What Have I Done Today To Make Me Feel Proud?

Well, I worked my ass off at the gym tonight.  That's what I did.  I had no intention of going tonight.  I've settled into my Tue/Thurs/Sat/Sun routine nicely and plan on keeping it that way.  However, we have a one-two punch of winter weather coming and it's getting in the way of my schedule.  Tomorrow we're supposed to get anywhere from four to eight inches of snow followed by another foot to two feet depending on which station you believe on Wednesday.  With that weather coming, I could easily have blown off tonight, but I'd miss the next couple nights, too, and I didn't want to do that.  I've got myself almost completely over my gym phobia and I'm feeling really good about all the exercise I've been doing.  I don't exactly look forward to the exercise, but I do look forward to logging in what I've done in my exercise tracker.  It's almost the same thing, right?  Oh, and I really love the endorphin rush that hits me about half way home.  

As I mentioned in many previous posts, I'm working my way through a 1,200 mile goal for the year.  That means it's just 100 miles a month, which seems like a lot.  And to be honest, it kind of is.  But I've been dedicated to meeting my goal and this being the last day of the month, I can honestly announce to the world that I'm so fucking proud of what I've achieved.  Not only did I hit my goal for the month, but I'm more than half way to February's goal.  As of tonight, the last day of January, I'm at 164.14 miles.  This means that I can be a little easier on myself if I want to, though I know I won't allow myself to be.  My goal when I get to the gym is to pump out about 6 miles and I tell myself I'll be happy with that.  But knowing how I am, I push harder and harder to hit bigger numbers.  The last two nights I've hit the biggest numbers I've hit yet.  Last night was 8.75 miles and tonight was 9.59 miles.

I did a screen capture of my January workouts.  I really can't believe this is something that I did.  Me.  Big fat Walt.  I'm in the best shape of my entire life and I know I still have loads of room for improvement.  I can't wait to see how the rest of 2011 goes!

Weekend

It's Sunday night as I sit here on the computer and contemplate going to bed.  I'm pretty tired.  Last week was a really long week for some reason.  It didn't help that when I got to work on Thursday, I went to sign in on my time card and got the shock of my life.  It wasn't Thursday.  It was only Wednesday.  I somehow got a day ahead of myself and that kind of set the rest of the week up to drag.  And did it ever.

This weekend Ken and I went to New Jersey to spend the weekend with his friend Jim.  That meant getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday so that we could be on the road by 7am.  Saturday is the one day that I allow myself to sleep in as long as I want (or more specifically, as long as Ollie will let me.)  Before getting to Jim's house, we made our customary stop at IKEA and loaded up on unassembled furniture, drinking glasses and picture frames.  I got the final bookcase I think I need for my office.  Once it's assembled, it's going to look like a library in here.  But that can wait until I've got a little time.  It's a big bookcase and will take a little bit of time to assemble.

The weekend at Jim's was fun.  We did a bunch of shopping around (Ken wanted to check out a few places for patio furniture) and some eating.  I was going to try to behave myself, but our first stop was 5 Guys for burgers.  It's been a while and it was delicious as ever.  I like the burgers there, but not everyone does.  And that's fine.  For dinner we went to this Italian place.  I forget the name, but I want to say it's something like Bluestone.  Italian places are hard for me because I try to stay away from pasta and excess red sauce and there's always a lot of bread around to eat.  I looked at the salads on the menu but ended up getting the eggplant parm lasagne and it was completely worth it.  So good.  Not to mention all the freaking bread I ate.  Ken actually got the salad I was looking at and I'm so glad I didn't get it.  It didn't look all that good to me.

We hit the road after breakfast this morning, making a stop or two on the way home.  After the car was unloaded, I got changed and went to the gym to try to work off a little of the damage I did this weekend.  Dinner was ready when I got home and after doing the dishes, I had a bowl of ice cream.  I always regret when I have a moment of weakness in the supermarket and buy a tub of ice cream, but it was really good.  I stayed away from sweets all weekend, so I don't feel as bad about it.  Tomorrow the scale may call me horrible names, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

127.46

Hot 100

I think I've mentioned before that one thing I'm fascinated by is statistics.  All kinds of statistics.  And rankings.  I love all that kind of shit.  There's a website that combines my love of statistical lists and music and I obsess over it.  The site is last.fm.  It tracks your music listening.  You can download a widget from the site and it will log everything you play via iTunes (or your preferred music player) and it will also extract what you listened to on your iPod to keep a running total of what you're playing, how often you're playing it and all that nonsense.  I just did a quick capture of my 100 most played artists according to the website with the number of plays for each artist.  I've logged 170,938 plays since June 10, 2007.  It's a weird list to look at sometimes.  And remember, I just finished up a challenge to myself where I wanted to make sure everything in my iTunes library was registering at least 2 plays, so artists with bigger catalogs tend to rank higher than those with fewer releases.  I guess that makes my list slightly skewed, but who cares.  That challenge is over and all my play counts in iTunes were reset when I moved the library off my desktop and onto an external drive.

And you don't have to say it because I know it.  I listen to a lot of cheese.  I like cheese.  So there.

1		Dolly Parton		2,095
2		Tina Turner		1,782
3		Cher		1,652
4		Barbra Streisand		1,421
5		Elton John		1,399
6		Diana Ross		1,182
7		The Cure		1,118
8		The Rolling Stones		1,038
9		Indigo Girls		912
10		Queen		910
11		Spandau Ballet		869
12		Frank Sinatra		855
13		Prince		854
14		Barry Manilow		846
15		Eurythmics		824
15		Judy Garland		824
17		The Beatles		758
18		Aretha Franklin		757
19		Duran Duran		755
20		Billy Bragg		752
21		David Bowie		747
22		Ike & Tina Turner		736
23		Sheena Easton		730
24		ABC		729
25		Tori Amos		719
26		Liza Minnelli		713
27		Johnny Cash		700
28		Jill Sobule		692
29		Madonna		690
30		R.E.M.		681
31		Nena		650
32		Pet Shop Boys		636
33		ABBA		610
34		Barenaked Ladies		607
35		Squeeze		606
36		Elvis Costello		602
36		Ramones		602
38		They Might Be Giants		585
38		Alison Moyet		585
40		Depeche Mode		573
41		Falco		562
42		Morrissey		557
42		Rick Astley		557
44		Blondie		556
45		Elvis Presley		552
46		Kim Wilde		541
47		The Pretenders		538
47		Erasure		538
49		Nanci Griffith		534
50		Wesley Willis		528
51		Devo		520
52		Harry Connick, Jr.		512
53		Talking Heads		507
54		Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton		502
55		Donna Summer		493
56		Madness		465
56		Sheryl Crow		465
58		Richard Cheese		454
59		Neil Diamond		453
60		Eartha Kitt		450
61		Cyndi Lauper		449
62		Glee Cast		448
63		New Order		436
64		Jason Mraz		434
65		Shirley Bassey		433
65		Howard Jones		433
67		Emmylou Harris		427
68		Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark		425
69		Aimee Mann		423
70		Juliana Hatfield		418
71		Bette Midler		415
72		Shawn Colvin		410
73		Ben Folds		409
74		XTC		401
74		Dusty Springfield		401
74		Ultravox		401
77		Melissa Etheridge		399
78		Lyle Lovett		398
79		Lisa Loeb		397
80		a-ha		393
81		Sinéad O'Connor		392
82		Rick Springfield		387
82		Pat Benatar		387
84		Bananarama		386
85		Dwight Yoakam		384
86		Suzanne Vega		380
87		Cowboy Junkies		378
87		The Human League		378
89		Placebo		377
90		John Wesley Harding		376
91		Willie Nelson		375
92		Everything but the Girl		373
92		James Taylor		373
94		Robbie Williams		372
95		Lady Gaga		369
96		Eels		364
97		Crowded House		361
98		Cracker		355
99		Camper Van Beethoven		351
100		The Onion		350