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Not a great start to the day, my daughter woke up at 4:00 a.m. and fussed around for quite a while. This has destroyed the plan to go for a morning walk at 6:00 a.m. However, unlike most mornings, my heel is tender but not barking like when I usually first plant on it -- new shoes may be making an impact already.

Pre-walk weigh-in: -6.8 lbs. from yesterday afternoon's weigh-in at the doctor's.
Real skeptical of this reading

Activity: Walked 2.67 miles in the morning, 8:00 a.m.

I keep forgetting to provide my trek playlist. I must remember to upload the activity on iTs.

Supporting activities:
- Pre-walk had some antioxidant tea, my daily multi-vitamin and some BCAAs
- After walk, drank 1/2 a serving of Surge to restore glycogen stores & provide protein

- Packed up my mixed green salad with arugula & bok choy for lunch. Unfortunately, forgot to prep some chicken last night. Will go to JITB for grilled strips, however will pay in sodium intake ... ugh. Tonight, I have to prep my lunch chicken

- Drank some Metabolic Drive, 3 scoops with scoop of L-Leucine powder & 2 Tbsp organic flaxseed meal

- Did my water requirements calculation. 142.3 oz. -- good gravy, that's a lot. Guess I'll be peeing a lot until I acclimate to the new water intake

To be continued ...

Went to doctor for quarterly blood test and exam. Not happy with the borderline numbers. I don't take any maintenance medications for any conditions and certainly do not intend to, although genetics ultimately may have the final word. I suppose when you find out what I did about my family history of disease, it would shake and motivate the vast majority of people

Activity: Walked 2.67 miles in the afternoon.

I plan on providing my trek playlist if I remember to upload the activity on iTs. Forgot to do it for this afternoon's walk

Supporting activities:
- Bought some shoes with better support. Tried out Nike Lunar Elite + on trek, weird to say it but this shoe totally adjusts to how your foot strikes and plants, providing support where it is needed. Hopefully this helps calm the plantar fasciitis that I have been experiencing for months now -- probably because I am too heavy right now.

- Picked up 2nd CSA box from Ma`o Organic Farms. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the produce, and vegetables I have never seen before in my life. Have some meal ideas to try out. Last week, the results were mixed for the cooking with fresh vegetables, but if you don't cook recipes, you won't find out whether you like them or not

I'm not yet 40, but I've been borderline on some medical readings which could lead to serious health problems in the short-term and long-term. So I have resolved to live a healthier and more balanced life. I suppose everyone at some point gets to where I am. I'm going to try my best to make this happen over the next few months or so and hope to continue on throughout my life

It's taken years, but apparently the big four bands of 80s thrash metal -- Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth -- will finally share a stage at a few festival dates in Europe. Hopefully, this leads to some appearances together in the United States -- we can hope, anyway ...

Review to come.

Setlist
Spiderwebs
Hella Good
Underneath It All
Excuse Me Mr.
Ex-Girlfriend
D.J.s/Message to You, Rudy (outro) (covers: Sublime, The Specials)
Simple Kind Of Life
Bathwater Play
Guns Of Navarone (cover: The Skatalites)
New
Hey Baby
Running
Different People
Don't Speak
It's My Life (cover: Talk Talk cover)
Just A Girl

Encore
Rock Steady
Stand And Deliver (cover: Adam and the Ants)
Sunday Morning

"It's a very complex record, I'm trying to do something different. Some of the arrangements are kind of like Queen. Some people are going to say, 'It doesn't sound like Axl Rose, it doesn't sound like Guns N' Roses.' But you'll like at least a few songs on there."

- Axl Rose, Rolling Stone, 2006

After so much time, money and speculation, Chinese Democracy has finally been released for mass legal consumption. My impressions from several listens is that it has elements of the GNR formula, but it appears that re-creating the glory that was GNR was not really the point of the album. Instead, Chinese Democracy is a big creative leap in many different and interesting directions, an attempted proof of concept of Axl Rose's "musical genius".

And that leap yielded mixed results -- but the picture that emerges from the album is that of a emotionally conflicted artist who still has brilliant ideas, but he could not execute them at times, leading to some really overwrought songs that were terribly in need of others to counterbalance the creative output.

Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

An unexpected return to form. Even my faith as a long-term Metallica fanatic was beginning to wane with each entry into the Metallica catalog post-Black Album. I had pretty been resigned to the fact that the Metallica that plays fast, thrashy and energetic was long gone, and was only seen periodically during its live performances.

However, I am very pleased to report that I was dead wrong. After the perfection exercise that was Black, the experimentation of the Loads and the statement of St.A, all of which never really delivered on a visceral level the experience of the first four albums. Metallica delivers with Death Magnetic, a record that shows that heavy metal can still be a vital force in current music.

It's unbelievable

3 of the G.O.A.T. and Kanye, too

So little sense ...

Dark. Realistic. Created an unrelenting sense of dread, and a drink from the firehose type pace. Leaves you feeling gut punched; however, it is a very satisfying movie as well. The quality of this movie transcends that which would normally be associated with the superhero movie genre; it simply is a great movie.

What does it look like when a comic comes to life? This movie is a pretty close approximation of my childhood recollection of what I appreciated about reading Hulk comics -- really liked the action, the chases, the explosions and destruction and I wasn't particularly sophisticated enough to appreciate some of the psychological complexity/human drama that Bruce Banner was going through.

SD and I saw this movie as a part of the theatre's child friendly matinee program. Ironically, a performance designed for child and infant interruptions actually turned out to be less bothersome, loud, and irritating than that of a regular performance, interrupted by inconsiderate people who should know better -- Iron Man at Windward Mall comes to mind. Go figure.

I didn't write this for a while, as I waited to stop seething from the vast number of clueless morons who think it's okay to light up and text and answer cellphones during a movie. It definitely colored my experience of the film, but hopefully I've shed the angst adequately enough.

This is a fun, summer popcorn movie.

So little sense ....

Making his first Honolulu appearance in a little over three years, Jason Mraz played a really solid set to a surprisingly large crowd of 6,000+ at the Waikiki Shell. This is one that SD really wanted to go see. Admittedly, I was less than enthusiastic when the venue shifted from the concert hall to the 'Shell. However, it was a nice night, with nice weather, and the environment was really well suited to Mraz's performance style.

Well said, KO.