Monday Cat Blogging

I Miss the Ocean

It's a fact that Kansas is about as far from an ocean that you can get and still be in the U.S. Therefore, if you love seafood and live here, you're just S.O.L. Oh...there are places you can go to eat something that may have been dragged out of an ocean at one time or another in the past few years; but nothing approaching what would be considered good eating.

Take Red Lobster for instance. Saying that Red Lobster serves seafood is akin to claiming that Taco Bell is a Mexican restaurant. The names for the food is all there. There is a decor trying to get you to believe you're getting the real thing. The commercials and the menus are packed with visual clues to make you think you're at the place to get what you crave.

But-the-food-is-crap!

I received a $10 off coupon from my credit card for Red Lobster the other day. I've usually been sorely disappointed with the place but...hey....ten bucks would just about pay for one meal....may as well load up the wife and head on over for a lunch. The fish and chips were always barely acceptable, so I figured I could have that rather than just making a baloney sandwich at home.

Red Lobster no longer sells the fish and chips. Instead they have shrimp and chips. So I shrug and get that instead. The shrimp (all five of them) was greasy and tasteless. The chips were not fries but potato chips, which were actually the best part of the meal. The soda was flat and, for nearly three bucks, it would have been nice to have at least one refill. My wife had some shrimp meal that was likewise gross. We ended up fighting over my chips and leaving the restaurant hungry.

I wish I had the baloney.

Monday Cat Blogging

Morning Cardio

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Yeah....right.

Ski Kansas!

Just Do It

I start off the day shoveling my walk and clearing the snow and ice off my pickup. Why? Because it's fun? Because I like it? No. Because I have to get to work. Because I have to make a living. Because if I don't do those two things...I'll have to do other things that I like far less. I may not like going to work on a cold winter morning but I sure do like getting a paycheck.

Kinda the same goes for exercise. Do I like to exercise? Well, yes and no. I like the effects of exercise but I'm not really wild about the application. And, like going to work, it seems I can't get one without the other.

Monday Cat Blogging

All Dressed Up and No Way to Go

It is starting to seem that this winter will never end. Every day off that I've had from work....every one of them since mid December...it's either snowed or I've had to deal with snow. I've got things to do! One thing I would really like to do is drive to the gym without feeling like I'm risking my life on the roads. There is only so much you can do at home. I need iron! I need to run!

But here I sit, watching big fat snowflakes fall hour after hour, with myself getting fat as well.

Control

I think that snowstorms suck but, like many things in my life, I don't really have any control over events...just how I react to them. I can sit moaning and groaning about the weather all winter long; it's not going to change a thing. The snow is still on the ground. It's still cold. The cosmos doesn't care about my comfort or convenience. All I can do is try to stay warm and wait patiently until Spring.

I can't control other people. Oh sure, I can manipulate a little but it's very temporary and entirely dependent upon another in allowing themselves to be swayed. I can't even get my cat to do what I want. She will blithely claw up the furniture no matter how much I yell at her. About the only thing I have a modicum of control is my own body.

Even that is selective.

I can't control getting a cold. I can't control aches and pains after working out. I can't control all the effects of steadily getting older.

I can control my weight. Wow! I really do get the total decision on what I put in my mouth and how often. I get to decide if the food I do eat is stored as fat or if my body moves around enough to build muscle and burn calories as fuel. Right now I'm losing about one to two pounds a week. That's not something that is happening to me, it's something I'm doing to myself.

I am in control.

Monday Cat Blogging

Okay...It's Snowed Enough This Year

Sigh....another day off for me and another snowstorm. I haven't been able to take care of several things that I need to do because it seems to snow every time I have time away from work.

These are the days where I see a real advantage of a home gym.

Hard Drug

I've never had to struggle with anything like I have in giving up smoking. As a little background about myself, I use to do drugs....lotsa them. I never really got into alcohol but I tried and liked just about everything else that was out there. How I managed not to wind up dead or in prison is a testament to luck of the stupid rather than any skill on my part. I did reach a point in my life where pretty much everybody that was important to me didn't really like me, so I made some changes, starting with giving up drugs and the lifestyle that went with it. It wasn't all that difficult. I just didn't do drugs anymore. No 12-step. No intervention. I just became tired of who I was and started doing things differently. I stopped my addictions.

Well...almost. I'm having a fight with smoking. Have been for quite a while. Sometimes I win. Most times the cigarettes win. I've held them off for today. Tomorrow....who knows?

This is the hardest drug for me to leave behind.

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.