Project Green Arrow update 1: One Man's Quest to get into top Green Arrow Cosplay Condition!

Water Always Wins

I broke a promise but a smaller one than is usually promised.  A short while ago I promised to get into better shape, lose some weight, cook an occasional meal for a nerdgirl posse and write regular updates.  I broke one of those promises.

In my defense, it was perhaps the most easily rectified promise.  I did cook the meal, ask Jackie (fun fact #1 is that Jackie and Katheren will do just about anything for a well buttered sweet potato).  The current soreness in my abs is indication of my efforts to work out (which will be discussed forthwith). 

The promise I broke was that I missed the update, and I will rectify that promise, now. 

The first step was about water.  This step was as much symbolic as it was functional.  I love my Dr. Pepper and I drink way too much of it and its associated corn syrup.  Giving that up was going to be a bit of a chore.  I needed a replacement, something similarly soothing to affix my oral fixation.  Cigarettes give cancer, Doritos would just make me fatter, diet sodas are filled with experimental amino acids, and chewing gum would make me look like I'm chewing cud.   So I found something to be happy with, sparkling water.  Normal water doesn't do it, I need the bubblies.

Fun fact #2, those bubbles are carbon dioxide!

Fun fact #3, by drinking them I'm doing my part to eliminate greenhouse gasses!

Fun fact #4, fun fact #3 is as true as fun fact #1!

So now I'm up to about a liter and a half of Pellegrino a day.  It was Pellegrino at first (purchased at the local gas station), but now I've moved onto the much more reasonably priced Arrowhead water.  It's water and CO2, the price difference between two brands of sparkling water? A better way to determine the raw price of pretention I'll never know.

Food for thought

I had a vision.  Visions are potent things, they take on lives of their own.  Some cling to you like barnacles of thought until they come into being.  My vision was of a teriyaki stir fry.  This proves that the cling-ness of the vision often has nothing to do with the grandeur that will result (something most cosplayers know intimately well).   But it was a vision, and it was mine.

Also Katheren blackmailed me into cooking for them, but I'll stick to the vision story.

Cooking that dinner was an unexpectedly emotional event.  This could be a result of a labyrinthine interplay of gender roles, expectations, unrealistic expectations, and millennia of sexual politics.  There's material there I think.  The dreadful ramifications of giving a group of women a bad meal should be enough to bring any man to his knees. 

Giving women a bad meal is giving them the most terrible power in the female arsenal.  That weapon is comedy.

However, KC cooks for women just fine, so my conclusion is that more likely I need some therapy or a little prozac. 

Private Poindexter Reporting for Duty

Which comes to the last part, the working out.  And so it begins.  It has started with boot camp. Boot Camp is the newest thing that the Calabasas wives do to keep themselves in tip top shape.  It's regular high-intensity workouts designed to make you hate life. 

Oh, of course not, how bad could they be?  There were sessions starting up literally 2 minutes from where I work.  I am big strong man ......oh I can't keep a straight face to that one.  I'm a nerdy guy with glasses, whose most passionate hobbies include the phrase "I stab the orc" with a subsequent roll of dice.  I've seen every episode of Star Trek and youtube music videos of Doctor Who....

I walked into boot camp with 100% awareness of my capacity.

The session was two women and the instructor, whom I will dub 'Boot Camp Lady'.  Both of the other women were over 40, one of them was over 50.  Some men would be fooled by this,  I was not. 

10 minutes later I was dead tired.  20 minutes later, I was beyond death.  35 minutes later all I could hear was the far away voice of Boot Camp Lady saying "lie on your backs, time for abs!".  40 minutes later I was hurling my lunch onto the gym room floor. I was many things. I was annoyed, embarrassed, and undignified.

I however was not surprised. 

There have been six such sessions, I only puked after the first two..... so far so good.

I started at 21% body fat.  More to come later.