I had a pretty interesting weekend.

On Saturday I got up, did a 2.25 mile run in Sparkman Park. Along the way I named the park's resident wildlife (9-10 cats; they look like they are cared for). It was my first official 'cheat' day so I did some calculations and made my dinner. It was basically chicken and rice - I had forgotten just how much rice is produced from 1 cup of dry long grain. It had some spices in it like garlic and turmeric.

The ground school was uneventful - only one person and he was fairly heads up so his first jump was not eventful. I did one other jump on Saturday, a coach jump with a woman who hadn't jumped since November.

What made Saturday fairly interesting was I met Brian Germain, who came down to teach a course in canopy control. I wanted to attend, but I had the ground school. Mr. Germain is a big name in skydiving; I tried to find an appropriate analogy - it's not like meeting Oliver or Wilbur Wright, maybe more like meeting Chuck Yeager but Yeager I don't think designs airplanes.

Nice guy. Awful cute, too; damn shame there's no picture of his face on his website. I let him jump my Sabre 120 (he didn't bring his own gear). Wish I landed my canopy that gracefully.

Saturday night, after I drank some liquid courage, I got to talk to him about a bunch of things. I don't get starry-eyed when meeting someone famous, but a well-known name (coupled with good looks) can intimidate me. I really wish I could have taken the class. I have his textbook which I plan to devour during the week.

I did two jumps Sunday - even though I planned and executed a cheat day, I really need to stay away from the beer. I just don't feel good the next day. The second jump was the nicest formation skydive I have done in a long time - 19 points - but the weather was moving in and even though we could see the ground we were pelted by ice. That *stings*.

Sunday night Jon invited Steve (camera man and friend) over as well as Brian. So I got to cook for 4 people again. I am proud of my cooking skills so I was glad I could do something nice for them (I made Thai Chicken though I was beside myself at the supermarket because I couldn't find any fresh basil). Brian is a cat person and even Big Fat Kitty made an appearance and let himself get petted and loved on.

I'd like to say we ate dinner and had witty conversation around the table but no - Jon has a bunch of South Park episodes on TiVo so we watched them. I'm with Butters: I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid.

Enough of my social life: what about the diet?

I weighed in at 129.2 Saturday Morning. Sunday morning I clocked in at 134.6. Pretty good, eh? 4.2 pounds! How the hell much did I eat Saturday?!!?

Not that much, actually. About 2300 calories and that's a generous estimate. If I'm right about my maintenence level, that's about 600-700 calories over maintenence. The massive weight gain is all the water I retained when the carbs I ate were stored as glycogen in my liver and muscles. This was my plan, remember. I did fairly well and stayed away from fat (except for the cheese on the pizza I ate) so I'm fairly sure that very little of what I ate was added on as fat.

But the proof will be in what I weigh once I re-deplete my glycogen stores. Sunday I did no exercise (except the skydiving) but I jumped right back on the lowcarb horse and (this is important) No Cravings! Wierdly, I ate about 680 calories all told yesterday but I did not feel like eating more (I should have).

Today I still weighed 134.6 and I went to the gym and ran 2 miles and did Squats (3 sets 17 reps 75 lbs), Stiff-legged deadlifts (3 sets 17 reps 75 lbs) and seated calf raises (3 sets 10 reps 70 lbs). Why such high reps w/the leg exercises? It's supposed to be good for endurance as well as weight loss. While there's no such thing as spot reduction, resistance training does ramp up the metabolism better than cardio because apparently the protein synthesis that goes on afterwards is energy intensive.

Or so I've been told.

Oh: I went on a bagel hunt on the way to the drop zone Saturday morning and here's a sad fact: I can't swing a dead cat without hitting a gas station/store that sells Krispy Kreme donuts, but I can't find any place that sells single, fresh, bagels! Alabama is so backwards about some things. No, I did not have any of those tender morsels of fried sugar, I wanted a damn bagel! *Sigh*. Next refeed, if I can find a supply.