Catching Up on Things

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted in this. I believe this will be the mode of my blog posting for this semester. I was hoping for once a week, but it may just be once whenever I can. These last few weeks have held excitement for sure. Story time!

Story Number One: About two weeks ago, one of my roommates (we'll call him Zeke) came into the apartment in a fit, saying he locked not only his regular keys in his car, but he believed the spare to be sitting in the middle console since he could not find it in his room. A few days later, we decided to break into his car to get his keys back. By this time, another roommate (going by the name of Mack in this story) wanted in on the action. We had a couple of wire hangers, no tennis balls, and even a string. The closest we got was with the wire hangers. Ten-fifteen minutes after initiating Operation Initiate-Life-of-Crime, we were feeling confident, having finally made a little progress against the car. The score was still Car:1, would-be car-thieves: 0. After an hour and a half with two hangers jammed into the car, me on the car roof for better leverage, and Mack ready to execute his string theory of car-jacking, the score remained unchanged. Zeke had disappeared for a few minutes, and Mack and I were surprised to hear his voice coming from the other side of the car announcing that he had the keys. We turned to see him standing in the open door of his car, holding both sets of keys. Turns out his spare was in a different place than he had supposed. A wire hanger found him swiftly, but without harm.

Story Number Two: This last Thursday (the 24^th) was my first Ultimate Frisbee game in the intermediate league. After much begging from a dear friend of mine, I consented to join her team, The Book Club. Yup, that's our name. It is a traditional name for the captain who's been playing under the name ever since he started competing. At least that's how I understand it. Anyway, it was a good game! It was a bit chilly with a slight wind, but nothing we haven't seen before in good ol' Rexburg. I took a few hits for the team, which I like to think helped contribute to our victory. At least I feel cooler for having done so and survived. But anyway, there's nothing like a little friendly smack-talk between players, right? The first play of the game, the other team had the frisbee in the hands of their best player. I was guarding him and tried to block a pass, but ended up hitting his arm after the fact. He sternly warned me to “watch [my] hands.” The next time I was guarding him, I totally stuffed his pass and said, “I was watching them that time.” Sure I was a little smug, but he hardly said a word to me after that. As a result of the pass-stuffing, my right index finger was tenderized. He had a pretty mean throw, after all. All said and done, we won, and it was well-deserved. Both teams worked hard: it was a close match with a final score of 9 to 8, but we had more heart, I would say. Now to continue building the team's confidence by winning more games!

Story Number Three: One of my classes is Exercise Physiology Lab. In that class we get to do a lot of different tests and whatnot. We've done muscle endurance/strength tests and cardiovascular fitness tests. Turns out I am pretty normal for a guy who hasn't had a solid workout for longer than he cares to remember as far as muscle strength goes. However, I found out that I do have a good heart and am rated “superior” in what's known as a VO2 max test. VO2 max (with a dot above the “V” and standing for Oxygen Uptake) is essentially dealing with Oxygen consumption during activity. The higher your VO2 max, the better you are in cardiovascular activities. We did a partial test to estimate my VO2max last week and this week did the actual test to get a hard number on it. The actual test involved me wearing a tight facial mask that hooked up to a tube that ran to a machine that measures a bunch of stuff like your Oxygen to Carbon Dioxide ratio while I ran on a treadmill. After warming up and maintaining the same jogging speed throughout the test, the treadmill's incline was increased 1.5% every minute until volitional exhaustion (when I decided I couldn't jog any more). I believe I got up to 10.5%-12%. I couldn't really tell because the face-mask blocked most of my lower view (and I was trying to not pay attention and just go). At any rate, the 90^th percentile for men for VO2max (meaning 90% of men in your age-range have an equal or lower value for VO2max) is 51.4. I topped off at 61.59! Yep, I'm pretty awesome, like everyone's always suspected...

Story Number Four: Bill Cosby, the great comedian, family man, and boundary-breaker, is coming to Rexburg June 6^th and 7^th. I have floor tickets to go see him on the 6^th. I'm incredibly excited to be going. End of story.

At any rate, this post is long enough. Pictures will come soon, I promise! Hopefully I'll get some good ones from this weekend. I'm currently in Driggs, Idaho, which is nestled in the Teton Mountains, with a bunch of friends from school. It's really nice up here. We have two cabins that we're all staying in and it feels pretty isolated in the mountain forest. Such a nice change of scenery.

As a closing note, this is Memorial Day and I hope that every observes it as such. I always feel such a great swell of gratitude and respect for the men and women who lay their lives on the line for us and a better tomorrow. May our prayers be with them and their loved-ones.