My precautions: eating outdoor or in my room. I masked up going inside and on the exercise bike (35 minutes…kind of a small but nice air conditioned room) and I did some rehab in my room and walked for 5-6 minutes.
Hampton Inn: Muskogee. They had breakfast but provided gloves and masks; I had my own mask. I also took my food to my own room.
When I checked in; the receptionist said I didn’t have to wear a mask. I told her I was ok; I wanted too, so she offered to pull her mask up. We chatted a bit; she is vaccinated and wonders why so many are resistant to it.
Earlier, I stopped at a Kum-and-go to get some dinner: I got juice, yogurt (and bought some Naproxen as I was too lazy to go into my suitcase). I went to an outdoor table to eat it (along with dates and protein bars). A young woman saw me and wiped my table down without my asking!
Back to the Hampton Inn: when I was working out; one other guy was on the elliptical. He left. Another started to come in and asked if I were ok; I said “sure.” Of course, I had on a mask..no big deal.
There are 7 hours left on this trip, but so far, well, only a few are masked up but most everyone has been polite.
Aches/pains: shoulder was mostly ok last night. A few glute tingles. I’ll stretch before I get on the road and again when I arrive in Austin.
Physical Therapy: yesterday, the PT dug around; the usual piriformis site was not as inflamed as it should be, given my symptoms. He went to the gluteus medius part (where your butt meets your lower back) and OMG…
YEEEEEOOOOOWWWW……. this was 1970’s style PT baby! I breathed through the pain…
And I got a new exercise: similar to Warrior 3.
I’ll try that tomorrow.
During the day, I had the usual pull ups (went ok; sets of 5-10), push ups, lots of rehab, curls outside..
Today: yoga, rehab, 40 minutes on the NuStep (3.48 miles), 43:08 on the Matrix bike (14 miles) and extra massage (with a gun) at Ms. V’s.
Well, what do you know: the Chiefs pitching came through in a big way, winning Saturday’s game 3-2 and today’s 2-0. So the Chiefs get the series split with the Timberrattlers.
The Chiefs scored 5 runs over 2 games and 3 of those came directly from home runs. And in both contests, the fielders put on a show, robbing batters of base hits..sometimes extra base hits. The action was very, very entertaining …and it didn’t hurt that my team won both games!
Attendance was not outstanding ..downright dismal today:
I did do a “heavy” single last weekend and, well, it does appear that maxing (or coming close) does take something out of you. So, I kind of fell back this week. I was also worried about a slight “tug” I felt in the right side of my lower back.
So today was a bit different: I was paranoid about form and pain:
10 x 134, 10 x 184, 10 x 224
Now I dropped down from 266 to 251 and took care to set up with tense glutes and drive from the legs:
5 sets of 3 x 251 on the 3. I did have to get through some sticking points.
Then instead of high handle work: 2 sets of 10 x 134 Romanian; that really left me feeling good.
Note: deadlifts are one of the fun things my body will still allow me to do, so I am going to be careful and not hurt anything.
Then more stretching/rehab and 42 minutes on the home stationary bike (14 miles)
Last night: shoulder ache (some) but I am embarrassed to admit what that was about.
Now, here is what I see as another divide in our country: this comes from a thoughtful thread by a very smart, thoughtful man:
This shouldn't need to be said, but poor women are just as entitled to have babies as rich women. It's not a bad choice for poor women to have children. A society that wants to make things easier on parents can choose to do so.
I refer to the first sentence. I admit that I struggle with this; I think there *should* be some personal responsibility with respect to having kids but saying “only the worthy should procreate” is just…evil.
Nevertheless: “personal responsibility”, in my OPINION, will always be popular in the US and the Republicans will always run on that..even if the individual politicians do not practice it themselves:
THIS does not pay well in the US.
Now of course, this is extreme; not what most poor people do. But this is what Democrats will be saddled with (examples like this) and this is why Democrats will always struggle to win, unless Republicans are downright incompetent and dreadful (as they often are).
And so it seems, though I am filling that notebook and typesetting some of it.
And rehab continues unabated…and there are signs here and there that I am getting better; it just won’t be as quickly as I’d like.
Weight: ugh..call it 206 sans clothes; too high. But the lack of walking means I have to cut back on intake.
I talked to Lynnor after her walk with Barbara and there it is…”it is always something” (she pointed out that something else will go after (if?) my two current dings clear up.
Today: light stretching and abs, 40 minutes NuStep (3.4 miles this time on the “Fourier Series” program), 42:50 on the exercise bike (upright) for 14 miles; hit 12.5 in 38:08, a lot more rehab on the porch; can I remember it all? Then shenanigans with Barbara and Lynnor.
And so I spent a LOT of time but really didn’t do all that much; I did get sweaty and out of breath. And I have to watch my deadlift form; I need to force myself to NOT do “touch and go” reps; no I do NOT bounce reps but I need that “form check” set up between each rep. Perhaps I will drop weight next session to ensure I am doing it right, or maybe do “reps on the 1” instead of “sets of 3 on the 3”
I did not do cardio (did some on Tuesday, Wednesday (bike), Thursday) but I did do a ton of rehab and:
pull ups, (55 total reps; sets of 5, 10 and 5 slow singles at the end), 3 sets of 40 sissy push ups and curls. This all took close to 2 hours..so much rehab. And I used the cord for some new exercises and a special band for monster walks.
This country, of course, is in a culture war. Topics include vaccinations, covid mitigation measures (e. g. mask wearing), how to teach the history of race in school (often incorrectly labeled as Critical Race Theory wars; in fact, CRT is really an advanced academic niche area)
And, of course, few change their minds, and almost never does a mind being changed come from an activist from the other side wagging their finger.
Yes, mostly I’ll be “attacking the liberals” as, well, let’s just say that my vision of what the country should be is, well, what many (most?) liberals want. So, I am very much interested in how the message is delivered and conveyed.
Sure, I’ll probably get accused of “tone policing” but the fact is: you cannot FORCE people to listen to you; you have to find a way of selling your message and that might even mean that you are not the right messenger.
But to show that tone and “the correct message by the correct messenger” matters for conservative messages, I’ll talk just a bit about white conservatives and their finger wagging.
Yes, black and brown people are well aware of the community shortcomings in many areas including crime and education. And you can see that where I live: every so often a predominately Black Church or group will mount a “stop the violence” campaign, or put on some program that rewards teenagers for staying in school and not reproducing as a kid.
I’ll now make an *I* statement: sometimes, I am just ignorant as to what some “other” group faces. I really didn’t know about this:
Iiiiiifffff your job ad for (ostensibly) an office position specifies the need to stand for long periods and "repeatedly lift 50 pounds" and you do not *specifically* offer accommodations…
I don’t know *for sure* if this is a thing or not, but it sure appears that some post jobs and post a “well, this MIGHT happen on the job…be part of the job, but really isn’t” just to make an end run around providing accommodations.
Sure, there were times when I helped out by carrying a box of books; and there were times when I had to walk across campus and teach classes on the top floors of different buildings, but in the latter case, there were “work-arounds”..and my uni IS good about being accommodating. But not every place is.
Woke rules, turn offs, assumptions.
Ok, now to the main point. What are woke rules and assumptions?
Wokes take pains to classify people into groups of relative privilege. The “highest privilege”: the rich white male.
Females have lower privilege as do “people of color” (Black, Brown, Asian)
Disabled are sometimes grouped, including those with, say, anxiety disorders. And to be “intersectional” is to fall into several “not-privileged” groups at the same time:
Note how much the video focuses on the fact that she is, well, female, a Latina and has a disability. I would that the CIA would focus on recruiting those driven for excellence and service to country, but the vast majority of this was about identity and being a part of various groups (“intersectional”).
Wokes use these classifications to set up rules for behavior and discourse.
Example: consider the following situation: a sitting US Senator is giving a public address and an “activist” from the audience rushes on stage and disrupts. How does one judge the behavior?
To the woke: it depends on “privilege”: if the protester is a white male and the Senator is an African American female, then it is wrong.
If the protesters are African American females and the Senator is a white male, different story.
The fact that I see these as similar makes me an out of touch dinosaur.
And there rules for discourse too: slamming WHITE MEN is always ok, since they are privileged. Sweeping generalizations are welcome, even cheered. But making sweeping generalizations about other groups (women, African Americans, etc.) are considered taboo…in some cases, even “punching down” if there is a “power difference” and the critique is coming from someone of a “privileged group.”
Another aspect: the non-privileged “get” to state what the privileged are thinking and how they see themselves and what they “need to do.” Here is an example:
Now what struck me as interesting is not that the Yale professor had dark thoughts; I think most of us get them from time to time. Sure, had it been a white professor saying the same about non-whites, well, they’d get fired..probably.
But going though the interview, note how Professor Hill and Dr. Khilanani seem to be comfortable talking about “how white people see themselves” and how wrong they are. On the other hand Professor Hill didn’t react to kindly to hard, cold statistics being cited and that perhaps the collective behavior of some of the African Americans in New York (at least) lead to more police interactions:
So, yes, there is a clear double standard. Wokes don’t hide this: they think that there *should* be a double standard; that is “fair.”
This might surprise you but I agree..to an extent. Example: there was a mean meme about President Bush that compared him to a chimp. Similarly, there were some that did similar to President Obama.
But the Bush one, while rude and crude, was not considered racist as there is no prolonged history of comparing white men to simians. But there IS such a history with respect to African Americans.
But, I think the wokes take things way too far.
But my opinion doesn’t really matter here. What I think matters more is that THE PUBLIC, on the whole, neither agrees with nor follows woke rules. And that just enrages the wokes.
The idea is that too many wokes set themselves as the “hall monitors” or discourse and customs and become enraged when they aren’t viewed as authorities by everyone else.
The wokes think they are doing something when they “call out” this or that..and are just perplexed when they are blown off. Hey, on a college campus, the mere mention of “racist” brings forth an army of deans, administrators, etc. Not so off campus.
Sen. Rick Scott: "Democrats know that they lose on actual policy. We win on policy, so that's when they play the race card. We can't stand down and we can't cower to the Democrats calling us names. They're going to call us racist no matter what we do." pic.twitter.com/CkXe6hXEbK
Here is a longer version of a similar speech (different speech)
The bottom line, in my opinion: “call outs” only work when they come from “within”; from someone that the other person respects. And few outside of woke circles respect wokes.
Yes, much of what I said about “wokes” applies to MAGAS as well; I didn’t dwell on that because I think the MAGA vision of the United States is, to state it charitably, fundamentally simplistic. They do not seem to realize that the United States only contains them…they are not the sole, or even the most important example of what Americans are.
I made it to PT AFTER: yoga, 40 minutes NuStep (3.2 miles), 41:00 bike (13 miles) And they have me doing more shoulder stuff, even a few light presses. I might spend some time finding video of all of the stuff I do.
Life of an old goat 