nothing; boss wanted me to work on some cost budgeting which I had already finished...but then he wanted it massively changed. So I spent SEVEN HOURS from 2pm - 9pm playing with spreadsheets until my eyes bled. Finally at lunch around 4pm. Tonight the head of equity trading was buying drinks on the veranda for a team-bonding evening, which I missed because I was bleeding from the eyes playing with spreadsheets.
Finally, after my eyes had bled dry, I decided to leave the office, skip the planned trip to the dojo, and simply came home.
Now I have eaten a fat carrot with some yummy edible rayu and finished it off with a nice juicy Japanese pear. I suspect my net calorie intake today was seriously, seriously negative.
Whatever; when I am focused on something I don't even notice being hungry. And thanks to PCP training and regular zazen, I can deal with hunger. It's no worse than an annoying headache, a hangnail, dealing with boring people, or listening to bad singing; that is what is, I just deal with it.

Breakfast

Mini tomato with egg and ham, bagel

Dinner

Crab meat and veggies with afternoon snack spinach. Really busy all day so hardly any time to space out my food. Probably not such a good idea to bunch it all up, but I eat when I is hungry, so after this I killed a nice juicy red apple, too. And now I am off!

Oh btw the photos are now coming from my new Android phone. Still getting the hang of it; some things are incredibly annoying, other things are way cool. My geek-factor is recovering well; I am even considering doing some root-kit action so that I can kill a few of the standard install apps that I don't want...

gettin' twiggy wid it

During one of my stupendously ungraceful jumping kicks this morning, I think I over-extended my left leg or something. Back of my left thigh feels twiggy; kinda sore and like it won't stretch out.
Finished the exercises ok and actually felt good stretching it out.
Then at lunch I went to fighting and it continued to feel twiggy, and now my legs are tired and it feels not right. Doesn't hurt, just feels like I am trying to stretch it and it won't stretch. I suspect what I need to do is take it easy for a couple of days, sit in a hot bath, and stretch it out.
Wouldn't necessarily classify this as a debilitating injury, but I will skip running until next week just to be sure.

Lunch plus

Veggies and crab meat and oden, am fruit snack, corn soup with bread.