1.31.2011

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!


1.30.2011

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.

1.24.2011

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
Play
2,095
2
Play
1,782
3
Play
1,652
4
Play
1,421
5
Play
1,399
6
Play
1,182
7
Play
1,118
8
Play
1,038
9
Play
912
10
Play
910
11
Play
869
12
Play
855
13
Play
854
14
Play
846
15
Play
824
15
Play
824
17
Play
758
18
Play
757
19
Play
755
20
Play
752
21
Play
747
22
Play
736
23
Play
730
24
Play
729
25
Play
719
26
Play
713
27
Play
700
28
Play
692
29
Play
690
30
Play
681
31
Play
650
32
Play
636
33
Play
610
34
Play
607
35
Play
606
36
Play
602
36
Play
602
38
Play
585
38
Play
585
40
Play
573
41
Play
562
42
Play
557
42
Play
557
44
Play
556
45
Play
552
46
Play
541
47
Play
538
47
Play
538
49
Play
534
50
Play
528
51
Play
520
52
Play
512
53
Play
507
54
Play
502
55
Play
493
56
Play
465
56
Play
465
58
Play
454
59
Play
453
60
Play
450
61
Play
449
62
Play
448
63
Play
436
64
Play
434
65
Play
433
65
Play
433
67
Play
427
68
Play
425
69
Play
423
70
Play
418
71
Play
415
72
Play
410
73
Play
409
74
Play
401
74
Play
401
74
Play
401
77
Play
399
78
Play
398
79
Play
397
80
Play
393
81
Play
392
82
Play
387
82
Play
387
84
Play
386
85
Play
384
86
Play
380
87
Play
378
87
Play
378
89
Play
377
90
Play
376
91
Play
375
92
Play
373
92
Play
373
94
Play
372
95
Play
369
96
Play
364
97
Play
361
98
Play
355
99
Play
351
100

350