Brunch, Pig Roast and Tacos with NerdStrongers

After today's workout a few of us went out for breakfast, we planned to go to Corky's but when we got there they were filming and the cafe was closed to the public. So we searched around the area and found another cafe called Nat's. I actually ate there a while back and they have some tasty breakfast. We caravan over and found it to be  a 25 minute wait. We were cool with that and what made the wait even better was the fact that their is a "geeky" store next door called Big Kid Collectable.

This place is unbelievable. There are so many "old school" things that I remember from my childhood along with modern day toys and items. All of us were in heaven and we scattered like little kids oh-ing and ah-ing at everything. You could spend hours in there just checking out all the really cool things out. What is even better is that they have a deal with the cafe next door and when they call your name for your table it's announced in the store so you can shop there while you wait.

Everyone had a great time at brunch... I think we were the loudest table in there. The food was great and I think this  might be our new go to brunch place after workouts, especially with the cool geeky toy store next door.

I got home, showered and changed and then headed out to my friend and fellow NerdStronger Dan's place for his Going Away Pig Roast. He actually roasted a pig and when I got there he just started to carve it up. As always with fellow NerdStrongers we gravitated to the corner of the backyard and had a nice time chatting away and eating some pig.

I left the pig roast after about four hours and headed to another NerdStronger's party. This time it was Kim's Taco Tuesday (on a Saturday) Housewarming party. Took about forty minutes to get there but as soon I got there I once again gravitated towards the group of NerdStrongers. Throughout the night more NerdStrongers arrived (many who were at Dan's pig roast hours earlier). It was a good time, great food, friends and festivities. We ended the night with a game of Cockroach Poker and some Simpson Trivia (which I unexpectedly was pretty good at).

Overall it was a fantastic day, spent the entire day with some of the most amazing people who I would have never met if I hadn't joined NerdStrong.

NerdStrong Gym - The Vikings Return

The Vikings return.. I did this workout a few months ago and it's pretty awesome. the are constantly tweaking it, making us do a bit more of everything. After a warm up we got right into the workout.

Today's Viking workout had row 500 meters to the enemy's land, we then ran 500 meters and into battle with our weapon (Steel club). We attacked with 50x Mace Strikes and then made sure they were dead by crushing their skills with 50x Slamballs. We then had to grab one of those crushed skulls (slamball) and run 500 meters back to the boat where there was a fire and we had to toss the head into the fire (or toss the slamball into the large tire).

The Viking workout is always a blast as people really get into it. It's a tough workout but if you pace yourself properly you can get it done within the time limit. I'm happy to say that I did better this time then I did with the previous Viking workout and I'm sure I'll do even better the next time as we all know there will be a next time.

In the corner of workout board they wrote down the original Viking workout.. it's everything we did today with an extra 500 meters row making it a 1000 meter Row at the beginning and then they added a 1000 meter Row at the end with an extra 50x Grave Diggers in between. One of these days I'll give that one a try. But for now I'm happy with my current accomplishments.

Thanks coach Andrew, coach Marla and coach Kimi for another fun workout.

Geeky Picture, Heroes Reborn and Game Night

So I had an amazing start to today but instead of heading into NerdStrong for open gym I rested a bit more before work. I pulled my lower back yesterday at gym and decided that I would take the day off in order not to make it worse. It's still sore and only really hurt when I move so as long as I just lay here I'm was good :)

There's a few geeky things I want to share with you guys. That geek print that I blogged about a week or so ago is back up for order. The artist contacted me as promised and informed me that she'd be opening reorders again so of course I checked her website and sure enough I was able to order me a print. It's gonna take 3 to 4 weeks for her to finish it (yes they are all hand made) and send it but it's going to make a great addition to my apartment. If you want to order one for yourself follow this LINK. 

They released a much better teaser trailer for the new series Heroes: Reborn, they show a few familiar faces as well as the new cast. We don't know much about he story or when this is suppose to take place. I've only seen seasons 1 & 2 and a few episodes of season 3 before I stopped watching. So I have some catching up to so before I watch this series in the fall.

Tonight after work it was Game Night at NerdStrong Gym. Tonight we had a largest turn out yet. I once again hosted a table and we played Ticket to Ride and Cockroach Poker. It's fun hosting a table and getting people excited to play new games. I've hosted a table the past two game nights so I'm hoping for the next one in July I'll be able to play some new games.

This game night we extra long (to much fun) and I didn't leave NerdStrong until around 12:30am, when I checked my phone I noticed that several people had said Happy Birthday to me on Facebook. I was a bit confused as my Birthday isn't until September. So of course the first thing I did was check Facebook to see if there was a glitch but it still had my birthday in September. I did notice that the first three people to wish me a Happy Birthday were from my Treks in Sci Fi group and earlier in the day my buddy Rico (who runs Treks in Sci Fi) posted a picture of him and myself with the comment "Very happy for my good friend Kenny today. The world makes just a little more sense now." I assume that people saw this post and thought it was my birthday, and then people saw the first birthday post and then jumped on the bandwagon, but he wasn't wishing me a happy birthday he was congratulating me on the Supreme Court win. So I spent a good fifteen minutes replying to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday and told them thank you but it's not my birthday. So I didn't get to bed until around 1:30am.

And I'm also very happy to say that I didn't have to unfriend or unfollow anyone for rude comments about the same sex ruling. I saw a ton of "rude" comments being said but luckily they weren't from any of my friends or followers... it was a good day!!

Love is Love ~ Marriage Equality For All

I woke up this morning to a ton of messages on my cell phone. Because 20 minutes prior to me waking up the Supreme Court announced their verdict on the Gay Marriage case and it's now official, Same Sex Marriage are legal in all 50 States. Every single person in the US can now enjoy the benefits and rights of being married.

I've been trying to write this blog the past hour and I just can't seem to find the right words to describe the feeling of joy and love I am feeling at this moment. All I know is this is one of those moments in history that I will remember forever, the moment love won.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored today’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the United States, closed his opinion with one of the most beautiful passages you’ll likely read in a court case... it's just remarkable.

That last line... "It is so ordered" gives me chills every time I read it. It's as though he made the speech, held the mic out in front of him and dropped it... beautiful!!!

NerdStrong Gym - Strict Press & Back Injuries

Today's workout looked like a good one. Pretty straight forward and nothing to fancy.

We started with a nice warm up before moving on to our Skill work. We practice our Strict Press as this was going to be part one of our workout.

Speaking of our workout, the first half was EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) for 12 minutes. We had to do 2 Strict Press and then rest. Depending on how long it took for you to do the 2 press' determined how long your rest was before the next minute.

For workout part 2 it was a 12 minute AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) We had to do 100x Jump Ropes, 10x Braniz and 16x Lemon Squeezers. I just finished my second round and started to do my third when in the middle of jumping rope I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. I landed wrong on one of the jumps and compressed my spine (so we think). I was in immense pain and coach David came over to assist me. I wound up laying down with an ice pack on my lower back for the last 20 minutes of class. It's not how I like to end a session but I didn't want to push myself. I've made that mistake before. I hope this doesn't knock me out of to many workouts and heals quickly. Thanks to coach David for taking care of me.

TV Finale Reaction Videos

So I was writing my blog about the finale of Flash and wanted to watch a few key scenes to get me back to the excitement that I was feeling when I first watched it. But as I was searching you tube I came across "reaction" videos. These are people watching finales of shows and recording their reactions. Yeah my whole day was shot after that. I spent the next six hours watching various videos of people watching the finales of Agents of SHIELD, Flash, Arrow, Supergirl sneak peak, Legends of Tomorrow trailer and the Star Wars trailer. The Flash finale seemed to get the most visceral reaction. There were these three girls who were just in tears during the Flash and when Eddie died I thought they were going to die right along with them. Some of my favorite reactions was when Gemma is swallowed up by the Kree block, jaws drops, mouths open and not a word is spoken.. for like 60 seconds... priceless.

Of course some reaction videos are better then others. I really liked these guys, Eric and Aaron from the Blind Wave channel on youtube.. they were one of my first I watched and I really enjoyed their reactions and comments.. these are my kind of geeks :). I went back and watched a bunch of their reaction videos. Check out their reaction video for the Flash finale below.

I actually thought for the next TV season I should record some of my reactions as I know they can be funny at times. Maybe I can get a group of us to watch together and record all of our reactions.

NerdStrong Gym - The Birth Date Workout

Today is CON day with coach Blair. Yesterday was his birthday so today he built a workout around his birth date 6/23/1980.

6 Rounds
2 Laps around the parking lot 500 meters
3 Turkish Getups
1 Barbell Complex
9 Burpees
8 Dragon Levers
0 Strict Bar Muscle Ups

So after the warmed up we did 2 laps around the parking lot and came back and did a new workout called Turkish Getups.. there is no way I'm going to be able to accurately explain what these are but once we were shown it wasn't to bad. It required lying on the floor and holding a weight above you. You had to get up without dropping or bending your arm once up on your knees you then had to proceed to get back down to the ground, again not moving your arm/weight.

After those we did 1 barbell complex which consisted of a press clean, then front squat, then push press and another front squat. We then did the 9 burpees and finally the 8 dragon levers, which is when you lie on your back and hold onto a pole and then bring your toes up and touch the pole with them. Luckily we only had to do 0 strict bar muscle ups as they sounded horrible.

We did this circuit six times in a row. The first four were good but the fifth and especially the sixth were tough but I'm happy to say that I finished it all within the allotted time. Thanks coach Blair for another killer workout.

Sci Fi Commercial, Superman Tee & A New Dating Site

I came across this cool video and thought to myself.. wow this looks amazing. Is this a TV series or a new movie because I can't wait to see it.. but then at the end everything changes and you realize it's a commercial... I was beyond bummed. I mean it had a touch of Fantasy and a huge amount of sci fi and it looked incredible.. well done to Canal+, well done.

I got this awesome new T-shirt today from Tee Fury. When I saw the design it was an insta-buy. If you know me you know I LOVE Superman and especially the Christopher Reeves era.. I've been trying to not spend money but sometimes you just have to do it and this was one of those times.

I did debate on which color to get it in as it came in three.. navy blue, darker grey and chocolate brown. I knew I didn't want blue and I went back and forth with the grey as the image popped more but I ultimately decided on brown as I think it suited the picture better and brown is my second favorite color (Green is my first). Anyways I'm very happy with the final results.

Now for some personal stuff... the author Daniel Errico of that children's book that I adore "The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived" contacted me on Twitter to thank me for the support and said that he checked out my blog and read up on me a bit and thought I sounded "kickass". We direct tweeted back and forth seven or eight times, discussing his book and various other topics. It's always fun when someone you admire contacts you out of the blue to thank you for your support.

And even more personal news.. I signed up for the dating site "Our Time" It's a dating site for the more mature person 50+ (even though I'm only 44, soon to be 45 I figured I'd find a better man on this site). I actually signed up about a year ago but only had the free service which really meant you couldn't do anything. I kept getting emails saying, you have six new flirts or you have seven new messages but of course since I didn't pay I couldn't check them out. Now that I had over 100 messages and a large amount of flirts I figured I'd pay for a month and see if anything of these guys were worth getting to know. First of all let me say that if you're going to put a picture up on your profile you should at least try and put a good one up. Some of these guys profile pixs are horrible. And I'm not talking about their looks I'm talking about the lighting, the angle and the blurriness.

So I perused all the messages and flirts that I got. I just deleted the ones that were over a month old and only looked at the recent ones. Of those guys about half were not my type and a quarter were cute but when I read their bios (if they bothered to file one out) we had nothing in common. The few that were cute and we had a bit in common I sent messages to but none of them seemed geeky enough for me. I seem to be a rarity on that site.. maybe this clientele is just to old for me. I have the service for a month and I'll keep looking but so far this dating site isn't doing so well.

NerdStrong Gym - Squats, Squats and More Squats

After a good warm up today's first workout is all about Squats. We started with 5x Wall Squats, 10x Air Squats, 10x Jump Squats and finally 20x Walking Lunges. We had to do a total of 3 sets of these.

Wall squats are always fun though they must look funny as we are up against a wall with our hands up and slowly sliding down into a squat. Air squats are a piece of cake now. Jump squats are decent but can get tiring. The walking lunges are pretty horrible as I have bad knees and they don't like landing on the gym floor. But I did all three sets and felt pretty good. I probably could have done another three sets before I really started to feel it.

We rested before moving onto the second workout of the day. This one was :30 seconds of workout then :30 seconds of rest. We had to do 4x Frog Hops, then 4x Split Jumps and finally 4x Burpees. This was another good workout, definitely put me through my paces.

RIP James Horner

Today we lose a great composer James Horner. If you're a geek you probably know his name but if not you've heard his amazing soundtracks to some of the best movies. Horner's first composer credit was for Roger Corman's "Battle Beyond the Stars". He then got his big break when he did the score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. He then went on to do a slew of high-profile releases during the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. (1982), Krull (1983), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Commando (1985), Cocoon (1985), Aliens (1986), *batteries not included (1987), Willow (1988), Glory and Field of Dreams (both 1989). His biggest success was the score for Titanic, the album became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack in history, selling over 27 million copies worldwide. You can read all about this amazing career on his wiki page. Needless to say he was a genius when it came to movie soundtracks. What makes his death even more tragic is the fact that he died while flying his private plane, he was only 61 years old. He will be missed but his masterpiece soundtracks will live on forever.

Father's Day & Football

Today is Father's Day.. so after NerdStrong I headed out to visit my dad. I planned to take him out to lunch for Father's Day but when I got to my brother's (he lives with them) I found out that my nephew Kenobi was having one of his flag football games so before we went out to lunch we headed over to watch him play. It was cute watching these little guys run around. He's only 6 so it's wasn't the most active game of football but it was still exciting. Kenobi play quarterback and he's really good at throwing the ball. My brother Mike is also one of the coaches. Unfortunately they lost this game but the kids had a blast and that's all that really matters.

After the game Dad and I went to Marie Calendars (his choice), he wanted pie for dessert and they have some of the best. We enjoyed a nice late lunch and then went to Walmart as my Dad needed to pick up a few things.

Back at my brothers I got hang out with the family for a few hours before heading home. I'm so thankful to be so close (within a 2 hour drive) to my family. It's great seeing my niece and nephew grow into awesome kids each with a very different personality.

My Dad and I have grown closer as we've gotten older, he wasn't really around when I was younger as he was always working taking care of his family. When he got cancer the first time back when I was in collage we grew closer and I've made it a habit to visit him at least two to three times a month. His health has gone up and down over the years but he's a survivor. He is the reason why I am a geek in the first place.. he loved Star Wars and took me to many, many viewings back in 77. He also is responsible for me collecting toys as he bought me my first Star Wars action figures. Though he may not have been around for me when I was younger I always knew he was there making sure that my brother and I had everything that we needed. He's a great dad but an amazing grandfather and loves his grand kids to death and I truly believe they are why he is still around. Happy Father's Day Dad.. Love you.

NerdStrong Gym - I Aint Afraid Of No Ghost

Though I missed the Ghostbuster movie night last night I am looking forward to the Ghostbuster workout today. And what is even cooler three of my friends came to the earlier 9am (Free class). Jes who had been previously and friends Robert and Cait, both are first timers. I hope they enjoy it as much as I do and become members of the this awesome gym.

Sunday's classes are extremely busy this month. Sunday's have always been popular but it seems that each class is full (20 people). The 9am is even busier since the noobs join that class and don't sign up like members. It's awesome to see fifty or so people in the gym (when the 9am is almost over and the 10am is about to begin). So many awesome nerds. 

Today's workout was all about stations. I love station workouts. Here's the breakdown. Station 1 was Waiter's Walk, Station 2 is Medball Run, Station 3 is Dumbbell Thrusters, Station 4 is Step-Ups, Station 5 is 2 Handed Battleropes and Station 6 is Rest.

We were broken up into teams of four. We did 1 minute of workout before moving on to the next station with no rest inbetween. We were doing 4 rounds of each. Each team started at a different station and after a minute moved on to the next one on the list and so on. My team started with Station 3, Dumbbell Thrusters, then moved on to Step Ups, then Battleropes before taking our mandatory minute rest (the wonderful station 6). We then did Waiter's Walk (which is holding dumbbells overhead and walking back and forth). We then did a Medball Run and coach David gave me an particularly heavy medball before starting all over again. 

The workout was tough but fun, as usual the first few rounds you're feeling pretty good, but round three you start to feel it more and more and by the time round 4 comes, you just want to it to be over. Thanks to all the coaches as there were quite a few of them here today.. Coach Andrew, Coach Marla, Coach Christy, Coach Kimi and Coach David. Another amazing workout!!