Wednesday Aches and Pains

First, congratulations to those who screened for department head. It still surprises me that we have department head screening boards now. Retention was so low in my year group that there was no question about it - if you wanted to be a DH, then you were in. It just boggles my mind that there are a lot of guys who don't even get the option to be a DH now. There was a glut of JOs for a few years when we recruited enough JOs to man two VA-Class per year, but we only ended up building one VA-Class per year. Boats had an average of like 12 or 13 JOs (when I was a JO, we had between 8 and 9 JOs at any given point in time). The DH screening board results were released today. This was the first look for YG '03 and the second look for YG '02. I have a bunch of '03 guys on my boat. Two screened this time around and four didn't.

It's Wednesday. As those of you who read my blog regularly know, Wednesday is our interval training day with the PT Nazi. I only jokingly call him the PT Nazi - he's a really nice guy and always gives us a great workout. This morning he surprised us with another new lineup of exercises. We spent almost the entire hour alternating between pushups and squats, with minor variations each time. It went something like this (doing each exercise for 1 minute):

- Regular Pushups
- Regular Squats
- Wide-Arm Pushups
- Squat & Twists (start facing to the right, do three squats, on the third squat you jump up and twist and land facing to the left, do three squats, on the third squat you jump up and twist and land facing to the right, etc).
- Diamond Pushups
- Star-Grabbers (squat down and touch the ground between your legs, then jump up reaching for the stars, repeat).
- Dive-Bombers (start in a pushup position, keep your butt in the air and put your face down to the ground, then sorta swoop your body down toward the ground as your head comes up away from the ground).
- Bleacher Steps
- More pushups
- More squats
- More pushups of another kind
- More squats of another kind
- More
- More
- More...

My legs felt like jello by the time we left the gym. My chest is starting to feel a little sore now - I know I'll really be feeling it in the morning. I should just take some Motrin now before I go to bed.

We went to Moe's for dinner tonight. We used to go to Moe's every Wednesday night because it was kids-eat-free night and there was a guy who came and made balloon animals. My addiction to Mexican food and raving about carne asada burritos in San Diego earned me a Moe's gift card from the Nav at his farewell party.

I wasn't so sure about how going to Moe's would derail my diet this week. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find nutrition information listed on their website (I can't post a link because it's all java, but at the bottom right side of the web page, you can't miss it). It's more than just your standard list of items though. It's a very interactive feature where you can click on each item you put on your burrito (add guacamole, subtract sour cream, change from pinto to black beans, etc, etc), and it shows you a very nice standard nutrition information label customized for however YOU like YOUR burrito. Turns out it wasn't as much of a gutt-buster as I expected it to be, and it fit just fine into my food plan for the day.

I still really miss Chipotle though. Chipotle was my favorite fast-food Mexican place in Northern Virginia. I found their chicken tacos to be downright addicting. I mean, a day after having Chipotle chicken tacos, I would have serious cravings for them again like I was going through withdrawal. Someone told me that Chipotle is owned by McDonald's, but I see on their website that they are a publicly traded company on the NYSE. Maybe whoever told me the McD's story was pulling my leg. Anyway, I checked the nutrition information on the Chipotle chicken tacos, and they would fit fabulously into my food plan... if only there was one less than 2,000 miles away.

We have heard that there is a Mexican place on the North Shore called Chollo's that's pretty good. We rarely go to the North Shore though. It's been on our list for a while now, next time we DO go up there, we'll plan on eating there and write a review here to share our observations. So all five of you who read my blog have that to look forward to reading about. :-)