Monday Cat Blogging

Snow Day

Snow would be okay if I didn't have to go outside for anything more than checking the mailbox or building a snowman. I wouldn't try making snow angels for fear that my neighbors might think I was having a siezure and call 911. Snow is great to look at and play in. When I was a kid, snow was a cause for celebration because it carried with it the possibility of a canceled school day. I remember listening intently to the TV or radio as they listed school closings after a heavy snowstorm....crossing my fingers and thinking "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" until the announcer called out the name of my town's school. A snow day is like an unexpected Christmas.

Alas, I no longer get snow days. When I stagger to the coffee pot in the morning and look out the window to see everything blanketed in white, I no longer light up with joy and anticipation. My thoughts are "oh shit, look at that mess out there" and I consider that I will have to leave for work a bit earlier in order to scrape off my pick-up and then navigate un-plowed roads across the city.

Driving is always a puckering experience. Most people take it nice and slow, but weather like this always brings out those with SUV's who think that 4-wheel drive will somehow prevent the laws of physics being applied to their tires on ice....so they whip in and around traffic about twenty mph over the speed limit, usually with a cell phone crammed to the side of their faces. I often see one or two of them on the side of the road on my way to work; crumpled around a light pole or some other car that they managed to take out upon discovering that it is difficult to go from 50 to zero on a patch of black ice.

Work all day. Watch the snow continue to fall. Repeat the harrowing driving process getting home in the evening.

I need a snow day.

Balance

It's no easy thing...walking that line between obligation and desire, between work and play, between what one must do to make a living and how one wants to live. It's tough to find a balance.

I love my job. I don't love having a job but I derive great satisfaction in what my job allows me to accomplish. I get to put into practice many of my values around serving people. I do good. I make a difference. Still, in order to be permitted to work on my job, I have to devote an extraordinary amount of time and effort on things that have nothing to do with actually doing what I perceive as my job. So much, in fact, that it threatens to overwhelm my life outside of the allotted forty hours out of each and every week.

This is probably the way of the world now days, with the increasing demand that workers do more for less, though it doesn't make it right or necessarily a good way of operating any business. What happens when you squeeze workers, whether in an manufacturing industry or social service agency, is that the product is compromised. In industry, product quality is sacrificed and goods become shoddy. In social service, people are sacrificed and lives likewise become less and less.

And at the core...the workers...who tread water every day, fearful of losing everything at the whim of management which threatens extinction of careers for those who do not provide their ever increasing demands of carrots; the value of their lives becomes irrelevant.

Something is wrong.

Monday Cat Blogging

Free Day

If I had to make a choice between giving up BBQ and being overweight....I'd pick being fat without a moment's thought. Fortunately, I don't have to make that choice. I can have my ribs and eat them too. One day a week. Enjoy good food that may not be particularly good for me. Start up another six days of eating healthy and exercise.

It may not be the fastest way to fitness but it's a lifestyle I can live with.

How Much is Too Much?

One problem I'm having, due to being horribly out of shape and in my early oldfarthood, is integrating daily exercise into my life without hurting myself. I know that I should take it nice and slow, especially at first, to keep from injuring myself...thus short-circuiting any fitness program before it gets off the ground. It's happened to me before; go all out in the gym, take a week before I can walk straight again, and have a lot of trepidation in returning to the gym.

I know, I know, I know.

Still.....it's embarrassing to be lifting itty bitty weights when youngsters are next to me pounding out iron to beat the band. I realize that most people in a gym could not care less about what the fat man in the baggy warm-up suit is doing, and those that do notice most likely approve of anybody working out no matter what their shape. I wonder at times just who I'm trying to impress.

I guess I'll just have to resign myself to wuss status while I slowly build up to more respectable weights.

Assignment #1 - part 2

In recent days and weeks, the three most predominant inner feelings I have been experiencing can be specifically described with these words:
1. Anxiety about my health
2. Feeling a lack of energy
3. Thinking that I fail at my goals

Three limiting beliefs about my ability to change, which might interfere with my future achievements are:
1. I've failed before, I'll fail again
2. I'm too old
3. I'm too out of shape

Three objectively verifiable and measureable statements which reflect my physical condition and health right now are:
1. I've taken before pictures; front, back, and side
2. My weight is 223.6 pounds
3. I wear a size 42 pants and they are snug

TC 2010 Assignment #1

Three values for my life, which I hold deeply within my heart are:

1. All people have value, each life is precious.
2. It's not what you get from the world that's important, it's what you give.
3. My wife is more than a spouse; she is, in every way, my soulmate.

I am sometimes amazed that, out of the billions alive and billions who have gone before, each and every person is unique. I don't even pretend to understand what happens after death; but I do know that we all seem to have only one shot at the here and now. A life is a rare gift...one to be grateful about and not to squander.

The world owes you nothing and going through life complaining about that fact will get you more of nothing. I believe that our purpose of existence is to make the world a little better during our lives.

I know that "soulmate" is a corny and overused phrase. I've had a lot of relationships, some good, some bad, and some disastrous. I've never met anybody like my wife. We seem to communicate on a level I didn't think was possible. All I know is that I'm a better person because of her and I feel complete.

Monday Cat Blogging

Blog TV

Monday Cat Blogging

Evil Girl Scouts

Well...no...not really. It's a fine organization, much better than the homophobic quasi-military group available to boys. Still, I do wish the GSA would quit forcing me to buy their damn cookies every year.

Of course, girl scouts don't actually sell the cookies to me. I get them from the mothers of girl scouts at my place of work. They usually hit me up on my way to the vending machines or scouring the break room for some left over snack; when I'm so hungry that you could sell me gum scraped off the bottom of a chair. The cookies seem good when I order but usually disappoint. Dry, mostly tasteless, and expensive....about 15 cents per itty bitty cookie.

Yet, year after year, I buy a few boxes. Absolutely not a good thing to be chomping on while trying to lose weight.

I do it for the girls.

Weighty Matters

Does weight really matter? After all, it's only a number and says nothing about overall health and fitness. The number on the scale gives no indication of my blood pressure, any onset diabetes, my heart, my lungs, or even tell whether I have a pot belly. When I first started this blog my weight was at 250 and I feared that it would start to skyrocket and, that if I didn't do something about it immediately, I would reach a point where it may be near impossible to turn back. In the last couple of years I've managed to get it down to the 220's range and have pretty much stabilized there without much effort on my part. I should be happy with this weight. For a man my age, this isn't too bad.

Yet it is.

That 223.6 lbs is mostly fat. I'm what is physically described as an ectomorph....or I was in my youth. Slight build, slender arms and legs, and not much in the way of muscle. My typical weight was usually about a hundred pounds less. Now, I know that I haven't grown taller in the past few decades, so that extra hundred pounds is probably just accumulated fat around my mid-section.

This is what I am aiming at. I certainly do not expect to lose 100 lbs in the next few months....nor do I believe it would be particularly healthy for me to do so....but I would like to get under 200. While the scale may not be a good indicator of fitness, it does measure and I need real numbers to gauge real change.

24 pounds in 18 weeks. That's not too much to hope for. Is it?

Monday Cat Blogging

Snowed Under

Good gravy, I feel like I'm emerging from an ice age. So okay, I didn't get going on the transformation last Monday as planned. It's been the story of my life all week....no traction. Snowstorms have pounded Topeka since before Christmas and it's been a mess. Any type of travel has been an ordeal. Heck, just getting out of the house has been a major expedition. I caught a cold from somebody, somewhere. I twisted my ankle slipping on the ice in the parking lot on my way to a meeting at work where everybody was informed that they needed to increase productivity or risk being fired by those in the agency who have no productivity at all. I had a flat tire. My cat was sick.

Add to all of that.....I hate winter. More each year.

It sure would be easy to say "fuggit".

Not happening though.

Not this time.

Monday Cat Blogging

Transformation

I am starting to wonder if it is going to snow every weekend for the rest of the winter. I'm getting sick of the white stuff, the ice, and especially the trying to find ruts in the road to drive through since my city could care less about plowing out residential streets.

I need a change.

But since I can't really change the weather...or move...I guess I'll just have to concentrate on changing myself. Starting Monday I'm going to give this thing a try: Transformation Challenge 2010

18 weeks with the philosophy that a true and lasting physical transformation begins with the brain.

Join me. I triple dog dare you.

Apologies

I've enabled word verification on this blog. I'm sorry to do this because I know it's often a pain. I sure don't like going through this hoop when I comment on other people's blogs and I've resisted doing it here because I want people to be able to just leave feedback as the mood hits them. I like comments. I like visiting the blogs of other people who visit mine.

But....jeeze...the spam

I've had the function whereby comments were moderated. I'd get an email and could decide whether to publish or trash a particular comment. This was pretty good but required me going through all of them and picking out legitimate comments from spammers. I've also seemed to acquire some auto spammer which leaves comments in Chinese...several every few hours. I've grown tired of sifting through it all every day.

So, I've enabled word verification. If you want to comment here, you'll have to do an extra step and type in a word to prove that you are an actual human. If it's more trouble than it is worth for you, I'm sorry. This is a major place where I discover blogs of people that I enjoy, and I would hate to lose a chance to be introduced to what you have to offer.

Tradition

Something my wife doesn't really understand, but puts up with anyway, is my insistence on eating black eyed peas on the first day of the year. She originates from Nebraska and had never encountered any of these weird looking little beans in her childhood. I, however, grew up with them and with the idea that it's somehow good luck to eat them on New Year's day.

I don't really know why. I read once that the tradition goes back over a thousand years with Hebrew culture eating them on their Rosh Hashana. Jewish settlers in the South carried on the tradition and it somehow fused into the rest of the populace. I've heard stories that during the civil war the Union armies would steal all the food during their marches, but considered field peas to be unfit for anything but livestock and ignored them...thus the southerners would consider it "lucky". My own opinion is that these hardy little peas are easy to grow in great abundance even in droughts and, during years of poor harvests, black eyed peas would be just about the only food left in the root cellar around the first of the year. I imagine mothers telling their kids that it was good fortune to eat them just to get their kids to eat the dang things and quit asking for other foods that were not available.

Whatever....I eat them...with hot sauce. I don't have many actual traditions in my life but this is one I make an effort to keep going. I'm thinking that it works too. I've never died in a year that I've started off by eating black eyed peas.

Bye Bye 2009

Another year over with. Where does the time go? It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was hot and heavy about going after my fitness goals. 2009 was going to be the year!

Then January passed. Then February. Spring came. Summer flew by. Autumn spilled into winter and, before I knew it, 2010 rears it's head in a few hours....with nothing to show for the last 12 months.

I'd like to think that all my previous trials enabled me to learn the tools I need to truly succeed. Perhaps I've finally, finally, finally "got it". Maybe I now know what to do, how to do it, and probably most important...what not to do.

We'll see. I won't post before photos but I will show my feet, nearly every day. It's symbolic of my journey. I would be thrilled and honored if you would join me.

Thanks For Sharing

One of the joys of my job is being able to interact with people on a personal level. Shaking hands, talking face to face, and the occasional unavoidable hug. This, of course, leads to sharing assorted germs. The advantage of this is that my immune system is loaded with all types of antibodies and I actually am not sick very often.

But...once in awhile....I get laid out with a particularly nasty type

Why Diet?

Back in my younger days I had a heck of a metabolism. I ate like a starving hyena and never gained an ounce. For years I maintained a rock solid 120 lbs no matter what I ate or how much. One of my favorite "snacks" was a bag of Doritos and a 2-liter jug of Coke. I sneered at low-fat and looked at "dieting" with disdain.

Then things begin to change. The weight started creeping up....so slowly that it was years before I noticed. Pant sizes that I've worn for a decade all of a sudden began to be painful and, eventually, impossible to get into. Shirts became tighter. Even my underwear no longer fit. Yet I made little note of it and just got myself larger sizes. Then a little larger. And a little larger. Until I eventually had to face the unpleasant fact that I was no longer getting fat...I was fat.

Well hell, what to do? I've never had any experience with paying attention to what I ate. I went vegetarian for several years figuring that cutting out meat would magically make the pounds disappear. Fact is, salads of leaves and twigs wasn't very satisfying and I supplemented with a lot of dairy and legumes. I became even fatter...shooting past 250 lbs. So dumped that idea.

I've tried several types of diet plans. Most of them suck. Low carb diets make me feel like a slug. High carb diets make me feel like a whale with indigestion. Things like Slim Fast just taste nasty. I've found out through a lot of trial and error that eating a balance of good foods (not processed) and concentrating on managing portion sizes, works the best for me. Portion to me was a full plate...then back for another. I'm having to learn what a rational portion of food really is and....what's probably hardest....I have to learn to eat a meal without the goal of feeling stuffed afterward.

It's a struggle. I've always ate because I was hungry. I ate until I was not hungry anymore. I ate until I could not eat another bite. That way of dealing with food is killing me, literally. To me, diet is not about eat this food and don't eat that; it's about controlling what goes in your mouth and in what quantity. So sure, I diet. I eat what I want but not all I want. Since I limit what I eat during the day, I find that I would much rather have something nutrient dense than a bag of chips. All I have to do is keep in mind that I cannot have both.

It works for me.

Monday Cat Blogging

Why Exercise?

The thought occurred to me as I was shoveling snow off my walk for the third time this weekend..."this is pretty damn good exercise". Actually, I had other thoughts, but "damn" was certainly a word in there somewhere. Then I got to thinking about my plans for exercising and the goals I wanted to set. What type of exercise? There are loads of them and everybody has an opinion on what is great and what type are a waste of time. Some say go cardio. Others say cardio sucks and you should lift weights. Some are into rigid programs others just find something fun and interesting.

I'm not an expert. I'm going to do cardio for the benefit of what the name implies...build up my heart, lungs, and stamina. I'm also going to do weights to build up muscle, but with machines at first to limit any damage to my beat up old body since I have a tendency to do more than I should when I lift.

It's not very glamorous. Go to the gym three times a week and do cardio for about twenty minutes. Go another three times to work on the weight machines for an hour or so. Rest one day. Repeat.

Why do it?

So I can still do it in ten, twenty years or maybe beyond. As my ever admired role-model Terry says; to extend my best if used by date.

Winding Down the Year

Well....Christmas is done. Not a bad one for me even with the blizzard. Somewhat of a drag that with a 4-day weekend I can't even dig my pickup out of the driveway; but, on the bright side, I don't have to try and get to work in this mess. So overall, a good feeling of contentment right now.

Almost.

I still have that fitness goal. Still have all that weight that I promised myself I would lose about this time last year.

I'm sitting here trying to figure it all out. It's not a lack of desire. One could just chalk it up to laziness but that's a bit too simplistic. I've never minded doing the actual working out...it's the going to and from the gym at the crack of dawn that was always a pain for me. It's not for a lack of time. My days are pretty busy at work but I'm only at work for eight hours a day, which leaves plenty of time for other things.

I dunno. I'm working on a plan to make changes. I think I failed to really commit to that and, as a result, 2009 was pretty much like 2008.

I don't want to be writting this same post in 2010.

Merry Christmas

Wrapping Things Up

There are a few things that I am good at...wrapping presents isn't one of them. I've had decades of practice but still can't quite get the hang of how to cover a box with paper. Sheesh....I can't even cut a straight line with a pair of scissors. I'm also sure that normal people do not use about two miles of tape per present.

But I get it done. They look like hell but it's the thought that counts.

Right?

I'm Dreaming of a Dry Christmas

I grew up in the Texas Panhandle and, while it didn't snow very often in that part of the world, when it did snow it was either a light dusting or blizzard conditions. Even with the snowstorms accompanied by fifty plus mph winds there was really no problem other than high snowdrifts. No trees. Just flat, open, white from horizon to horizon. Here in northeastern Kansas it snows frequently during the winter and most times can be actually quite beautiful. However, once in a while, we get a combination of rain and snow. This part of the country can get some really fierce ice storms which tend to black out power and wipe out hundreds of trees through the city. I have a couple of big old trees in my front yard that were stripped of heavy limbs last winter, almost taking out a piece of my house as they came crashing down to the ground.

It's a mess. Shattered trees everywhere and, of course, no way to clean it up because of the snow and ice. Downed power lines. Impassible roads. Not exactly a winter wonderland.

The forecast calls for thunderstorms followed by snow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one-two punch will not be accompanied by lingering freezing temps. This last thing I want to see on Christmas morning is a Yule log through my bedroom window.

Take It With A Grain of Sodium Chloride

I always find it ironic that, in a country with so much food readily available, there is surprisingly little of it that is healthy. I've been in countries where people who live there could never in their wildest dreams conceive of the bounty on display at an average American supermarket. Thing is though....most of it is processed way beyond it's original form. In that processing they add ingredients to preserve foods for a long shelf life and other ingredients to hide the flavor of the preservatives.

Take salt for instance.

My wife has high blood pressure and so is very cautious about her sodium intake. Seeing as she is the primary (and best) cook in the house, this means that I also eat low sodium meals. That's probably a good thing for me especially since I've come to realize just how salty most foods seem to be these days. You see, eating low sodium for a few years changes your sensitivity to sodium...to the point that many foods outside the home taste so salty as to almost make you gag.

I've also developed the habit of looking at sodium content for foods I buy, and salt is in everything. Anything that is in a package is loaded with gobs of salt. It's in high concentrations in pudding mix, for pete's sake. While there are loads of food items that tout themselves as low fat, low sodium doesn't appear to be much of a marketing gimmick for most processed foods...and those that do, suck in the taste department.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it forces me to eat very little processed foods and stick to fresh items.

Monday Cat Blogging