Progress!!!

I started a diet on January 5th. It's essentially weight watchers, but I am only using the point system to determine how healthy the food is. I'm not going to walk around and count the points for every thing that I decide to eat or drink. I did for the first week as a baseline but this week I'm not counting. That's not to say that I am not watching what I eat. My eating habits have taken a sudden change and I think I'm liking it.

Before:

I would make a big cup of coffee before I left the house with LOTS of sugar and LOTS of half and half and drank it on the way to work. Then when I got to work, I would have another, and at 9:15 break I would get one more. For lunch, I would eat the hot lunch that she made, which is like eating a huge dinner. the kind that when you are done all you want to do is take a nap. If i didn't like what she cooked, I would get a THICK Chicken Salad Sandwich and a large (16 oz.) soup. And wash it all down with a can of Mtn Dew and of course I would buy a second can to have at my desk for the afternoon. Sometimes I would also get some junk food like hostess apple pie or ring dings too. Dinner would be standard dinner. Only difference would be a lot more than normal!

Now:

I wake up and have a bowl of cereal, per the serving size (3/4 cup). Right now it's Total Whole Grain Wheat with 1/2 cup of skim milk. Then before I leave I make a cup cup coffee with equal and Skim Plus milk. Then at 9:15 I have a lowfat yogurt. At lunch eat a Lean Cuisine frozen entree. and a banana and a bottle of water. at 2:15 I eat an apple. After I get home at about 5:00 I have another snack like an apple, banana or yogurt. Then I eat dinner. I'll still eat the same stuff except I'll make sure to take less than I did in the past. Sometimes Between dinner and bed I have another bowl of cereal.

So there it is. This is working for me. When I started this diet the scale yelled at me to get the fuck off! 248!!!! After a week of this the scale read 243. So that's 5 pounds this week. I'll continue doing this and see what happens next week.

Now if I could get my lazy ass up and work out on the BowFlex thing might move along even quicker. We finally got it set up, so really i just need to work it into my schedule. But one thing at a time and the one thing right now is to get used to the change in diet.

Mike Farris

Mike Farris, originally uploaded by chrismek.

Last night we drove through a snow storm to go to BB King's on 42nd St NYC to see Mike Farris. Mike is a great singer. He used to sing in the Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies. He quit that band because he was on a road of self destruction with all the drugs he was on and stuff. So he took some time off and came back singing Gospel/Christian kind of stuff. His music is amazing! Very inspiring to me.

My Bro-In-Law was friends with back in the SCW days but they lost touch for a while. I brought his business Card to give to Mike but never got a chance to talk to him so had to give it to the session guitarist... I hope Mike gets it and they get back in touch.

Go check him out here:

http://www.mikefarrismusic.net/

And here:

http://www.myspace.com/mikefarrismusic

Game On!!!

It's Game On! Sunday I got on the scale, knowing that I've gained a lot of weight between quitting smoking and the Holiday gluttony. But I was totally NOT ready for what I saw!!! Holy shit!!! OK so, some stats on me ... I'm 6'2" tall, 39 years old. I weigh a whopping 248 lbs!!! HOLY FUCK!!! I never thought I would see the day! I know when I went to college I gained some weight but that was mostly from sitting around the dorm eating cheeseburgers and cheese fries and washing it down with a pitchers Killian's or mountain Dew. Plus the only exercise I was getting was lifting the burger and beer so I was bound to gain some weight... I looked online and the website I looked at (I can't remember which one it was) said I am obese!! I thought I just had a bit of a belly and that was it, but OBESE?

Last year, we went to Bonnaroo. If you are into music and live on the East Coast, you MUST go to Bonnaroo! Check it out: www.bonnaroo.com. It is a 4 day music festival in Manchester Tennessee that changed my life. I will return every year if I can afford it. Music starts each day at 12:00 and goes until about 4:00am... spread over 5 big stages, 2 or 3 small stages and a big comedy tent. over the 4 days there were 168 acts to see. Of course you just go and see the ones you want. Anyway, I will be going again this year. Pre-sale tickets are sold out already so I have to wait for them to go on sale again.

Anyway, I've set a goal for my self... there are no numbers as in weights or anything... My goal is to walk around at Bonnaroo shirtless. That doesn't mean I want 6-pack abs or anything. I just mean that it gets fucking hot in Tennessee and I want to be able to take off my shirt with out shame. You wouldn't catch me dead without a shirt now... I figure that Bonnaroo starts on June 11. That gives me like almost 5 months...

So there we go, there's the frustration and the incentive. So what's the plan, you ask? I decided to do Chris's form of Weight Watcher's. What that means is I'm too fucking cheap to pay for Weight Watcher's and I was hanging out over someones house that had a weight watcher's book. So I flipped through it figured out My "Points" and away I go. I am keeping track of how many points I take in and as long as it is under 35, I should lose weight. Wife is helping me stay in check too. I went to Shop-Rite and bought a shit load of frozen meals with the points all figured out for me. I've switched from lots of sugar and lots of cream in my coffee to equal and skim milk. I think because it tastes so bad I drink less of it. The only other liquid I drink is water. I will have to see what happens when I am schedules for beers with the boys though. Now add to that, that I will be working out with the Bowflex starting this week. I have to do some re-arranging of furniture before I can start Bowflex. I figure by Bonnaroo, I won't be embarrassed to take off my shirt if I'm hot.

I think I may even document my progress photographically. We'll see about that...

Anyway... Wish me luck!!!

Not very active here

I've not been very active here... Mostly because the wife has been rather sick for a while and at work I've been working in the test department so have been away from my desk.

Tomorrow is Katie's birthday. She'll be 9... Holy Shit, where did the last 9 years go?

The weight issue:

I've decided to not even worry about my gained weight until after the holidays. I figure it this way... I just quit smoking like 80 days ago and am still not out of the woods with that. I figure in January I will address the extra weight I've gained. Besides, what's worse, Smoking a pack a day, or an extra 15 or 20 pounds.

Stuff.

Not too much going on really. Work got really busy for me. This will last until the end of the Month/Year. Then in the new Year I will probably get slow. Usually happens like that around here.

Saturday we brought the kids to see Dark Star Orchestra or DSO for short. If you like the Grateful Dead you should see this band. They will play a set that The Grateful Dead played. And when I say play a set, I mean they will pick a date that the dead played, and replay the set. Not really note for note but they will play the same songs in the same order too. And they sound spot on! They have a following too, its pretty weird. but they are really good. Anyway, Katie had a really good time. See:






And of Course Mat played Legend of Zelda on his DS through the whole concert. See:

It was good, he actually got into it for a while. He really liked the Drum Solo.

Me, Murray & Brian @ Reunion

Me, Murray & Brian @ Reunion, originally uploaded by chrismek.

Here's a picture of Me, Murray and Brian that I snagged off of Facebook. The first thing Murray said to me when He showed up was "Oh, cool, you showed up in a Purple Velvet jacket, I was worried that I was underdressed with the Corduroy jacket" It was good hanging out with Murray!

I told him I would make it out to L.A. someday soon and chill out with him. I hope I can actually do it. He's good people!

Back to work after a week off... :-(

Today is my first day back to work after having the week off. I had a tough time getting up after sleeping late the whole week, but I did make it to work. Of course I am swamped! Sometimes I feel like it's not even worth it to take time off because nobody will do my work while I'm gone and it just piles up.

Anyway, the week was good. Relaxing if nothing else. Me and wife re-arranged some furniture and my Ham Radio/Computer/Guitar/Music room is awesome now. I'm diggin it because there is som much more room in there! I need to get some pics of it now. It's almost pointless becasue I don't think that I have any before pics. If I do I will put some up here and over at Flickr.com.

I went to my 20 year high school reunion on friday night. Wife had hers too, so we went solo to our own reunions. I had a great time. I'm so glad that I went. I spent a long time talking to Murray who moved to L.A. around '92. I talked to a lot of people there and was surprised at how many people haven't really changed, except for the age. And mostly everyone looked really good. There were only a couple people that I thought " Boy, you didn't age well!" But of course I didn't sya it, only thought it. and I couldn't believe how OLD some of them looked. We're not even 40 yet and some of them looked all of 50. But mostly everyone looked really good. I just hope nobody is saying the same stuff about me! Becasue I dont' think I look that old.

I gotta say that I had great conversations with Murray V, Elaine R, Nicole S, Jenn H, Cordell J, Chris D, Andy T, Wendy H, Colleen P, Carmen B, Mike S, Traci A, Rich D and a bunch of others! I was a little disappointed that Bob wasn't there. He is way cool. I'll try to mak it to one of his shows i guess. I am really hoping they decide to do a 25 year! I'd be there!