I just spent the last couple of hours finishing up a column that I’ve been working on for how to spend time at Disney when it rains, and was actually surprised when I walked into the other room and noticed that it was bright and sunny outside! Apparently I need to open the shades in my office because otherwise I could’ve sworn that it was the same kind of dreary weather outside that I’ve been writing about this afternoon…
http://www.baconbot.com/2008/02/27/bacon-bukket/
Cuddle Bear came with the idea that instead of cuddling up with massive amounts of blanket in the middle of the night, I could instead embrace the bear itself, thus preventing Sara from freezing to death in the middle of the night. That said, I’m not entirely sure how that’s to work, as she’s the one who monopolizes the blankets in the middle of the night by rolling up in them like some sort of modern-day mummy, thus making it virtually impossible to get any blanket for myself without first pulling on one of the corners of the blanket really hard and spinning her out of the bed like something in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
All cuddles aside, maybe I can use the bear itself to keep me warm when I come to bed to find that the blanket has gone the way of the Egyptians. Ahhh, the conundrums of almost-married life…
Take the 30 Day Sex Challenge!
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=74042
Stress Eating / Not-Working-Out
I didn’t do very good this week. I mainly blame work stress and the extra hours that I’ve been putting in (again) because what little time I could’ve had to make it to the gym ended up being devoted to planning for Valentine’s Day, which actually ended up turning out pretty great, mind you, but still, all the romancin’ in the world ain’t gonna make me skinny! It’s tough because sometimes I get a little jealous of Sara for her dedication to her own weight loss day-in, day-out, whereas when I start feeling stressed out I turn to snacking or extra “reward meals” without having actually done anything to be rewarded. I really either need to put my foot down about leaving work at night to make it to the gym on-time or make a big change to get up early enough in the morning to go before all of the chaos starts.
Along those same lines, that’s actually a concept that I’ve been kicking around in my head to help push my writing forward to, albeit as scary as the concept of getting up at 6:00am (or earlier) sounds to a night owl like myself! I often times find myself coming up with some workable ideas on my way to work and during the first few hours, but by the time 9 or 10 hours have gone by, the creativity is just gone and I’m pretty much spent for the day. Still, any other options as opposed to getting up early as a solution to help motivate either venture are certainly still up for consideration at this point!
Eye Strain
I think I might need to schedule an appointment with an eye doctor next week because lately I’ve been having some extreme eye strain at work. The trouble is, I can’t quite tell if it’s just something with my environment specific to work – my office isn’t the brightest as it is and I normally work late at night, meaning there’s a big contrast, and I’m pretty sure I probably actually sit closer to the screen at work than I do at home. In that same line, I’m having trouble reading some smaller prints on the screen at work, but as I type this on my laptop at home, the text in Semagic is roughly the same size on-screen and I can read it just fine. By the time I leave work, I don’t even want to think about looking at a computer screen … although apparently I recovered adequately this particular evening. Hmmm…
The Celebrity Apprentice
Is anybody else actually still watching this show, or am I the only sucker left tuning in every week?! I just watched last night’s episode and it was horrible – how Trump didn’t put his foot down and fire Omarosa after how she acted was intolerable. If anything, I was hoping that her blatant display throughout the entire episode would mean that this was her last one, and I was even holding on there in the board room thinking that Trump might change the rules of his own game at the last minute, but instead he opted to keep the publicity whore on for another week.
My question is this, though – will she actually stay on until the very end or will Trump eventually hit a point where his audience will dwindle for keeping her onboard? At this point we can only hope…
This is cool.
http://www.pvponline.com/2008/02/14/cw-33-news-at-nine/
Inspiring both for someone that used to make a webcomic and also for someone who aspires to make a living publishing his work online in general. The perspective that these guys take to publishing their comics is one that I’ve entertained in my head for a while as a more reasonable way to make money from my writing as opposed to the ever-shrinking print market. At the end of the day, it’s kinda nice to see a change of tides finally taking place!
More photos from Downtown Tampa…
I actually took these last weekend when we were out and about, but never got around to posting them until just now. Last Saturday we went on a free lunch cruise around the bay under the guise that we were actually considering them for our rehearsal dinner. It turned out, however, that their prices actually make The Melting Pot look pretty affordable, so unless we find any other restaurants that are willing to attempt to woo us with free food, it looks like we’ll probably end up scavenging for extra money to make our fondue rehearsal dinner a reality.
It’s been a long week, and it’s already stacking up to be an even longer weekend – I may have to work tomorrow, we have a wedding to attend in the afternoon, and I still need to do our taxes so we can get our money back from Uncle Sam! I do want to try and post again later tonight, though, to share all of my leftover wuv from Valentine’s Day. Sneak Preview: I got something big and cuddly from Sara!
Super Lego Mario
Lazy? Maybe Just Exhausted…
I don’t feel like I got anything done today at all. Sara and I got up and went to the gym for a while, then we came home and pretty much sat around the rest of the afternoon and evening. And it’s hard because now I feel guilty because I’ve got this to-do list that’s a mile and a half long (writing, taxes, organize the office, web design, etc…) and I pretty much blew one of the two days that I would’ve had to make any real uninterrupted progress. This has happened the last couple of weekends, where I get to Sunday and just want to lay around all day – Sara’s trying to convince me that it’s because of all of the long hours that I’ve been putting in at work and that I need the downtime, but it’s still rough when my writing gets another week behind and the dream feels a little farther from being a reality…
A Two-Parter
Diet Progress
So I went back to using Spark People to track my calories in an attempt to get back on the weight loss bandwagon a few weeks ago. I really haven’t made a whole lot of progress so far – it sucks having to get used to counting everything all over again – but I know that this really helped me last time so it’s unfortunately worth the extra effort. At this point I’m doing ok at keeping my calories under or at least around 2000 per day via meals, but the snacks are what’s killing me because apparently I have to count those calories, too! It seems like the stay the weight loss course part of my brain doesn’t engage when I get up to get a drink in the middle of the night, so a drink of water ends up being that and whatever else I can find in the near vicinity. Don’t know what to do other than not have any snacks in the house – an idea I’m not particularly fond of – but when I can clear out a bag of chips that should last a week in two days, maybe it’s time for more drastic measures?
Exercise Progress
I was actually doing good with exercise up until last week when I worked so late that I didn’t get out on time to catch the gym before 10pm any day of the week. Ugggh! It’s something that I just need to focus on getting out at a reasonable hour because in addition to having the time to workout, I’m sure it’ll drop some of the work stress off my back as well. But so far once I actually get there, the exercise itself anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour isn’t that bad, which is good because I’d rather have problems finding the time than finding the motivation to go in the first place! Today I did over an hour with Sara at her gym because she exercises a ridiculously larger amount than I do (I guess that’s the kind of inspiration a wedding dress gives!), but if I can do a solid 45-60 minutes three or four times a week, I’ll be happy for now.
Wedding Planning
It gets closer and closer every week! Yesterday we went to meet with another photographer and we actually really liked this guy, so we might finally have that angle taken care of once and for all. This should be the last big (read: multi-thousand) dollar expense to line up, so I’m looking forward to at least having a good estimate of what this thing’s actually going to cost us before long. We also looked at wedding bands while we were out and about, and I was quite surprised to find that my ring is actually going to cost more than Sara’s … at least the band, that is … let us not forget the huge rock that she already got a year ago as a wedding deposit, if you will! I haven’t the foggiest idea what I want at this point, but now that I’ve actually seen a few, I think I’m leaning away from just a plain gold band. I want some sort of design or texture, but so far nearly everything I’ve seen reminds me of The One Ring and I’d rather not have a ring that I might some day have to walk hundreds of miles to toss into a volcano to save the world if I can at all avoid it…
Don’t I Have More Updates Than This???
Apparently not. It seems that time also flies when you’re not having fun … I need to work better at balancing that back in my favor because two good days out of seven just ain’t good enough! I believe that tomorrow is Lori’s Divorce Day, so that should be a jolly good time. Hmmmm…
Unless you’ve ever had the uncanny desire to drink a handful of tootsie rolls, you’ll likely find this disgusting, too. Why is it that Dr. Pepper is the one to try all the completely bizarre and gross flavors lately???
Is it just me or does today really feel like it should actually be Saturday???