Weight loss update

Long post tonight, this way I can get all my health craze stuff out of my system in one big ass post. If you can't tell by now, I've been working very hard at losing weight lately. I've tried not to overload my blog with weight loss/fitness type posts mainly because it's a more personal thing for me. But every once and awhile, it feels good to share.


The weight just seems to keep dropping off at a consistent rate of 10 pounds a month. At this rate, I'll be around 240 by the end of the year! That would be amazing if I'm able to reach that, but I'm prepared to see it start slowing down. Obviously the fast weight loss is motivating, but I can't let it get to my head and get discouraged once it starts to slow down. (which it will)

If I had to say what my specific goals are, it is to get in the absolute highest range of the "normal" scale on the BMI chart. That would be a 24.9 BMI, which for my height would be a weight of 189. Now, considering the fact that the one time I felt like I was the healthiest I've ever been in my entire life I was at 195, I'm seeing 189 as a damn hard goal. I started out this summer with a 40 BMI score, which is extremely obese. I'll be excited to just get into the overweight scores, which would be a weight of 227. Maybe I'll throw a party or something. "Congratulations Shawn! You're now officially just Overweight!"

But seriously, I'm still surprised at how simple weight loss really is. Breaking it down to basic math helped me a lot. More calories out then calories in equals weight loss. The other main thing was completely cutting out fast food, aside from the occasional 6 inch turkey sub from subway. (with no cheese or mayo!) I have decided Fast Food is Hell on Earth. I spent some time browsing various nutritional information for a lot of chains and was stunned at what I found. I would add up a typical fast food meal I'd eat and find it to be anywhere from 1200 to 1700+ calories. That's more calories then I'm eating in an entire day now! Just crazy...

Speaking of fast food, there is something else I've been wanting to post about. Obviously, as part of this weight loss I've completely changed my eating habits, and reading a lot of information about eating healthy. One thing a lot of these books say is that after changing your habits you "retrain" your body to crave healthy foods and that you find yourself looking for fruits and veggies when you get hungry and want a snack. I would just like to state for the record, that is complete and total bullshit. Every single lunch hour at work, I see someone with greasy pizza or tacos or a nice juicy cheeseburger with fries. And you bet your ass I want some. I bike past a long strip of fast food restaurants and the smell alone is enough to make me crave the stuff. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason I don't stop and buy some food right then and there is because I don't bring cash with me on my bike rides.

I'm 99% sure I will always crave unhealthy foods. You know why? BECAUSE THEY TASTE GOOD. And if you try to tell me otherwise, you are lying to yourself. Pizza tastes good. Sandwiches with mayo taste better, potatoes smothered in cheese and sour cream taste better. Deep fried anything... just tastes BETTER! Therein lies the power of choice. Now lets just hope I can continue with the choices I'm making for the long term.

And don't try to pull some "enjoy unhealthy foods in moderation" crap on me, because it won't work. Not for my all or nothing personality, it just doesn't fly. I don't do things in moderation and so in order to eat healthy, those are the choices I have to make. I can just hope that after making the same choices over and over enough, they will get easier and easier.

Madden's 2006

No, I'm not referring to the latest football video game. We headed up to Madden's on Friday - the trip up sucked. There was some kind of accident involving a semi truck on the north part of 94, the traffic was horrible.

What sucked even more, the accident didn't even look that bad. There were more cop cars then accident vehicles blocking most of the road. Anyway, we made it in time for dinner so I guess I shouldn't complain. Our room view was awesome once again, and the weather was perfect all weekend.

Saturday was my big bike ride, the main thing I was looking forward to for the whole weekend. It was just awesome, take a look at these pictures. The trail was so smooth and straight, the weather was perfect. I will definitely be going back to this trail in the future - maybe not this year, but at some point. I did 32 miles in 2 hours of biking!! That's raw time, the cyclometer only measures time actually spent biking. The trip probably took closer to 2 and half hours with breaks for taking pictures and the longer 5-10 minute break I took at the half way point.

The rest of Saturday was okay, a nice dinner and comedian / magician. After that was a casino theme night that was pretty generous with the payouts. I turned $5000 into $200,000 in just under 2 hours, heh. Then you could buy raffle tickets for $10,000 a piece for prizes. I didn't win anything, which was lame. Some people won multiple times, because no one setup any rules or said anything like only 1 prize per person. Oh well - not everything is perfect.

This weekend is the big Anderson Labor Day get together, so we will be busy getting ready for that. I'm going to try and find some more time to post again later this week.

I like reality. It tastes of bread.

Don't expect much in the way of interesting posts this week. Added to my already busy schedule, I went and bought Dungeon Siege 2 on Monday. Just a little time killer video game that I'll probably play obsessively three times back to back in order to unlock all the difficulty levels. Can you say 100+ hours of gaming?

This week started out great since I decided to take a vacation day Monday. That night, I did a 25 mile bike ride with Steve. The cool news is that Steve signed up for the St. Paul Bike classic, so we will being doing that together! Should be fun and more enjoyable to have someone along for the ride. My brother also started his classes yesterday, which means I will see him pretty much never. At least we get to chat online while he is in class - his school has wireless internet and he brings his lap top with him.

My bro said something to me yesterday that I thought was interesting:

"You are the most zen person I know."

I took it as a complement. He is of course referring to the fact that I hardly get angry about anything. Sure, I get pissed off when someone cuts me off in traffic, just ask Andrea. But even she has said to me before, "How come you never seem to get angry?" Honestly, I'm not sure. In some ways, I feel like anger is the most useless of human emotions. I can't think of a single time in my life where anger served a useful or productive purpose. In fact, the few things I remember doing while extremely mad, are usually things I regret. Like punching a hole in a wall, for example. (which I was able to hide from my Mom for years) I can only hope my lack of anger will help me in fatherhood when I find an Xbox game disk broken because my daughter thought it should fit into the Gamecube....

Maybe I just don't like anger, because anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering - and that is the path to the Dark Side!

Who needs soft water?

Warning:The following paragraph will make very little sense to those not familiar with AD&D and/or roleplaying.

Dungeons and Dragons went a little long this Friday night. We started around 10pm and didn't finish until 5am. The last hour however, was a long discussion about the role of the GM, the players, and overall expectations. It was a bit heated, but some really constructive ideas came from it. I'm just a newbie GM so honestly, I need more work on things like being creative with situations the players encounter and coming up with interesting story ideas where I don't have to force the players into one single path. It's an interesting challenge, something I've never really worked hard at before. Hopefully our next session won't be for a few weeks, and I can use that extra time to refine my GMing skills!

Shirt says Congrats Shawn & Andi, SO CUTE!

Saturday was our first Baby shower. It was great fun even if not a lot of people were able to attend. You know us 30 somethings, our lives are so hectic! I didn't particularly enjoy the baby food tasting contest, but damn did that give me a new respect for what I might be feeding my baby some day! After the shower I hit up a decent bike ride and then played some Magic: The Gathering with my bro that night. Scott is trying to jam as much fun stuff as he can into this last weekend before he starts classes.

Today while grocery shopping I finally broke down and bought some rock salt for our water softener. I have been so bad at keeping the water softer filled with salt. I think since we've lived here, which was exactly one year this month, I've filled the water softener 2 times? I'll have to get better with that. :-)

This coming week should go pretty fast. Monday will be a long (24 mile?) bike ride with Steve. Tuesday night, Andrea and I are going to check out the birthing centers that we have decided to have our baby at. This is a change of venue due to some circumstances that have happened recently. I think it will be a good change, as we weren't to impressed with the tour of where we had originally planned on delivering. Wed night is our birthing class on breast feeding, and then this weekend we head up to Madden's Golf Resort for our company retreat. (and hopefully my first every 30 mile bike ride!)

Week in Review

No updates this week, I've been slacking. Seems like it's been a really busy week but at the same time not busy at all. Anyway, here is a week in review. As I mentioned, Andrea came back early from her conference. She had fun as she expected she would, even though at times it "gets really intense". She made it over to the Iowa State fair, but didn't get to spend much time there. She also proceeded to teach me a song she learned called The Button Factory (seriously, click on that link and listen to it). That about sums up why I can't go to these things. I can sit around and have philosophical discussion about life, death, religion what have you. But as soon as they break out in song, I'm out.

Wednesday night Andrea and I went to birthing class again. There are 2 more classes left, both focusing on breast feeding. Those are really important to us, so we are looking forward to them. But weds class just sucked. We ditched out only after an hour into the class because after the break they were just going to do relaxation stuff and watch a video.

Andrea's parents are coming up today to spend the afternoon with her, and then we will be going out to dinner tonight. My brother and his crew informed me they want to play Dungeons & Dragons tonight after that. I swear, it's like crack. You give them a little D&D and all of a sudden they can't get enough! Too bad my brother starts college classes again next week, so I'm sure that will put an end to weekly sessions and end up more like monthly sessions if we are lucky.

Biking Update:
Monday: 5.5 mile test run of the cyclometer. Seemed to work great!
Tuesday: 24.5 mile longest ride so far. The plan was to meet up with Steve for this ride. If it went well, he was thinking of joining me for the St. Paul Bike Classic. However, he ran into bike problems just as we got started, you can read about what happened on his blog.
Thursday: 19.25 mile ride

The plan is to do another long ride this weekend, and then next weekend do my first 30 mile ride up north on the Paul Bunyan Trail!

Tech Toys

After a quick 12-mile ride this morning I took my bike in to the place I bought it for a 90 day tune up. They basically just check your breaks and all the gears and give it a little cleaning. I also bought some new pedals because I didn't like the pedals that came with the bike. I think they were called "clipless" pedals that have some kind of locking mechanism for special shoes. Because of this, I could only use one side of the pedal. The other side of the pedal had these bumps on them that made it so I couldn't use that side to pedal. I was constantly looking down and/or taking my feet of the pedals to adjust the side, etc. It finally got annoying enough that I decided to replace them with some normal pedals. However, that wasn't the coolest new thing I bought....

I finally bought a cyclometer for my bike!! It will be awesome to finally know more accurate distances, ride times, average speeds, top speeds, the works! Hopefully it helps motivate me to keep pushing myself harder as well, which is a definite bonus.

Well, Andrea just called me a few hours ago to tell me she decided to come home early, so she will be home tonight. I was going to make some fancy chicken and rice dinner, but in the end I opted for the easier route: frozen lasagna and garlic bread!

I'm attacking the Darkness!

Last night we played some Dungeons and Dragons! This is my second attempt to get a campaign started as a Dungeon Master. In my first attempt, Scott and I tried to include our wives in on the gaming fun. That experiment failed miserably so I decided to just stick to the pure gamers this time around.

Trying to explain what D&D is and why it is fun to those that don't get it, is damn near impossible. I enjoy it simply as a creative outlet. Seriously, how often during our day to day lives do we really get a chance to BE creative? I know I sure don't. I get up in the morning, go through my routine, and head to work. Once there, I go through the motions, the procedures, what have you. Sure, maybe every now and then I get to use some problem solving skills, but that's not quite the same. You remember how when you were a kid you played make believe? (If you don't, then I'm really sorry) But if you do, then you understand D&D at the most basic level. It's just a way for grown ups to play make believe. What's so wrong with that?

Biking Update: This morning the weather was perfect. The plan was set, I had mapped it out earlier this week. With high 60's weather all morning I did my first 20 mile trek! I was able to finish in 2 hours, which included a 10 minute break around the midway point to rest and refill my water. As I came up to the last hard hill, all I could think was "this is going to suck, this is going to suck, oh man this is going to suck..." Before I could stop repeating that over and over in my head, I had reached the top. Wow. I finished strong and felt great. I'm definitely going out again tomorrow morning, the weather is just to nice not to.

After my ride I talked with Andrea on the phone for a few minutes, she will be back Monday. I then headed out to see Dukes of Hazzard all by my lonesome. I came home and did clean up from last nights gaming. Mt. Dew & chips everywhere!!

Midweek update

Sorry, couldn't think of a better title... Andrea is gone this week, at a Unitarian Universalist conference in Boone, IA. Actually, it's two conferences joined into one: Opus and Concentric. I miss her, but I'm glad she is having fun. She has really enjoyed past conferences. My brother and his wife are in the process of moving out - I know they don't think it, but I am going to miss them a ton. It was a fun summer even if we didn't get to see each other a whole hell of a lot. It was nice to just have once a week where we would all sit down for dinner and chat, even if it ended in me and Scott arguing about some random topic.

So all of a sudden, I'm home alone and it's really weird. I mean, not in a bad way. I'm used to being at home alone, seeing as how Andrea has been working nights for well over the past 4 years. But it's still a little strange experiencing it again. I had flashbacks of Idaho when Andrea was still in college and I was REALLY alone. Then of course I started thinking about how I should probably enjoy this week of solitude, seeing as how I probably won't have many quiet nights alone for a LONG time soon enough. :-)

Biking update: Last night I biked 18 miles - 4 miles over to Steve's place, and then we did a 14 mile loop together. (one of the routes he does) Tonight I did 15.5 miles and it felt great! I feel more and more confident about the 30 mile bike ride coming up next month. I just hope the weather continues to cooperate this week so I can get some more biking in.

Come Friday, I'm going to try and start some Dungeons & Dragons with my brother, and some friends of his. I've invested a bunch of money on books over the last few months for some odd reason, so we will see how that goes.

Would you look at that

After getting back from my weekend trip, I headed out for a quick bike ride even though it was kind of warm today. I wanted to visit my Mom and wish her happy birthday, and also I promised I'd tell her the name Andrea and I have picked out for the baby. (no, I won't tell you) On the way home, I felt like extending my ride out a little bit and ended up doing 13.5 miles. It felt great! After arriving home, I was met with a surprise.

(Feet covered with socks just for you Mike)

Just when I thought it would start to get a little harder to keep losing weight, I end up dropping another 10 lbs. One part of me feels like, "Why the hell didn't you start sooner! Keep it up!" And another part of me is just a little worried I'm losing weight too fast, and maybe it's not good for me. I'm not sure, I figure that when you have as much to lose as I do, it's probably normal. Even though 20 lbs seems like a lot, it's really not enough for people to notice. Well, except for my Mom. (Thanks Mom!) Fortunately, people noticing has never been on my list of motivational factors.

The truth is, I'm a bit afraid to admit my true motivation. Why? I don't know really, I guess it's simply because I've always believed that if you want to be healthy, you should do it for yourself. You shouldn't try to get healthy because someone else says you should or for some special event where you want to look better, or as I mentioned above, simply so people will notice. I'm sure you can guess the source of this new motivation, my pending fatherhood.

It's really a combination of everything I guess. From my desire to teach my daughter how to be healthy by example to simply wanting to be alive long enough to experience all I can about fatherhood. Do I wish I had been able to come to the simple realization that healthy = better on my own? Sure. But I've always been the type of person that doesn't seem to find change in my life until it is forced on me by some external event/force/experience/etc. (thus my alignment with Existentialism) I suppose it would make since then, that possibly the biggest event in my life is finally the motivation I needed. For now, I just hope I can keep it up and see where it takes me. Because tonight, I decided to cheat and enjoy a little Davanni's! (wheat bread, turkey sandwich with extra lettuce!) Although one book I read said you should stop using food as a reward, maybe I can get away doing it after every 10 lbs lost. :-)

Duluth Weekend

It's been awhile since I've had time to write anything, mainly because after Tuesday my week nights were super busy. Wed night was our weekly birth class and Thursday night I had to get ready for my weekend trip, which I'm going to post about first!

It was a super weekend for a trip up to the north shore, having been invited to spend some time with old college friends at a lake cabin. The weather was perfect, the company was great, and it was awesome to reconnect with old friends. It seems hard to think it's been 7 years since I graduated college. It sure doesn't seem like that.

Friday we settled in and caught up. We ended the night with some Mario Kart for gamecube and some Mario Party. Mario Kart was basically how me and my college roommates got through college. (original SNES Mario Kart and N64 Kart) Pretty much every weekend contained some amount of Mario Kart and Alcohol. Of course, we all thought our skills improved as our blood alcohol content went up.

Saturday we headed up the north shore to Splitrock Lighthouse. It was a lot cooler (temperature) right near the lake which was nice. We did some hiking and of course, throwing rocks into Lake Superior! If you've never done it, I can't really explain the addictive quality of it, but trust me, its just fun to stand out there and throw rocks for awhile.

We headed back to unwind with a nice dinner of northern trout on the grill and some relaxing trivial pursuit. And for the record, the NCAA tournament has 65 teams (not 64) because of something that happened back in 1999 involving a new conference. So HA! I then forced my friends to watch Napoleon Dynamite since none of them had seen it. It was met with mixed reviews, but I have spread the love of Ligers, YESSSSSS!

I've limited the amount of pictures on the front page, but there are a bunch more. Click here to see the rest of the pictures from this weekend.

Shooting in AV

Just when you think you live in a safe neighborhood, you wake up the harsh realities. Less then 2 miles from my house, a spot that barely 4 hours earlier, I had biked past 3 times doing multiple loops, a convenience store clerk was found shot in the head. Will they catch whoever did this? Will they ever discover a motive? Who knows... but regardless, violence this close to home is scary. About 2 years ago, at our former apartment in Boise, Idaho, the same thing happened. I had stopped at a Taco Bell about 3 blocks from our apartment at 9:30pm to grab some food. 10:00pm that same night, a man shot and killed his girlfriend in the Taco Bell parking lot.

As Andrea was leaving for work this afternoon at 1:30pm, apparently a channel 5 news van was in our culdesac. They approached Andrea asking her questions about our neighbors, who they tracked down through a license plate or something. They said it was in relation to the shooting. This seemed very odd, especially since our neighbors moved out about 2 weeks ago, and there doesn't seem to be any connection.

It's days like today I have serious doubts about my choice to bring a child into this world. When I hear about violence at Apple Valley High School, I wonder, "What is it going to be like in 14 years when my daughter would be going there?" Is private school the only answer to providing an education in a safe environment? (and along those lines, are the wealthy the only ones that deserve to live in safe, violence free neighborhoods?) I thought that AVHS was a pretty nice, safe, school - but that was 11 years ago. What will the school be like 25 years later? Is that the same as comparing an inner city school of 1980, to how it is today in 2005?

As much as I want to shield my daughter from these harsh realities of the world, I realize it would just do more harm then good. But how do you teach your kids independence at the same time wanting to protect them from all the bad things in life? Thankfully I have time to figure that out, but it seems like a very hard thing to come to grips with.

Biking and Boozing

A coworker of mine invited me out this weekend for some biking and bar hopping with a small group. I guess it's something they used to do back in college, since biking while intoxicated is completely legal. I didn't really know where we would be biking, but he assured me it was all really nice trail areas.

I arrived at the designated starting point in St. Louis Park off Minnetonka Blvd. From there we hopped on some trails, that I have to assume were part of the Grand Rounds. At one point we were riding along (and faster then) a coal train. I think we then went past Cedar Lake and ended up at our first stop, Old Chicago. There everyone loaded up on beer and I filled up my water bottle. :-)

Back on the trails, we did another few miles and went around Lake Calhoun and ended up at Applebee's. We stopped there for dinner, a couple perfect margaritas and more beer. (water and diet Pepsi for me!) After dinner, we headed out again for another hour or so of biking and ended up back where we started.

All said, we did 19 miles, which I thought was awesome. Although there were 2 long breaks, I wasn't even tired the way I get after doing the hills around my house. It made the biking so much more fun, even though it was kind of warm out. It also confirmed my suspicions about hills sucking. I think the next step will be to give up on the south suburbs, buy a bike rack for my car, and always drive somewhere for longer bike rides on the weekends!

After doing 19 miles and still feeling pretty good, I'm convinced I can do the 30 miles for the St. Paul Bike Classic. (with another month or so practice) So I signed up!

Behind door number 2

A NEW CAR!!!

Now before you say, "OMG Shawn I can't believe you let your wife buy an AVEO, the cheapest car known to man." Let me explain something - Andrea likes small cars. Her progression of cars looks like this:

Renault Alliance -> Dodge Omni -> Geo Metro -> 2005 Aveo (with only 8400 miles on it!!).

Her new car even has a CD/MP3 player! It was a really good deal since it was slightly used at a Nissan dealer. I think they were just happy to get rid of it. The sales guy ended up telling us he made a mistake and had priced it as a 2004 used Aveo when really it was a 2005. We kinda believed him, simply because the price was much lower then standard Kelly Blue Book value. I think it will be a good little car for Andi, and it will really give us both piece of mind when she travels to Iowa in August by herself for her week long conference.

I've also posted a review of the Kung Fu Hustle DVD coming out soon. I highly recommend checking it out! (my review, and the DVD)

Bad Luck Good Luck

Tonight's post was supposed to be about my first St. Paul Saints baseball game. I was going to take pictures, post interesting commentary, etc. Instead, it gets to be about my luck, both good and bad. The plan for tonight was to have Andrea pick me up from work downtown and we would then head over to Midway Stadium for the Saints game. Pretty simple right? Well, it started out okay. Andrea picked me up, and we headed towards the ballpark.

Just last week, Andrea was complaining about the A/C in her car not working. Next time I was in her car, the A/C was working fine - okay, so maybe it was a fluke? On the way to the game, the A/C stopped working again. Hmmm.. odd. Oh well, its a nice day out, roll the windows down and go on. Waiting at a left turn light, smoke started coming out of the hood! So we quickly pull over to a side road and pop the hood. The engine was obviously overheating, the coolant boiling over (not from the radiator, but from the coolant tank). So this is where you are thinking, "Oh man, that's some bad luck."

No, this is Shawn you are talking about. My wife calls me "charmed", my family thinks I'm insanely lucky. I've always called it, "Things always seem to work out for me." So as we are standing there, looking at this overheated engine, 2 guys walk up to us:

"Hey, what's up? We just got off work at the repair shop down the street, what seems to be the problem?"

They then spent a few minutes pointing out the problem, which ended up being the cooling fan not turning on. (so either a temperature sensor or a fan motor) More importantly, they let us know about a couple car shops within a few blocks that were open until 8pm. What were the odds? Who knows, maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket tomorrow. Anyway, thanks again you 2 random car mechanics, for helping us out and reminding me that perhaps Minnesota nice still does exist.

We thought maybe we could walk the remaining 3-4 miles to the ballpark, but in the end, the Applebee's at the end of the block seemed more inviting. Andrea had already been walking all day at the Minnesota Zoo. We called Mom to pick us up, and left the car in the shop over night. Tomorrow? Car shopping for Andrea!! Mommy gets a new pair of shoes! (or a new car, as the case may be)

Most Excellent Adventure

I was looking back at my previous posts and I couldn't help but notice a pattern. I tend to post twice a week, once during the week and again on Sunday. I think the main reason is that most of the week is pretty mundane, and I have nothing really interesting to post. Seriously, who wants to read, "Today I got up, went to work, came home, exercised, watched some TV and went to bed." Oh well, too late, you just did.

Anyway, today I wanted to write about my most excellent bike ride. I've been psyching myself up for a much longer bike ride then anything I had done yet - starting with this weekend. Unfortunately, it was so hot that I was only able to get 2 small rides in on sat and sunday. Then when it rained all last night I was really bummed out. So when the weather was saying tonight was going to be high 60's with nice cloud cover and low humidity, I got really pumped up. I decide I would ride from my house to Blockbuster where my brother was working. That way, I had a destination in mind (which helps me) and I would also have an excuse to take a break midway through. I did 12.5 miles, and it felt great! Although my left leg just barely started to cramp up as I was getting back home, I really felt like I could still do another few miles. I learned a couple of really useful things on tonights ride:

• Hills suck. I think all my previous rides contained too many hills which just end up killing me and making me too tired to continue. Tonights ride was mainly east/west, and only contained a few minor hills (with one major hill at the start when I was fresh). Going north/south from my house is too hilly.
  
• Temperature/humidity levels have a huge impact on my endurance levels. Less sweat = ride longer = feel better. And everything I've read says that exercising longer is better for you then exercising harder.
  
• I can do longer bike rides over more level distances, and hills suck.
  

I'm pretty sure that over an hour period I could easily do a 15-20 mile trek over paved mostly level paths. The other reason it's cool to know I can ride farther, is that I've been thinking about maybe driving to a few other bike paths in the area, like the Gateway state trail or portions of the Grand Rounds trails that go near Lake Nokomis. Another thing I'd like to try is the Paul Bunyan trail when I goto Madden's Resort in August for our company weekend.

If that wasn't enough links for you, I'm even considering registering for the St. Paul Classic Bike Tour! Remember when I said I'm either 0% or 100%? Ya, this is me being 100%.

Texas No-Limit Hold'em

This morning I had a little chat with my scale. Normally it just kinda nods and tells me good job, keep up the good work, and we go our separate ways. But this morning, it just wouldn't shut up. It went on and on, giving me this long convoluted motivational speech. I didn't want to be rude, so I stood through the ramblings until it was finished. And just like some sucker buying from an infomercial at 2am, I bought into it's little speech. It convinced me to go biking today, on one of the hottest and humid days of the summer! So I mapped out a 6 mile loop and at 11:30am, the hottest part of the day, I headed out. It was a good ride, and I'm glad I did it. The only mistake I made was bringing gatorade instead of water - half way through it just became WAY to sugary and I couldn't drink anymore even though I was thirsty. I love this new Gmaps Pedometer that I found, my friend Steve also uses it and mentioned it on his blog as well. I just wish I had a way to check hill levels prior to a ride, because those things can kill me. I live basically on the top of a hill and any direction I go leads to massive up and downs.

Last night I ran a Texas No-Limit poker tournament at my place, nothing to big. Just a $30 dollar buy in with the top 3 going home with money. After 2 months of planning, mass emails, and date changes I was able to get 5 other guys over (for 6 total). I'd say not a bad turn out for my first hosted tournament. Maybe I can get even more next time. I think everyone had a good time, I know I did. I went out 4th, so I didn't win anything, but it was a really fun way to go out. (I had the hand until the very last card was flipped - always exciting!) I have to admit, it was damn funny watching a bunch of us 30 y/o guys getting tired and worn out by 11pm. After it was over, someone mentioned how back in the day, we would have all been pumped up after something like that and been trying to figure out what we would do with the rest of the night. :-)

One last thing, I'm not even going to bother with a full review of Alexander - Director's Cut DVD that comes out on August 2nd. Seeing DVD's before they are released is a little benefit of having a brother that works at Blockbuster. The movie is just so bad it doesn't even warrant a full review, suffice to say I would have been much happier to live my whole life without having to see Colin Farrell's nut sack.

Bloody Show

Last night started out a bit weird. As I got home from work and sat down to enjoy my latest edition of PC Gamer magazine, I found that reading was difficult. It started with little blotches around what I was reading. I could see the word I was looking at but it was getting hard to see any words around it. I chalked it up to being tired and put the magazine down and headed up stairs to enjoy a nice salmon dinner Andrea had prepared. As dinner progressed, so did my vision problem. Eventually it got so bad that I couldn't see my hand moving 6 inches out and 6 inches down in front of my face. I tried to remain calm even though I was sort of freaking out. As we headed out to child birth class it finally started to go away, but it was replaced by a massive headache. It was then that I realized, I've just experienced my first migraine! Luckily it was minor and I was able to get through the rest of the night. I could still feel a dull pain this morning when I got up, but I think for the most part the worst has passed. Now the question is, why would I get a migraine like that all of a sudden?

I know you are dying to know what I learned in child birth class this week: The Bloody show, soft bowel movements, and diarrhea. All the best parts of child birth! I just don't think Andi needs 8 weeks of constant reminders of the pain and ugly parts of childbirth. I think everyone pretty much knows that it isn't an easy process, but what good things in life are easy?

At one point we separated by sexes to do an exercise. We had to make list of "Joys" and "Concerns" about everything, from before, during and after childbirth. The first thing the guys put on the "Concerns" list was Money. Interestingly, the second thing on the "Joy" list was - Time away from work. So I asked this room of about 12 guys, how much time everyone was taking off work? The answers were, "1 week", "2 weeks", "a few weeks". When someone asked me, and I responded, 2 months, the entire room basically looked at me and said, "WHAT?", "How can you do that?", "2 months?! NO WAY!". When I mentioned FMLA, they basically looked at me like I was crazy because "that's unpaid!" It must suck not being financially responsible.

Or as my brother would say, the cheapest bastard he knows.

In other news...

Something else I wanted to share with everyone. It seems that my body is reacting to some of the changes I've been making. I've lost those initial 10 pounds you always end up losing really fast after make drastic changes to your calorie input/output.

I've actually been floating around 300 for a year or more now and this is the first time I've actually had noticeable weight loss. It's motivating to see results already. I don't have any particular weight goals in mind, but I have decided that if I can lose another 10 pounds by October, my reward will be a membership to Lifetime fitness.

I've been trying to figure out why I think I will be successful this time. The answer I've come up with is Choice. Intellectually, people are usually aware of the bad choices they make, I know I am. Yet I would continually make choices that were bad for my health. What I've come to realize is that it wasn't the individual bad choices that were guiding my actions, but the overall choice to NOT CARE about my health. I think for the first time, I've made the choice to BE healthy, and the rest of the day to day choices just sort of fall into place. I know it sounds cheesy, and a lot like a quote from the Matrix. (Choose the Red pill or the Blue pill?) But it works for me, so I guess that's all that matters.

Now I just need to figure out where all these damn ants are coming from! I know I eat at my computer a lot, but it's pretty clean right now. No food leftovers, no pop cans, etc. STUPID ANTS!

The Reunion

Well, I survived. After a nice hour and half drive down to Lafayette, we met up at Laura's parents house in New Ulm before heading down to George's Bar. Of all the things I wasn't looking forward too, awkward conversations, having to repeat my job description 20 times or getting through the evening without a stiff drink. None of them compared to what we were in store for. After arriving to George's bar, my worst nightmare was confirmed - THERE WAS NO AIR CONDITIONING! To say it was "hot" inside would be an understatement. It was dripping sweat while not even moving hot. It was completely unbearable. On the plus side, the sweltering heat made for a good excuse to leave rather quickly.

Andrea was just glad to see her old friends and she said she had fun. I told her she owed me big time for having to deal with that heat and being that uncomfortable. Only one person told me I looked like Kevin Smith, bonus! On the drive home she told me I'd never have to go to another one - I'll get to stay home with the kids. WOOHOO!!



We also saw the movie Wedding Crashers on Friday night. It was enjoyable, pretty funny. Check out my movie reviews section for a more detailed review.

Birthing 101

Andi and I started birth classes this week! 6:30 - 9:00pm every wed night for 8 weeks. That’s 20 hours of class. Why do I have this feeling we will be in class longer then the actual labor? The first session started out with way more medical information then I needed, I felt like I was in 6th grade sex ed. It was interesting to learn about the various positions the baby might be in prior to birth, but again - sometimes more information isn't really the best thing. All it does it give you more things to worry about, which Andrea has covered for both of us. (trust me)

There was one brochure for Dads that I read through. It mentioned something I thought was pretty interesting. It said how no one ever asks how the Dad is feeling. Everyone will always ask, "So how is Andrea doing?" or "How is your wife feeling?" This is probably because its more of a social norm to ask about the Mom and ignore the Dad. But it brings home for me how easy it is for Dads to not feel involved at all during the whole child birth process.. aside from... you know, the initial step.

And whoever decided that laying on some hard ass floor on a blanket during birth classes was a good idea, should be shot. Luckily, it was only the last 20 minutes, but it was still annoying as hell. By the time we got up, half my body had gone numb. Andi said it felt like we were in kindergarten nap time.