Rare Product Review, Musical Meh, Recovery Time

It’s rare for me to do product reviews on this blog. I don’t get any ad revenue, I don’t have sponsors, and I’ve voluntarily bypassed the thirteen cents a year I would theoretically receive from Google for running advertisements. But thanks to Mr. Typist, I recently came across a product that I love and must rave about free of charge: Raycon wireless earbuds. He ordered them for me without my knowledge and presented them to me last week at dinner, and I was enthralled. I listen to a lot of podcasts. But I don’t have an iPhone, having given up on Apple products long ago, and as such, I don’t have those weird, cigarette-looking iPhone headphones that are so prolific nowadays. I’ve been getting along with normie, twelve-dollar drugstore headphones that I have to keep re-buying because they continuously wear out and break. And they are extremely annoying at the gym, as they get in the way of the barbell when I’m doing Romanian dead lifts, they pull out all of the time on the leg press, and they continuously snag on the drawer pulls in the kitchen and get forcibly yanked out of my ears. The Raycons fit my ears beautifully, they have a ridiculously long battery life, they look elegant, and they come with an adorable, sleek carrying case that doubles as a battery charger. I love these things and have basically walked around with them jammed in my ears since I’ve received them.

Mr. Typist suggested I try listening to music on them to get a sense of how good the sound actually is, but unfortunately, that sort of auditory depth is lost on me. I don’t have musical anhedonia, but I don’t have much of an ear for musical subtleties either. I have a fairly limited range of notes that I can hear and respond to emotionally, and anything outside of that range just sort of goes by the wayside. So if the Raycon headphones are awesome at picking up high and low notes, I’m not going to notice. I’m far more interested in the fact that they fit my weirdly-shaped ears perfectly and that they come in a really cute little case that I can throw in my purse and know that they are going to charge up on my way to work. Raycon earbuds, ya’ll. They’re the best.

I’ve been On Vacation since Friday, and I’ve been aggressively, proactively vacationing since, that is to say sleeping a lot, doing next to nothing, and actively avoiding looking at work e-mail. I deleted the link to my work email on my home computer because it was too tempting to click on it, and I’ve been re-familiarizing myself with our TV streaming options (not great, as it turns out.) I’ve also decided, at my trainers behest, to take a full seven days off from the gym. Normally, I feel frantic if I take even a day or two off (I know that’s not healthy) but she said that taking an extensive period of time away will help your muscles fully repair, and when you come back, your progress will be exponential. I did not know how sore and tired my muscles actually were until taking a few days away. I normally feel a strong urge to go and lift, but somehow since I made the decision not to, I don’t feel any desire whatsoever to go to the gym. Everything aches. I can tell that my connective tissue is gluey and that my back has had it. This latest trainer has worked me harder than any other to date, and I’ve had very little recovery time. And over the last few days, even my abs have been in full-on rebellion against my normal ten-minute morning routine, screaming in protest at an activity that I have done now for every morning for almost two years straight. It’s clear that it’s time for a complete rest. So there will be no gym-going for me for at least a week, and I’m totally at peace with that. Maybe when I come back, I’ll finally be able to do that pull-up. My record to date is being able to hold my body up on the pull-up bar for seven-and-a-half seconds, (!) so we’ll see what a little rest and repair time does.

My favorite ridiculous video game, Power Wash Simulator, recently had an update, albeit not much of one, so here’s a video. Enjoy!

 

--Kristen McHenry