I am at Steelhead Coffee, and just polished off my new favorite entree, the Avocado Toast. Gee, it’s been almost three weeks since I published my last blog post. I seem to have gotten out of the habit, and it is high time Captain Univac again takes the helm and creates some content!

My new favorite breakfast at Steelhead Coffee

There have been a number of reasons why I have been less that diligent in my blogging. The main reason is that I have been geeking out a bit lately. I have a potential contract to do some generalizability studies for a organization that is developing their own tests and they need to examine the reliability of their raters, and I have been spending time getting back into variance component modeling using Stata. That kind of endeavor can suck up a lot of time, and a lot of that time came out of my blogging budget.

At the airport for the Muslim ban protests

Another reason is that I have been working on upping my EQ, or Exercise Quotient. Since I had my triceps problem I had been unable to ride my bike, and bike riding is my main calorie burner. I have found from long experience that I need to get in at least 1000 calories worth of exercise daily. By my figuring, each mile of walking is worth 100 calories (with an added bonus of 50 calories for every 100 feet of altitude gain) and each mile of biking is worth 40 calories. Thus a 10 mile walk will suffice, or a 25 mile bike ride, or some combination of the two. It takes me 3-4 hours to walk 10 miles, and that is IF my foot is cooperating which is not a given, but I can get in a 25 mile bike ride in less than 2 hours with no drama at all.

Monica

Since I have not been riding the bike my weight has been creeping up and has finally reached a tipping point at 160 lbs, and I have now resumed the bike riding in order to reverse that trend. Got in 75 miles last week, and will have logged another 20 as of today (day 2 of the week). I have also been Pretty Indulgent (PI) with sweets and bedtime snacking, so the combination of more EQ and less PI should put me back on track. Last June I was flirting with 140 lbs, which I think may be my ideal weight.

Of course there is also the fact that I wind up spending a lot of time talking to people! In one of my early posts I had written about the cornucopia of pretty girls (keep in mind that given my advanced age “pretty girl” spans a quite wide spectrum age-wise) currently inhabiting Steelhead, and my friend and fellow blogger Scott Brause warned me that talking to girls would eat up all the time I should be spending writing. That is true, and I have been guilty of that! I don’t restrict my camaraderie to just girls, though–I am an equal opportunity chatter!

King Louie and brother Nathan at the Steelcraft grand opening

What have I been doing since my last post? Let’s see…I made it out to the Royal Cup Cafe for their open mic on Friday, 1/27. I went up to LAX on 1/29 to participate in the protests against the Muslim ban. The Fox Coffee House re-opened on the 31st after cleaning up from the flood of the 23rd. No Saturday open mics this month, but the Thursdays have been good. A highlight was the performance by Jesse Schade last Thursday, 2/9. There was also a Grand Opening for the Steelcraft complex on Friday, 2/3, that was very well attended.

Jesse Schade with Romel, Ishmael, and Sean at the Fox Open Mic

Okay, in the interest of ending my streak of “no blog entry” days I am going to wrap this one up. Adios for now! Below is a little blast from the past, pics from a workout with Rina Wong sometime in the early 90’s.