For the most part. Two full days of eating horrible amounts of sweets, chocolate, and anything else I could get my hands on. Even today, I'm still on the tail end despite attempts to get back on the wagon. I got 20 miles of running in over the last 2 days so that at least helps, but it doesn't quite balance out the amount of food intake. I'll recover starting Monday with a 3-fer (3 days in a row of running) Tue/Wed/Thur leading up to New Years Eve.
Thursday we braved the weather and made it up to north Minneapolis in one piece. On the way home, I hit an exit ramp a little too fast and almost slid off the road. Friday everything was melting due to the high temps, and we made it over to my Mom's house easy. By Saturday, with everything frozen and after 2 days of travelling and food and everything else, we just weren't up to another whole day of travel down to New Ulm (sorry!). We'll be heading down there next Saturday anyway. Here are just a few pics and a video from Christmas.
Oh that chocolate fountain was evil. Someone even tried chocolate dipped cheese. No one was ambitious enough to try chocolate dipped meatball.
Casey getting into her first present opening.
Megan got a lovely new dress. She loves wearing a bunch of different costume dresses we have, but some are getting too small or too ragged.
And finally, although I got a lot of video footage from Christmas, this one is my favorite.
I was describing a work situation to Andrea last night and used the term "Grand Poobah", only to immediately have Megan ask, "Whats a Poobah?" That was fun. Not so fun was when I later said "Fubar" and of course, got the same question.
It's 2pm on this lovely Wed afternoon. I just got back from an 11 mile run, Andrea is off seeing 2012, and both girls are napping. This is probably the absolute calmest moment I'll have for the next few days. I'll take it! I always have mixed feelings about time off around the holidays. Sure, I have a 5 day weekend, but it will feel like much less.
Today at least, is mostly laid back. I might head out here before the big snow storm comes and buy a few last minute groceries to get through the weekend. Then comes tomorrow and the "play it by ear". We are slated to visit family in North Mpls, which isn't that far. But depending on the state of the roads, it will feel worse.
Christmas day should be easy however, as it's just spending all day at my Mom's across town here. The big thing this year is that my Mom is going to setup her Chocolate Fountain she got a few years ago, for the very first time. It should be interesting, I think I'm going to get pictures.
Then Saturday, following Christmas, we are scheduled to head down to New Ulm and visit with Andrea's parents for the day. Again, that trip will hinge somewhat on the weather. I'll brave a certain amount, but we'll just have to see how things are looking that morning.
Too all the workers plowing streets over the next 72 hours, my hats off to you. Thanks for making the roads safer for all the holiday travellers and for giving up your time during the holidays.
My obsessive side wouldn't stop thinking about the filming that happened this week. I kept going over in my head what I wish I would have said, how I wish I would have prepared, and trying to remember what in the world I even did end up saying. I think the worst part is that I feel like I gave video games a bad rap, blaming them for my weight gain. They were a factor to be sure, but they were more my main excuse. At the time, it felt "better" to just lose myself in video games then to face the realities of my bad decisions.
Anyway, long story short, I finally got over myself yesterday and came to a realization. It's just something I did - I'm glad I did it, period. Whatever comes of it, and however it turns out, it is what it is. The bad news is, the actual commercial might not even be put on the interwebs for many months. They are releasing them a few at a time over the next few months. By the time it gets posted, I'll have completely forgot about it. One last thing - they let me take all the pictures I wanted. So here is a behind the scenes shot of where I was.
In other news, Casey offically started crawling this week! Very exiciting stuff. If it wasn't for the bad colds that both Megan and Casey have, this week would have been pretty awesome. Both girls are having hard time breathing at night, and with our luck, Andrea and I will catch it just before Christmas. I'm just hoping they are both a little more healthy in a week.
We also recently went to the eye doctor for Megan, and found that her vision is not improving as much as it needs to. I have a lot of worries about her long term vision, and it's hard to think of the possible negative outcomes. I told the doctor to give me some worst case scenarios last time, because I needed to hear it. Andrea had a GREAT idea recently, to switch to cloth patches instead of the adhesive kind. It's making a huge difference. Megan doesn't mind them, can put them on herself, and will wear them without any fight. We have high hopes these will help over the next year.
Lastly, just a great picture that we took this afternoon while playing around. Andrea's parents came up to visit today, and that was great. We'll be heading down to visit them the next couple weekends as well.
Where to start? I need to brain dump some of my thoughts about today, before I forget. I survived the day of filming, and that's the important part. I'm glad I did it, and to have had the experience, but I'm surprised at how hard it was. For someone who talks about himself all the time, you'd think it would have been easier. But being on the spot, trying to consolidate 2+ years of hard work, and how it was that I managed to do a complete 180 on my life wasn't easy at all.
Oddly enough, part of what made it so hard was just how long ago it all really happened. I mean, it's hard to think that I've actually stopped worrying about losing weight for nearly 3 years now. That's a lot of time to forget who and what I was all about when I was overweight. Maybe I should have gone back through some old blog posts and refreshed my memory!
Everyone said I did a great job, but I gotta be honest and say I didn't feel the same way. I was all over the place with what I was saying and overall, let my nervousness get the better of me. Almost like I was trying too hard instead of just letting my thoughts come freely. My only hope is the magical world of editing can mix things up and put it back together into a cohesive, positive message.
Because really, the message I DID want to get across was simple. If you feel like you want to change, don't wait. Change isn't going to be easy, because nothing worth doing ever is. But if you work hard, you can change, and in the end, it's all worth it. Thank you to everyone out there that helped inspire ME to change.
"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well." -- Theodore Roosevelt
I left off with a teaser for this weekend, mentioning an "interview". Let me start with bursting the bubble that it is not work related at all. Now that I've got that out of the way, on to the real "story".
A few months ago, on the way into work I heard a radio advertisement about the "Do Groove" campaign being put on by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The ad said they were looking for people who had successfully managed to lose weight. They wanted people to log on to their web site and submit their story, how they did it, why they did it, etc. I figured, what the hell, I got a good story. Most anyone reading this blog already knows more details than I could submit in a few paragraphs, so as you can imagine throwing together some of the bigger aspects about my journey wasn't that difficult.
Fast forward about two months, I had almost forgot about the thing, and I get a phone call from someone with the campaign. They wanted to do a phone interview with me to hear more about what I wrote. I said sure, and a few days later had a 20-30 minute conversation with someone. I was then called back a few days later after that and told they wanted to have me come in for a casting session to potentially be part of their on-line commercial campaign! Once again, I figured, sure what the hell! That sounds both fun and interesting.
So last week Wed, the day of the nasty snow storm, I had a casting interview session that evening, at 3:30pm. I thought I was totally nervous, which I was, and that there was probably no way they would pick me. I can tend to ramble on and figured my incoherent thought processes wouldn't be what they would choose. But Friday night rolls around, and I get the phone call - they would like me to come in and shoot a commercial!
Now, to be clear, these are webisode type commercials. I have no illusions that I would end up on TV (but I'll keep everyone posted!). It is still cool to feel like... I don't know, maybe my experiences have something worth sharing, in a way that might help someone else. That's a good feeling, and yeah, maybe even a little ego stroking too.
Never in a million years when I started making changes in my life did I think it would culminate into something like this. I'm trying not to make it out to be more than it is, I mean, any yahoo with a digital camera can make a video to post on the internet (i.e. videos I post), but it's still cool to be singled out in this way.
The video shoot is Tuesday next week, with some kind of wardrobe session on Monday. Once things get posted up to the web site, I'll let everyone know so you can go read my story and see how my interview turns out. Here's hoping I don't end up too nervous.
That's me. A week or so back I had planned on taking Wed off this week, for an ear appointment and to be home so Andrea could goto the dentist. Lo and behold, I get to stay home, using sick time, on the day of the horrible snow storm! I also was able to schedule an interesting interview later in the day... but more on that this weekend (teaser!).
Winter is offically here, and it offically sucks. I forgot how quickly traffic becomes an absolute nightmare. This morning I woke up late (6am) and wasn't on the road until 6:30am. It added a solid 10-15 minutes to my commute. Ugh! More motivation to get out and on the road even earlier these days...
The worst part about winter, is that when the commute becomes longer, something has to give time wise. That means less time running or worse, more "skip" days. After being in the car for a solid hour, the last thing I want to do is get on the treadmill for another hour.
Enough whining for now. In other news, Casey is growing up fast. She is trying so hard to crawl these days, just not quite sure how it works. Her upper two teeth are coming in already and she is trying lots of new baby foods all the time. Megan is still... Megan. Might be time to take the advice I've been given and read a few more parenting books.
With Monday off work, this week went by pretty fast. For whatever reason, December always seems to be the "fastest" month of the year. Maybe it's Christmas, maybe it's time off work, who knows. All I know is I'm gonna blink and it's going to be 2010. Twenty Ten. It's weird when you stop to say it outloud. For the last 9 years, we've all been saying "Two thousand and...". But prior to that, we never said "One thousand nineteen hundred and...". Everything was "Nineteen Eighty." Or "Nineteen Ninety Five".
Now, we will enter a transition period. Some people will linger with the current way and say "Two Thousand and Ten". While others will go back to saying "Twenty Ten". Which will you be?
Of course the pending New Year has me thinking about my goals for 2010. I have some good ones, but so far they are all personal goals. I need to do what I did last year and start thinking about goals I want to make for other people. That doesn't quite come off right, because I'm not talking about making goals that I think other people should do. What I mean is, coming up with goals for myself that help other people.
In otherwords, coming up with the things I can do in the next year that help make me a better father, husband, son (& son in-law), brother (& brother in-law), and friend.
I do know that I have a lot of positive thoughts about the future right now, which is very unlike me. It's doubly weird considering all that we are going through right now and some of the family challenges we face on a day to day basis. I mean, it's a monumental task just to get Megan dressed these days. We have fights almost every night once I get home from work, usually revolving around her phyiscal side. Hitting, kicking, biting clothes. I won't even start about bed times and overnights.
Yet somehow, I know it is all going to pass. Megan will grow up, and yeah, it might take a year. Or even two, or hell, even three or more before she gets out of this phase. And during that time I might need to learn how to better deal with her outbursts. But we'll get through it together. I have faith.
I promised 3 days in a row of videos, but the rest of the weekend just got away from me. Sunday we did an awesome amount of family stuff, Casey's first ever swimming trip to the YMCA, Vikings game, and dinner with the family. Made for a fun but long day, with no time for blogging. I even had Monday off work but still had other things going on.
Here is the last video in my video series of blog posts. It was from Saturday this weekend while Andrea and Megan were setting up the Christmas tree. I didn't realize the clip was so long (2:34) when I uploaded it. Hopefully it's not too long as to cause boredom!
Does that video seem familiar? Because it should. Almost exactly three years ago, we saw a similar event. Granted Megan was a little older than Casey is now...
