hmmm

and last night we rejoined the gym

if you're me, you're used... or at least you have in your head that your weight is supposed to be anywhere between 183 and 190. it's suppose to be lower than that, but that's where it ends up most of the time.

i've had a really good time enjoying food and drink of late - it's not like i'm unhappy, but...

215 is not the number you expect to see on the scale.

just so happens that there's a weight loss contest at work, and i happen to know how to lose weight. so it's back to the grind. hopefully in prep for track cycling in the spring.

year in review 2010

Top 10 Kroger Brand (Big K) diet sodas discovered in 2010.
1. Diet Ginger Ale
2. Big K Zero (or whatever they call their Coke Zero copy)
3. Big K Diet Citrus Drop
4. Big K Diet Orange is the worst one. This list is not 10.

Top 10 New (to me) places to eat in Indy 2010.
1. Tamale Place
2. Southside Mexican grocery place
3. Monday Night Taco Ride Taco Cart
4. Tortas
5. Square Rootz (maybe that should be higher)

Top 10 Names of Hoppy Beers That I'm making up right now (and one from yesterday)
1. Hopspital
2. Orange County cHoppers
It was at this point I found a list on the internet of words with "hop" in them.
280 words found.

3. The ArchbisHOP
4. BakesHOP
5. Frédéric cHOPIN
6. Chinese cHOPstick
7. ClodHOPper
8. Mott the HOPple
9. HOPScrotch
10. LitHOPhane
11. MorpHOPhonemics
12. MuttoncHOPs
13. MytHOPoeia
14. OnycHOPhoran
15. OrtHOPaedic Insert
16. PatHOPhysiologic
17. Pawnshop
18. PhospHOProtein
19. PsycHOPath
20. RockHOPper
21. SHOPboy
22. SHOPgirl
23. SHOPhroth
24. SHOPlifting
25. SweatsHOP
26. TrocHOPhore
27. WHOPped
28. WoodcHOPper
29. XantHOPhyll

more later maybe

got this in the mail yesterday

ordered this like 6 months ago, after they finally got it right (production problems) it showed up in my mailbox... very nice.



this is not the face i made. nor am i as thin as this gentleman.

rode to work

current temps: 13 feels like 3

getup:
rapha winter cap
sunglasses
rapha base
rapha winter jersey
showers pass elite jacket
rapha bib knickers
brand p winter bib tights
specialized radiant gloves
defeet wooleator socks
specialized road shoes
endura overshoe

toes got a little cold towards the end of the ride, and face was cold as usual, but i kept decently warm. legs were pretty damn red when i got undressed. that's why i keep long underwear at work.

worth noting that this was probably my first time on the bike in more than a couple months, and it's not like i got many miles in in the time before that, either.

probably weight 205ish right now, that's not a good place for me to be (as my clothes are starting to not fit).

pretty rough riding in, rode off the shoulder in the fog of early morning tiredness/low light/overweight and outta shape.

it only gets better...

Vietnam 1

I've had this idea in my head for a while that at some point I'll retrace Dad's route through Vietnam by way of bicycle. I don't have a ton of info on where or what he did, but my Mom recently acquired a map at the family reunion - so I think I've got a jumping off point, anyway..

TBC.

10 years

I have now lived in Indiana for 10 years. I suppose that's worth noting.

done? or done.

sent this over to my friend clayton to print for me so i can double check everything... still gotta get some ads and tickets and stuff like that.

winter poster

Real thing:



Placeholder text:



Had a sneak preview on twitter, a certain brewer requested "a gentler version":



a few old techniques used in different ways: background is the same old paper background i normally use, but this time the colors are all tweaked. then i threw a darker layer on top and messed with opacity.

shadow on all the text and images to make them jump out a bit - i used shadow with a light color on the logos at the bottom, since i went black with them - they were a little heavy in white and i think they're better this way.

there's been talk of testing a theory that if we take a photo of someone with their face smashed against a window we can make a sort of "trapped under ice" look here. considering my inspirations were heavy metal concert posters (can you figure out which one?) and metallica, it seems like an idea worth pursuing. maybe. we'll see.

(of course i'd google winterfest poster before making my own. i have no ideas of my own...)

how this works

gina actually finished this one - the kerning on the font is a little off, but i think it's pretty solid.

i had this...



But not only is that overcomplicated, saying "we're not going to say anything else" and then saying a whole lot more makes no sense.

this isn't exactly a new idea, but I think it's the first time I've done it in print..

OH AND THERE WAS THIS...



which i thought was a completely different direction for me. i did the art, rod threw some words on it, and we had an advertisement for a beer and cheese event. oh boy.

it's not perfect (far from it), but at least it was different. good practice.

!

welcome back to the new and more exciting ridehorsey. we'll start being more exciting by telling you about how formulaic life has become. work/home/food/p90x or work/home/p90x/food with the occasional work/home/dining&beer. though last night the hbg folks (with a lot of help) put on a beer/cheese thing and raised $700 for some people in need. that was nice. and exciting on some level. i think.

but other than that it feels like buying time. buying time till november when gina and i are headed south for a week in hopes of seeing a shuttle launch. buying time till december when xmas rolls around and i someone run out of money. buying time until january when despite the fact that i always run out of money in january we'll be visiting jon in san francisco. buying time till january when i hope my credit card is forgotten and i can blow my entire tax return on the new bicycle. buying time until march when we visit florida to see my brother married. buying time until next year's great american beer festival. buying time until my car is paid off. buying time until we can get out of our house and move closer to where we spend our time socially. in a perfect world we live in something like this. with a garage and a basement. in fountain square, maybe. buying time until the dodge challenger r/t is a affordable used. (it's the latest thing from my childhood that i'm not obsessed over. if that's a mid or quarter life crisis than so be it.)

so we'll see. it's all very exciting.

week 5

so sunday we were supposed to start week 5 of the p90x thing, but sunday was john's wedding, so we missed out. yesterday was a holiday, giving us time to catch up, but instead we did a bunch of nothing.

last night i retook my measurements and weight and found that i'd made no progress whatsoever. i didn't expect much, to be honest, but i did expect something. gina took the same measurements and found the same results. i found that a little surprising because i thought i had noticed a difference.

in any case, i think that perhaps i haven't done enough, or committed myself enough, and as a result we're rededicating ourselves. at least that's the plan. i plan to get in more cardio, too, hopefully with a return to the bike (it's been over a month, actually, which is my longest dry stretch since i started, i think. even in winters i get on it at least once or twice a month).

so that's what's going on. pretty boring stuff.

and

since i'm keeping track of my life on this thing, i guess it's worth nothing that for the past three weeks gina and i have been doing the p90x lean program, along with trying to follow the diet. took tonight off, though, as i was feeling pretty burnt out on everything.

back to it tomorrow, so far so good.

oops

with this i decided that i'm not into doing commercial work and dropped out of the "contest" or whatever it was that i was in.

no time no time.

i'm happy with these

i think they turned out well.

ideas because i skipped yoga

this one is out of scale, everything needs to be bigger. originally the embellishment at the bottom was just embellishment, and then i saw a face in it, so i tweaked it and added eyeballs. i like that it sort of looks like there's a mustache above the nose. i was playing with the idea of what porters do (did), which is carry shit places. didn't like how my boxes were turning out. so instead i turned him into some sort of gypsy mind control porter.

the "hat" or box that says "porter" was a standard photoshop shape (as was the face) that i tweaked - in this case i cut the bottom off the police badge, flipped it, and merged it with itself.

was approached to maybe do some commercial work today (on the strength of my hbg stuff), we'll see what happens. still don't know what i'm doing, really, but i'm getting there.

oh, i'm back on bebas as a font - it's guilt free and jason likes it.

should have looked into sherpas...

got a photography idea for this weekend, hopefully i can get it done saturday. might take forever.

Untitled (kids), 2010.

i give up

i'm now on blood pressure medicine and my ear thing is still not right.

better medicine than heart attack, i suppose.

hmm

This past weekend i took an intro to velodrome sort of class at Major Taylor, where I learned a) I like bikes and b) racing on a velodrome is hard but fun.

From here I could a) start intro racing on thursday nights or b) do nothing. a requires a new bike. i love new bikes, and a track bike is the sort of affordable that i can handle.

but i've got something bigger and more involved on my plate now, a collaborative effort that i hope will make an overall improvement to my overall wellbeing, an extensive exercise effort that might be long overdue. so velodrome racing is on hold.

velodrome bicycling buying, on the other hand...

get the hell out of here.

yesterday, while visiting the doctor in hopes of clearing the unclearable, i was also made aware that my blood pressure is out of control.

this was not welcome news. the news i was hoping for was "here, i will clear the mess out of your ears and you will be normal again", not "if you have any symptoms of heart attack you need to call 911" and "check your blood pressure at your local pharmacy every couple of days, take notes, and come back to see me in two weeks".

i suppose that's how doctors work, though. they remind you that you're going to die.

not me though.

not enough this lately:



it's indiana beer week, which means gina and i are on a weeklong quest to accomplish what i'm not sure. it involves a week of drinking every evening and then putting on a beer festival (oh, 5000 or so people attending) with friends.

i am taking a break on this evening's leg.

to say that this blood pressure thing doesn't freak me out a bit would be a lie. i do not see myself as someone who takes drugs on a regular basis, regardless of my family history. i see myself as someone who instead just works harder.

so that's what i'll do.

our future, your clutter

still infected. water in the ear feeling. i can hear myself breathe. it's annoying.

over the past two weeks i've ridden my bike once. this coming saturday is the IN microbrewer's festival, and the following saturday i'll be at a track clinic at the major taylor velodrome. the clinic makes me a bit nervous, but it should be good for my bike handling skills. plus i think it'll be fun to ride on the velodrome once.

and so.

did another poster recently.


this isn't exactly original, but it's what they asked for.

this week will go down in history as the week i got strep throat and an ear infection and was incapacitated for five straight days.

i do not get sick often, and when i do i turn into a cake of physical misery with a nice emotional (OH MY GOD WHAT IF I EVER GET REALLY SICK!?!?) ice cream side.

if that does ever happen (i actually get sick), hide the cyanide pills.

*

still dealing with the ear infection. it feels like like i've got little elves pulling on my ears. i feel slighty retarded, as well. and my head is in a cottony cloud of yuck.

come on antibiotics.