One Year Anniversary

I really don't know how I deserve to be so blessed....but I'm grateful nonetheless. I think I fell in love with Vicki the moment I met her. After our first serious date I knew it for sure, and this was the song playing on the radio as I was driving home later that night.

Drive to Work

Monday Cat Blogging

You're Not Helping!

There's a controversy with several people I know that are dedicating a significant amount of time and energy into making changes in their lifestyles. If you have people around you that are not helpful in your goals or outright trying to sabotage your progress for whatever reason....are you better to rid these people from your life? Even family members? Even a spouse?

My view is that real friends really want other friends to succeed and be happy. I think that holds true with family members as well. It should with a spouse and...if not...then there is much more problems with that relationship than a lack of support for a diet plan.

What I really think is going on is that we sometimes use the attitudes and behaviors of other people as an excuse for our own. I'm very much guilty of that and have rationalized giving up on many things because I didn't feel as if I was being helped and encouraged by friends and family.

Support is nice....but if we depend upon outside forces to do the real work that needs to be done on the inside, it will fail. We can then blame that failure on the outside forces; but we really know who is at fault, don't we?

Can't Find a Cat Monday

I seem to have a lot more time in the morning when I don't sit around and smoke. Plenty of time to pack the three meals that I will need while I am at work today.

Plus a big thermos of coffee.

Ah....Springtime in Kansas

Right. I've spent most of the day clearing tree limbs and buying replacement appliances that were blown out when lightning hit my house last night. I finally settle down to salvage what is left of my weekend when the notice comes over the TV that we are under a tornado watch for the night.

Anyway, on the bright side....I feel really good! My sick bug is gone. I'm still not smoking. And I'm ready to hit the gym early tomorrow morning and finally get this BFL challenge on the road.

Last Smoke

Sitting here watching the ticker up top count down the last seconds while I finish what I hope is the last cigarette I ever put in my mouth for the rest of my life.

Such a simple thing to give up. After all, I know full well how bad it is for my health. I know that nothing...not one thing...I do toward my fitness goal will make any difference at all as long as I puff on cigarettes. I know. I know.

I counsel people about addictions, fer pete's sake....so I know!

Last seconds. One more puff. There it is....zero hour. Into the trash go the cigs.

No more.

Friday At Last!

I had doubts that Friday would ever arrive. What a loooooong week this has been.

I'll be gearing up to begin with Body for Life again on Monday. I feel good. My bout with being sick is mostly over. Lots of planning and shopping to do over the weekend. Plus, if you notice the little ticker at the top of this blog....I'll be doing another attempt at giving up the cigs at midnight tonight.

A great deal of changes in my professional life this week. Now it's time to do something about my personal life.

Workplace Snacking

I re-discovered a big disadvantage of working in my new location. The place where I use to have my office was a bit isolated. The only food available was whatever I brought myself. I tried to pack a bit of fruit for whenever I got the munchies and it was very easy to avoid sweets and chips....they just were not around.

However; the building that I now work in is full of people that love to eat. Donuts. Cakes. Cookies. Pot-luck lunches. Vending machines galore. You can't walk anywhere without unhealthy food popping up in front of your face. I tried to do my part to help mitigate this trend of shoveling sugar and fat in our mouths all day by leaving out a bunch of grapes and a container of strawberries for my fellow workers in our break room.

Two days later, I took them back to my office and ate it myself. Nobody had touched them. Surrounding the fruit were three empty boxes of donuts.

Will This Week Ever End?

Okay...it's Wednesday, which use to be my Monday. I was always pretty rested and ready to start my week on Wednesdays but now it's more like my Fridays; which I guess will feel pretty good now but seems an awful long time in the future.

Dang. This is worse than switching to daylight savings time.

Scheduling

With my new work hours comes a re-arrangement of my life. Though I worked long hours before the change, I only worked four days a week...and I had become use to having those three day week-ends to take care of everything.

Now, I have to plot out my weeks a bit differently. I can't go shopping for a week's worth of food on a Monday morning anymore. I can't hold off on going to the gym until afternoon on Tuesdays anymore. I'm going to have to get back to a set schedule of going to the gym every morning at 4 or 5 and shopping on the weekends.

I know this is piddly stuff....but these are the type of things that give us excuses to give up. Scheduling is all about the details.

And, of course, that's where the devil lies.

Monday Cat Blogging

Moving On Up

After a couple of weeks dealing with being sick, I think (knock on wood) that I'm finally back to feeling more or less normal. Just in time too. I'm starting a new position at work Monday. I'm also starting a new work schedule, meaning no more 10-12 hour days and I will actually have weekends off. Who knows...I might be able to have a life now.

So what am I going to do on this first free Saturday that I've had in years?

Move my crap from my old office to my new one in another building. It's really going to be a pain because, though my agency is technically computerized and paperless, the reality is that there is a shit-load of paperwork, documents, folders, binders, files, and various other pieces of crap I have to clean out from one place and transport to the other.

On the other hand....shredders are marvelous inventions.

Almost Human Again

This is the first morning in over a week in which I'm not hacking and sneezing and feeling as if I could just lay down and die. I don't get sick often....but it seems that when I do, I go all out.

How did this effect my Body for Life challenge plans?

Pretty much trashed them for now but there is no law preventing me from trying again.

Gay Marriage

I've generally held off on talking about politics in this blog. I had another place where I dabbled in political opinion and eventually tired of all the idiots from the right and the left. After several death threats from Obama followers during the last election circus, I decided to just stick with things more personal...like trying to lose weight and displaying cats.

Yet, I'm making an exception today. The California court upheld a ban on gay marriages in that state. They had the odd decision that all prior marriages between gay couples were valid, but any future ones are forbidden. I normally view topics such as this as non-relevant things used to divert our attention from the really important (and scary) stuff that is going on; but this is something that really chaps my hide. Curtailing the civil rights of people because of their biology. In my own life, there was a time when people were prohibited from marrying because of different skin color. Saying that two people cannot marry because they are the same gender is equally stupid and has no place in the 21st century.

I'm trying to understand the arguments against gay people marrying. One is that marriage is a religious institution, and we're talking Christian specifically. The other that marriage is for the production and rearing of children.

If that is the case, then my own marriage is not valid. I did not have a particularly religious marriage ceremony and it certainly wasn't a Christian event. I also have no children from this marriage and never intend to have any.

So why did I get married?

Because I found somebody that I loved and wanted to share my life. It wasn't about sex. It wasn't about financial advantage. It was purely a personal decision of the two of us for the two of us. The only thing that was required of us is that we proved we were not related, pay for the license, and make sure there was enough cake for all the wedding guests. Nobody cared who I married or why. Nobody told me that I did not have the right to marry. Nobody told me that loving somebody was wrong...even against the law.

We all should have that right. If you expect to have that right while insisting others do not...then shame on you.

Monday Cat Blogging

BFL Day 13

Remember these things? There was a time that, if you telephoned somebody and they where not there to answer, the phone would ring until you decided to give up and end the call. Then they came out with these nifty devices that would answer your phone when you were not at home or in the office. Believe it or not, once upon a time, phones pretty much stayed at home even when you left. They were a bit pricey, bulky, difficult to set up, and had a distressing tendency to malfunction. You recorded some cute little greeting (or at least you thought it was cute, everybody else thought it was stupid) and the caller would leave a short message.

Real short.

The thing was, these answering machines had a little cassette tape in them that didn't have a great deal of recording time. Most machines let you get in about ten seconds before you were cut off. As a result, people were in the habit of speaking very rapidly before the beep which indicated you were now talking into to a dead line.

Well...technology advances...and now the answering machine is as extinct as an 8-track player. Phones now have chips in them with so much memory that you could probably dictate your autobiography and still have room for more. Certainly enough time to leave one's name, when you are calling, and what number to call back if you wish. Even more people just use cell phones in which you have a voice mail service that calls can go to if you are too busy doing something else, like driving (HA!) to answer a call. Still, with virtually unlimited time to leave a simple coherent message, many people continue to deliver a rapid-fire barrage of mumbled sounds like "Hi thisisFredKiddilehopperandit'srealurgentthatIgetwithyaASAP. Gimmeacallat5559oneohsixtyateextensiontwooh73assoonasyagitthis"

Forcing me to replay the message about a dozen times to pick out the name and the number.

My new rule at work. If I get a message and I cannot figure out who is calling in two tries...fuggit, it gets deleted. They will just have to call me again if it's so damn important.

Still dealing with a cold, though I can manage to get by without clutching a box of Kleenex to my chest all day. My tip is for everybody to buy stock in the makers of NyQuil. I'm sure I boosted their profits this quarter.

BFL Day 11

Jimminy Crickets.....how long is a cold suppose to last? Just when I think that the symptoms are going away, I get pounded again. I wound up taking time off from work yesterday because I was feeling lousy and really didn't want to interact with anybody on any level. Slept horrible last night with all the coughing and sinus draining. I've taken so much NyQuil that my pee is starting to turn green.

But off to work I go this morning ...cuz paperwork waits for no man. I guess I should be concerned that I may spread my germs to my co-workers; but I got this cold from them in the first place, so to hell with it. As far as exercise goes; I'm thinking this week will be a wash.

I never thought I would miss working out.

BFL Day 10

Well...I don't know what kind of an opportunity getting sick is, but I do know that I'm not going to let it be an excuse to quit.

It really sucks though. All the coughing, wheezing, and sneezing makes it impossible to do any type of significant exercise. Even if I could manage to haul my mucus laden head over to the gym, I wouldn't want to spread all those wonderful germs around for other members. I can't do much in the way of exercise at home before being racked by a coughing fit and feeling like my sinuses are going to detonate.

My normal pattern of behavior is to say "fuggit, I'm sick, I can't do this right now, I'll do it later". The usual result though is that "later" seems to take a long time to come around. I even thought briefly of re-starting the Body for Life Challenge; but that also seems to strangely take several weeks to happen, plus...I honestly think that I cannot bear to take before photos again.

So, I'm plowing ahead. Week two of my challenge is going to be pathetic as far as progress goes...but progress it will be. The next week will be better. The week after, better still. I won't have this cold forever.

It'll just seem like it.

BFL Day 9