a door just for Cleo…

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So I’m not really crazy about the idea, but we’re thinking about getting one of these things for our dog:
http://www.petco.com/product/109078/Perfect-Pet-VIP-Vinyl-Patio-Doors.aspx

The last couple of days it’s been a little cooler out, so the wife started leaving the back door cracked so that Cleo could come and go as she pleased, and boy, did it make a difference to our general sanity! Our backyard is fenced in and she hasn’t really shown too much of an interest in digging yet, so she enjoyed being able to run around outside without necessarily having somebody with her.

Plus, it was a godsend in that Sara normally works nights and sleeps during the day … at least, until Cleo gets too bored and forces her to get up … but with the myriad of bugs and sticks and rocks for her to investigate outside, she seemed perfectly content just poking around on her own out there and letting Sara actually sleep for a change!

Still, I think my concerns are at least somewhat warranted because of, well, this!!!
http://abcnews.go.com/US/alligator-bathroom-florida-woman-finds-gator-house/story?id=13451486

I mean, we don’t exactly live close to any lakes or rivers or anything, but alligators can basically be found anywhere down here – including ponds and drainage ditches and god knows probably swimming around in the sewers right below my feet! And as much as a morbid me thinks it would be kind of neat to look out and find one swimming around the pool (assuming that he’s noticed before anyone jumps in), there’s just something different about coming across an 8-foot reptile lounging around my living room or heaven forbid, just chillin’ in the bathroom!

Seriously, look at that picture! Who wouldn’t literally crap themselves if they went to use the bathroom and found that toothy grin looking back at them?!

Anyways, fortunately for my sanity, the kind of doggy door that we would even need is kinda pricey, so it’s not like we’re going to be throwing one in and welcoming Florida’s most frightening creatures into our house tomorrow or anything. Still, to win my vote my wife has proactively confirmed that I’m well within my rights to say “I told you so!!!” if we happen to come home and find a gator in our house, and sometimes in a marriage that’s the best compromise that one can hope for…

Thin Post : More and More Time Sweating…

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I can’t help but notice that despite my waistline not exactly shrinking the way I would prefer, I seem to be spending more and more time working on those minimal results.

Maybe it’s just a result of the dreaded getting older or even minor slips in my diet that are still doing more to hold me back than I realize, but I’ve gone from at the beginning of the year only spending 20-30 minutes using WiiFit, to trading that for walking the dog for about 75 minutes a night, then as of last week also adding back in 30 minutes of cardio in the mornings … and on top of all of that, now I’m thinking about looping some WiiFit back into the mix to boot!

I’m not gonna lie – sometimes it seems very overwhelming, to think that I’ve gone from maybe 2-3 hours a week of exercise to now be approaching upwards of 10 hours a week across multiple mediums, and to watch as exercise is becoming more and more of an activity in my life. Then again, maybe I kind of deserve this as a reaction to having not gotten things in order years ago when I was a little younger and didn’t have nearly as much to lose! And I don’t mean that in a negative, poor-me kind of way – more matter of factly that I could’ve made some of the changes that I finally made to my life this year a while ago and maybe I’d be there already – that’s all.

Of course, everything is 20/20 in hindsight, so even though I’m having to make more sacrifices now, with any luck hopefully I’ve at least picked up the motivation along the way as to why it’s actually important to get my ass in gear this time around! Today I made the decision that I think I want to re-incorporate some WiiFit back into my routine … mainly because I was just too damn exhausted to use the elliptical when I got up … but all in all I think the stretching would do me good because it’s something that I’m sort of neglecting right now.

Nothing much – probably just my old routine of 20 minutes worth of yoga and light strength training exercises before taking Cleo out for our 3.5 mile walks that we do a few times a week. I’ve been feeling a little extra sore lately between my newfound AM elliptical / PM dog walking routine, whereas I actually felt great after a little WiiFit this afternoon, so we’ll see what happens!

Awkward Embraces

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I’m not entirely sure how I got here, but some late-night surfing brought me to this new (to me!) web series by Jessica Mills called Awkward Embraces, and after watching about half a dozen episodes pretty much back to back, I must admit that I kinda like it!

The creator kind of reminds me of Felicia Day, in that she also stars in the show as a socially awkward geek girl who’s constantly getting schooled by her friends around her, although the majority of Awkward Embraces actually takes place in “real life” instead of in game! It’s slightly less nerdy, given that it’s more focused on relationships than gaming, although I’m sure most Star Trek fans would argue that Jessica earns that point back rather easily by constantly bringing her obsession with Trek of all kinds to the forefront! It’s a pretty funny show, though, and apparently I’ve got two full seasons to catch up with before I’m current.

I think Felicia Day had produced four seasons already when I finally first discovered The Guild, which just continues to amaze me that there are all of these high quality, professional, but independent creators out there cranking programming that strongly rivals most of the crap that ends up on network TV these days. I mean, both The Guild and Awkward Embraces look great – and sometimes it’s hard to believe that these shows are being created by passionate teams of maybe a dozen instead of the hundreds that all have to come together for a traditional TV show.

Also funny that aside from a few random favorites, most of the new shows that I seem to get hooked on these days are born on the Internet! Go check out Awkward Embraces – you might find that you like it, too…

Thin Post : Getting Up Early … Two Weeks Later

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Ok, so week #1 might not have had the best results, but I’d like to think that I’m doing a little better now…

(weeks run Sunday – Saturday)
Week #1:
– Weekend Workout – 2 days
– Weekday Workout – 2 days

Week #2:
– Weekend Workout – 4 days
– Weekday Workout – 2 days

The only day that I actually ended up missing was Thursday because I had obligations early in the morning that obliterated any hopes of also slipping in a quick 25 minutes on the elliptical, but overall I think I did pretty good! Now granted, I don’t know if I’d necessarily say that I felt “better” after exercising first thing in the morning – on the contrary, being very much not a morning person, typically I spent the first half of the workout waking up and wondering if I might be feeling slightly sick from not eating first, but for what it’s worth by the halfway point things usually turned around and I was able to start pushing myself like normal.

One thing I do want to try as I continue this horrible project of pain and torture is playing more with the resistance settings on the machine. Normally I’ve never really messed with these and as a rule just tried to go longer when I wanted more of a challenge, however scheduling this in the morning really limits me to about 30 minutes maximum that I can dedicate at the time, so instead I want to try gradually increasing the resistance to get a little more umph out of the time that I do have.

Right now I’ve been averaging somewhere between 250-300 calories burned during 20-30 minutes, so that adds up to around 1,800 calories (about half a pound) this week alone!

Anniversary: Planned!

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So this year my wife and I are celebrating our fourth anniversary, and the planning has been kind of a pain because as much as we’re always trying to one-up ourselves year after year, it looks like it just isn’t in the cards this year. I mean, last year we went to Disneyland and the year before we went on a cruise, but unfortunately other things have our budget already kind of tied in knots this year, so we can’t exactly afford to spend thousands of dollars like we’ve somehow managed in the past…

That said, we sort of have two things “planned” for celebration #4.

The first is simply put, our gift to each other is going to be the gift of time. What can I say? Life has been busy, and stressful, and between me trying to build a career and her working weird hours, and then also introducing a puppy into the mix, we haven’t exactly gotten much time for each other so far this year. So next weekend for three solid days, no writing, no interruptions, no puppy – we’re going to take a well-deserved break to just kick back and spend some time with one another for a change.

The second, and I hope this doesn’t sound more extravagant than it actually is, but we are going over to Disney World for a single evening, basically just to get us out of the house and help to kickstart our long weekend together. Originally we were hoping to stay at the Polynesian and checkout the Hawaiian Luau that they do there, but prices and availability got the best of us … so instead we’re staying over at Animal Kingdom Lodge, where we actually celebrated our 6-month dating anniversary way back in 2006! We’ll only be there for a single night, but it’ll be a chance to just hang around the resort, do some swimming, and also enjoy the restaurants on-site (Boma and Jiko), which are supposed to be outstanding.

I’m excited for the break, even though I’m up to my eyeballs in things to do and will probably feel guilty about part of it. Hopefully next year will be a little smoother and we’ll be able to do something truly grand for the big #5, but in the meantime, I guess you work with what you’ve got…

thoughts of heritage and whatnot…

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I honestly have no idea how I stumbled onto this particular topic today, but for whatever reason I started wondering what my family tree looks like. I know that there have been other relatives in the past who showed an interest in this – I think someone even put together a little “book” on their findings, but I’m guessing that there isn’t much online for the digitally curious like myself.

It’s something that I’m both mildly curious, but also somewhat afraid to explore because I do see the potential for a kind of neat project in there – some sort of interactive family tree where distant family hunting for genealogical data could plug their piece of the pie into the larger Sevener dessert buffett, to make a food analogy out of it! (I wonder if all Seveners love food?) I’m not necessarily looking for anybody’s life history or anything, but it might be kind of neat to be able to explore a tree that shows geographic locations, professions, special interests – that sort of thing.

Of course, the fear part comes in because I’m sure this would be just an absolutely massive task and I certainly don’t have the time for it right this moment, but at the same time I can also see the value in it not just for my own curiosities, but hopefully for a good number of people who eventually grow curious about their past. Maybe that’s just another sign of getting old, that I finally care to learn about my own heritage – I don’t know…

Does this type of thing already exist??? I really have no desire to reinvent the wheel or anything, but when I searched all I came across were some genealogy forums and a bunch of paper forms that you could download to have people fill out, whereas I’m basically picturing more of a web-based, pseudo-Facebook sort of app that stores everything in a database and then makes it all neat and pretty for people to browse.

This might be something to explore when I travel up north for Christmas here in a few months. Maybe…

It’s pumpkin season again, baby!

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Just like fall itself, I guess this one sort of snuck right up on us, now didn’t it?! And here I’ve already put nearly a dozen new posts up on that goofy, little pumpkin site of mine, not to mention the schedule is quickly filling out for the rest of the season as well!

It often amuses me that this site is still even going, seeing as I first created it four years ago as a joke just to help distract myself from wedding planning stress back in 2008! And yet now the site is pushing 150 posts and will likely hit 200 by the end of the year, and not for nothing, but it also happens to get a surprising amount of traffic to boot…

It’s kind of weird because although just about every year I worry that I’m not going to be able to find enough new pumpkin stuff to actually review, things always seem to work out when I finally get into the swing of things and more often than not, I’ve even found myself with too much stuff to cover! Plus, I’m trying to incorporate in some new features to try and make up for a decreasing number of actual products – things like last year’s All-Pumpkin Meal Plan and the recipes that I’ve made a point to highlight more this year.

I honestly have no idea how long this gag is ultimately going to last, but I suppose as long as it keeps being fun and I don’t get to the point where I’m just absolutely sick of the thought of pumpkin, and as long as the pumpkin itself doesn’t run dry, I’ll be here.