Working out

When I said yesteray, I planned on posting more, I didn’t really mean I’d do it daily, but I wanted to get this written down.  I mentioned a couple of months ago, I’ve lost a fair amount of weight in the last year.  I’ve sort of stagnated here the last 3+ months.  First of all, we got a new scale because Sherry said she thought the old one was reading too light.  She weighed herself here and then at the Dr’s office and the difference was more than could be accounted for by additional clothing.  So, I bought a new one and sure enough the old one was reading about 3-4 lbs lighter than the new one.  So, when I hit that 195, it was probably actually a 198 (I’ve actually hit 196.8 on the new scale, so I’ve been even lower than what the old reading of 195 would have meant) and the 232 when I started (this time) was likely more like 235.  Anyway, since early May I’ve been sitting at 200±2 lbs.  There isn’t really a problem with that, I actually am feeling pretty good at this weight, I’m wearing jeans that are 4″ smaller in the waist than I was a year ago (and I’m noticing that they are actually a little on the loose side).  Also, hopefully tomorrow the jeweler will call and I’ll get my wedding ring back (it is being resized smaller).  Several times this summer, I’ve nearly lost it in the pool and when I nearly lost it in the shower last week, that was the final straw, I took it to the jeweler 5 days ago.  Now, I lost the first 15-20 lbs strictly by watching what I ate, cutting the caloric intake to 1500-1800 calories a day, but then I plateaued for a while.  In Jan-Feb, I started adding in some resistance/weight training (starting with the resistance bands 3 times per week and later switching to the actual free weights occasionally for some variation) and more weight came off, another 15-20 bringing me to a total of about 35 where I am now.  For the last two months, however, I’ve gotten out of the workout habit.  It started around the time of SANSFIRE (maybe just before) and with all of my travels in July, it kept on.  I worked out once while I was at my parent’s place and was very, very sore the day I had lunch with the college friend (I hope she didn’t notice I was moving like an 80-year-old).  Then not again until Monday.  I finally put the old DVD in and went at it.  Obviously, I had to lighten the weight (or reduce reps) from where I was when I was doing it regularly and I was a little sore yesterday and this morning, but I hit it again today and I expect I’ll feel better tomorrow.  Perhaps a little more will come off if I get back in the routine.

To continue where I left off…

I still haven’t made the flight to visit my friend, if all goes well, that should happen next week.  In the last week or so, however, I have gotten some good news, that I’d like to share.  I mentioned in the last post that there had been some bad news.  I was informed that my aunt had breast cancer.  About the same time, one of my wife’s coworkers got bad news about possible cancer in her abdomen.  Finally, the father of a good friend discovered he required 5 heart bypasses.  Well, the good news is that after the lumpectomies, the tests suggest that my aunt’s cancer was caught early enough and appears not to have spread.  Followup radiation should be brief and no chemo required.  My wife’s coworker had surgery last week and they removed 17 lbs (yes, you read that right, 17 lbs) worth of tumor from her ovaries.  Now, she isn’t a large girl by any stretch of the imagination, so I’m stunned at the size, but they don’t believe the cancer has spread to any other organs (though they are still waiting for some test results).  Finally, my friend’s father seems to have come through the quintuple bypass well, so it has been good news all the way around.  I am going to endeavor from here on to post something here at least once or twice a week.  I have a number of thoughts that I need to develop into a more complete form, but we shall see.

Home for a while

Well, my car has travelled 5,118 miles in the last 30 days.  It has been a busy month and I have one more little visit (though I intend to fly that one rather than drive) to make sometime this month, but otherwise I think I’ll be a homebody for a while.  The week after the holiday, I visited my youngest sister for a couple of days and got to see my nephew play some baseball, then went on to NJ to get in some face-time with the boss and team.  While there, I also got to visit with some good friends from back when I lived out that way.  Then it was back to my sister’s for another day and on home.  After a week at home, it was down to NC to spend time with Mom and Dad and celebrate Dad’s 75th birthday.  While there, I set up wireless networking so I can use the laptop down there.  I also was able to have lunch with a very dear friend from college that I hadn’t seen in over 25 years.  Then I came home, but my car went on another road trip with Matt.  He went to Memphis to visit a friend from basic training (I think) then to visit with George (his old boss, the one who took him to Japan a few years back).  After he brought my car back, I traveled back over to my sister’s for my nephew’s belated graduation party.  Lots of miles on the car, but lots of good visits with friends and family.  There has also been some bad news in the extended family, but I don’t really want to talk about that right now.  It looks like the weather probably won’t allow the flying I was hoping to do.  I really need to find some time to get instrument current again.

The $100 hamburger

I desperately needed to fly, but my original plans to visit a friend (that I haven’t seen in 24 years) fell through, so I decided to take my first “$100 hamburger” flight (which with inflation is probably more like $200, but who’s counting?).  The weather was pretty nice this morning, high only expected to be about 80°F.  I flew from KVTA to KPMH and had lunch at the restaurant there on the airport.  The grilled ham and cheese was pretty good, the pie, not quite so much, but the people and the atmosphere were perfect for the venue.  Got some nice crosswind practice on landing too which I can’t complain about.  The flight back was windier than I expected and on landing at KVTA, it was 28°C, alt 29.59, wind 270@16G22.  Fortunately, right down the runway, because that’s a little more crosswind than I’ve done in a while (not that I was really worried about crosswind, but…).  A pleasant little 1.8 in the logbook (and another airport) and I’ll still try to catch up with the old friend next month.  Life is good.

More random thoughts

Wow, so I went another month without posting anything.  Sorry about that.  Since I last posted, I finally got the notification that my GREM Gold paper was approved (it hasn’t been posted yet, I’ll update this (or post a new one) when it is (it should be at http://giac.org/certified_professionals/practicals/grem/48.php when it is).  I actually turned the original draft of the paper in around the end of Feb, but for some reason it took almost 3 months for my advisor to sign off on it even though I made no significant changes in it.  I’ve written up and done a trial run of my SANSFIRE talk based on the paper, it was too long, so I’ll have to shorten the talk up some before I give it on the 18th.  The pool is open, I got in it yesterday, Erin got in today, but it is still a little on the chilly side.  I really need to find some time to fly under the hood with and instructor and get IFR current again.  Mom and Dad leave this week for their Alaskan cruise (did I mention we –the kids– gave them this cruise as their 50th anniversary present?).  I saw the new Star Trek movie and I’m still (even 3 weeks later) not sure how much I like it and how much I dislike it.  I’m not real happy that they tossed out everything that came before, but I kind of understand why Abrams felt like he needed to.  Mark’s baseball team lost too early in the state playoffs, but Marist made the NCAA tournament (where they were promptly eliminated by Ohio State).  Hopefully he can help them get back there again next year.  There still isn’t a new contract with the union, so I still have to worry about possibly getting sent out to the New Lex CO.  I finally watched The Bucket List this evening.  I DVRed it a couple of weeks ago.  I enjoyed it though I thought Jack Nicholson had too much weight on him for someone going through chemo.  How’s that for an odd thought.  I have built a database using the baseball databank data to give me game info back to at least 1920 and play-by-play back to 1960 (except 1992-1999).  I even figured out how to convert the current season data into retrosheet format and put it in the database.  I want to use it to get more accurate fielding data than I can get from the box scores.  I’ll play with it after my SANSFIRE talk and before I start studying for my GCFW recertification.  I enjoyed Leno’s last week and Conan’s first on the Tonight Show.  I need to call my baby sister, I didn’t get to call her on her birthday, I hope she’ll forgive me.  How’s that for random thouhts?

Random thoughts from Star Wars Day

I have a whole bunch of things I need to post about, but not enough time in which to do it, so I’ll throw a few of them out here and hopefully find some time in the next couple of days to write about some of the others.

Wow, it was more than 10 years ago now when our musician at Faith UCC asked me to do “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar as a solo for Maundy Thursday. Since I am not now (nor have I ever been, well maybe I was briefly, anyway…) a tenor (are there any parts in the entire show other than Caiaphas for basses?), we took it down a little bit and changed the arrangement slightly (and I took a few parts down an octave), but I really like that song. The whole story of Gethsemane has always been one of my favorites because it shows Jesus as struggling with doing God’s will, just like the rest of us. I was reminded of this when John Shuck posted a link to this youtube video (it actually starts at 1:44).

The other thing I wanted to mention today has to do with my weight.  I am just shy of 6′ 2″ tall and when I graduated from high school I weighed 147 lbs, yup not a lot of body fat there.  Apparently, that is at the bottom end of “healthy weight” for my height.  I remained there until about my junior year of college.  I was still about 160 when I graduated from college.  By the time I returned to grad school for the second time I was in the 190s.  I topped out at 242 in 1999 (after my back surgery).  Yup, at that point I was 95 lbs heavier than when I graduated from high school.  In 2000, I talked to my doctor and devised a plan to take off some of that weight.  I ended up losing 44.5 lbs in 7 or 8 months.  I eventually got down to 197.5, but I didn’t stay there long.  I was in the low 200s for a while, but over the next year or so, I gradually crept back up to the point that I was pretty consistently 227± 2 for about 3 years until last July.  When I got home from SANSFIRE in July, I weighed 232 again.  At that point, I decided enough was enough.  I’ve changed the way I eat (limiting calories by watching portion sizes, increasing fiber, drinking lots of water — about 140oz/day) and I exercise regularly again (something I haven’t really done in a very long time).  This morning, I weighed myself at 197.0 lbs which is the lightest I’ve been in at least 15 years (I was about 208 when we got married if I remember correctly).  I’d still like to take a little more off, but I’m very happy with this.  More later.

Oh, and may the Fourth be with you (yeah, lousy pun I’ve seen numerous places today).

Fuel – the documentary

I posted last month about Josh Tickell’s book Biodiesel America and mentioned a couple of weeks ago that his documentary, Fuel was coming to Columbus.  I went and saw it at Studio35 in Columbus on Tuesday (tonight is the last night it is showing here) and it was every bit as good as I had hoped.  Now I just need to find ways to put it all in practice.  If it comes to a town near you, please go see it.  It is well worth the time and money.  I just wish I would have been able to get a few more people out with me to see it.

What is going on?

Things have been pretty busy for me lately.  I took a brief vacation last weekend and visited my baby sister and got to see my nephew, the baseball star, play.  His team won both games, he scored the first run in one and drove in the game winner in the other (and according to my internet research, he appears to have won this past Thursday’s game with a solo homerun in the top of the 7th inning).  It was a good time, I always enjoy spending time with Munchkin and her family.  Yesterday and today seemed like they would have been great days to fly, but, alas, I didn’t get to.  I hope to get in some flying again in the next week or two, but that will depend in part on the work situation.  The company and the union are still negotiating although the contract expired last night at midnight.  If the union goes out, I’ll have to work in a new place and, I’m told, it will be 6 12-hour days per week for the first few weeks (if the strike lasts that long).  Ah, well, it isn’t flying weather now, we have thunderstorms and a tornado watch and they are predicting snow tomorrow and Tuesday.  Gotta love spring, huh?!  Oh, well, tomorrow is opening day of the baseball season and the NCAA championship game (in basketball), so I’ll try to OD on that and enjoy the snow.  It also just occurred to me that yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis.  As I think I wrote before, I really came to appreciate him much more in the mid-70s, but I do remember the rioting that broke out after that awful day.  I’ll try to write something of substance in the next week.