30 Day Challenge -- Day Fifteen

Inscrutable notes:

06:32 89.2 24.0

No row, cooked breakfast for boy instead.

$8.50 small McD coffee, drank half

08:04 BM

11:04 H elev to gym

13:04 finished workout, felt weak, screwed up weights and cardio order due to an unfortunate number of people in MY gym. 120 max bench not a lot of sets.

13:05 apple

steam, shave, sauna

Peter gave me a bottle of Givenchy "Gentleman Only," (hint, hint?) which makes me small like a Russian whore. Will only spray on my balls for now. 

84.7 gym scale

14:14 beef tenderloin, veggies ... had violent allergic reaction to veggies which almost never happens anymore ... what happens is I have to spit out loads of phlegm and can't swallow anything until it's all out ... dashed unpleasant.

17:41 E3 to home

Boardwalk Empire -- S05 E02

The law's a shield, not a sword ... Joe Kennedy makes another appearance.

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Movies Watched -- What Maisie Knew

Poor little rich girl .... Julianne Moore (b. 1960) as ageing rocker ... marriage on the rocks (pun?) ... ugly biz ... what is Maisie, five or six? ... is the little girl autistic? something weird about her face/expression ...  British art dealing Dad with asshole-ish long hair ... beautiful blonde nanny, "Margo," Irish? Scottish? ... custody battle ... "temper, temper" ... little girl is going to grow up to be a junkie, no doubt ...  uh, oh nanny  takes father's side and becomes Dad's lover / wife ... will fast forward from minute 30 ... some other guy on the scene now, solid chin, fairy-boy hair ... "new stepfather" ... this is the genuine guy ("Lincoln"), unlike lying manipulative Dad, she needs in her life .... he's a bartender? ... Irish nanny turned wife breaking down ... all these screwed up adults and Maisie a witness to them all ... hang on, the help is going to hook up ... poor nanny and bartender as Maisie's good responsible parents? ... asshole rich celebrity parents versus a nice Scottish lass and a blonde bartender boy, seems a bit predictable ...  oh yeah, genuine board game fun with the adoptive family ... not going with you, Manipulative Mom, despite the monster miniature stuffed pony. Bye bye bad celebrity Mom.  Cue the heartstring piano!  Blueberry pancakes with those wholesome adoptive parents. The End.  Under 100 mins but still had to fast forward through most of it. Red rating.

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30 Day Challenge -- Day Fourteen

(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)

Wife informed me at 6:30 AM that she had fired half the staff ... I was left to clean up the bodies, pay people off etc.  Insanely stressful, would have normally sent me into a dark hole, but I managed things rather well I thought, given the carnage.

07:42 4K row

88.2 22.5

Lots of Fritos to deal with shock of an empty house. 

13:21 BM

18:40 Kung Pao chicken from Meizhou Dongpo for dinner

$50 Pizza+ (not for me)

Day was a complete bust, a real disaster ... on the food discipline front I did ok (not great though) and the key was not cracking out the bottle or smoking cigars, which I would normally do.

30 Day Challenge -- Day Thirteen

(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)

Inscrutable notes:

08:40 BM

87.8 24.0

$138 Jenny Lou's cred

12:21 Ten jiaozi for lunch, giant bowl iceberg lettuce with French dressing

$802.56 Carrefour cred

15:17 4K row

16:46 4K row (to make up for Friday)

17:07 100g beef tenderloin, giant bowl iceberg lettuce with French dressing

$15 Jinsong grocery, tea for foot massage and crisps for masseur

T back at XDF on Saturday nights

18:32 end of foot massage, watched half of Frances Ha during

20:08 end of body massage

$100 massage

Notes becoming super spotty here in the second weekend ... not maniacally recording all actions with a timestamp.  That shows I'm slipping, but have not yet plunged back into total depravity.

30 Day Challenge -- Day Twelve

(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)

Incrutable notes:

88.2 24.5

07:15 BM

07:20 mush (fresh squeezed soy milk, blueberries, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, cashews, apple, pear, banana)

$16 McD sausage egg McMuffin and coffee

Finished Drug War -- overly violent and lame.

Goldin Financial may want to talk with me next week but blessedly free for now.

Dreaded work: Cosmo (Century City) wants to talk this afternoon, good thing I didn't go to the gym on time and miss the notice.

11:20 E3 to gym

11:26 apple

12:27 apple

13:00 finished cardio ... usual routine.

steam but no sauna 

They changed the soap delivery system in the showers much to my annoyance, can't get good volume out of bottles unless you unscrew em and dump contents out which is of course what I will do.

13:27 84.2 gym scale

Subway has closed down ... refurb or gone?  Did a roaring biz, I thought.

13:30 apple

14:00 No protein for lunch in honor of Chrissie Hynde ... 300?g steamed veggies, two boiled eggs, tea

Dreaded work, talked with Cosmo, wasn't too bad 38 minutes, Mr. Lo, though not Won Hung Lo.

Listened to some comedy (Pandora) ... bless the office WiFi and unmonitored bandwidth ... didn't know John Pinette died earlier this year ... always liked his stuff.

Submitted insurance claims

Serious thoughts of drinking about a dozen pints of beer after work but will restrain self ... mood is not good ... this is where the month of disciple gets really hard.

17:35 E3 to home

$138 Kerchin beef jerky 

No notes after that ... just remember I had no booze or smokes on Friday night and that was key.

Movies Watched -- The Spectacular Now

Coming of age / teenage love story for Millennials ... features a boy (b. 1987) who looks like a less Jewish version of Mark Zuckerberg ... he carries a flask and is always half in the bag which is refreshing to see ... kid can keep up a steady stream of patter / bullshit which shows that he's a child of an alcoholic ... his Bad Dad is the impossibly handsome Kyle Chandler from Early Edition, which explains why he has a beautiful sister ... nobody sounds like they're from Georgia ... his boss at the tie store is Better Call Saul ... story wasn't very strong, sorta lame, I wasn't super thrilled with it.  Under 100 minutes so I was able to watch it to the end, no fast forwarding. Yellow rating.

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Movies Watched -- Before Midnight

Made it twenty minutes in and even that was a stretch ... two people framed in the shot, talking, for nearly two hours. Guy is Ethan Hawke (b. 1970) who looks like junkie (except for the Hollywood teeth) and the girl was that French actress, Julie Delpy (b. 1969) seen her in something else, I forget what.  Anyway, they talk.  And talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.  And it's not interesting talk.  It's dull middle class white people talk. No man with balls between his legs has sat through this entire thing, I can guarantee that. Red rating.

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Movies Watched -- Enough Said

I guess this is targeted at late Boomers / early Xers ... people who have kids of college age ... Gandolfini and Dreyfus both born in 1961, so they're both early Xers.  They will always be Tony Soprano (even with beard) and Elaine Bennis to me, whatever roles they play. Catherine Keener was born in 1959 (late Boomer) and is once again playing an aged California hippie chick. Annoying "emotional cue" acoustic guitar or piano at all the bits where you're supposed to tear up.  Was this Gandolfini's last movie? Sad, that. Audi and Prius product placement ... Le Creuset cookware and a Mexican maid (though not hot like Richard Dreyfuss's) at the shrink friend's house ... brand name schools (Parsons, Sarah Lawrence) featured ... I guess its deep message was you have to compromise to be happy, yeah, very deep ... wasn't thrilled with it. Gets points for being under 100 minutes though.

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Movies Watched -- Frances Ha

This was like a 90-minute episode of "Girls" in black and white with a prettier and spacier Gen Y girl lead. Mickey Sumner (b. 1984) is Sting's daughter, the ultimate rich kid playing a middle class Boho girl who went to Vassar and then floundered for the next five years (nice to see shots of the campus).  Like "Girls" it had some funny bits and cute bits but was ultimately unsatisfying. Might be of interest to white upper middle class Gen Ys and Millennials.  (Wondering: would a guy like "Patches," who buys distressed ball caps and works at Goldman, marry a homely Jewish girl like Gerwig. Of course not.) Big points for being under 100 minutes.

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