An example of what you can accomplish with a sous vide wand: this is a cheap roast Rhonda picked up at ShopRite for around $25 bucks. Fed four with leftovers. I put it in the tank with salt and pepper for a few hours then finished it on the grill.

Here’s my top-five 10k rows:

Fairly linear trend in the desired direction, although slow going for sure. I am sure that my decline in performance in December and January was due to my second COVID infection, from which I did not suffer any serious or long-term symptoms, but nevertheless. Happy about this!

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

1. Logitech MX Master Mouse: I bought my first MX Master during Covid, when a solid and functional seated workspace became important. I still use my original MX Master at my desk at home, but after trying a few cheaper mice at the office, and seeing the gen 2 of this venerable mouse on sale on Amazon, I sprung for a second device. (There’s a third generation for sale now, hence the sale.) It’s really big and I thought that I wouldn’t like the first iteration, but it helped me realize that, for seated computing, a big arc in your palm is just the thing you need.
2. Tostones: Tostones are fried green plantains. Rhonda has been making these excellent (and cheap) pork roasts for taco nights, which even Joey eats. I started making refried beans from dried beans in my pressure cooker (Rhonda, perhaps rightfully, fears the quaking pot), and they have been a big hit. Aaron pulled a green plantain out of the pantry and asked about making it. The trick with these is to fry them in warm oil after cutting the plantain into one-inch slices, and then dropping them into cold water for a few minutes. Once your pan (and oil) is hot, you smash them and fry them a second time. I used the Blackstone, so these were less oily, and I was able to smash and fry at the same time. We only had one, but would have eaten more.
3. Portmanteau: This might actually just be a blend word, but in any event: I’ve been making sous vide egg bites every Sunday for the work week for Rhonda and me. I make ten bites, but we only have nine mason jars at this point. I put the rest of the egg mixture in a sandwich bag and sous vide it alongside the jelly jars. It has come to be called “eggbag,” and we always recognize it apart from the other bites. I always eat eggbag. Eggbag is not capitalized, outside of starting a sentence.

I took the ServSafe test for work; it was not at all a requirement of being a special education supervisor, but we opened a cafe at the local community college for our students to work in, and we (the leadership) team agreed it would be helpful for as many of us as possible to have the certification.

I will say that this test is much harder than I expected, and I wasn’t sure I’d passed it when walking out. Add to that that I had a class to attend that I forgot about and missed the first 45 minutes of the testing session.

Time to glove up!

Today I found myself about a mile-and-a-half from the Sly Fox brewery’s Malvern location, so I just had to stop in. The original Sly Fox was my college haunt back in the late 90’s; it was in nearby Phoenixville, and (usually) Mike Walter, Jeff Henning, and I would find ourselves extracting a sawbuck each from the nearby Mac machine, and having three pints (at three bucks a pop) and leaving a buck for the bartender. We didn’t do the noisy sports-bar, plastic-cup-of-Natty-light, ten-cents wing thing very much, if at all, and preferred the quiet peace of the Sly Fox.

Things have changed a fair bit for the Sly Fox since those days; they now distribute their beer in cans in the region, and have multiple locations. I mentioned that I used to hang out at the Phoenixville location to the bar tender who pulled my stout this afternoon, and he knew of the original location, and filled me in on the new building across the street from the original, as well as two locations in Pittsburgh.

I can’t say the food was terribly exciting, but it was neat to step into an evolved version of my history, when the Sly Fox was one of the newest options for discerning drinkers popping up on the East Coast.

Some things to check out:

1. Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon: Not the most exciting whisky I’ve ever had. Fairly sweet, lots of corn. Just fine in a Manhattan, though.
2. eMClient: one of the pain points of using Windows is having a good email client option. My particular needs for work center around a useful smart folder scheme. On the Mac, it’s MailMate, hands down. This Windows client uses IMAP to access your Gmail account, but the clutch feature for me is Smart Folders. It’s not as flexible as MailMate, but is anything?
3. Villa Fazzolari in Buena makes the best pizza around. Rhonda and I split the personal Gino Jr.’s Favorite, as we often do.

Gino Jr.’s Favorite Pizza

eMClient

This is a silly little thing, but I get a kick out of it. This is a small pocket I knife I inherited after my father-in-law died. It was eminently amendable to sharpening, but the tip of the blade had broken off.

I busted out a two-sided whetstone I got at Ace Hardware some years ago and filed the blade down into a point. No bladesmith am I, but it’s really usable now.

Last August, I wrote in “Another Good Trend” that my cardio fitness levels, as reported by my Apple Watch through the Health app, had gone from “below average” to “above average.” Cardio fitness is Apple’s term for VO2 max. From the Health app:

This is a measurement of your VO, max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can consume during exercise. Also called cardiorespiratory fitness, this is a useful measurement for everyone from the very fit to those managing illness.

A higher VOz max indicates a higher level of cardio fitness and endurance.

Oddly, all of the rowing I do doesn’t lead to Cardio Fitness reports. But walking does. Rhonda and I took the dogs for a 30-minute walk again today and I found a pleasant update when I checked my stats: I moved into the “high” category.

1. We’re lucky now to have an Indian restaurant nearby (two, in fact). Pictured below is their excellent Chole Bhatura appetizer, which Rhonda and I split.

2. We had a nice Mendoza from Moore Bros with our Indian. Very good.

3. Funny coworkers: I’ve often remarked that I get much of my social exposure at work. Outside of work stress, I’ve never found my colleagues to be anything but funny and admirable people to work with. One of my coworkers hung this sign up at the new worksite we’ve been opening this week after I quipped this hated boss phrase about having the student workers keep at it.

I took the time Sundays often afford to row a 10k this afternoon. As I lamented in my last 10k update, I didn’t match or best my current PR. There was one noteworthy stat, though: my stroke rate.

Here are the splits table from my PR from November 2023:

My Current 10k PR

I averaged 30 strokes per minute on this piece.

And here are the splits from today’s 10k:

Today’s 10k

My last split got up to 28 strokes per minute, but check out my average: 25.

I’ve been looking to reduce my stroke rate to allow me to more comfortably row longer pieces. It reminds me a bit of weightlifting, when I would deload to fix an error with my form.

A quick word on comparisons: It’s fine to compete with yourself. But the progress and knowledge of others is worth consideration, too. Case in point: I used to cycle, and rode solo all them time (I’m an only child and most of the things I prefer are solitary pursuits). I did chance upon a local club ride, though, and I learned a lot from riding with better, more experienced riders, and it changed my skill level after just one ride.

OK, enough about cycling.

In that spirit, however, I took to Concept2’s excellent Logbook (which doesn’t require a separate subscription, thank you very much!) to compare myself to other rowers. Filtering 10k pieces by males in my age group 40-49, I found the following record holder’s stats:

Impressive. This guy was pulling with way more power than I can muster, but with a stroke rate just a digit above my 25.

Long slow distance.

---

PS: I am comparing myself to heavyweights. I weighed in as a lightweight this morning, though. Here’s the same age group’s lightweight record holder:

30 strokes a minute. Heaps of power.