Here's to RSS Readers at 9:27 AM

Been a while, hasn't it? Well, I kind of lost my motivation there for a while, but I'm hopping back on the blog here to try out the old digs again. It'd be pointless to go into all the happenings of the past year in detail (those who are reading here are probably Facebook friends, so you know about it anyway,) so we'll just dive back into the present.

First, the kids. Luke is five now, and he'll be starting kindergarten here in a few weeks, which will bring to an end the era of being able to plan trips at any time of year. Sad on one hand, but on the other hand, that kid is ready for some school. He's the most curious and observant little kid I've ever seen. Always with the questions like "how does this work? what's that made of?" And while I love that he's going to prove smart, answering questions that I really don't know the answer to can get tiresome. So school will be good for him. Ronin is three, and he is a monster in every sense of the word. He's almost the same size as Luke (they can wear the same size clothes,) and he's built like a linebacker. If he ends up with that size and my brother's athletic prowess, watch out. Unfortunately, however, he may end up about as coordinated as I was when I was a kid (which was not very.) Also since he's this age, he is a miserable person. I don't know if everyone has this experience with three-year-olds, but in short, mine have been awful people. Luke is better now, which gives me hope for Ronin, who a year ago was a gregarious, outgoing, fearless little boy and is presently bad-tempered, demanding, and scared of everyone and everything. But we still love him. As for little Renae, she's pretty much the cutest baby ever. There are only good things to say about five-month-olds, after all. She pretty much just sits there and smiles and makes cute baby noises. The boys love her to death, which is both good and dangerous. They don't quite realize the size difference between them and her (mostly the oafish Ronin,) so we have to keep a pretty close eye on their interactions.

As for personal stuff, I'm still pretty much a fat guy, but I'm getting on a program to make that different. This has happened a few times before with moderate success followed by reinflating, but this time I've got a pretty good feeling about it. The thing with me is that I have to have a routine that I can follow constantly, and it's good to have my food regulated to "you can eat the following things, and if you eat anything else, here's how to do it." So Jessica and I are on the Power 90 program right now (which is the precursor to the P90X, because we're just not in good enough shape to do that yet,) and it's feeling good. We get up at 6:00-6:30 every morning and work out for about 40 minutes. I haven't been able to stay up as late as I typically like to, which is a drawback for me, but at the same time I feel good all day long and I have energy like I didn't have before, even with the same amount of sleep. I'll get into results once we finish the program--we've only been doing it for a week and a half now, so I don't want to talk it up too much just yet. Hopefully the results will be dramatic enough to post some before and after pictures.

I think blogging feels good again. I won't get into a bunch of media recommendations or witty anecdotes just yet (namely because I don't have any at the moment,) but that will come later. I do have just a few recommendations, though:

*If you haven't seen Breaking Bad, the AMC series, watch all three seasons immediately.
*If you haven't seen Inception, run - do not walk - to your nearest movie theater and take care of that.
*If you want to hear some good music, check out the new Black Keys album, called "Brothers." It's fantastic. I had just about given up hope that this group would release an album that sounded a bit different from all their others, and this one did the trick. Great stuff.

Every Year I Forget at 7:56 PM

Being a manager, January and February are absolutely insane months. Especially January, but the first half of this month is also no joke. Performance reviews, setting goals for the next year, accounting for what happened last year, meeting with the boss and the boss's boss (that one's not every year, but it was this year,) etc. Not to mention I'm the spreadsheet guy for the region, meaning I put together all the new spreadsheets to track stats, attendance, marketing, and everything else for all the Indiana centers and pretty much for anyone else who likes to use them.

And the problem is that most of my New Year's Resolutions have to do with dedicating time to things. So I always pledge to do things - get in the habit of doing things - that take time. So by the time things die down at work, the resolutions are gone from my mind. But this year I'm not forgetting. It's been a couple of weeks (like I said - the end of January is ridiculous), but I'm back. It may not be much of a post, but a post it is. My bigger writing problem is that I can't dedicate a lot of time to writing columns at MMATorch. I enjoy doing it, but it takes a good couple of hours of solid thought research and writing. And if I don't do it all at once, it makes things a lot tougher. But right now I'm working at work, then bringing my work laptop home and working some more after the kids go to bed. Or falling asleep - whichever comes first. Oh, and that's not even including the fact that it's the season for 24, Lost, and American Idol, among others. So this is not an interesting post, but it's here to make sure I don't stop posting before I forget.

Remember how we were going to drive to Delaware if the Eagles made the Super Bowl? Well, we went anyway. Last week was the visit with my boss's boss, and it went really well, but there was so much preparation involved, not to mention everything else that was going on, so I just wanted to get out of town for a few days. We conducted an experiment on the way out, making the 12-hour drive overnight on Thursday night. It actually went much better than I had expected. I'm a late driver and Jessica is an early driver, so I drove till about midnight and then she took over till about 5am. And the kids slept for most of the ride, so that made it even better.

The trip was nice; blissfully uneventful one might say. Some shopping, some hanging out, and watching the Super Bowl, followed by the second 12-hour drive in four days. That one wasn't actually too bad either. Really they were better than two drives of that length with two kids should be. So no complaints here. The other nice thing was that when I got back, it felt like I'd been gone for way longer than I actually had, so I was only backed up a couple of days, but it felt like a longer vacation. Good times.

Now, speaking of the Super Bowl. A lot of people talked right afterward about how great the game was, but I thought the first three quarters were horrible, followed by a great fourth. It was poorly officiated and poorly coached. Also, the Cardinals were robbed by the touchdown at the end of the first half. Harrison didn't get the ball across the goal line. I'm just sayin.

On & Off the Wagon. Also It's Freaking Cold at 8:21 PM

There's been some talk of weight loss in the previous post/comments, and I'll keep that theme going for a little bit.

My boss was in town this week, which put me a little bit behind on...well, life. So I was a day late with my MMATorch column (it's up now), and I'm a day late here. Besides putting me behind on my writing, that little fact also makes me eat badly. An excuse? Of course. But she buys us lunch more often than not, and what am I going to do, get a salad? Please. I'm not that far gone. So yeah, it's been a bad week for being on the wagon. I haven't actually weighed myself, but I'm surely a couple pounds heavier than last week. That's considering also that I've been at work more hours than usual, preventing me from going to the gym. That's the first week I've missed since November. So I'm getting on that train again next week, and getting the discipline back in my eating habits.

Speaking of which, his Shoelessness asked about any recommendations. I don't know what this will do for you, but I can tell you what I've been doing, and it's really simple.

1. Count calories

I never did this in any prior diet. But when I'm really going strong, I'll eat anywhere between 1200-1500 calories a day. Not a whole lot. It's actually pretty easy when I'm working because of some habits I changed. I never used to eat at work. That meant that I ate a whole lot when I got home or before I went in. So I started eating a lot of lean cuisine/healthy choice frozen meals. Most of them are actually pretty tasty, and they're usually under 300 calories, and they're quick to eat at work. Also to keep the calories down, I drink almost none of them. I usually have a glass of orange juice or milk at breakfast, and then it's water and Crystal Light the rest of the day. I'm a big drinker, and I actually hate water, so this was an adjustment. But it definitely works. Drinking a lot of water keeps me from being really hungry, and of course it's nice to be hydrated (especially when working out). I also stopped grazing. I don't walk through the kitchen and grab a cracker, or a cookie, or a handful of chocolate chips, or all of the above. That's all stuff that I'd have to keep track of, and it takes away from what I can eat at dinner.

2. Eat breakfast, but not a huge one

I don't like cereal, so I never used to eat breakfast. Now I have a banana (sometimes with some peanut butter to get the metabolism going) and a glass of orange juice or milk. When I keep it low-cal at breakfast and lunch, it makes dinner a lot easier to deal with because a lot of times it's tough to count calories in recipes. Usually by dinner I've only eaten between 350-450 calories, so I've got lots of room.

3. Don't eat late

Nothing after 7:00. I've always struggled with this because I love to eat, and I love to eat while watching TV, especially sports. So this is a tough one, but also important.

4. Portion and self control

This was the biggest thing. I didn't want to "go on a diet." I wanted to change my eating lifestyle. I figure if I go on a diet and lose a bunch of weight, but never change my eating habits in general, I'll just gain it back. So the key to all of this was to control myself. The non-grazing, not eating after 7:00...all that stuff. That's why the portion control is also important. I would usually eat 2 or 3 servings at dinnertime, but now I keep it at one. The best thing about that is I can recognize more easily when I'm not hungry, and that's when I stop eating.

So no magic tricks or anything. Just change. Also there are no dumbbells. (At least until I lose some more weight.) (And yes, that was for Joel's benefit.)

So as you can surmise from the post title, it's freaking cold here in North-central Indiana. Last night it got down to -4 with a -26 wind chill. That is coldness of ridiculous proportions. I know it's cold in Minnesota and North Dakota and stuff, but this is not there. We are not used to living in a freezer. My garage door doesn't work because it's so cold, and I get up to five employees a day calling me because their cars won't start when it gets like this. At least there's not ice on the roads to go with it, because I'd have no one left to work.

As an illustration of the numbing frigidity of this joint, Jessica saw the cable outlet out of the corner of her eye yesterday and noticed that one of them was white. She was about to get annoyed because one of the boys put Desitin on it, but when she took a closer look, she saw this:



That's right. Ice. In my house. Such a thing is not cool in my book, literal interpretations of that phrase aside.

I mentioned the boys earlier , and it occurs to me that I haven't posted pictures of them in a while. So here's something for you. This is them on Christmas day, showing off their new pajamas in front of the awesome Christmas tree that we turned into a prelit tree ourselves (pictures of that may come later as well.) I guess that kind of makes it a post-lit tree, but it's prelit for next year now, so whatever.



As a side note, the ice picture was taken with our new camcorder, which is awesome. It's a Canon HG20, and it's most excellent. We'll be taking it on our 10-day trip to Europe (more on that next week), and if I can figure it out, I'm thinking about a series of vlog posts while we're there. We'll see if I can do it, and if I'm up for it when we get there. But that's it for now. Till next time.







Ooooooohhhhh!! I totally fooled you. You thought I was leaving without talking about the Eagles? Please. I'm not going to say much because I'll get myself all lathered up, but let's just say that if we can't beat the Cardinals to get to another Super Bowl, it will not be a good day. If the Birds can get into the big game, I'll be headed to Delaware to watch the game with the family. But in short, here's my prediction: Larry Fitzgerald (the best receiver in football) will have a few awesome catches and perhaps get the Cards a touchdown or two. Anquan Boldin will also have one or two nice plays. But they won't be able to run the ball, and Kurt Warner will lose at least one fumble, maybe two. McNabb, meanwhile, will be able to use short passes to the quick receivers and tire the defense out. Westbrook may be hurt, but he'll still command a lot of attention even if he doesn't get the ball a whole lot. Buckhalter will get some carries and he'll also make a big play as a receiver. The Eagles will seal the game in the fourth when DeSean Jackson makes a big catch for the winning touchdown, but the outcome of the game will never be in doubt as the Cardinals will not be able to consistently get anything going on offense against the Eagles' suffocating D. They'll be shut out completely in the second half as Philly takes over and finishes off an improbable run to the NFC championship.

Bank on it.

2009 Resolutions at 7:45 PM

Just before the new year is a week old, I'm posting the ol' resolutions for this year. We won't talk about last year's resolutions, because I tried something a little different (remember the year of the month?), and kind of fizzled out around March. So I've got a few things I want to get done this year:

1. Lose 30 pounds
Right now I'm about 35 pounds lighter than I was this time last year, so I know it's possible. Losing another 30 will get me down to about 200. It can be done! We joined a gym in late November and I've been going three times a week since then. I also finally got serious about dieting around September and dropped about 20 pounds in 3 months. So I'm pretty confident that I can keep going.

2. Blog once a week
I know, I've said it before, but I'm putting a number on it this time. That will give me 52 posts this year if I keep it to only once a week, which would be more than 2008's 37 posts. As of now I've set my blog day to Thursday, which is 2 days after my column day. I'm a day early this week.

3. Organize memories
I've got hours of home video that I haven't even transferred from the mini DV tapes on which they were recorded. So this year it all gets transferred to the computer, edited, and turned into an ISO file, to reside on an external hard drive in addition to a DVD format. And that's just the video side of things. I'm also going to come up with a system for organizing my photos (I haven't decided on one yet - Picasa? Flickr? Just put them on the hard drive and organize by folder? I don't know.) But I'll figure that out and make it easy to perpetuate the photo organization.

4. Stick to the Budget
Yeah, this one's a given. But this year we've got a system. The wife and I will track the finances together instead of only having one of us do it, and we'll meet once a week to sum up what we did, where our budgets are, and that way we won't just ignore the fact that we're spending way too much on groceries and eating out until the 15th of the next month when all the expenses are finally tracked. I'm just sayin, that's not the most effective method.

5. Get the House Where We Want It
Or at least have a plan of action to finish what we can't afford this year. There's a lot of projects that we need to start in the house to make it a more pleasant place. The problem is not wanting to put a lot of money into the house that we're not going to get back. But we at least want to paint, and get the place decorated to where it's nice to look at. We're just incredibly lazy when it comes to beautifying the house. Upkeep? No problem. Making it "homey" or whatever? That we could work on. The first thing on the list is to paint our bedroom, which has walls resembling a jungle. It's kind of like living in a safari. After that's done, I can move the desk into the bedroom from the basement and have a decent workspace where the kids don't mess with all the stuff in the desk. I can't even work there now because it drives me nuts. But that's a whole different rant that I'm not going to get into.

I think that's about it. I also generally want to be more organized with my time, but that's way too general and broad a goal to even expand upon just now. For the moment, I think those five will suffice.

It! at 12:59 AM

Okay, here's the deal: It's 1:00 am on Wednesday, but this counts for Tuesday's post, because I make the rules and I say so. One thing for which I did not make the rules, however, is this game of blog-tag. And so, here I am with a writing assignment. I need to finish packing for the meeting I'm going to tomorrow, I've got dishes to do, and it'd be kind of nice to get some sleep tonight, but hey. Duty calls, and I've put it off long enough. The rules are as follows:

A. The Rules are posted at the beginning

B. Each player answers about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people, posts their names, and goes to their blogs letting them know they've been tagged.

(I might add that Amelia never actually came to my blog to tell me I was tagged, but who's keeping score here?)

5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago
1. Starting my second semester of my freshman year at BYU, after having the most fun I'd ever had up to that point, and getting the worst grades I'd ever gotten in school.
2. Playing in the two-man band Autumn Eclipse with Zimm (maybe we'll get the band back together for a couple of recordings at some point...)
3. Taking a dance class to pick up chicks. (I was good, too.) (At dancing, I mean.) (And picking up chicks.)
4. Going out when I should have been studying...taking Shoeless Joel's car, where it fit the whole crew only when Johnny rode in the back.
5. Having water fights in the dorm that were intense enough to get the floors above and below us wet.

5 Things On My To-Do List Today
1. Pack for the two-day regional meeting starting tomorrow (almost done)
2. Watch Glengarry Glen Ross, which has been chilling on my DVR for a while (almost done)
3. Get some groceries (done)
4. Put together some spreadsheets at work for other locations (done)
5. Do a complete staffing analysis so that I can tell how many more people I need to hire (done).

5 Snacks I Enjoy (A shorter list would be 5 snacks I don't enjoy, if I could come up with 5 things)
1. Town House crackers with sharp cheese or peanut butter (not at the same time), accompanied by orange juice
2. Any flavor of Fritos
3. Most things involving chips and dip (tortilla chips/salsa, potato chips/french onion, etc.)
4. Fries with fry sauce or honey mustard (the best condiment and/or salad dressing in existence)
5. Ice cream with some milk to give it that certain consistency that enhances deliciousness

5 Things I'd Do if I Were a Billionaire
1. Give my friends a million dollars each
2. Make sure my parents and in-laws were taken care of and could retire
3. Run an Alamo Drafthouse-style movie theater, but less Texas-y
4. Travel a lot.
5. Attend every UFC event and every Eagles game live, along with a bunch of Phillies, Flyers and Sixers games.

3 Bad Habits
1. I tend to procrastinate, not that you would ever know that by reading this oft-updated blog
2. I'm too organized with things that aren't important, and not organized enough with things that are.
3. I talk too much after I've already made whatever point I'm trying to make

5 Jobs I've Had
1. Pizza delivery guy
2. Mover
3. Drug store clerk
4. Video store assistant manager
5. Dish washer at Boston Market

5 Things People Probably Don't Know About Me
1. I was a big pro wrestling fan as a kid, and I still enjoy the occasional good match
2. I played the saxophone in fourth grade, but just for a little while
3. There was a point in my life when I wanted to be a statistician (I call this my "I'm a boring person" period.)
4. My right front tooth is half fake, because I chipped my tooth in fifth grade when I passed out from sucking too much helium from a balloon
5. The only bones I've ever broken are my thumb and my pinky toe.

So there you go. I've poured my soul out to you. And I choose to tag the following people (brace yourselves):

Zimm
Kristen
Johnny
Joel
My Mom

Zimm likes this kind of thing, because he likes to talk about himself; Johnny, Kristen and my mom haven't updated their blogs in forever, and Joel gets to do it because I said so. Have at it.