tired

I'm just plain old running out of steam. I need a break from classes to recharge my batteries.

results not typical.....

I love the heart felt testimonials of people who went on a diet and lost a metric ton of weight. They have the horrid, miserable before pictures followed by the incredible after shots. The same is true of weight lifting supplements. I lost 45 lbs!!!*


*results not typical


Ever wonder why "results not typical" if this new way is the greatest thing since god invented the Earth? Makes me wonder too. I have a theory and it goes like this: The typical person is too lazy to commit to what is necessary to achieve exactly what they want, so they settle for less than they want.

Everything in life worth achieving demands some sacrifice.

sad week for losers

I only lost one stinkin' pound! I have to control my weekend eating much better. A night of Chili's and of fried seafood is bad for the belly. 13 pounds is still nothing too shabby, I just want more. The way I'm doing it, however, is the healthiest and most sustainable way.

I know right now that when I get to a skinny weight, I'll have stretchy belly flab, and I don't know how I feel about that. Oh well, I guess I'll wear layers.

feeling better all the time

I've been dieting for 3 weeks and so far, so good. Next weigh-in is tomorrow morning. I'm hoping my exercise offsets two nights of being bad. I should still be ok, especially if I keep it tight today.(I have)

I've given up redbulls as a morning drink. Yes, they give you wings, and then you crash like Icarus. I've started with a B-12 supplement in the morning. As of right now, wow what a difference!

BTW the Texas Cheesefries at Chili's has more fat and calories that a person my size should eat in two days! beware.

a gym? what's that?

I've not been working out regularly since I got sick last March. I've pretty much flushed all the progress I made away. Now that I'm losing weight, I'll be losing muscle too. If I want that trend to stop, I need to act yesterday. I've been naturally strong for most of my adult life, I don't want to be a skinny weakling. So, I must make it a poit to get back into a gym routine.

How to tell when things are going great.

I have time to write in my blog that nobody reads.

good times....

Life isn't too perfect at the moment, but I realized:
1. I'm gainfully employed.
2. I'm in college bettering myself.
3. I'm losing weight on a diet.
4. I'm in a very strong relationship.
5. There is a point very soon where I'll be pulling out of some of this hardship.

I'm doing great these days.

Biggest Loser update:

Last week was dismal. I only lost 2 pounds. So I knew I had to watch myself on days where I could splurge. My main issues is portion control, meaning I eat too much too fast and I wind up blowing it big time. I've worked on eating out skills this week, I did pretty good. Roby and I went to Outback and had a great dinner. I had the bread, a salad, a 9oz fillet w/mushrooms, a baked potato, and split a dessert with Robyn. How did I do it? That would have blown a whole weeks' diet! I ate 2 small pieces of the bread, I ate the whole salad, I drank diet soda, I ate half the steak and potato and about 1/3 of that awesome dessert. I also ate very light that day before. I exercised portion control and took home steak and potatoes for dinner the next night! I lost 4 pounds this week.I took some before pictured too, so I can show off my after.


Starting 260
Goal 195
Current 248

Going strong. I want to march for my degree in skinny clothes.

a hard heart

I tend not to feel too sorry for the downtrodden. There are some that have nearly-unbelievable bad luck, but most tend to be people who are more content wallowing in misery than to work for better circumstances. I know because I used to be one of them.

I've worked in kitchens, delivered pizza, ran the register at a few convenience stores, all the while miserable with my condition. What did I do? I assigned blame everywhere but where it truly belonged...with me.

I didn't go to school, I didn't eat right, I didn't do what I was supposed to when I was supposed to. Period. End of story. And there you have the seldom recognized formula for failure. It's easy to do nothing when the person who is at fault for your undoing is not you. You can't change them, you can't succeed.

Then what are we to do? It seems so hopeless, we should just give up, right? And there you are, a downtrodden "victim" of society.

But what if you realize that you have to change to change your situation? You realize that and you actually do something to change, then what? You break your back playing catch up and learn that change for the better is hard, but worth it.

Now, at nearly the end of my first 5-year plan. I graduate from college in 9 months, I'm on a diet and I've already lost 8 lbs. I can't change every one else, but I've done a lot to change myself and now I can't go back, or should I say I don't want to.

Pennsylvania

I don't get out too much, but this past weekend I went with Robyn and her parents to Allentown, PA. I honestly don't care to travel, but I had fun anyway.

We went to Robyn's cousin's wedding reception. He married a woman from Bulgaria both are going to be very successful. It was nice. We stayed in her Aunt's house with several people visiting from all over. One brought his giant iguana that was pretty much free-ranging the house. Made me want to try to grow another one, but not now anyway.

They were nice people, Allentown seemed a very nice place with lots of character. I came back and this whole place looks tired and ugly. Everywhere I saw run down everything that looks like nobody even cares a little bit. The minute I got back into NC, people were just plain old rude. Now I know why people with out-of-state tags fly past on the highway; they can't wait to get the Hell out.

I can't blame them now.

How did I do it?

After a week of fast food, no exercise, and general gluttony; I still managed to squeak out 2 pounds of weight loss. I'm amazed and disappointed at the same time. That could have easily been a 5+ pound week. Every trip to the fast food drive through, every second dip into the buffet is that much longer I have to stay in a shape that I'm ashamed of. That alone should discourage me. On the other hand, if I don't treat myself some, it's just setting myself up to fail.

That being said, I could care less what the scale says. I'm a somewhat muscled person (not muscular) and I'd not have it any other way. I'm not going to weigh the same as a person with no strength. I want the thin face and narrow waist and I want to feel good. Since I got myself fat enough cause stretch marks, I'll never look 100% the way I'd wish I could, but I knew that when I first saw them and kept stuff my face.

We work with what we have.

Start 260
Goal 200
Current 252

bad day

I managed to mess up all of my vehicles this week to the point that I am wheel-less for the moment. Does that upset me? A little. I'm frustrated, but there's nothing that can't be fixed in the ammount of time I have and nothing is too expensive, so I'm good.

Sometimes you have to look at the blessings, or the good stuff if you prefer. I'm doing great on my diet, I was the biggest loser for my team last week, my grades are all good, I've not gotten behind on anything important. Life is good, despite one bad day.

Biggest Loser - middle school edition

Well, we had our first check-in, and I lost 6 lbs. That makes me the biggest loser! Actually, being the lowest paid person here and the only fat guy working here makes me the biggest loser.

Either way, I joined weight watchers last week in hopes that it would show me the way. As of right now, I'm not disappointed. I know that to maintain a healthy weight, I must maintain a healthy lifestyle. This is the part I must learn. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, my whole life is changing around me and I'm ready to change too.

Starting - 260
Current - 254
Goal - 200

Senior 60

I have a kind of twist to the freshman 15. I'm border lining morbidly obese and something has got to give. I'm doing the senior 60. I want to lose at least 60 lbs before I graduate.

My school (where I work) is doing a "biggest loser" contest in the vein of the TV show. I joined up and I'm the only man in it. I'm also the only guy in wretched shape in the school. I tend to be a very competitive person and thought this would be the perfect motivation to do get it done.

I have decided to get organized with it. I'm going back to the gym starting today, and I've joined weight watchers. I like structure and I've realized I can't do it without it. Mainly, because I never learned how to eat healthy.

Current weight: 260 lbs.
Current goal: 200 lbs.

Timespan: ~8 months

Let the fun begin

rough night

Last night I dreamed of my death. Not of how, but of the precedings before the funeral. I looked like a creepy glob of wax and they were dressing me in a gray suit. I was watching them do it all, I guess I was a ghost of some sort. It was disturbing to say the least, but I remember thinking "there's something more after all".

I'm a reluctant athieist, meaning I'd like to believe in more, I'm receptive to the idea there is more, but I just don't. I've actually had people tell me my beliefs were "convienient". I think they are anything but. I want the tunnel of light, I want to see all my loved ones that passed away. I think Heaven should be there, and it should be like a Southern picnic. Everybody you know is there and they are all happy to see you. I'd like to think dear old Buddy is at the main gate waiting for me to come in.

I'd like a place that is a cross between everything we know about afterlife. It's what you enjoy and find beautiful and you can interact with other loved ones who have died. Maybe it would have a little reincarnation mixed in. You can remember your past lives after you pass on, but eventually you send your essence, or soul back to be reborn. Perhaps the people we strongly connect with in life were the people we had a previous connection with in another life.

Who knows really? I know that if this is my only shot, I want it full of love, comfort, and happiness. I want the people I've shared my life with to be left with positive things after I'm gone. I want them to remember the love and that I'd want them to be alright after I'm gone and move on with their lives.

All this over a dream. I don't know when it will happen, but I know and accept that I will eventually die, and everyone around me will die either before or after me. I cannot stop or control this, it is a simple fact of life. I will, however, fill the future with as much good as I can so when the time comes, I'll have no regrets.

I shouldn't listen to raving athieists before going to bed, or eat spicy sandwiches either

Solution?

Organized crime? Gang problems? Terrorism? Dwindling resources for social programs?

HA! Easy solution, what do they all have in common? Drugs.

Gangs, Gangsters, and terrorists fuel their agendas through the illegal drug trade. So? Legalize it, tax it, and go into an economical golden age.

Simple solutions are the best.

great quote

I was watching TV last night, which is rare in itself and I saw a quote used on CBS's "Cold Case". I was a few punk kids tagging "Evil Triumphs" as thier motto and they were convicted of murdering 3 kids. It turns out they didn't, and the big rock&roll satan gimmick was a reach. The kids were making a statement. "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" was the whole quote. I thought' "Wow!".

It's so true it's scary, just look at what a generation of inaction has given us.

Everyday we lose a few more rights. we allow the Constitution to be erroded and we do nothing. As long as there is an i-Pod, a Starbucks, and 500 crystal-clear HD channels to keep us numb to world events and all the while Big Brother is listening.

A Russian commedian that was popular in the 80's, said "Things are so different here. In America, you watch TV. In Soviet Union, TV watch YOU!"

Patriot Act my rear, just wrap that one in the hammer & sickle and call it a day.

the future...whatever

I don't get much time to write with school in full blast, but we do what we can. I was looking at some vintage reels from the day talking about the future. By the year 2000, we'll have flying cars, take vacations on the moon, and have robot servants. Well, they sure missed on all that.

I think the problem with predicting the technology of the future is we use today's standards of life to base what we think tomorrow will be like. The problem being is that all the technological advances that get us closer to those goals also shape the society and creates other issues and goals.

This is a transcript of what might happen in 2000 in a 1961 newspaper.

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you.

It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom.

- Still no cure for cancer

You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space.

- Hmmm

Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun.

- nada

Doors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

Automatic doors? yes. Everything else is BS

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

- Answering machines & internet okay, this real

You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

- You can have a big screen tv, and indoor pools, they made video phones and video chats are popular. Mostly stuff for the wealthy, not the average person. No push-button remodeling though...

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Well, they can't cook, but computers and TV's do seem to 'babysit' the kids to ill-effect.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

- Wow, they had the good drugs in 1961

Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

-Yep, food without nutritional properties are here, we call it McDonald's.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift.

- So much for that work week. Those glade plug-ins work nicely.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

-Email and internet. Didin't get the need for paper out of our mind yet.

There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will "talk" to each other.

-Internet! Still have to type manually...

It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities.

- Not yet...

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

- keep dreaming

Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation's traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains.

- I guess consolidation of services is a foreign concept.

In commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour.

-HA!

By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond.

-We're really falling behind schedule here.

Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

-Yeah...

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100.

-Well, no regrown limbs, but people have been seen to live vitally past 100.


And this isn't science fiction. It's science fact - futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists.

It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!


- Yeah, they were pretty delusional. I want my robot servant.

But there are thing we have now that they never imagined in 1961.

Cell phones
Mp3's
Laptop computers
Video Games
Internet

All these thing make a lot of what they were talking about obsolete. A robot servant could consolidate many things and really simplify life. But think also of the bad things that could happen.

Podcasting....

I'm intrigued by podcasting and I want to do it. I need to figure out what I need to make it happen.

teachers...

I was never a good student in school, I am 100% responsible for the mess I made of my adult life. I never did get much guidance and direction as a kid. I got a lot of love, but not much guidance. But there were a few. There were people who tried to teach me, even when I wasn't ready to hear what they had to say. And now that I work with kids and see what their effort meant, I'm truly ashamed that I won't ever get to thank all of them in person and tell them what they meant to me.

Mrs. Niparts, 1st grade - Thank you for being loving, inventive and creative. Thank you for making me feel special.

Mrs Leath 3rd grade - And currently my department head, thank you for making me feel wanted and important.

Mrs Martin 5th grade part II - Thank you for just being a great, loving person and a wonderful example of who to be as a person.

Mrs Gates 6th grade - Thank you all I can remember is feeling love.

My entire 7th grade team - Thank you for not killing me, I'm sorry.

Mrs Miles 7th grade Language Arts - Than you for trying to make me a better person and not budging on it, though I hated you at the time for it.

Mrs Baumgardner 9th & 11 grade LA - Wow, thanks for being so crazy I had to pay attention and thank you for reminding me that I like to write.

Mrs Cheney 11th grade US History - Thank you for telling me I was worth something long after I no longer believed I was.

Mr. Cook - You never taught me, but you knew my name. That made me feel important. Thank you

Mr. Pickard 11th grade Intro to Computers - You are a great man and you made me feel like a person in your room, thank you.

Mr Rice 11th & 12th grade graphic arts & Al too - This class was my refuge. I felt like family in here. I stopped thinking about killing myself after the first month. Mr. Rice called me by my French class name "Serge" it was the fist time anyone thought enough of me to give me a nickname.

Coach Staley 12th grade Geometry - thank you for treating me well, and not getting mad when I was too wasted to hold my head up in class.

Mrs Danieley 12th grade Chemistry - If not for you, I would not have graduated. Thank you so very much.

They did so much for me, and cared long after I had stopped. Now that I'm trying very hard to improve my lot in life, I can use what they gave me to be a success now that I'm ready to do it.