Blogrilla

I went to the fitness center at work today for another bike-ride. I can
usually burn off 200+ calories that way and I work hard but I don’t
exactly see the weight falling off. I’ve decreased the portions of food
I eat. For lunch I had a tuna-salad sandwich with cheese & tomato
with a V8. I was totally full afterwards! I used to pull through a
Burger King and wolf down a whopper, fries and a drink and then start
looking around for something to finish it off. Last week I ate just the
sandwich — just the whopper and it filled me nicely. I’m quitting
french fries and chips, which is really hard since I like them a lot.

With
lunch I usually like the motion of nibbling on something while I eat a
sandwich. I may need to find something to substitute for the motion –
at least for a while.

The point is, through a combination of
aerobic activity and decreasing the portions of food I eat, the weight
should start dropping off fairly quickly. I would think. So far its not
working out that way. I’ll give it a chance though. I’ll keep at it for
a couple of months and if I don’t see any improvement by … lets say
the middle of April, then I will have to sit down and re-evaluate what
I’m doing.

My hope is that I can loose enough weight over the
next few months that when summer gets here I won’t be so heavy that I
will hurt myself when I start being even more active. A couple of years
ago I started trying to jog and gave myself a nasty case of shin
splints. They really hurt a lot and made me back off of exercise for
quite a while. I also hope that by weight training my muscles will get
strong enough that I won’t hurt myself by exercising harder.

This is just the beginning, baby! I want to start doing much more active and interesting things than I’m doing now.

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Not me! I’m not dropping out this year! This is the year I make my own health and fitness a priority and get back in shape.
Amen!

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True confession: I can’t shuffle cards. I’ve always been
embarrassed that I can’t shuffle cards. I end up carefully sliding the
cards together in a stupid way. Yes, it adequately mixes the order up
but its a lame way to do it. So I’ve been practicing shuffling. So
Gabriel keeps wanting to play “Go Fish”.

And the kid is good.

Ok,
ok… there’s very little skill to the game but the kid has some kind
of insane lucky streak going on. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday
we played about 20 hands and I think he won about 16 of them. So if you
have the opportunity to play cards with my boy you’d better bring lots
of pennies!

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This morning I went to the YMCA and worked out for an hour. I
walked the half mile there and back and then rode a bike for 30 minutes
and lifted some weights. After cleaning up I looked after the
kids for a while. Liz left to take care of some things and I hung
around trying to figure out what to do. I had many ideas, but
Grace was sick and so I couldn’t do anything outside or anything that
would cause physical exertion — I didn’t want Grace using up her
energy running around outside instead of getting better. I
finally hit on “Painters’ Pride” — its a
paint-your-own-plaster-sculpture shop. If I do say so myself it
was a great idea. The kids had a fantastic time.

• Gabe painted a dagger (of course)
• Ben painted a space ship
• Chloe painted a unicorn/rainbow
• Grace painted a dog — all green

I had a miserable time because it went against every grain I have to
let them make sloppy lousy paintings. I REALLY wanted to show
them all how to do it right and how not to make a mess and on and
on. But it wasn’t about me and they wouldn’t have appreciated my
butting in.

We went to Cracker Barrel afterwards for supper. I continue to be a big fan.

They have the week off coming up and I have to go back to work.
yippee. Work started early — I spent about 45 minutes tracking
down a problem this evening.

I was this busy today because I don’t want to waste my life in front of
a video screen but unfortunately I’ve chosen a profession that is close
to 100% in front of a screen. I spend too much of my life on my
ass.

I’ve been wondering what else I could do and don’t have any good ideas yet.

And its supposed to snow 4″ - 6″ tonight. 

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On Saturday me and the boys needed to scout out some locations for Ben’s next birthday party.  Liz suggested we start with Laser Quest. 
Its a laser tag place.  They specialize in birthday parties and
the whole place is decked out in good looking decorations.  They
went with an interesting theme of “cave/tech”.  We played some
video games and air hockey in the lobby area.  After about 30
minutes they called our names. 

There were 28 people playing in our game.  We wore vests with big
laser-guns attached.  Our names were associated with the gun/vest
so everytime we nailed someone it showed up on their gun that
“TankBuster” had just shot them.  That was Gabe’s nick name. 
Anyway, the maze was lit by black lights giving everything a strange
look.  It was made even creepier by the fog and many mirrors that
bounced the laser shots all over the palce.  The maze was really
well designed and we had a great time. 

That’s where Ben will be having his NINTH birthday party.  Can you believe it ?

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I’m looking at the weekend and see nothing special lined up. Its
been a busy week and I’m looking forward to doing something fun over
the weekend. I worked out twice this week. I think I need to do better
than that if I want to loose any weight. I’ve actually dropped five
pounds over the last few weeks. I guess I’m going in the right
direction, but I would like to see speedier results.

Today I
went to the fitness center at 10am and rode a bike for 30 minutes and
burned off 200 calories — or so the bike said. Then I did some weights
and hit the showers. I have to admit that I’ve felt really good ever
since. The actual working-out time isn’t so bad — its not painful
although the exertion is uncomfortable. But that’s what I’m there for
right?

I know I can’t make this year’s or next year’s marathon,
but SOME day I will run a marathon. I’ve been looking at Boston Metro
Sports magazine (http://www.metrosportsboston.com/)
– a monthly newspaper-type magazine and I’m always intrigued by the
adventure racing and the 5k runs and whatnot. After I loose some weight
I want to try some of these. Not because I think I’ll win — I don’t
think I’ve won a race since I was 15 (and that was against sixth
graders!). No, I think just participating looks like a hell of a lot of
fun. Its hard to keep up this kind of inspiration as evidenced by my
training regimen. Exercising twice a week isn’t going to get me there.
Even when I was a kid, although I was never (ever) a distance runner
I’ve always looked at the triatheletes who do those Ironman
competitions with awe.

I think I will one day achieve this goal
of finishing a marathon. But the Ironman… now THERE’s a competition!
I wonder if, when I’m in shape, I could finish that? Maybe I’d better
focus on a more reasonable goal first.

I should plan something
outside for this weekend. I think Saturday and Sunday are only supposed
to get up to 30 degrees or so. I can still get outside, though, can’t
I? What can I do? I’m afraid its going to be sloppy in the woods, so
hiking is not so attractive. Any ideas?

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I saw that the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival (http://www.bostonsci-fi.com/) was happening this weekend. I thought that sounded like it might be fun. Its showing at The Somerville Theater in Davis Square and is starting this evening. Unfortunately, I got a look at the lineup and it doesn’t look very good. You be the judge:
Shorts
 Animatrix
 Duck Dodgers
 Hareway to the Stars
 Jumpin’ Jupiter
 Hardware Wars
 Chubb Chubbs
 Mr Magoo Outer
 Sapce Jitters
Features
 Earth vs Flying Saucers
 Starship Troopers II
 Primer
 Godzilla
 The Apple
 Superman
 The Time Machine (original)
 THX1138
 Charly
 Planet of the Apes
 SKY CAPTAIN
 Invasion of Body Snatchers
 The Forgotten

I’d kind of like to see “The Forgotten”. I’m unfamiliar with their lead off movie, The Creature From the Sunny Side Up Trailer Park and some of these others don’t ring a bell (Charly, Primer and The Apple). I recognize most of the others and am not interested. Christ, hasn’t Godzilla been done to death? And Starship Troopers II went straight to video. THX1138’s only claim to fame is that the director was George Lucas.

So I think I’ll pass on the film festival.

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active.com has a caloric-needs calculator. It says that if I want to
maintain my current weight I need to consume 3,078 calories per day.
I’m not consuming anything near that right now. I should be seeing the
pounds falling away.

Hmm… either the calculator has a bug or I’m consuming more calories than I think.

I wonder if I should debug the calculator to see where the bug is?

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… so she stayed home. Turned out she started throwing up by 9:30am. I
guess in the end she only tossed her cookies twice, but because there
were some things going on in the afternoon I said I could come home and
work from home in the afternoon. I had two meetings, but I was able to
call in to both of them. It wasn’t easy. The girls did their best to
leave me alone but I have to confess that there were a lot of
interruptions. I still find it difficult to work at home because of the
interruptions. I have enough trouble staying “on-task” at work much
less at home.

Last night I was able to go out and play poker
with some guys from work. It was quarter-ante and we had a fine time.
In the first 10 minutes I lost about $7! I was down to a measly three
piles of quarters when I won a monster pot that put me back up to even
($20). Although I won a couple of more hands I never did get beyond
“even”.

Still $5 down for an evening of poker is fine. I think
one guy came out $30 ahead! That was fun. I think its the first time
I’ve been out socially without Liz or the kids in … at least a year.
Probably more like two or three. No wait, last year while I was
traveling on business I went alone to Fat Matt’s in Atlanta for BBQ and
blues. Another night on the same trip I went with some people back to
Fat Matt’s and then to ESPNZone.

Can you tell I like BBQ? Not the sauce — the real smoked stuff.

Anyway, I need to get out more often, I think.

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I’ve been feeling lazy lately and haven’t exercised. I think the muscle
pain in my back from shoveling made exercise seem very unappealing.
Also the emotional scarring from all the snow. That too.

In any
case, I managed to get a good solid 45 minutes in at work today. At
10am I went to the fitness center and spent 30 minutes on a stationary
bike working hard. I know I was working hard because at the end I was
soaking wet. Then I spent about fifteen minutes lifting weights. This
left me fifteen minutes to shower and change in to my work-clothes.

It
really took me about 30 more minutes to cool down, which is always
uncomfortable. I grabbed a tuna sandwich with some soup for lunch and
ate that at my desk. I need to get back in the groove.

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