1,200 Miles Update

Today ends the third month of the year and this is my monthly update of my progress.  Being as neurotic as I am, I'm both thrilled beyond belief and disappointed in myself for where I'm at so far.  I'm ending March with 590.34 miles.  That in itself is outstanding.  That's nearly my grand total for last year if I'm remembering it correctly.  I'm really proud of myself for that.  I've been really sticking with my fitness routine.  But I'm disappointed for a ridiculous reason.  I'm disappointed that I missed hitting 600 miles by just one workout.  It's not my fault, but still.  The second week of March I was sick sick sick.  And I shouldn't have gone to the gym at all that week, but I pushed myself to go and paid the price for it.  I tried to make up for the missed week and did make some progress, but not quite enough to hit the half way point.

To put it all in perspective, to see exactly what 590 miles looks like on a map, I took this screen shot.  The starting point is where I live and the ending point is over the North Carolina border.  I'm just shy of half way to Walt Disney World already, which is the visualized goal I've set for myself.

I was thinking about it at the gym tonight.  By this time last year, I think I'd maybe put in about 60 miles.  Winter is too cold to walk outside and my only exercise came on Sunday mornings when I'd go to the mall before opening and walk for a hour to an hour and a half.  Having the gym has definitely changed how I'm handling exercise this year.  And it's definitely showing on the scale.  

My big worry is vacation, which started at 3:45 this afternoon.  I need to be a good boy.  I need to be a good boy.  I NEED to be a good boy.

My Mundane World

 You know, people often come up to me on the street or email me asking the same question over and over again.  They say, "Walt, you were once an internet superstar.  Do you live the same kind of life that we ordinary folks live?"  Well, I'm getting tired of answering that question over and over again.  So I decided to document a day in the life of me.  It's a rather exciting life, as you will soon discover.  The day I chose was yesterday, Sunday.

The alarm went off really fucking early.  Yeah, I set the alarm on most Sundays to get my ass up and get to the gym to get it over with.  I really needed to go because Saturday night I mowed down hard on a brownie sundae from the ice cream place around the corner from the house.  They recently opened for the season and I needed my fix.

Before I could do anything, though, the cats demanded to be fed.  They get two different kinds of food.  Ollie's bowl is on the left and it's regular cat food from the supermarket.  Lucy gets prescription cat food because she can't digest normal foods like a regular cat can.

Next stop, the gym.  I kept my sweatshirt on for the first fifteen or twenty minutes because it was actually cold in there.  The sweatshirt came off, though, once I started getting too warm.

I busted my ass this week.  Here it shows I have about a minute and a half left on the elliptical and I'd already done 12.10 miles.  My total workout was 95 minutes, a new record for me.

And I was soaked by the time I was done.

When I got home, the paper was waiting for me.

But so was the shower.  I smelled bad.

I got on the scale for my weekly weigh in.  I do record my weight every morning, but I have Sunday as my official weigh in day for the week.  I was thrilled with this week's weigh in.

Ollie helped me tie my shoes.

Then it was time to catch up on my Words With Friends games.  Here I'm playing against Nicole.

After my games were caught up, it was time to go downstairs and throw a load of laundry in.

And then I made a bag of popcorn to nibble on on my way to the supermarket.

Needed gas, so that was my first stop.

Pudding, Reese's Pieces, cereal.... yup.

This was my treat for the drive home.  It occurred to me while shopping that I only had popcorn to eat so far. After that gym workout, I was really hungry.  Naturally I did anything but grab something healthy.

On the way home I made a pit stop to look for toys.

When I got home, this was priority number one.  I swear I don't eat as shitty as this all the time.  I'd be back to 300 lbs if that was true.

While the brownies baked, I went to the basement to play on the computer for a little bit.  The cats got fed some treats because I can't be the only one to eat poorly.

After the brownies came out of the oven, this chicken went in.  For lunch every day, I make a big salad with chicken in it.  This week whole chickens were half the price of a package of chicken breast, so that's what I bought.  I'll chop this up and make it last all week.

Then it was time to put away the laundry.  Do you like my Green Lantern undies?

At work I have Cheerios as a snack when I get there and again at 10 o'clock break.  I mix regular and Chocolate Cheerios, bag them up and bring them in to work.

After the bagging of the cereal, I laid down with Ollie and finished this trade.

And then, just like Ollie, I feel fast asleep.

I woke up in time to feed them dinner.

While Ken cooked dinner, I had a couple of chores I wanted to take care of in my office.  My side table started piling up and it was driving me crazy.

My desk, too.

And my Supergirl poster slipped in the frame and fell below the edge of the mat.

Dinner was ready by the time I was done.  Salad, polenta, pork chop "fish sticks" and applesauce. 

For dessert, I piled pudding and ice cream on top of a brownie and slathered whipped cream on top.  Because I only want to eat like an 8 year old left on his own.

Ken cooked, so I loaded the dishwasher.  It's only fair.  Unless I cook, then I get to load the dishwasher.  I'm still trying to figure that one out.

I made my lunch for today and tomorrow.  Chicken, broccoli, red peppers, cucumbers, summer squash, peas, corn, garbanzos, kidney beans, strawberries, mushrooms, carrots, radishes... 

Watched the Amazing Race..

And got into my jammies.  I was going to read, but I got distracted by Words With Friends and Angry Birds.

Bedroom Makeover

Here we have a couple of "before" shots of the master bedroom.  Redoing the room has been pretty low on our priority list because the bedroom isn't one of the public rooms.  The downstairs living space and the upstairs guest rooms took top priority.  Now that it's coming up on one year in this house, it was about time to finally get around to painting the room.  I don't know exactly how much you can tell from just the pictures, but the paint job the prior owners did was for shit.  Parts of the walls were glossy, parts were flat, parts showed through the other paint color.  They really did the worst paint job one could possibly do.  Also notice that there is crown molding up.  If you look closely, you'll see that it was installed upside down, not to mention poorly.  The room was just a mess.

In the year we've been here, Ken has had many ideas on what to paint the room.  You can see he's put all sorts of samples up on the walls.  Not a single one of these choices made the final cut.

This room has always made me feel like I was living in Green Acres.  

We emptied everything we could out of the room.  The bed and the chair were the only things that stayed.  The crown molding came down first, all the holes were spackled and sanded and then the primer went up.

It's a large bedroom, but after the primer went up on the walls, the room felt like it was about half the size to me.  I expected it to feel twice the size with the whiter walls.

Ollie spent most of the remodeling time on the bed, watching.  

The first coat of paint is on the walls.  I think it looks great.  When Ken first opened the can of paint, I think he was shocked.  I think he thought he bought a lighter shade of brown than we actually did.  He instantly hated it.  But once it went up on the walls, he realized how good it looked.

The room started looking bigger once the walls were painted.

Oh, and notice that hideous brass light fixture.  That's outta here!

This is shortly after the second coat of paint was put up.  It looks wet in this picture.  Ken went out curtain shopping and I started painting.  It was glorious, or at least as glorious as painting can be, to be alone with my task.  I work better on my own and Ken can be known to need assistance with everything, so it's hard to make headway when working with him.

The new ceiling fan.  Ken was very proud of himself for installing it.  He's terrified of doing anything electrical. It took a little while to put it up.  What's unfortunate is once it was installed, the fan wouldn't work.  The light worked like a charm, but all we got from the fan was a faint hum.  It was too late to do anything about it by the time it was up, so Ken did some research online to see what the problem could be.  He made a list and the following morning we set out to fix it.  There was a loose connection.  Once that was reattached, we were in business.

One of the purchases for the room.  This mirror is on the wall on the right side of the bed.  Ken wanted something to balance out this wall.  There's a window on the left side of the bed and this mirror is nearly the same size.  He did it so that the bed is now centered between the two.  It also adds even more light to the room.

The room isn't 100% done yet.  We have no art for the walls.  That's Ken's next project.  Because the room has a brown theme, he wants to incorporate color with the art.  He's having trouble finding what he really wants, but he'll find something.

There's the window I mentioned in the mirror picture above.

The brown on the walls is showing a little bit lighter than it looks in person.  I don't know if it's because of how bright the sun was shining or what.  It's a little bit darker.

The room went from being big to feeling massive.  It's amazing how much bigger it feels.

The other project was to replace the nasty, ugly brass light fixture we had hanging in our foyer.  This is our new one and I love it!