jimmypribble.com/blog

Errata: Upon review, it looks like my Iggy Pop celebrity sighting was false. He was in town and I thought it reasonable to believe that he would have a gym membership that would allow him to workout in most cities that he would visit on the road, but this apparently isn’t the case. From a Blender interview:

Q: What’s your workout regimen?

A: I do about 40 minutes a day of qi gong, the fundamental exercises of tai chi. It looks like nothing, but if you learn from somebody who knows the shit, it’s really hard. Or I’ll swim about 200 yards in a pool, just to get a little bulk. I’m about 140 pounds, but I was a big boy when I graduated high school — 160 pounds. Singers look funny at 160, unless you’re in Lynyrd Skynyrd.

He confirms the qi gong, sex, and swimming regimen in this radio interview with Terry Gross.

jimmy
 

My wife and I did have dinner with a friend at the Old San Francisco Steak House on Saturday. A full report on that evening is coming soon. It’s almost 2000 words already and we aren’t even all the way through the main course. It was a wonderful evening and I look forward to telling you about it.

But yes, my preferred style of long-form blogging is not conducive to daily entries and I have failed at my challenge to blog for 20 straight days. Meh.

jimmy

I’m only a third of the way (almost) through my challenge to blog every day for 20 days and I’m already feeling the stitch in my side. Man, I hate behavior modification. I didn’t get home until 9pm tonight and I don’t even have the energy to cheat like I did last night. I need to double-up on my blogging this weekend, when I have some time. Then I can mete out the posts next week on my busy days. Tuesday will be bad, because I have Bible study and I usually don’t get home until almost 10pm.

The Site: added some links to the links page.

The Workout: legs (five exercises, instead of the usual three), biceps, and triceps at the gym. We did three groups so that we don’t have to workout tomorrow. I’ll just do the treadmill.

jimmy 

I worked on the site structure today and now all of the pages except for the home page are being managed by WordPress. The pages are empty, but I’ll get some content back up soon. I also changed the main menu, adding an about item and eliminating the archives item, which could be confused with the blog archives. I also eliminated the redundant menu in the sidebar, added an RSS feed button, and fixed the feed links in the footer. I know - yawn. Sorry, slow day here at the jimmypribble.com offices.

Today’s Workout: 2 x 30 minutes on the home treadmill. The first 30 minute leg ended with a random power failure, which is common out here just past the city limits. The treadmill stopped cold and I almost went through the wall. Maybe I should put a UPS on the treadmill for safety. Anyway, the second 30 minute leg was 4 mph at a 3% grade, which amounted to 300 calories burned (or so the NordicTrack says). Naturally, I was listening to the latest edition of Trance Tuesday.

jimmy 

So, what happened between November 2005 and May 2006? Well, in no particular order, here is some of the stuff that happened. In every almost every case, I fully intended to write about the event…but didn’t. Over the next couple of weeks, I might go back and expand on these things, but if I don’t, I have at least logged them into my blog so that I can release them and move on.

• 11.30.05 - Saw The Spazmatics at Cedar Street on a Wednesday night with Janea, Debbie, and another friend of theirs, whose name escapes me. The band was fantastic and we had a great time dancing to their perfectly rendered 80’s covers. Our fun was only hampered by the fire-code-busting crowd, made worse when they went into a star-struck frenzy trying to rub elbows with Matthew McConaughey and a wasted Lance Armstrong, who for better or worse was standing right next to us at the back of the dance floor. Debbie spoke with him at length, but I never got a full report of the exchange other than she was being a protective mother hen to the hapless lad. He also had protective help from his tall blonde arm-candy (ahem, pre Cheryl Crow break-up), who at one point popped me on the back of the head and demanded, “Down in front!” I turned around to look at the pair, the girl looking quite pleased with herself and Mr. Armstrong looking a little dazed and unsure of his position. I made a dozen quick calculations before finally blustering something incredulous, yet benign enough to diffuse the situation. Meanwhile, the girls were having their own problems with guys dry-humping them on the dance floor. It was almost too crowded to avoid some contact, but some guys were going way too far. [old man] I don’t know if it was that particular night/crowd/venue or if that is the way things are now, but it was very uncool. [/old man]
• In December, Mrs. Pribble and I took a cruise to the Western Carribean. It’s probably too late for a full write-up, but I have a partial write-up and some photos which I will publish separately soon.
• In March, I went to Florida to see my first professional road race - the 12 Hours of Sebring. A very thorough write-up of this event is coming very soon.
• In April, we did the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour for Peyton’s birthday. Not inexpensive, but very fun for most of us. Afterwards, we went to Peyton’s mom’s house in Johnson City for one of the best home-cooked meals I have ever had - homemade fried chicken, homemade baked macaroni and cheese, green beans, sweet tea - all perfect southern standards - really, I can’t talk about it anymore. If I ever run away from home, that’s where I’m going. Anyway, I found myself sitting next to a fella that I had never met before - David Williams, the husband of a friend of Peyton’s. To be honest, for most of the meal, I was concentrating on the meal and not really participating all that much in the conversation at the table. Then at some point, possibly during my third helping of macaroni and cheese, I heard David say something about freediving. I almost dropped my fork. “Excuse me, did you say ‘freediving?’” He had. I had stumbled upon a freediver. How difficult is that? Well, let me explain it like this - he told me that he was a member of the South Texas Freedivers Association. “How many members do you have?” I asked. “About six.” So, what is freediving and why do I care? I’ll explain in an upcoming post.
• Mrs. Pribble and I decided to cut off our cable a few weeks ago. I’ll pause while Rob gathers himself together. We have been subsisting on network TV, PBS, and DVD releases of TV shows, which is a far better way to watch a series. The quality is better, it’s more efficient because there are no commercials, and of course you can cram an entire series into just a couple of weeks and then get on with your life. The down side is that we have to wait for the DVD releases, which is agonizing. We also have to avoid commercials and spoilers. I just finished watching the series finale of Alias and I kept having to close my ears and eyes to the Lost commercials. Anyway, when Alias first came out, I thought it was brilliant. It pushed all the right buttons with me. But, a victim of its own success, it was left to wither on the vine by its creator, while he went off and…well, created Lost. Alias jumped the shark for me during the third season and I haven’t watched it since, but I owed it to myself to see how they finished. My favorite character has always been Sydney’s dad Jack, so even though most of the episode was rather meh, I was pleased when Jack came through at the end with a perfect coda. So long, Jack - you were the coolest.

Today’s Workout: 30 minutes on one of the brand new bikes at the gym, chest, shoulders.

jimmy