We live in freaking Florida … just because it’s 90 degrees outside doesn’t mean that it has to be 10 degrees inside! Why does every store / shop / restaurant / place-that-we-have-to-be-for-more-than-five-minutes insist on keeping the thermostat set so damn low?! Good grief…
“How can anyone make an educated decision to buy Tuscan Whole Milk when it only has 737 reviews?”
(in talking at work with someone about going to the Kevin Smith Q&A tomorrow)
“Yeah – that Clerks movie was pretty good. And didn’t they just do a sequel that everyone said was really funny? What was that called again???”
“Uhhh … Clerks 2?!”
Priceless.
So today I decided to pick-up lunch / dinner at Quiznos because a) I haven’t eaten there pretty much since we moved from downtown, and b) I ended up working a later shift that I knew wouldn’t allow me time to go get food, so I wanted to have something already there. Sure, I could’ve made something and taken it with me if I’d actually be running on time, but regardless…
I’m mad at Quiznos because they don’t really make their nutritional information available anywhere. Go on their website and you’ll find the numbers for exactly two of their sandwiches – of course, the bland and boring ones that nobody eats. Today I had a Cabo Chicken sub because they’re delicious, but I have absolutely no idea just how many calories it cost me. 🙁 I finally did some fuzzy math after comparing what various numbers on forums that I could find and put the whole thing down as 1280 calories, which sounds like a lot until you consider that it’s pretty much all I ate all day … and with that many calories, it’s no wonder that I wasn’t really all that hungry, either! Of course, ultimately I can only assume that I made my goal today, but needless to say I probably won’t be eating there again in the immediate future – Subway’s sandwiches aren’t quite as good, but at least that’s a company that is willing to tell us what we’re eating.
But anyways, I’ve actually been doing really good with the calorie counting thing for my first week. One day I went over by about 13 calories, but nothing to be concerned about. I can’t wait for Sunday so I can see if all of this torture did any good! I know in the upcoming weeks I’ll have to shift my focus to address the other aspects of the scale – namely sodium, to help control my blood pressure – but right now just limiting myself to less than 2000 calories a day is enough of an accomplishment for me! I’ve only had a couple of minor cravings here and there, and did document them to make sure I still stayed within the guidelines, so I’m pretty proud of myself right now. Next week I do need to do a little better job at exercising along with it, but that’s a post for another day…
If your automated recording starts with “Wait, don’t hang up!”… I’m probably going to.
Starting Weight: 225.8 lbs
Caloric Intake Required to Maintain This Weight: ~3058 calories
Actual Calories Consumed Today: ~1953 (my max. ceiling was between 2000 & 2200)
Amount of Exercise Performed Today: 30 min / elliptical to burn 431 calories
Net Required Calories: -1536 calories (1 lb = 3500 calories)
Day #1 is a success!!!
So needless to say, I’m very proud of myself today because I really didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but somehow I did – not only did I get up and exercise first thing in the morning before work, but I also stuck to a strict (at least for me!) diet all day long, counting the calories and turning down some very good looking donuts at the office! I know this probably doesn’t sound like much, but anyone who’s ever started a new plan knows that it really is a big deal. This is my first step towards finally losing this extra weight and returning to a level of health that I haven’t seen since I worked at the warehouse…
A couple things to note:
It’s going to be a long and arduous road, that I’m sure, but after years upon years of either doing things half-assed or simply putting them off altogether, at least now I’m finally taking a stand! I’m absolutely starving, but at least I’m taking a stand… 🙂
Oops.
So any idea where I left off???
Diet and Exercise (or a complete lack thereof)
I don’t think I’ve exercised at all in the last week, and I haven’t exactly been eating very well either because according to my latest trip to the scale, I weighed in at nearly fifteen pounds more than what my best weights were over the last year. 🙁 So it’s really time to step it into gear – no more excuses. I’ve been watching Sara eat her Weight Watchers religiously over the past couple of weeks now and even with a bit of slacking exercise-wise, she’s lost something like 7 pounds already, so I just need to take a hint of motivation from her and get moving. Starting tomorrow I’m going to begin a new routine – as much as I hate it, I’m going to actually get up and exercise first thing in the morning – even if only for half an hour. I need to start giving myself more time to get to work anyways so that I can stop being late and I figured I might as well get the exercise out of the way first thing as well. A long while back I was actually getting up an hour early and putting in some time on the eliptical, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. With any luck, an extra hour will knock out my exercise for the day first thing in the morning, give me enough time to actually sit down for breakfast, and get out the door without feeling quite as rushed! I’ll let you know what actually happens…Creativity
This one is still sorely lacking as well, but I really need to get off my kiester and get moving because recently I found a whole new slew of freelance postings that I could be cashing in on (literally) if only I was a little better organized. Between cleaning and getting some things ready for my new “diet” tomorrow, I didn’t really get the time that I had wanted in writing this evening but with any luck it’ll be a different story tomorrow night.Happenings / This Weekend
Another lazy couple of days, which might just explain why the first two items above are as slacking as they seem! Much sleeping and cleaning and fighting about cleaning was had, and Sara and I definitely took some much-needed relaxing moments amongst the mix, too. Yesterday I pretty much slept while Sara was at work, then tore apart the bedroom in a cleaning frenzy for most of the afternoon. Sunday brought us to the theater down the street to see Invincible, which was actually pretty good for a football movie, except that parts of the sound kept cutting out throughout the entire thing. We ended up getting two free passes to go back and watch something else on the house because of it, so I suppose all in all two for the price of one wasn’t too bad!Happenings / Next Weekend
Saturday we’ll be over in Orlando for An Afternoon with Kevin Smith, which I’m horrendously looking forward to! They say that the Q&A will be a minimum of 4 hours, but the venue will let it continue as long as Kevin wants and his longest so far has been 7 hours. It should be very cool, indeed! Sunday is, well, a special surprise for Sara, so I can’t post anything about it just yet, but I’m betting my money that she’ll have a good time and that’s really all that matters…Last Note: Disney Reservations FINALLY Made!!!
What: Sara and My six month anniversary (as far as dating is concerned)
When: the weekend of October 20th
Where: two nights at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, savannah room (giraffes and everything!); the first night at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort (because we don’t make enough money to stay three nights at the AKL…just yet)Let the countdown begin! 🙂
I make it a habit of not publicly blogging about work in fear of being dooced, but this is one of those things that a) couldn’t possibly get me in trouble; and b) really needs to cross the eyeballs of as many people as possible, to the point that even the few folks that read this really do help…
So anyways, the company that I work for recently finished up a big project that allows the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to broadcast AMBER Alerts as text messages to wireless devices. For those who aren’t familiar with the program, the group works with local and state law enforcement agencies to help spread the word about missing and abducted children via various broadcast mediums. Text messaging is the latest method to be added to that array and in a race where every advantage could mean the life of one more child saved, hopefully it’s going to be a very beneficial addition to the program.
It’s a pretty simple program to setup – simply visit the website listed below and enter your wireless phone number. If your provider is participating in the program, you’ll be transferred to another website where you’ll setup the service. Following the on-screen instructions, you can select up to 5 zip codes that you want to monitor – if an alert is issued for any of your selected zip codes, you’ll receive a text message about it. From there you’ll likely get a confirmation text message based on your selections, and that’s it!
https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org
The service is completely free – the carriers involved are eating the costs of all text messages sent via the program, so there’s really no reason not to take a moment to register your own phone, not to mention tell all of your friends and neighbors to go do the same. Kind of like insurance or 9-1-1, it’s one of those services that you really hope you’ll never have to use, but it can make all the difference in the world when tragedy strikes. The entire sign-up process took me less than five minutes Friday afternoon – I hope everyone who reads this will do the same.
So Sara and I decided to do something a little different last night and went for “a little walk” instead of our usual exercise routines. It was meant to be just a leisurely walk through the neighborhood to see some of the areas that we haven’t yet, to be followed by a relaxing dinner & a movie to lead into bedtime. Instead, you might say that I sort of underestimated the distances from A to B … to C and back, and we ended up walking a lot longer than planned.
Just how long, you ask?
We left the house at about 7:45pm.
We returned sometime around 10:30pm.
Yeah…so our feets are very tired today!
Now we’ve both got blisters on our blisters, and I’ve proven without a doubt that my current “new” sandals just have got to go, but it was still some good exercise and a nice chance to spend some time together after a pretty stressful week. Of course, next time we bring a pedometer so we’ll know exactly how far we’ve traveled (we’re guessing about 5-6 miles for last night), and actual shoes are definitely a must as opposed to sandals, but it was still a good time.
Mind you, the only exercise I stand a chance of getting today is going to have to be down at the pool, but all’s well that ends well!
So I got sidetracked while I was putting together the comic tonight and did some wandering around friends pages on MySpace. One hop to another lead to finding a lot more people from high school than I would’ve expected, and it was kind of neat to find that MySpace is actually good for something! Interesting finds, too – some folks are married, and more than I would’ve expected with children; a couple more, including one that I briefly dated, are pregnant; I even found the guy who had a locker next to me Freshmen year that always used to shove me around – and he still looks like a jerk, go figure! A few people fled to the far reaches of the country like myself, while a surprising number now live downstate still in Michigan (most that got married), and of course there’s a few that are still bumming around Gaylord for whatever reason. One girl’s even a stripper, or maybe a model, but judging from the pictures I’m leaning more towards stripper – interesting, indeed…
Also, a good portion of the ones still living in Gaylord had lots of drunk pictures on their profiles – not sure if there’s some sort of corolation there or what.
Anyways, now I don’t actually have a MySpace page of my own – I pretty much just use the L7 one that Lori setup and check out people’s pictures through that, but I’m actually thinking about creating one now because like it or not, it actually seems to be a fairly good way to keep track of the people I went to high school with and a select few from beyond the classroom. Of course, then on the other hand is my dilema of not having any time to keep up with most of these people anyways, but maybe that really doesn’t matter. It’s not like many of us are going to become the best of friends again, but it is nice to be able to check back with people from time to time to see how they’re doing – I did spend some thirteen years of my life around these people, you know! Some of these people I haven’t seen since I graduated seven years ago – one of the people I found was a girl that I met in pre-school … we used to hunt for easter eggs in my house when we were little … and I hardly recognized her!
So maybe, just maybe, you might see me breakdown and actually setup one of these here MySpace accounts because I guess it would be easier to keep my friends separate from all of the friends of the comic, not that those people aren’t my friends, too! Kind of like friending a band, and then also your buddies in the band – yeah, that’s the ticket! One question for you MySpace regulars, though – can it be setup to e-mail me notifications on friends requests and messages and whatnot? Because even though I may initially set an account up, I probably won’t remember to check it often and would be better off just getting told when something changes.
Hook a brother up with some knowledge and maybe I’ll waste a few hours this weekend getting into MySpace! Lord knows I’ve already got dozens of people from high school just waiting to not really want to talk to me when I get there – it’s just like Dungeons and Dragons club all over again… 😛