Once again, I find myself at the bar at The Outback steakhouse.
Why is this weird? I’m a vegetarian and some kinda health / fitness freak. I assure you, it feels sorta weird.
Why does it work? Well first off, Outback has a number of fine non-meat options. It helps that I consider fish to be vegetables … but I can dine quite well on the wedge salad (hold the bacon, please) and the cheese fries. I’ve also, in my eternal travels, learned the virtue of ordering a couple of appetizers rather than any entrees. Eat a whole restaurant entree, especially without exercising, and you’re in for a heavy, bloated, soggy, gut twisting evening. Have a side salad and an appetizer (a crabcake, some fries, whatever) and it’s okay. Plus, the entree almost always drags out into one more beer … which if I’ve got the laptop can become yet one more beer after that. No good. Best to eat and leave the beer dispensing zone if we’re going to do this all week, two weeks a month.
Why does it really work, here in Hampton VA? Because this particular Outback went smoke free as of March 1. That makes it instantly better than every other bar in the area. For clean air, I will be loyal, even if I have to subject myself to the dreaded onion blossom.
Oh sweet onion blossom. Forgive me, but you’re as bad as the entrees … even though you’re on the appetizer list.
In other news, work is making me work. A week-long series of 1.5 hour interactive training sessions to get as many users as possible using the compute cluster is exhausting.
Also fortunately, I’m healed enough to get back to the gym. Went back to the MMA place and got a solid three hour workout yesterday. Their current “prize” warrior who goes by the nom-de-plume “The Juggernaut” took the same jiu-jitsu class as I did. We rolled, briefly, and I felt good for holding my own for a while against a man who fights for a living on TV. It may be a gentle, giving, “use your opponent’s strength against him” style … but when a dude is approximately three times as strong as me and does this for a living, you sort of know how it’s going to end.
We also did an exercise that I’ve always liked. It’s unfair, but in much the same way that real life is unfair. Sort of a modified king of the hill: The four highest belts in the room started off in the middle of the room. The rest of us formed a line in rank order, lowest to highest. The instructor defined a scenario: people in the middle start on their backs, challengers try to hold them down – however you want. If the person on their back escapes, they win and stay in. If the person doing the holding gets a submission, they win. Winner stays in the middle.
We went through the line, perhaps a dozen times with a class of 20 men. Nobody can stay in the middle forever, and the point is to wear down the top of the class until we’re all at the same level. The better you are, the longer you’re going to be out there, challenged by fresh people. Eventually, everyone loses … and gets a break.
Anyway, it was three hours of brutality – I hurt – but I’m going back tomorrow.
