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All But Over
2006-02-22, 3:24 p.m.

Day 549 All but over

My bachelorhood ends tonight on or about 9:30. I�ll have to expend a monumental effort to get all the dancing girls, empty liquor bottles, lingerie leftovers and drug paraphernalia out of the house. Can�t be having Cindy think I was having too much fun while she was gone. Lucky for me, tonight is the usual take out the trash night too.

In truth, the worst thing I did while Cindy was gone was bake those damn cookies. At least I gave half to Zach. After eating maybe half of what I had left, I tossed the rest. Tonight, that bag goes out to the curb, along with any temptation to �rescue� what�s left.

I also really clamped down on eating again, now that the cookies are gone. Salad and soup for lunch Tuesday, and another (bigger) salad for dinner, along with a couple ounces of the country style pork ribs left over from Sunday�s dinner. Took a lot of trimming to reduce them down to nothing but lean meat. A LOT of trimming. Worth the effort though. Today�s diet will be more of the same. So will tomorrow�s and the day after that. I really need to get back on track on this weight loss. I�m working out like a madman, but my eating is preventing me from making any progress. Guess that means bye-bye meat for a while.

Today is significant for another reason too. It is the actual 18 month anniversary of my quitting smoking. A whole 549 days. Still get the occasional �gee a smoke would be nice right about now�, but those urges are pretty easy to squash. The gains in physical fitness are a great motivator too. I keep reminding myself that even a single cigarette could undo all the progress in cardio fitness and decreasing blood pressure. Cuz you know, once you give in to that little bastard nicotine, he�s got his hooks back in you and you�ve got to re-break the addiction. NOT something I want to start all over again. Think I�ll just stay satisfied having broken it this one time, thank you.

Did notice that Cindy�s car was a wee bit low on gas � like down to 1/8 tank. So I�m being a nice guy and tooling around in her little 5 speed Saturn today so I can fill it up in the relatively less expensive, high traffic corridor up near where I work. Gas nearer home can be a nickel or more higher on any given day. So I get to have a little fun scooting around in the Saturn and get to do a good deed to. Pretty sweet.

All I need to remember is Jet Blue, flight 36, due in at 9:30. Can even check in at Jet Blue�s web site and see details on the flight� if it got off on time, when it�s due in and just where it is on a little map. Makes timing the run to the airport so much easier. That�s critical when it takes, oh, about 7 minutes to get there. Even better? The first 30 minutes of parking at the airport are free. There�s some incentive to getting the timing right. Saving that whole $2.75 that it costs for parking the 31st minute.

Oh yeah � �bout that elliptical that was letting me crank out 500+ calories in � an hour. Apparently it wasn�t just that one. The same thing has happened on 2 other machines now. One was just this week, while I was suffering the ill effects of this nasty head cold. Speed was down a wee it, but the incline level stayed way up there for a long time. That = lots of calories burned. At least the cold was in my head. If it was in my chest, I don�t think I�d have even attempted to do any cardio. Hard to move fast for an extended period when you can�t breathe. Cold is lessening some in intensity today too. Maybe all that working out is chasing the cold off. Maybe lack of tar & nicotine in the system lets your body fight it off more effectively? Could be. Think this is only the second cold I�ve had since quitting smoking, and neither has been too bad (well, yet - this thing will probably recharge itself tonight and make me miserable for bowling tomorrow. Might be sorry I mentioned that.)

Did I mention my bowling scores last week? No? Then how about we start with Feb. 9 scores: 220, 226, 212 for a 658 total. Feb. 16 � 223, 173, 266 for a 662 total. 3 weeks ago? Didn�t shoot a single score over 175. Gotta love the consistency. Noticed that the better conditions are for me, the worse they are for my left handed brother. Not that the left side is any different, just that the slightly drier conditions cause him a little more trouble and he has a smaller sweet spot in which to throw the ball. For me, the last two weeks the sweet spot was pretty fair sized. Sufficient velocity is a wonderful thing. Team is doing good too. Think we managed to take 6 of 8 points each of the last two weeks, leaving us fairly firmly entrenched in 2nd place. Looks like the top 3 teams are also starting to pull away from the pack a bit, building up an 8 or 10 point cushion. That gives us a little room to have a sucky week and not go tumbling down through the ranks. Tomorrow night I get to see if the current hot streak is going to hang around for a while.

I gotta go fix yet another damn batch of wonky VHDL code. Someone has got to stop writing that crap. Oh, wait, that�d be me. Job security then, that�s what it is. As long as my boss doesn�t put my ass in a sling over it all.


Updated stats:

Weight start: 206.5 on 1/1/06 (265.0 on 1/15/05)
Current weight 202.5 on 2/18/06 (Yes, a second week of ZERO progress. Damn cookies.)
Target: 180 by 7/1/06
Next weigh in: 2/25/06

The Keep on Truckin goal: (idea stolen shamelessly from Marn�s Big Adventure)
Miles at speed 2/9/06: 145.11
Miles with cooldown: 159.94
Target for 2006: 1000 miles


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