Five Minutes You Can Never Get Back

Road Rage

Damage

If anyone knows anything about me, it's that I'm neurotic as hell about my weight.  I weigh myself every morning and most nights.  I have two official weigh in days (one is my normal official weigh in day and the other is for a contest I'm involved in.)  When my weight jumps up, I get freaked out like the freak I am.  Well, this weekend I over indulged in deliciousness (including two nights of ice cream) while Eric and Brett were here visiting.  I ate a little better than I usually do and I'm paying the price.  Saturday morning before they arrived, I was at 191.6 lbs.  After Saturday's damage, I was up to 195.6 and after Sunday's damage (only half of which I can blame on them, dammit, since they hit the road around 1 o'clock) I topped out at 197.9.  That's the biggest number I've seen in a really, really long time.  And for some reason, I'm fine with it.  I'm not happy with it, but I'm not beating myself up in my usual manner.  The ice cream was so damn good and well worth it.  I know after a couple days the pounds will drop off again (just in time for my next set of house guests this weekend.)  I've noticed that it takes two days for whatever I eat to make it's way through me.  If I have a sundae on Sunday, I know that both Monday and Tuesday will reflect it on the scale.  Wednesday I'll start showing signs of improvement.  

So here's a word of warning.  If you want to have a certain couple of Southern Boys as house guests, be prepared to watch your weight do this.  :-)

Lucky

I'm just finishing up what turned out to be one of the best weekends I've had in a really, really long time.  Three day weekend, even.  Friday was kind of a complete waste and washout.  I took the day off because we were having furniture delivered.  Also, it was the day Ken and I went over to the old house to pick up a package that was accidentally there.  The rest of the day I dicked away and didn't do much of anything.  And it's not like there wasn't stuff to do around the house.  There's so much to do around the house.  But I blew it all off and did nothing.

Saturday was a different story.  Got up early and walked about 6 miles or so.  And felt really good about it.  We had plans to head down to Rhinebeck to meet up with friends Eric and Brett from NYC.  We poked around town and hit an antiques show, but it was horrible because of the heat and lack of cooling in the place.  The temperature in Rhinebeck was 101 degrees.  But the show wasn't too horrible for Eric and Brett to find themselves some fresh porn. Porn, or vintage erotic photographs.  

We also hit a local restaurant for some lunch.  We didn't realize it until we got there, but it was the same place we took Eric and Brett the last time we were together.  We could have gone someplace else, but it was too funny and we just ate there in spite.

After Rhinebeck, we all headed up to Albany for a slumber party.  The boys were our first official houseguests.  There weren't the first ones booked, but the first to actually stay.  Part of Friday's chore list was to get the house ready for them.  Yeah, that didn't go so well.  Like I said earlier, I didn't do a damn thing on Friday.

It was really great having them here.  I had such a good time and I hope they did as well.  It makes me realize exactly how lucky I am to have the friends I do.  They're all fucking amazing.

After the boys hit the road, we ran around to do some chores.  I took another nice, long walk (to try to burn off some of the ice cream I ate last night and make room for tonight's) and then another one with Ken.  I've got some laundry to put away and then I'm off to bed.  I'm pooped.

Going Home

Mail

Annoying

I Can't Believe This Weekend Is Over Already

This has to have been one of the quickest weekends on record for me.  It seems like I just left work Friday afternoon and now I'm about to wrap up the last couple of things I need to do before Monday gets here.  It went really quickly and it wasn't the most fun I've had.  Busy doing house stuff, dealing with a mini-meltdown (Ken's, not mine!), running errands....  And possibly facing a dental visit.

The house is coming along, slowly but surely.  This weekend we concentrated on getting the guest room finished.  That meant some touch up painting, followed by some more, then hanging stuff on the wall and cleaning.  The room looks great.  We still need to hang drapes, finish painting the furniture and change out the bedding, but that room is mostly done.  And it feels good.  But mid-way through on Saturday, Ken sort of had a meltdown.  He was feeling overwhelmed, feeling like he wasn't making any progress on anything.  He was generally miserable.  You see, one of Ken's biggest problems is he loves to start a progress, trash the area and then start another one.  Our house was in such a state of disarray when the meltdown happened that I could completely understand.  Tools were strewn all over the family room, unhung curtains and hardware all over the dining room, painting supplies all over the guest room and guest bath, buckets of tools in his office, tools all over the kitchen.  The house was really looking like hell.  We had a talk and I told him that nothing else could be started until some of the other projects were done.  And he managed to get it together (after vegging out on the computer for a couple hours.)  The guest room is (mostly) done.  The family room is (mostly) done.  That means curtains were hung, the television was hooked up and the tools were removed.  The new chair was placed in it's new home.  The dining room curtains were hung.  The living room curtains were hung.  I have to admit that I'm shocked that he pulled himself together and concentrated on finishing stuff rather than starting new things.

I mentioned the new chair.  We were one chair short for the family room and it arrived on Saturday.  Unfortunately, it has to go back.  The frame creaks like a 90 year old woman's bones.  I'm not happy with the framework on it at all.  But it's super comfy and looks great.

Today was more house projects and then shopping.  We spent about two hours in Lowe's, followed by an hour in Target.  That's well beyond my limit.  But we got supplies for redoing the guest room bed's headboard, paint for the furniture, and all kinds of other things.

So, my mouth.  I'm a little concerned (and by a little, I mean a lot.)  Last night the roof of my mouth started to hurt a little.  It felt kind of the way it does when you burn it.  I didn't think anything of it until this morning.  Still hurt, but more.  And it hurt more and more as the day went on.  I popped a couple of aspirins and that took the edge off, but not totally.  I've been feeling the area with my tongue and it kind of feels like I have a little cut on the roof of my mouth.  And I'm wondering if there's an infection or something that's causing the pain.  It feels a little swollen, too, and is now starting to cause on of my front teeth to hurt.  This is not good.  Not good at all.  I've got all sorts of plans for the next four or five weekends and I don't want this to interfere.  I'm fearing I'm going to have to have something wretched done, like a root canal or something.  I'm hoping my mouth feels better tomorrow.  If not, off to the dentist I go.

Right now I have the guilts and I need to get over my bad self.  I just polished off a nice big sundae.  It's National Ice Cream Day, after all.  And I had my single best weigh in in months today.  I'm so afraid I'm going to see a number that makes no sense whatsoever on the scale tomorrow.  I don't know why I can't just sit here and enjoy a little decadence every once in a while.  It's because I'm a freak.  

Only Interesting To Me

I get a little OCD with statistics about things.  I don't know what it is about tracking and analyzing stupid shit, but it just fascinates me.  Here are a couple of examples of things I'm looking at for not good reason whatsoever.

I have an app for my phone called iMapMyRide.  There's a website that goes with it that stores the information that the app tracks.  What the app does is it uses GPS to record my walks.  It creates maps of the routes I walk.  I tracks the number of miles I walk, the amount of time I walk, gives me the number of calories I burn, tells me my speed.  All the stupid shit.  I was poking around the website the other night and found a calendar which has all my info.  So far this week, I've walked 34.29 miles and burned 3147 calories.  Finding this information is only going to fuel my OCD and make me want to walk more, which isn't necessarily a good thing because I'm trying to take it a little easier.  The last thing I want to do is really hurt my old man self.

Back in April I wrote a little something about my OCD and iTunes.  I'm in the process of making sure everything in my iTunes has been played at least twice.  Most of the stuff has been played way more than that, but not since uploading my cd collection to this computer. Back in April, the number of "once played songs" in my "once played playlist" was 19,131.  Today that same playlist has 12,370 songs in it.  Keep in mind any new song that I add to iTunes needs to be played twice to get it to fall off the list and since I'm a huge music whore, I've added a lot of stuff.  So a drop of about 6,000 songs isn't too shabby.  At the rate I'm going, I'll have listened to my complete library at least twice by the end of the year.

And to prove exactly how much I need to get a life, I can tell you that there are still 2,335 different albums that have at least one track that is in my "once played playlist" and there are 1,520 artists.

You were warned that this post was only interesting to me.  

Mel Gibson Calls Dora The Explorer

Toy Show

At Home

I wanted to go walking tonight, but my sciatic is still telling me it's not a good idea. Instead I finally got off my lazy ass and hooked the Wii back up. I've only been in the new house nine or ten weeks... I popped in the EA Sports Active and got back to work. I know that eventually all the different exercises will help strengthen my back, but today it made my sciatic yell at me and really kicked my ass. How long has it been since I've done this stupid workout anyway? (Too long is the correct answer, by the way. Otherwise it wouldn't have kicked my ass.)

Still so much to do with the house and not enough time.  We've got a shopping trip planned for tomorrow for some more things that we need.  And I'm hoping that will include a side trip to the Converse Outlet.  Who doesn't love a clearance wall?

In The Car

Thursday

Another Video

I was bored on the bus ride in to work this morning, so I video taped part of the ride.  Albany is a small, small city and my ride in is through a dumpy part of town.  This shows the tiny skyline we've got in our downtown.  The video isn't really much to look at, but I had fun taping it anyway.

Sciatica Be Damned.

Okay, my sciatica isn't acting up too much.  I was able to get out the last two days and walk about 6.5 miles each day, but I also know that I need to take it a little easier than I've been for fear of a bigger flare up.  And I can't be having that.  But my mind has been racing all day and I find that I get some of my best thinking done when I'm out walking the neighborhood or the nearby office complex with a bottle of water in hand and the iPod playing.  Today is just not a good day to walk.  It's 8 pm and the temperature is still 90 degrees.  Just a little too hot for me to hoof it.  But the logical side and the emotional side of my brain keep fighting about it.  The logical side keeps saying I'm going to injure myself while the emotional side keeps screaming that I ate two brownies today.

It was hard to get going today.  I don't know why.  I went to bed in good season last night.  I slept pretty well through the night, but the alarm scared the shit out of me this morning and I just found it incredibly hard to get going.  I did lay out in the sun for a while yesterday and the sun has the uncanny ability to suck all the energy out of me.  That could be part of the reason.

And the scale made me mad this morning.  I had a few days of really encouraging news on the scale only to wake up this morning to find out that I was 7 months pregnant.  Or at least that's what the scale told me.  That was enough to piss off the Pope this morning.  I know my weight bounces up and down the scale, and I have good days and bad days, but I take the bad days really hard sometimes.  But I find the emotional side of my brain has greater power than the logical portion when I'm beat, and that's exactly where I was this morning.  The logical side gained greater ground tonight as evidenced by the brownie I ate when I got home from work.  I don't know how it happened, but I've become obsessed with brownies in the last week or so.  I need to make a batch of nasty tasting brownies to break myself from them.

That's my world today.  How's yours?

Video Blog #01

Post #800

My 800th post.  That's a lot of posts for someone who is barely a step up from a mute.  

I'm glad this week went by as fast as it did.  Work was really stressful.  The most stressful it's ever been.  The crack head who sits next to me and her boss were at all out war all week.  The crack head doesn't think rules should apply to her and has made it perfectly clear she doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks.  Her boss has been battling with her tooth and nail over it.  She's getting no support from upper management and that's only escalating the war.  My desk is exactly half way in between both of theirs.  Things are coming to a head and I think that something might be done.  I've thought that before in the past and was proven wrong, so it might happen again.  Next week is going to be really interesting.

I discovered earlier in the week that Converse is making a line of Dr. Seuss inspired Chuck Taylors.  I fell in love.  I want them all, but they're kind of pricey, so I'm happy just to look.  Well, as a surprise, Ken ordered me a pair and they arrived today.  I think they're fantastic!  

I've spent the week resting my leg & back.  I overdid it walking last weekend and my sciatic has been sending me warning signals to slow down.  It's killed me taking a break from my daily marathon walks.  It's still a little twitchy, but I did take a quick two mile walk when I left work today and I feel okay.  If I'm feeling up for it, I'm going to start back walking on Sunday.  With all the walking I've been doing, I'm not noticing a weight loss, but I think I am redistributing my fat.  My belly has felt a little jellier than usual.  I think I've lost a little in my legs and ass and that's causing the sciatic irritation.  I keep telling myself I'm going to hook the Wii back up and get back into the exercises that helped my sciatic over the winter, but I haven't found the time.  It's not that I haven't had the time, I just haven't made the effort to set it up rather than do chores or watch tv or web surf.  I'm a lazy boy when I want to be.

I promised myself I wasn't going to spend the whole night on the computer.  I've got other things I want to (and should) do.