Metal Night

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Wedding planning and buying a house sort of took priority over blogging, among other things. But things are starting to settle down a bit. Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. A small family get-together at our centrally-located apartment turned into 13 people (and one dog) packing in wall-to-wall. I guess it was symbolic of the Thanksgiving meal itself...you wouldn't ever believe that you could fit so much into a finite space, but you just keep making room and shifting things around and somehow in the end it all goes down.

We just started an indoor soccer league at the Sports Garden. It's a mix of people who have and haven't played soccer. And those of us who have played, haven't played in years. Oh yeah, and we're mostly out of shape. The first game was pretty ugly. We're apparently in the co-ed 'B' league. We lost 15-4, and it could've been much worse. The most frustrating part was that I know if I'd been in better shape we could've played better. I really got to the point where I couldn't breathe, as did most of us. Indoor soccer is tough. It's a constant sprint. Two of the people on our team had run a marathon 2 weeks before and even they were winded. So I've decided to try to get in a little better shape for our next game this week. Yesterday morning (Saturday), we went to the gym. I did my usual lifting and abs routine, then got on the treadmill. I did the 5k program, my usual 3 miles. I ran the first mile at 7.0 mph and the second at 7.2 mph. Then I decided that I needed to work more on shorter distances and higher intensity. So I ran half a mile at 8.5 mph. It's only a little over a 7-minute mile pace. When I was in high school and in shape, I could run a 5:45 mile. At the end of this half-mile I really thought I might die. I'm not sure the heart rate monitors on the machines are entirely accurate, but it said mine was 198 beats per minute. According to the 220 minus your age formula, my max heart rate should be 195. I cooled down, though I couldn't get my heart rate below 125, then got off and felt kinda dizzy for about a half hour. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to recover.

Last night we went out with Jen & Kevin and Charity & Greg. Greg works in advertising at one of the local radio stations, and had a list of places he had to stop at for Molson promotions. The first place we met him at was Montage Grille, which usually has jazz and blues bands, some rock bands. Well we found out as we walked in that it was metal night. We felt a little out of place. I, in my brown striped sweater (hey! it was cold!) and Michaelene in her lime-green jacket didn't quite blend in with the black-clad and face-pierced metal crowd. The first band was just awful death metal. I know you have to have some sort of musical talent to play it, but they used so much distortion that it was just a constant roar from the amps, accompanied by the typical incoherent death metal growl. Thankfully we got in at the end of their set. The second band was much better. A 3-piece group, they described their music as progressive rock/metal. The guitarist reminded me of the guy from King of Queens. He was this fat guy wearing flannel. The bassist was this skinny guy in a t-shirt and tapered stonewash jeans. I was intrigued, but they really really rocked. Kevin, Greg, and I were 100% tuned into their set, while the girls were more tuned into the others staring at them and making fun of them for even being there. Oh well, we escaped in time.