Friends

I've done it again, only this time worse than ever. Ample amounts of delicious food, hours of inactivity at work, Dogfish Head 90-Minute Imperial IPA, and delightfully addicting video games have produced an amorphous blob that used to be Dave Kopchick. While each of these are thoroughly enjoyable, and I really don't care all that much about my weight, I have allowed myself to reach, well, a point where I'm not happy. So I figured that I might as well see how in shape I can get myself. Who knows? Maybe I'll like it and stick with it.

Problem is...I've never really set an intensive routine or diet for myself. So Imma ask for advice. There are a few things I do know, so I'll spit them out. I do know that my main method of excercise is going to be lifting freeweights since I don't have time to go to a gym or the funds to support such a thing, so I'm guessing a high protein diet would probably be a good thing. I have the routine I plan on following down, so thats all set, but theres a few things I'm gonna need help with.

Mainly what I'm looking for:
-Anyone who can make recommendations for a realistic, high-protein diet, that someone who doesnt have a whole ton of money can afford.
-Once I post excercises that I'm doing, ways to change them up to constantly give my body a challenge (beyond the obvious more weight, more reps, and more sets. Be creative, folks.)
-People to think-tank for me for ways I didnt even think of to achieve this goal of getting in shape and being healthier. Like...huh. I wonder if the amount of times I chew will affect my hunger level/nutritional absorption?
-People to offer constructive criticism and offer words of encouragement to help me through the agonizing pain I'll likely feel thoroughout this year.

Anyone that actually wants to help me out with this, lemme know in a comment, I'm going to be posting private entries frequently with stats and routines and just random blurbs about it. To anyone who wants to help, let me offer a heartfelt thanks in advance. Working out starts Monday, I'll let people know how it goes.

I just got lost
Put myself aside
Forgot which path leads back
I’ve sat much too long
So long I can’t stand
I see my legs
I can’t seem to make them work
No matter how I try

Why do I come here
Only to find I have grown roots
Like I have so many times in the past
Sipping water from the poisoned pool
It’s burn destroying as it slides down my throat
Yet I drink again
Not caring
Not wanting to care
But caring all the same

The symphony of falling snow amongst the vineyard kept Vaashra standing in place atop the storehouse roof. As the blinding winds swept drifts across his newly acquired property, the workers lit the torches outside of the various structures, giving a warm, orange glow to the dark landscape. Up at the top of the storehouse, Vaashra had hung a banner of white, the three leaf clover of the House of Clubs dancing amongst the flakes. But there, at night, while the others hid near fireplaces and amongst blankets, he hadn't slept since he'd gotten there, and things did not look promising for that evening.

"I remember..." he whispered. As the shadows lengthened away from the dull, ruddy lanterns that contained the torches, he gazed into the deepest portion of that horizon, towards the road away. Dark, and obscured with fresh snow and laden trees, he knew what that road held. "I remember..." he clenched his fists. "I remember... the art... the way..."

His mind reached outwards to flood the rooftop with darkness, splotches spreading to gather together into that deep, purple hue of light-less silence. His hands tightened further, he gritted his teeth. They were marching back into his consciousness now, the days before Elmerton, before Azueron. He felt their claws working their way towards the new, fresh memories, striking at them, gripping and slashing to drag them away. Images danced and bucked amongst one another, and he could see them vividly, every time he blinked there was another. A cut throat here, a broken neck there, a thousand pleas and screams quieted to nothing in silent and unmerciful places. He could taste the air of a fresh kill, the weight of the Crotean's Promise in his hands, the way the bodies would fall, he could remember every second of all of them. Fresh memories drowning old ones away, as he felt more and more of his childhood and family being stolen by these deeds, the life they'd made him for.

He could remember the last time he felt this cold. It was in the Circle, it was when they made their offer, it was when they took his Verendar body and broke it. It was then they'd torn out his heart, his bones and blood, and replaced them, each piece methodical. It was the last pain he'd ever truly felt, the chill shadow vitae running as ice into his veins. He remembered screaming, though they said he was silent, his soul screamed every last ounce of agony it had ever known into the cerebral ether. And then, when felt like a puppet with a set of cloven strings, the need came on, rising like the tide against the shore, with the certainty of a glacier and the speed of the wind. The Geas took hold, the leash that ever hung from his neck and tore freedom away. That chill blood whispered of what he was, the heart that beat much slower than before, more certain, sudden, and with the memory of whom it once served. This heartbeat tore into the memories of the old, warm, ageless heart of his elven life and measured how it stood against them. That heart that presided over each order, that cradled the monster that they had forged him into.

He felt the blood, even now, as it kept his muscles tight, his joints poised to spring, his feet light in the snow. He felt the call it left to charge and wound, the seduction of each change it had made to craft him into the... thing he'd become.

Murderer. He knew that was the name for it, and he owned that name, he'd lived in its ghost and walked a million miles in its shoes. Every warm and caring memory it had changed or destroyed to help him stand under that banner.

"I remember..." he whispered to the night. There were no scars anymore, no keepsakes or pains to warn him of coming rain, but the necrosis of his memory was there forever. He could peer far off into the distance of that road, peering into the past at the time when that name was anathema to him, but the light was so far away...

Not long ago, he'd had the same fight, held in Elmerton, he'd stood again in similar darkness and chosen to reach back towards his own path. But here and now that light was just too far...

As the stories of all the atrocities he'd done welled up within his mind, he suddenly saw a curiosity, a distraction, an unfitting piece of the puzzle that was the vinyard. A man in heavy cloak and winter robes, touting a shield and sword as he slowly approached the compound from the very road Vaashra stared at. He considered the figure, and his thoughts shifted from introspection. He considered the color of garb, the presence of armor, the occupied hands. As the man approached the farm, Vaashra instinctivly threw a darkness spell to the foot of the storehouse. Sure enough, the man's gaze fixed upon the sudden movement, and he slowly approached the motion with weapon raised. Vaashra held still, tracking the man with his eyes until he was right near the opening for the structure. He then took his sword from his belt, raised it over his head, and sharply marched off of the roof.

He fell fast and plummeted to the man like a fallen angel, aiming for the man's neck and into his chest. He quickly added the spell to blind the man in route, and collided with a sickening crack as Vaashra's left leg snapped in two places on the landing. Silently he rolled aside, rising on his right. Blood from the compound fracture, black as pitch, spurted into the snow. The man struggled to regain his footing, his vision stifled with shadows and a gaping wound running from his neck to midsection. His mouth contorted to scream, but no sounds emerged as his lungs immedieately filled with his own blood. Vaashra stood patiently outside of the man's thrashing arms, and waited as his leg slowly righted the wounds. When the bone recessed back below tissue and skin, he stepped upon the man's back, grinding his heel into the giant laceration that had formed.

"I don't repeat myself often." Vaashra started. "So listen carefully. I want to know who sent you. You will tell me. Or I will torture you until I gather my workers for the day, and use your still living husk of a body as fuel for our fires. I am many things, but a liar is not one of them." he kicked him in the neck for emphasis. "I hope we are clear. If you tell me, I will put you out of your misery immediately."

The man coughed, sending a fount of humors before him among the snow. Vaashra kicked him again, hard, in the ribcage, over and over. After the first five minutes, the man was still. After the first half hour, he was spreading the man across the snow before the entry way. He continued to stomp and kick at the man's corpse, and realized that his throat was cold from wordlessly screaming at it. He screamed at the man for defiling the peace of the vineyard, screamed at whomever had sent him, screamed at his own impatience, screamed at his own blood lust and most of all, screamed at the silence the night showed in the face of his crime.

No one would question him. Ever. Vaashra would always be a murderer and a killer of men. His talents were respected, feared, coveted at times. His prowess had become his reputation, and people knew him as the blade that was never dull. He was fear incarnate here amongst Magesta. His visage was that of the fight, and he was known as the criminal no one wanted to cross.

No one knew him as Vaashra of Vholk Veldri, just as Vaashra, King of Cards for the Sons of Plunder. No one seemed to want to know, so he simply continued to kick the man's corpse until he was stamping flat meat into the icepack. So he returned to the roof of the storehouse, staring off into the sleepless, lightless horizon.