I gonna have to totally start bumping that late 70s disco vibe. Quick thought: why did '90s line dancing adopt country music? There's no groove there! Wear the cowboy boots and jeans still, but play KC & the Sunshine Band's Get Down Tonight. Ahh, add that one to the list of things I'll fix when I find my keys to the DeLorean.

Merry Christmas! I kicked off today with another 2:30 AM by pushing ol' Santa's sleigh so that he could crank it to start. What a mess that made in the front yard.

After knocking back my 16 oz of coffee blended into 4 oz of butter poured over ice that I prepped the night before, I ran through my simplified lifting session: a back day, just stiff-lead deadlifts, shrugs, and inclined rows.

I'm returning to my approach from May and June when I lifted for 9 weeks with a 5-day split. Not that I didn't lift beyond those weeks, but when I introduced supersets, I must have red-lined myself 'cause the increased load began punching holes into my plan. And while last week I had supersets (2 to 4 exercises nonstop), I recognize that approach will derail the pain train!

...and now in post-workout, I am drinking 20 oz of 160℉ homemade chicken broth. It just feels nurturing. And it happens to line up with my natural target of 87% calories from fat.

Now, I would be out there in those beloved pre-dawn hours, racking up the steps if it wasn't for 60℉ rain. Yeah, there ain't no I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas out there; Matt hit it on the head in his Southern Christmas is Different.

YES, it may have taken months for me to recapture that internal fire of mine, I couldn't even walk across the house without making pain choices, but here in December, I came back.

Yesterday was a big-BIG day; I earned 7 Garmin badges:

1. Olympus - (2,917 meters daily floors climbed over time)
2. Stepping Up 30K - (30,000 steps in a day)
3. Stepping Up 25K - (25,000 steps in a day)
4. Active December - (20 activities)
5. December Walking - (30 miles of walking activities)
6. December Time to Walk - (15 hours of walking activities)
7. Commentator - (I just talked to myself on the Facebook of Garmin when I learned it was collectible)

My favorite badge yesterday was the 30K one. I beat my personal best of 2023 by...10,000 steps. Very soon, I'll be beating that prior mark every day. While I remain disappointed with my average pace, I recognize I'm hauling a big ol' hiking backpack of Bill, where at last weighin, I got to yank out 76 lbs of stuff before I'll let myself run!

All of that to say is that I'm going to hit fitness in 2024 in stride.

Regarding other resolutions, I have received all the clothes for January. I got the jeans; the Under Armor under things and shoes; and a general theme of long-sleeved thermals black/grey and red flannels. But one thing I haven't updated my New Year's resolutions is...

BELT BUCKLES!!!

I already have the wolf on hand as I'm waiting for three more to arrive:

• Zombie Outbreak Response Team
• Taekwondo
• ThunderCats
• Wolf

Totally gonna have to grab cowboy boots again...or retire and replace my 2021 Xero Z-Trails. I'm back.

After sitting out yesterday to nurse that kerf in my heel from a new pair of Under Armors, I went for a pre-dawn walk this morning wearing socks in those 2021 sandals of mine.

So beneath a sky full of stars, I set forth...

I had hoped to run through my Starbucks ~5 AM routine, BUT, no, that weekday schedule did not apply!

Thus, I walked on.

I passed all of the oh-so-many, old memories. I watched myself dance in the Piggly Wiggly costume on the corner of Kirby Whitten and Stage. I continued on, smiling as I saw my sister excited tell me that I earned that full ride to UofM as I sheepishly responded in pushing a grocery cart to the store.

Stage Road: I don't know if there's a stretch of road that has meant more to me in my life:

There I am, a middle schooler, working at my family's print shop at two different addresses, bouncing into Subway for the very first time...

...there I am again, at 16, literally jogging for an hour to pull in carts on a busy Saturday at Kroger. "Hey Billy-turned-Bill, do ya REALLY think you ought to jog about with your tied around your forehead like Rambo...in cowboy boots? Whoa, you just leaped over the cart railing—and you do that all the time?"

Shhh, check this out: I am that 9-year-old with an armload of books on his weekly library trip.

Look to the left: that's me over there at Ryan's walking with my family for our Sunday afternoon buffet. You can see me turn from a kid to a man there. "Hey Bill, good job driving with that PDA on that truck's bumper all the way from your house!"

Check it out: across the street, I see me walking into the bowling alley for Cosmic Bowling—he does love blacklights! And that smoke-saturated place makes a good cover story to fib to my parents. "Bill, keep doing the random tangent hopping trick with those two girls in your car. Girls go nuts for mental machinations!"

Yes, that's me in the Union Planter's—me over at the Bank of America line—me over in the parking lot at the Bank of Bartlett—"Hey Mom, that's the wrong, white truck! I'm over in this one!"

Look, it's David and I going into Replays to add to that big ol' collection of CDs I own. "$8.99 is a fantastic price for a used CD! Have fun playing ball over at Bellevue! Don't forget to stop by the Baptist Minor Medical when your chin splatters open there. Oh, and to kill two birds with one stone, after they stitch you up, be sure to go through Christie's checkout at Piggly Wiggly and ask her out to prom. With your luck today, what could go wrong?"

"What a little fella!" There I am in tow with my dad to Chief's Auto Parts and Blockbuster's.

"Oh hey, cute girl, Bill. Remember to order the chicken fingers at Applebee's! And for the love of all things holy, DO NOT LET THAT GIRL'S CHICKEN FINGERS FINGER INTO YOUR MOUTH! You just don't come back from that!"

"Here, lemme help you push this ol' 1979 F-250 out of all of this traffic at the intersection of Bartlett Boulevard and Stage Road to this gas station. Hey, there's Adam Smith. What's Principal Carruthers doing here?"

"Ahh, look at you: got the career job and you're STILL spending time over dinner with your parents at Blue Plate Cafe and Dixie Cafe. That'll be with you a good long time."

And see: there's me from a couple of days ago, peering into the Pig, looking at an empty space of a concrete floor and steel beams...

"Don't take that photo. It's not a keepsake. It'll just remind you of life, all that is lost—that all the high school drama, all the love interests, all the stories and passions are gone."

"The Deli is gone and so are the booths where you were hired in June 1995 on the same day as Jessica by Stan. With minutes of your time at the Pig remaining as the threshold of college is at hand, you'll never again play the midi of Stairway to Heaven in the PA that set up a WAV file announcing that there is a K-Mart Blue Light Special on aisle 5."

"The produce section is gone. There's no Josh's antics of playing baseball with a knife and a watermelon or shared camaraderie with Mark as we stand together with rolled-up white dress shirts and sideburns. You won't be rebel yelling across the front end wearing your prom tux..."

"...there's no more chats in the dairy cooler or 8 PM on the bread aisle with Gilbert...

"...there's no Virtual Fighter arcade to play or 32 oz Powerades around the corner to drink after wrestling, one to drink before purchase and the second for the drive home..."

"...you won't find Jennifer to sack groceries for..."

"...no video department to grab a customer's box of Marlboro Lights..."

"...there's no bakery to grab those 4 fried apple pies for $1 that you liked so much on your break..."

"...no Frozen Food to hate or 0-degree freezer to yank those two girls back to their registers...

"...and there's no checkout line to wait in with an 18-stick pack of Winterfresh gum just to steal a moment."

"No, Bill, don't take that photo. It'll break your heart. Leave that building in your memory, fully thriving and noisy."

In the future, I dunno know what I'm gonna do, but today was downtime from my pull/push routine. Yesterday's push supersets were:

1. Flys / Close-grip press
2. Bench Press / Arnold Press
3. Incline Bench Press / Lateral Raises

Like the "intended for Monday" Tuesday pull program, it's pretty simple, isn't it? And then how they can neatly become a 6-day split is delightful! Then again, I always like the idea of a back, chest, shoulders, and arms MTRF approach.

Maybe I ought to begin brainstorming New Year's Resolutions for 2025? See, I'm on and off again about quitting this coffee addiction. Make no bones about it, there's totally a dependency in place! This morning, I skipped coffee when I woke up. Around 10 AM when I took a sip of my ice butter coffee brew, Sarah McLachlan came into the room and crooned Sweet Surrender:

YouTube Link

Maybe I ought to push quitting coffee off to Future Bill? The thing about coffee that is ever-so-delightful is that it is TOTALLY a performance-enhancement drug. It was even banned by the IOC from 1984 to 2004.

I specifically read why the IOC now allows it, which clashed with what ChatGPT told me, as AI stated that the IOC allowed it after its finding that caffeine doesn't provide a significant effect. Yes, after TWENTY years. I mean, if you ran up on me in 2001, I would have set you straight...but, no that's AI lying again...time to educate.

And thus, I gave the real reason to ChatGPT and then demanded that it would talk like an idiot in that session going forward. ChatGPT then repeated my answer back to me—sorta:

Caffeine got the boot from the banned stuff in 2004 'cause they couldn't figure out if athletes were just sippin' some joe or guzzlin' it down to be extra fast. WADA was like, "Uh, we can't tell, so caffeine's cool now."

I found this short article of some interest.

Of course, I share all of that, but OBVIOUSLY, we know all of that! While I didn't lift this morning, I went for a walk...without coffee.

I skipped my Starbucks midpoint and just walked for 3 miles. My speed was slower then the day prior (my new shoes cut into my heel the day prior). And still, by the time I dragged myself home, I was BEAT. And that without the lifting and a 1 ½ mile LESS! So yes, coffee totally affects the perception of effort.

And for this reason, I'm keeping coffee in the lineup. I just gotta avoid yesterday's 521 mg? At least not all in the morning. I do want to get credit for this 2024's body and not slow clap for Jimmy Tango's Fat Busters.