Fat and Irritated

I'm gaining weight. This is not good. I'm not sure why, either. My eating habits haven't changed lately. The only change I've had is I've stepped up my walking. I can't imagine that's had a negative effect on my weight loss. I would think it would only help it. Sunday is my official weigh in day, but I weigh myself every single day. This morning I was back up to 260. I'm crushed. So I went out for an hour walk today and tomorrow morning I'm going to get up early and go out to walk some more.

Tonight we went out to dinner with Lynn and Lori. We brought them to MJ's, our new regular haunt. Mary Jo comped our meal because we brought in the brand new menus with us tonight. I love when we eat for free. Can't beat it. I love seeing Lynn and Lori. We just don't see each other enough. I wish we lived closer. But when we did live closer, we saw each other less than we see each other now. Whatever.

Last night was Mark's school plays. Man, they were painful. Trying to pick the best actors in each of the grades was kind of hard. There were two grades where neither Ken nor I could come up with two definite winners, so we had to really stretch to come up with them.

The new Doctor Who started tonight in Britain. I can't wait to see this. I'm so happy the show is back.

Overscheduled

I know I'm not, but sometimes I feel overscheduled. I like to kick back and be mellow. In the last week, we've had houseguests twice. Tonight Ken and I are mystery guest judges at our friend Mark's high school inter-class play. We get to pick the best actors in each of the classes productions and then the overall winning play. This is my second year doing this and Ken's third. It was fun. But all I want to do is lay around the house. Is that bad? Probably.

It looks like we're going to Florida in May. Ken has a training class he's been trying to get approval to go to and he got it today. While he's in class, I'm going to Disney. I deserve it, dammit. And we're going again in September. I'm a spoiled Disney brat. I don't have any of the specifics on the May trip yet, but I will when Ken gets home later.

Another Boring Cat Post

I'm taking tomorrow off. It's the 4th out of the last 5 weeks that I've only had to work 4 days. I still don't know why it took me so long to get out of retail and into an office job. I've got a dentist appointment in the morning. Just routine. Cleaning. But I'll get some attitude about my wisdom teeth still being in my mouth. My dentist wants me to have them removed, but it's not as simple as pulling them. They grew in sideways and to remove them means surgery. I'm sure I'll have them out eventually, but they don't bother me at all, so they're staying.

The cats had their annual check up yesterday. Ken brought them. He said Lucy was a champ all during the appointment. She was well behaved, she let the doctor give her shots, she let her poke and prod and with no complaints. Ollie, on the other hand, wasn't having it. At all. He did not have a good time, he hated everything about the visit, he squirmed away from the doctor, didn't take the shots easily. It's pretty amazing how the cats exchanged rolls. You can do just about anything to Ollie and he'll love you for it. You could pick him up by the tail, whirl him around a few times and then throw him into the wall and he'll think it's the best game ever. You look at Lucy the wrong way and she goes into hiding. So for them to act they way they did at the vet, it just boggles my mind. They both had slightly adverse reactions to the shots they got. Neither of them felt good this morning. I know this because neither was interested in breakfast. That was a first. They both walked away from their bowls and went upstairs to lay down. Lucy laid on the bed, Ollie chose the guestroom. They were both mostly back to normal when I got home from work tonight. Lucy was 100%, but Ollie was still a little out of sorts. He should be fine tomorrow.

Sleepy

I'm beyond tired tonight. Between walking home from work (second night in a row) and the cats waking me up while fighting *on* me many times overnight, I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm going to bed now. And I get to get up early tomorrow morning to bring Ken's mother to the airport. Oy.

This And That

I need to take a new picture for my profile. I found this one on the computer the other night and I like it, but I've lost almost 50 pounds since it was taken. I can see the difference in my face. It's soooo round there and it's so much less so now. I'll get around to it soon.

It was 60 degrees today and I decided to do something I haven't tried before. I walked home from work. I wasn't sure how far the walk was going to be, so I googled it before I left work. It was only 3 1/2 miles. I figured it would take about an hour to walk it. I timed it and it took exactly 1 hour. To the minute. The beginning of the walk was the worst because the first 1/4 of the trip was uphill. Now that I've done it, I know it's a piece of cake. I need to try it more often. I'd like to say at least once a week, but I know that's not going to happen.

Ken's mother is coming tomorrow night. She's flying out to Texas on Thursday morning, so she's crashing here. We live 10 minutes from the airport and she lives about 45 minutes away from here. What's awesome is she'll most likely take us out to dinner tomorrow night. Yummy.

And I hit the lottery for some more money. Won a couple of Take Five tickets and I won $18.50 on one of them. Tammy at work was so jealous that she bought a ticket and made me touch it so that some of my luck would bleed out on it. We'll see tomorrow.

You're Terrible, Muriel

This is my all-time favorite movie. And this is the movie that gave me the balls to finally come out to my family. I identify completely with Muriel.

My Babies

I took this picture on Saturday. This is my new all-time favorite picture of the babies. They look so cute and innocent and they look like they actually get along.

Happy Monday

I've got 15 minutes before I Love New York starts. I know it's just a crappy clips show, but I do adore trash tv and this brings trash tv to a whole new level. I'm glad the season is almost over because VH1 will start showing Charm School once that happens. Charm School stars a dozen or so rejects from both seasons of Flavor of Love. I just can't get enough tv starring skanky bitches, yo.

Have you ever thought about if they put out a cd soundtrack to your life, what songs would be on it? I've thought about this on and off over the years and still don't know all the songs that would appear, but I thought about starting to compile them. Over to the right on this page, I'm going to start listing them as I think of them. I've got a few that immediately come to mind for whatever reason. Songs that bring me back in time to very specific moments or songs that I really, really identify with. Once I get enough on the list, I should make myself a mix cd.

Walk This Way

The houseguests are gone, the house is clean and I've got the rest of the afternoon to do nothing. Sort of. When they left, I went out for a walk. I decided to see how long it would take me to walk to the comic shop. I haven't been there in quite a while, and I've never walked there before. I figured it would take about a half an hour to get there. I was wrong. It's only a 20 minute walk. Not too shabby. I really needed to get out and walk. I ate a little too much this weekend. To be fair, I ate way less than I would normally when we have company, but I still overdid it. It was reflected on the scale this morning. Um, what I was getting at was when I went out, I asked Ken to put the laundry in the washer and I'd finish it up when I got home. So I need to fold and put away the laundry and then the rest of the afternoon is mine. Which isn't very long since it's almost 3:30. But I'll grab a stack of comics, sit down to read, fall asleep and then wake up all disoriented. My idea of a perfect, overcast Sunday afternoon.

Cats In The Cradle

Both cats have insisted on sleeping with us for the last week or so. This is special because Lucy never goes near the bed. The few times she's actually tried, Ollie would start fucking with her and she'd run away. But for some reason, she's decided she really wants to sleep on the bed. Ollie fucks with her and she doesn't budge. Once she has an idea in her head, that's it.

Anyway, they've been sleeping with us and generally making getting a good night's sleep impossible. They have both decided that I make an excellent pillow. Most nights they end up in between my legs, pinning me into position. This is bad because I flip from side to side all night long. When I finally can't deal with it anymore (usually around 3 or 4 am), I sit up and move them. But by the time I lay back down and try to find a comfortable spot, they've repositioned themselves right where they were. I can't win. Almost every morning right around 6am, Ollie finds himself awake and his first thought is to fuck with Lucy. They fight and she finally gives in and leaves. Then he loses interest in the bed and leaves, too. So for the next hour, I can usually rest in comfort.

I'm beyond exhausted right now. As I mentioned yesterday, today was all about cleaning this pig sty. I got a good 85% done today, but it took everything out of me. The houseguests said to expect them around 2:30, so that gives me time to finish up, and it also allows me to try to sleep in. Best of both worlds.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to post here tomorrow. If I don't, it's not because I was lazy. I actually will have a reason.

So Much For That

I'm taking tomorrow off of work. I have friends coming up from the city for the weekend and I need to clean the house. And run errands. And stuff. Ken had class tonight, so I had the house to myself. Survivor wasn't on, so I didn't have tv to distract me. I thought tonight would be the perfect night to get the bulk of the cleaning done. Well, I sort of started, but that's about it. Emptied the dishwasher. Did a little laundry. Took the trash out. Dicked the rest of the night away on the computer. I'm really annoyed with myself now. So first thing tomorrow, I need to throw some more laundry in, start picking up, go get my oil changed at 9:30, pick up food for Lucy at the vet, run to the supermarket, get home and really start cleaning. Friday is going to be no fun at all. And it doesn't even give me any time to go check out the Extreme Makeover Home Edition crew. They're in Albany this week. Not that I watch the show anymore, but it would be kind of neat to go see what's happening.

I'm beat. I need to go to bed.

Hear This

With the year a quarter of the way over already, I was thinking that 2007 just might turn out to be a pretty decent year for music. I was looking over what 2007 releases I've been listening to and I'm actually quite impressed that as much music has come out as it has. Here are 15 albums I've been playing:

Patty Griffin Children Running Through
She just gets better and better each album. She's tried doing different things on different albums and this seems like she's taken everything she's done in the past and given us a little bit of everything.

Malcolm Middleton A Brighter Beat
I love when someone's accent comes through in their singing voice. And I love it when someone names their songs titles like "Fuck It I Love You."

Tracey Thorn Out of the Woods
While I like Tracey Thorn best when she's doing the folkie Everything But The Girl stuff, her voice works so well with a techno pop backdrop. I just adore her.

Amy Winehouse Back To Black
This woman has balls. She's a fucking mess and I love that in a singer.

James Morrison Undiscovered
I guess he's going to be thrown in to the whole "James Blunt like singer" category, but it's not fair to him. I really like this album and I hope it does well.

Harry Connick, Jr Oh My NOLA
There's not much Harry can do that I won't like. This is his latest themed album, songs from, about or by artists from New Orleans.

Macy Gray Big
Macy Gray is a mess. She's always been a mess and she'll always be a mess. And when she can channel that mess into making great albums, I'm a happy boy. Big is a great album. "Strange Behavior" has got to be my newest favorite song.

Barenaked Ladies Are Men
The follow up to Barenaked Ladies Are Me. More upbeat than the last one. It's a fun listen.

Mika Life In Cartoon Motion
He really wants to be a Scissor Sister. In the worst kind of way.

Norah Jones Not Too Late
What I really like about this is how mellowed out it is. Not that Norah Jones is a heavy rocker or anything, but the arrangements and beautiful and sparser than the last two records. I think this is my favorite of all her albums.

Mary Chapin Carpenter The Calling
She's not breaking any new ground on this record, but it's still nice to hear her sing.

Lucinda Williams West
I haven't been a big fan of Lucinda's last couple of albums. I tried this one with some trepidation, but she put out an album that I find listenable. The last couple I could barely sit all the way through. This is more the speed I like, more like the stuff on her self titled or Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

Kaiser Chiefs Yours Truly Angry Mob
I've been bitching to myself that I have stopped listening to new artists. Since I've made myself aware of that fact, I've been trying different things here and there. I tried the Shins, but I found them boring as hell. I tried the Kaiser Chiefs and really surprised myself with how much I liked them. They are definitely big 80's music fans because it shows in every one of their songs. And I mean that in the best way possible.

Roddy Frame Live In Osaka
Roddy is my rock star boyfriend.

Joss Stone Introducing Joss Stone
I've only listened to this twice, so it really hasn't sunk in too deep yet. I just love her voice.

Falco Hoch Wie Nie
Okay, this is actually the 16th album in the list. And it's a greatest hits album, so it doesn't really count. But Falco is such a guilty pleasure. There can't be anything wrong with me liking Falco, right? He really did write and perform a lot of fun pop songs. Honestly. Stop looking at me with that contempt in your eyes. I bet you like a lot of crap, too. You're just too shallow to fess up to it. So there.

Doctor Who

Man oh man I cannot wait for this to start. I can't remember the last show I was this excited for.

Four Oh Four

I won a couple of free Take Five lottery tickets from some scratch off tickets I bought last week. This morning I looked up the winning numbers for the day I got the tickets. Of the four tickets I had, two of them were winners. On one ticket I won another free ticket. On the other, though, I won $404!!!! Yay me!

Sunday Doldrums

I hate this part of Sunday. It's getting closer to bedtime which means it's getting closer to work on Monday. I usually like going to work, but I'm not feeling it right now. I think because I didn't really get enough rest this weekend. I want one more day off to rest. I should really kick back on the overtime this week and get to bed early to make up for my exhaustion. What's nice about work this week is I'm taking Friday off. Out of town guests are visiting and I need a day to clean the house. I'm usually the one who cleans, but I'm good at doing a half-assed clean. With guests here, I really need to make sure the house is better than disgusting. I should really make a point of getting an oil change since I'm taking the day off. It's been about six months since my last one. Oops.

Last August I had my first physical in longer than I should admit to. My doctor told me I had borderline high blood pressure and that I was too fat. I weighed in at 300.5 lbs. I swore I would never reach 300 lbs. It scared and saddened me. I couldn't believe that I let myself go like that. The doctor told me I needed to lose 100 lbs. Just the thought of that seemed impossible. But I've been working on it. From August to December I managed to lose 30 lbs. It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I had to put myself in the right frame of mind. The doctor told me to watch my calories and carbs. I've been doing that. I set a goal for 2007 that should be easy to reach. Another 30 lbs. So far, I've managed to lose 10 lbs this year. I would say 15, because I weighed in at 255 this morning, but I don't believe it. Maybe if I'm still at 255 next week, I'll believe it. I have to say, it's probably been ten years since I was this weight. All I know is that I weighed 230 when Ken and I got together nearly 13 years ago. The thought of being 230 again is too much for me to think about. Something else that's too much for me to think about is that Ken and I, for the first time EVER, weigh the exact same. He's a few inches shorter than I am, so this means that I'm skinnier than he is. Me. I'm thrilled. But now he's depressed. He's determined to get back on track and drop more weight. His doctor wants him to be 180. I need to be supportive. Let's see if I can do it.

Happy Anniversary

One year ago today Ken and I brought home Ollie and Lucy. I'm not sure if it feels like it's been a year. It feels a lot longer. Probably because we've been through an awful lot with them, and by "them" I mostly mean Lucy. She's been a special needs baby since day one. I really don't think she'd have come home with us if we had any idea what a struggle it was going to be, but now I can't imagine life without her. She's such a sweet baby. She still has a lot of issues, but we're working on them every day and every day she seems like she's still getting used to the idea of living here.


Lucy may be a sweet baby, but Ollie is even sweeter. For instance, a few minutes before I decided to write this post, he jumped up in my lap, cuddled up and fell asleep. However, and with Ollie there is always a however, the keyboard is also in my lap and he's making it incredibly difficult to type. This is his standard operating procedure and I've learned to adjust to him.
What else can I do really?
As I said earlier, it was a struggle with Lucy at first. She came home with a nasty case of diahrrea that took us months to fix. The vet found a particular type of cat food that she can digest and have healthy poopies. She's had a couple UTIs, her skin turned all scaley and flakey... She's been on more medications than Anna Nicole Smith, but she's finally mostly all better. She's been acting more and more catlike in the last few weeks and it scares me. She'll play with cat toys, something she's never been interested in before. She'll jump on my lap, another thing she's never been interested in before. For the last two nights, she's slept on our bed with us, something she's never done before. More surprisingly, she'll sleep side by side with Ollie. They rarely do this. The pictures I've posted are deceiving. It looks like they are friends, but it's more Lucy being lazy. She likes to sleep on that perch. Ollie joined her and she was not very happy about it but she was too lazy to do anything about it. You can tell by her expression that she wants him to get inoperable stomach cancer.

What a year it's been. Those little fuckers bring me so much joy. There are days when they are so cute that I just want to cry. And I do. I'm such a pussy.

Go To Guy

I must be likeable. I don't understand why I am. I personally think I'm an asshole and I don't think I'd have anything to do with me if I wasn't me. But people seem to like me. And it's starting to kill me. I seem to be the one person at work who everyone feels comfortable confiding in, or more importantly, bitching about others to. While I don't mind this most times, it can get to be annoying. Like when someone came up to me today to bitch and moan that he got ripped a new one and it's not fair because he does so much fucking work, it's unbelieveable. He gets ripped apart for everything while the rest of his unit can do no wrong. Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan. It might not have been all that annoying if I thought the bitcher was justified in his bitching. But from where I see it, he got reamed out because he deserved it. I don't work closely with the guy, so I could be way off, but that's my perception. Someone who does work closely with him feels the need to come up to me daily to bitch about the aforementioned bitcher. And someone else bitches to me about him. It's a weird, fucked up circle jerk. I guess I shouldn't complain. At least I'm likeable.

Switching gears, I'm adding a second item to my "likes" sidebar. I fucking love Sharpies. Can't get enough of them. I just bought a 24 color pack of fine point Sharpies. I could squirt!

Thursday

Ollie, my boy cat, is sitting on the computer desk right now playing with a Best Buy bag. He's fascinated by it. He's licking it, tapping it, pushing it, moving it. Utterly fascinated. I just got home from Best Buy. I needed to buy new headphones for my mp3 player. The left phone went out at work today. Early at work. I wasn't happy. I took the headphones from my iPod and tried using those, but there was a weird noise coming through the right phone that doesn't happen when it's plugged into the iPod. So I ran out when I got home and got new headphones. The thought of not listening to music at work hurts me.

Why do I have two mp3 players, you may be asking yourself. Well, I've got a 30g Creative player that Ken gave me as either a "congrats on your new job" present or an early Christmas gift last year. It would have been a Christmas present if I didn't get the new job, he told me. About 6 months ago, I got a 2g iPod free for opening a new bank account. Since the iPod is smaller, I use it for some favorite songs and for all my podcasts. The Creative player is my main jukebox. I've got about 10,000 songs on it. I can't imagine not having it.

I'm exhausted. I've been putting in a lot of overtime again. Last Saturday was going to be my last Saturday for a while, but I think I want to work this coming Saturday and that will be my last one. But I'm not sure I'm going to be able to work it. We've got a Nor'easter coming to close out the season. Suppose to start on Friday night and end on Saturday. None of the weathermen are willing to commit to what is going to happen yet. This is only the third storm all winter and this is the third time they've all been afraid to make an actual prediction. Whatever. So I have one more potential day of overtime before I need to kick it back a little. I have to because my ass is d r a g g i n g . At least I'm going to bed early tonight.

Have You Ever Seen A Plastic Toilet?

Just about every single year, Ken and I take a vacation to Florida (though he says this year's vacation will be the last one there for a long time...) One of the highlights of the Florida vacations is always the Appliance Direct commercials. They're fucked. They buy up hours of tv and play their commercials back to back to back like infomercials, usually on the weekends. I've been known to sit in the hotel for an hour watching them while Ken gets ready to go out. This is probably my favorite one. After the guy asks the question "Have you ever seen a plastic toilet?" he answers himself with "Why not? White porcelain." White porcelain has become our standard answer to each other to the question "Why not?"

Idol Thoughts

So I'm watching American Idol tonight. It's the first night of the with the Top 12 finalists. About half way through the show Phil Stacey came on to perform. Phil has bothered me since the season started. I don't know what it is about him. He's got an okay voice, I guess, but there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. During his performance tonight, it dawned on me what annoys me about him. He has a very, very, very strong resemblence to a comic book character named the Puppet Master. Puppet Master is one of the Fantastic Four's villains. For some reason I can't manage to import the pictures I want to into this post. So here are links to the pictures, which doesn't have quite the effect.

Phil vs. Puppet Master

I need to read up more on uploading pictures and stuff.

Simmer Down Sarah Silverman

I'm watching tv and realizing I'm having a hard time trying to write this. The tv is too distracting. I think this is my 4th attempt at writing. So I hit pause and now I can hear myself think.

The weather is turning more favorable, which is a good thing. The last two months or so it's been way too cold for me to get off the bus early and walk home. My exercise routine is very minimal. It basically consists of getting off the bus a mile and a half early and walking the rest of the way home from work. Takes about a half hour to do this. It's really the only exercise I get, but at least I'm getting some. I haven't done this since January because the weather wouldn't allow it. But today got up to near fifty degrees and it was prime walking weather. Tomorrow will be the same. I'm glad the weather is changing. I've actually missed walking. And with the re-addition of walking, maybe I can up the weight loss a little more.

You know what I love? Swiss Cheese. I'm going to start a list at the side of this page and just list out random things that I really love. I love the taste a slice of Swiss Cheese adds to a sandwich. Fucking delicious.

So Tired

I hate when we have to change the clocks ahead. Never more so since I started my current job. I used to work retail and Mondays I never had to be in until noon. So losing that hour of sleep was never that big a deal. Now I've got a "real" job and have to be in on Monday morning. I'm gonna hurt. I'm trying to give my body a quick adjust to the change. Saturday morning I got up at 5:30am to go in for some overtime. Generally, if I go in on Saturdays, I work from 6:30 to 12:30, go home and nap the rest of the afternoon. As much as I wanted to, I didn't nap. I stayed up until about 1am (later than I planned). Then I got up this morning around 8:15am. It hurt to get up, but I did it. I figure that if I can get to bed at a reasonable time tonight, I should be golden. In theory. But you know it's gonna backfire and blow up in my face. We'll see.

Speaking of overtime, Saturday's was a nightmare. I get to work and my computer decides it doesn't like my new password and won't let me in. At all. It also doesn't like my old password. I was really pissed off. I got up at 5:30 for nothing? Luckily there was plenty of stuff for me to do. Most everyone had non-computer related things to give me to do and that brought me all the way up to 12:30. I figured that I might have enough to do until about 7:30 and then I'd be gone.

What bummed me out about the possibility of no overtime on Saturday was that I have already earmarked the money for some comic book t-shirts. I decided that as a reward for all the weight I've lost so far, I would treat myself to some comic shirts. I haven't owned one since the late 80s or early 90s. Mostly because I had gotten so big that I couldn't fit into one anymore. I know I can fit into a 2XL easily now and that's about as big as they come. I think I want a Shazam shirt and a Green Lantern. This will probably change before I actually get around to ordering them.

My first posting

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not a very articulate person. Why I've decided to do this blog is beyond me. I don't have anything much interesting to say. Well, interesting to me, maybe, but not to many. And I have a follow through problem. I get ideas in my head, like doing a blog, and I'm all gung ho at first, but then I start losing interest and before you know it, I give up. I tell myself it's going to be different this time. Maybe because I don't really plan on advertising the blog. If someone stumbles onto it, fine. But I'm doing this for myself and maybe that will help me keep it going.

Since this is my first posting, I'm not really going to get into much. I just want to see how this looks and stuff.