Primal Journal (Uncephalized) page 17

[Timothy]

Uncephalized, great to see you survived! This time of year with its short days, cold weather, and boring indoor activities makes it harder than ever to resist hyperpalatable food substitutes. My willpower muscle is exhausted too.

Hotels in particular seem designed to destroy the human body. Did yours not have a gym? Or was the gym just so pathetic that bodyweight exercises in the room were preferable?

In any case, tomorrow is winter solstice so perhaps we're through the worst of it. Have fun building momentum into 2012!

[Uncephalized]

I think it did have one but I never got around to checking. I was working out during our lunch break and working out in the room was quick and easy.

I am SO glad tomorrow is the shortest day of the year, and that from here on out the days will get longer until June. Unfortunately we're still at the bottom of that particular sinusoidal curve for a while and the time of 6:00am sunrise is still far away. But I know it will come! I am sick and tired of waking up at 7:45 every day. I refuse to get up in the dark, but I want to GET SHIT DONE.

[Uncephalized]

So yesterday: woke up around daybreak. Had some coffee. Read a magazine. Got in my dinosaur-burning wheelbox and arrived at my zombie-lit wagebox. Had some In-n-Out for lunch. Did some other stuff. Got back in my wheelbox and went back to my sleeping box. Walked the Dog with the Mate, made some steak, rice, carrots and broccoli, went to bed.

Why do I spend my whole day in boxes?

Today, I am going hungry by choice. I'm not eating until I get home. This is not leading to me being more interested in standing at my word-and-picture-box and staring into its virtual depths all day. It makes me want to go out and move, or at least do something with my hands. But my coworker is now on his third day of not assembling for me the parts I need to do the fun, absorbing part of my job. He is a nice guy, but this makes me want to scream.

I will not scream.

I also will not do anything of value until this situation has changed. I simply cannot do virtual work right now. I would happily work with my hands all day long. But forcing myself into the drudgery of manipulating onscreen images and equations at the moment would cause irreparable brain damage, I am convinced.

Maybe I'll work on my book for a little while. I seem to be able to write at the moment without wanting to put an icepick through my own eye.

Did I mention I'm writing a fantasy novel?

[Timothy]

Did I mention I'm writing a fantasy novel?

Fantastic! That is a worthy alternative to irreparable brain damage. It will be a great read.

As for wanting to move while strapped to the box, I know the feeling. The best I can do is tap my legs up and down for turbo calf raises. Keeps the body humming and the mind from total catatonia.

[Uncephalized]

Fantastic! That is a worthy alternative to irreparable brain damage. It will be a great read.

That right there just earned you an advance preview, in a decade or so when I actually have it finished.

[Uncephalized]

I have been gone a while. Has it really been 2 months since I wrote in this journal? The holidays certainly have a way of derailing things and messing up your schedule, don't they?

So, what have I been up to since December? Well, mostly going to work, of course. The Mate and I passed our holidays with family, lots of good food and company. We missed her brother this year, since he is studying abroad in Japan until the summer, which unfortunately means he will not be at our wedding either. Sometimes these things can't be avoided though.

When I'm not stuck in my box doing zoo-human things, I am working on a few projects, and making slow but noticeable progress. As is my habit, I flit back and forth between projects and rarely finish any one in what most people would consider a reasonable period of time. So, I have one home-made moccasin. I have a half-built aquaponics system (this weekend I may make some forward progress on that one). I have some materials for primitive fire-making, which I haven't done successfully yet.

My resolution this year, which I am (naturally) already falling behind on, is to learn one skill or set of skills every month pertaining to surviving in primitive conditions. My goal is, within a couple of years, to be fully capable of supplying my own physical needs without relying on any modern tools or services, should I ever choose or be forced to live without them. So I am embarking on a learning odyssey that spans making fire with sticks; shaping tools from stone, wood and bone; making shelters from available materials; making weapons; using them to kill animals; utilizing the parts of those animals for food, clothing, shelter and tools; making cordage from plant and animal fibers; learning to identify and use common edible and medicinal plants; and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. I think that two years is a reasonable time frame to become competent in all of these skills to the point that I would be confident of my indefinite survival (and, hopefully, relative comfort) if I were to walk into the woods with nothing but whatever I happen to be wearing.

So, that's my long-term project at the moment. What else is going on? I have been swinging my hammer regularly, and as of yesterday made an addition to the routine. I half-buried a big fat truck tire, and am using it as a target for striking with my sledgehammer. I tried it out last night, and it is a killer workout. The ability to swing much harder (since you don't need to brake the hammer) and the shock in the impact makes for a very explosive strength workout that hits your whole upper body. I am thinking of moving to a 12-pound hammer for both shugging and striking workouts, though--the 10-pounder I've been using has gotten a bit easy.

As far as my quest for leanness goes, I am not much further than before. Still soft in the middle. This should not be a surprise, I suppose, given that just maintaining body composition through the holiday season is an accomplishment in and of itself. Hopefully as the weather warms and the days lengthen I will find the process accelerating.

I have not stepped in the weight room since last year, either. Shugging, while excellent exercise, is not really a replacement for the iron. I'm hoping striking will have more pronounced effect on my overall strength. It's not that I don't want to go to the gym, but [24 hours - (8.5 for sleep) - (9 for work) - (1 for commute)] = 5.5 hours per day in which I have to squeeze whatever activities of daily life I feel are important, including cooking my food and spending time with my band at home. Subtracting the 2 additional hours that a gym trip takes out of my day including preparation, travel, and the actual workout has stopped being an attractive tradeoff for the time being. So I swing a big hammer, whack a big tire, jump in the air (tuck jumps are a killer substitute for squatting, I find), do pullups on my porch, and walk and run around my neighborhood, all of which have the major advantage that I can do them in my house, with the Mate and the Dog for company, so we don't have to be separated even more than we already are every day.

As far as food, I am sporadically being fairly rigorous, with a decided tendency to occasionally splurge on good sourdough. I've been enjoying a lot of fruit lately, mostly berries but also clementines, grapes and bananas. Today I'll be having grass-fed ground beef with butter-sauteed baby broccoli, some fruit, and a bit of dark chocolate for my first meal sometime in the afternoon. I have gotten completely into the habit of breaking my fast in the afternoon, which seems to work well for me.

Anyway, yeah, that's what's what. I plan to actually start updating regularly again, so anyone who's paying attention will hear more from me in future. Word. And stuff. Yeah.

[Uncephalized]

Oh, forgot to mention something I find pretty exciting. My dad and I just put in for the 2012 elk hunt lottery. We applied for antlerless hunts only, since we're not in it for trophies but for meat and hides. The draw odds on the hunts we're applying for are very good, and we will likely both get tags. So come winter, I'll probably be off to northern AZ for a week to see if I can harvest several hundred pounds of delicious, wild elk! Lots of preparation (shooting practice, equipment procurement, advice from experienced people, etc.) will ensue this year. I have never been hunting, and my dad has hunted deer but not elk, so it will be a new experience for both of us.

[Uncephalized]

Pretty good weekend! The Mate and I hung out around home mostly. We walked to a restaurant down the street Friday, one we hadn't tried before. A bit pricey for a casual place, but damn it was awesome. Pretty non-Primal or course, but it was a totally gourmet experience. We started off with breaded cheese curds, which were hot out of the fryer and lightly spiced with I don't know what, but it was fucking delicious whatever it was. Then we shared a couple of salads, one mushroom something or other and one with apples and walnuts. Main course was a half-rack with sweet potato fries and a little jalapeno cornbread muffin, also all fantastic. They made a more-than-decent vodka tonic, too. I had two. Everything had kind of a twist, some spice or combination of flavors that you weren't quite expecting but that totally rocked. Great meal. The place is called Tuck Shop, in case anyone in the Phoenix area wants to check it out. Expect to spend $90-$100 with tip for two, if you get drinks, depending on how many courses you order. And if some of you Primal people go there, come stop by our house and have a drink after. We're right around the corner.

Saturday and Sunday were much more on-plan. I hung my chin-up bar on my porch, and did a circuit workout:

Pistols, 5 each leg
Circle pushups, 5 each direction (harder than they look!)
Chin-ups, 8
Overhead sledgehammer strikes on my tire, 10 each side

Repeat 3x

It was killer, and my back and chest are plenty sore still. I'll probably do some shugging and tuck jumps tomorrow or Wednesday to mix it up, then hit it hard like that again on Friday before we go for sushi.