At my new work the guys there have periodic “food challenges”. Former challenges have been “fastest time to eat a whole pizza”, “fastest time to eat 6 supreme tacos”, and another one that involves chugging a XXL Weight-Gain drink that, in 24oz, contains a whopping 1,090 calories. (For the record, the best 24oz time is 2m19s, while two guys have gone heads-up in a 12oz split-the-bottle challenge and each killed their portion in a scant 7 seconds.)
Being one of the “new guys”, there’s been some pressure to engage in a challenge. I don’t care about the peer pressure, but I also don’t mind being presented with a challenge. Tacos aren’t my speed though, and I don’t like pizza crust: and no way in hell am I going near the XXL. So I put out the offer of nuggets as the foodstuff of choice. The original concept was presented as a 20-piece challenge, but that was quickly countered with 40 nuggets. And after checking the nutrition facts, one of my coworkers declared that the number had to go to 50 so that the total caloric intake bested 2,000 in one sitting. Oof.

Now not knowing what I got myself into, today turned out that I didn’t need to compete in the 50-nugget challenge after all. While we had scheduled the event for tomorrow, one of the guys wanted to push it up earlier, despite the fact that I had already eaten lunch for the day. Long story short, we ended up having two simultaneous challenges at work – one challenge with two of my coworkers attempting to eat 50 nuggets the fastest (or the most consumed after 30 minutes, whichever came first), and me against another coworker in a “minor league” 20-nugget contest. Including some “extras”, we ended up making an order for 160 nuggets from McDonald’s.

In the end neither one of the “big boys” finished 50 in their given half an hour, but the winner did successfully finish 44 of them to the loser’s 42. I smoked my competitor, finishing my 20 nuggets in 4m18s. Yeah, I’m not really sure if that’s something I should be bragging about or not, hehe. But after my sandwich and soda for lunch, I had twenty nuggets and a shamrock shake around 3:30pm, then came home and about 6:30pm had a full plate of corned beef and cabbage for dinner. Then killed about half a sleeve of Thin Mints for dessert later.

Honest to God, I really do want to lose weight. But today was one of those days you just say eff it.

I don’t know how BT presents itself, but working with it from a behind-the-scenes angle has really made me feel like the default WordPress installation, using the theme I had installed, was a bit like watching a guy with a broken leg balance on that leg, on top of a pole, in a hurricane, while being set on fire. (OK, so I’m not 100% sure on the fire part…)

I’m running with K2 right now, and will be playing with the look & feel as well as some addition plugins in the near future. With luck I’ll be happy with it once it’s done, but until then you may see some strange stuff going on if you happen to catch the site while I’m playing with things

This post really won’t do much for you unless you care, in the slightest, about racquet sports.

I’ve always been a big fan of racquetball ever since I first played back at Marist, even playing for the club team one year. After not playing the last few years of school, I played a bit at my local gym with coworkers after work at my first job: then didn’t play again until almost 2 years later when modeps and I knew someone who had access to a local court at a condo complex. When that opportunity went away (the complex began cracking down on access, forcing people to reserve court time and we were still playing there despite our contact having moved out of the place) the racquet went back on the shelf and it wasn’t until last season that I picked up it again to play in the winter league at my local Y where I’m a member. That was fun for the most part, but also frustrating since I had signed up in the “Intermediate” division and the group was filled with sandbaggers who were only playing down in Intermediate because they knew full well that they couldn’t compete with some of the players in the upper Advanced division; despite the fact that they cleaned the courts with most of the rest of us. I ended up not finishing out that league due to my frustrations, coupled with the beginning of disc golf season.

This year I joined the league again, moving down into the Novice division hoping to avoid last year’s fiasco. As it turns out that may have been a mistake, for multiple reasons. For one, there are only four people in my division as compared to the ballpark of nine guys playing in Intermediate. In a 14-week league, this means I play two of my opponents four times each and one other guy six times (I know, 5-5-4 would make more sense but I didn’t create the schedule), so it’s not quite as varied as I would otherwise have liked since I just play the same three guys over and over. Secondly, myself and one of the other guys (fortunately it’s the one whom I play against six times) are definitely better than the other two players in the division so it’s not too much competition. However, against that one guy, I always have to play at my peak when I step into the court… and in our three matches we’ve had heads-up thus far, I have lost each match 2-1. In our last face off I lost the first game 9-15, then won the second game 15-1, and then lost the third game 13-15 which was a heartbreaker. Still, I’m having fun with it overall.

I’ve also had to pick up some new equipment since I started playing again. First of all, my old glove was simply not fitting me properly anymore. Too much use, and to be frank too much sweat, and it had shrunk to the point where the fingers on the glove weren’t quite long enough for my fingers to fit inside comfortably. I picked up a new one with one of the “new” grip surfaces on the palm and immediately noticed a difference in how well the racquet handle stayed firm in my hand with much less “turning” while I played. Then I noticed that the old racquetballs that I had were getting pretty beat, so I did some research and discovered the Fireballs. A quick trip to eBay and I picked up 3 cans for a pretty good price: unfortunately these only just came in the mail, so I haven’t had a chance to play with them yet. Finally, a week ago I actually broke my racquet while playing a match; a Titanium frame and I just snapped the thing when I caught a little bit of wall while going for a backhand. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a new racquet, especially given the nominal amount I had already spent on other stuff plus having a lot of other things (like furniture and appliances) I’m throwing money at right now, but after looking around and doing a fair amount of reading I determined that best bang for my buck was going to be getting into a bottom-of-the-line E-Force racquet. Specifically, I purchased the Shock. Only $40 and I have to say, even after playing one match with it so far I can definitely tell that the “LongString Technology” does make a difference. It’s so much easier for me to generate power behind the ball, it’s a beautiful thing. My only regret is that I couldn’t drop some more cash to pick up a lighter racquet, but really when it comes down to it I’m probably still not good enough yet to warrant spending that kind of cash anyway. If I keep playing beyond this league, then I may see where my game goes and if/when I want to upgrade. For now I’m more than happy, and I even picked up some grommet tape for the head of the racquet to add a little more longevity to this thing.

And let me just say… getting back into racquetball is far more exercise than I have gotten in quite some time.