Weekly Weigh-in

It's Sunday morning and once again time for my weekly Weight-loss post.

This week I started doing something that, to my recollection, I have never done before. I started running. Many of my friends will tell you that I have been known to say that I won't run unless I'm being chased by something, and while that may have been true in the past, it's not going to be true any longer.

I didn't get to run as much as I'd have liked this week, the temperature makes it annoying to be outside, let alone doing any form of major activity, during most of the day here; and much of my mornings was spent either dealing with work related things or getting ready for impending work. That said, I did get in a couple good workouts early this week, and hope that I can get some better frequency in this next week. My feet really hurt the times I did get out, so I'm probably gonna have to be careful until I get used to the impact and other stresses going on. However, I'm hopeful that this will help me out in the long run to stay in better shape, and be generally more energetic by virtue of actually getting up and doing strenuous things that aren't just work.

So, now comes the numbers. This week I feel like I probably could have eaten better, but don't think I really did all that badly either. Time to see if the new workout helped any: 254.8, down 2.8 since last week. Hit my first checkpoint, down 10% of my starting weight. Took me since around January or so to do it, but I made it. It's been a bit of a long road, but entirely worth it. Here's hoping it's shorter to the next 10%.

Sunday Sludge the 9th

This week I've got a couple videos and some other miscellaneous links for you guys. Hopefully you enjoy.

Making Contact This link serves as a surprisingly good primer on how to make contact with "visitors".
Mysterious People A list of some very strange people.
Fun with X-Rays Someone people have way too much time on their hands.
Workout Program In theme with my recent weight loss efforts, a video about a 'unique' workout program.
Optical Illusion A rather impressive optical illusion that won some kind of award for being creative.

That's the links for this week, see you again next week with some more.

Weekly Weigh-in

It is now Sunday afternoon, which means a slightly late rendition of my weekly weigh-in.

This week was my first at the summer job, and it went rather well on multiple fronts. Work went well but that's not the point of this post. Work has forced me to eat at regular intervals, which is a good thing as otherwise I very often might not. It has also helped me start getting up earlier, which I like. It has also been making it hard for me to want to eat breakfast.

Breakfast has always been a hard meal for me, I usually don't want to put in the effort to cook an involved meal, but I also don't really care for cereal either with or without milk. Often this has resulted in me not eating breakfast at all, and that's not really that good for me on a number of levels. This week I noticed that my weight was staying very much the same despite increased levels of activity, which I felt was a tad odd as I didn't feel I was eating a lot extra. After talking with a friend for some advice and venting on the subject I decided I'd try and force myself to eat breakfast in the mornings and see if that helped. I feel like it has, I picked up some fresh fruit and some granola bars to help keep myself from having an excuse about eating breakfast in the morning, so we'll see how that goes.

Now comes the moment of truth, the actual numbers from the scale: 257.6 that's 1.8 pounds less than last week. Only another ~3 pounds to go before I've hit my first milestone.

Sunday Sludge the 8th

It’s Sunday again, and that means another installment of the sludge. It’ll be fairly short this week as I’m in the middle of moving, but here it is:

Brain Hacking The human brain can be made to do some amazing things, here is a list of a few of them.

Playing with Postage The brain isn’t the only thing that can be played around with, you can also have some fun with the postal system if you are willing to take the chance.

People of Class An interesting set of data from a national survey.

Awesome Pumpkin This pumpkin is more awesome than yours.

Cool Foreign Films A list of some impressive foreign films that are worth seeing, though I’ll admit I’ve seen only a very few of them myself.

Well, there it is, not much fluff but the substance is there. I’ll be back again next week and hopefully so will you.

Weekly Weigh-in

It’s Sunday afternoon, which means this is a bit later than I expected, so it’s time for my weekly weigh-in.

I mentioned last week that I was gonna buy a scale, and I did. So starting this week my weight will be provided by said scale rather than through Wii Fit.

With graduation and the end of finals this week it wasn’t easy, but I feel like I did alright with the food this week. I also had some issues with my exercise for the week after I had to get an ingrown toenail dealt with and that cut into my new exercise regimen, but more on that later.

My hope for the summer is that, with a more flexible work schedule to open things up a bit, I can have the time to actually make dinner on a regular basis. I’m setting an optimistic goal of cooking dinner at least 5 nights a week. Not sure that’ll actually pan out, but it’s a goal at least.

Well, formalities out of the way I think it’s time for the actual weigh-in. This weeks weight is 259.4. That puts me down 2.7 since last week, and 23.7 since January. Not sure what's gonna happen the first couple weeks here with my summer job, but hopefully I can keep up the progress. Until next week, live the way you want to be.

Sunday Sludge the 7th

Once again it is that wonderful time. The Sunday Sludge. Late one today, but it is Mother's Day and I was off with Lara spending some time with her family. Without further ado, I present this weeks links:

Badass Things You Can Learn in a Week Not all winners, but overall a somewhat decent list, if you define badass as action movie star.
Timmy O'Riley Some may say it's an advertisement for Thinkgeek, and while that may be true it is also awesome.
Speaks for Itself.
Only in America Foods that could only have been invented in America.
Top of the Food Chain A short informative story about a man at the top of the food chain.

See you all again next week for another installment of the Sludge.

Weekly Weigh-in

It's Sunday, and that means it's time for my weekly weigh-in. This week was tough, I had a number of times when I knew I ate more than I probably should have. But somehow it seems I've still managed to stay pretty well on track. The Wii Fit has been acting strange lately, so I'm starting to feel like I may need to spring for a separate scale that feels a little more trustworthy, so that's probably gonna happen this week.

Also coming up is the end of the semester which means a huge change of my schedule and hopefully more time for getting some actual dedicated exercise into my daily life. I've been tossing around the idea of paying for the Rec Center on campus so that I can use their pool, but I'm not sure I feel like it's worth the hundred dollars they want for it. So, I'm totally open to suggestions of places I can find a pool for cheaper than that.

Anyway, now it's time for the actual numbers. According to the scale I'm down 2 pounds from last week, leaving me at 262.1. Only 7.5 pounds to go before I hit my first checkpoint. Making steady progress at least. Gonna try this next week to force myself to eat better, something I've said a lot and not been very good about.

Wine Reviews

Today I'm going to post two wine reviews that I've had waiting to go up for a while. I've still got two more waiting to go up, and I'm hoping those will make it up sometime next week or so. I've been sitting on these quite a while waiting to have the time to get them posted, and now it's that time. Hope you enjoy.

Review: The first wine is a 2008 Sauvignon Blanc from Steven Bannus of Sonoma California, the bottle identifies the appellation as the Russian River Valley. The first thing that struck me when I went into the first glass was the smell, hints of apple, honey, and apricot. The taste also came off with hints of the apple flavor, and an almost flowery flavor. It became a little sharper in taste as it warmed up, but was very well balanced and remained drinkable even as it warmed.
Price: Normally it's priced at $14 a bottle, but I picked it up during a 'buy one get one for a nickel' sale so it worked out to about half that.
Rating: 9/10 The wine was excellent, well worth the $7 I paid for it and worth the normal $14 as well. It was good enough I'm going to strongly consider keeping some Sauvignon Blanc around in addition to the Riesling that I normally keep around.


Review: The second wine on the list is the Firehose Gewürztraminer. The first time we opened it, it was bitter and practically undrinkable. We closed it up and put it back in the cellar for a month, nearly two, and when we tried it again it was much more palatable. While I will say I was disappointed by the first impression, I plan to give it a second chance to make sure it wasn't just too young the first time around, or otherwise just a bad bottle.
Price: Average retail is around $10-12, and that is about what I recall paying for it, though I no longer have the receipt or the records to verify that.
Rating: 6/10 As I said, I don't really feel this bottle can be considered representative, it's the only Gewürz I've yet had, so take this rating with a grain of salt. When I have had a chance to make a second assessment to determine if this was just an off bottle I'll make sure to post the results.

Sunday Sludge the 6th

Alright, after today's more serious post it's now time for a more humorous post. It's once again time for a link dump. It's been a while since I've done one of these so some of the links in my dump folder are probably a little old, and you may have seen them already. If so, feel free to send me better links to share with everyone next time.

On the Origin of Circuits - A story about how a circuit that could learn taught itself to do amazing things.
Gaping Plotholes - An article from Cracked about movies.
Culinary Kurios - A strange story of stranger food.
Fusion Reactor - A story of a homemade fusion reactor.
Built a Time Machine - Watch out for the plutonium.

And there you have another Sunday of Links. See you next time.

Hopefully the Start of a New Series

Hello to my few readers. Today I am going to start a new series. I can't promise I'll actually stick to this, but I'm gonna do my best to try. Every week or so I'm just gonna show up here, and post my current weight. I'm not really sure why I've decided to post that here, but hey let's run with it. For those of you who don't know me all that well, I'm a pretty large guy. I've been trying to lose weight this year, and I've done pretty well as I'm down 19 pounds from the start of the year. But recently my progress has gotten rather disappointing, with losses dropping to nearly none and sometimes even gaining weight back.

I'm hoping that by posting here I help keep myself a little bit more accountable, as now more people will have the ability to directly see how much weight I'm losing/gaining. Posts won't happen more than once per week, and may not happen that often, but I'll probably drop in every now and then at least to mention the numbers. Currently, I'm at 264.1 down from 283. My next major milestone is ~9 pounds away at 254.7 which will mean I've lost 10% of my starting weight. Until next time, eat what's good.