Picking up where I left odd...

No, that wasn't a typo in the title, it was a well-designed pun. I'm so clever, sometimes I only SEEM dumb. Then I do a brain ninja like thing on you and you only realize it later. Example: earlier I said our really old industrial shredder (which stands about 3.5' tall) wasn't actually a shredder, but had a miniature Viking inside that we fed paper. "Vikings," I said," are actually more eco-friendly people than we give them credit for. That's why they created Greenland." Think about it.

So, some things are the same since I last wrote, I think. I'm trying out a gluten-free diet to the best of my ability and am trying my best to diet overall. It must be working; yesterday I weighed in at 238! That's 16 pounds less than 9/29 without trying very hard for most of that period (and I know it went up during that time). And no... I'm not trying to become a model or anything. I just want to fit into my Halo 2 t-shirt.

My friend Travis and his wife Kim are here to stay, having moved from New Hampshire for Christmas! Yay!!! It was all a big conspiracy; they sprung it on their family after they got here and on us the day after Christmas (when we were all assembled together). Sadly, when their stuff finally arrived here a month later (SUPER late, as I understand it), much was broken. Hope it all works out, guys!

What else... we still haven't gotten a house yet. If I haven't posted about that before, by the way we're trying to buy a house (I assume you read my wife's blog anyway if you read mine). We've been trying for some time now; I imagine our poor realtor will be very happy to be rid of us! We got close one time but the bank was playing hardball with us and something about the area didn't sit right so we decided not to go with it. Otherwise we've had a lot of near misses. Our friends Matt and Angela got one the first weekend they went out...but it does have termites. That sucks.

Sorry for the absence, by the way, my computer has been down for most of this period and I haven't been motivated enough to wrest my wife's away from her when I have the time to do an entry. She has claws... Anyway, I have Dynasty Warriors, Rock Band, and other things ( mostly like looking for houses and work) to keep me busy lately. My brother was finally able to bring me back Star Wars TFU, so I played it again...and promptly deleted my saved game and uber leveled up character. Scott was unhappy. I did discover downloadable content with a new level that looks interesting, so hopefully I get to play it this weekend.

Finally got to have dinner/coffee with my friend Katrina, who had moved here...um...a few months ago. Yeah, it's not easy to get together with me. Ask Andrew, he'll tell ya. After that I got to go on a diaper-purchasing adventure. Lesson learned: the boxes for wipies and diapers look similar. Probably should take one's time a bit on that aisle. Speaking of Andrew, I also got to have dinner with him, and once a month is not enough, mein freund. We shall do this again, sir, and there shall be much rejoicing in the land.

Got to see the Cardinals win the championship game to be eligible for the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks, which was exciting. I'm not really into football, as you know, but it was fun watching it with my dad and my friends. I'm expected at Travis' parents' house for the Super Bowl as his mom is an ardent Steeler's fan and his dad is a Cards fan so it will be advantageous not to sit in the middle. :-)

Other than that I can't think of anything more. Hopefully once the house thing gets done stress levels will be reduced a bit in our household and we can move on to something else. I'd like to get started again on school before too long here, of course, and I'm bemused to actually find myself missing it. I guess after so many years of being a student it just gets under your skin; I don't know.

Next post will not be so delayed, I hope!

Health/Weight Watchers stuff

I didn't forget to post the stuff I promised on the Weight Watchers thing, I was just busy (see previous post). Having said that, I decided to change last week from week 1 to "week 0," or in scientific terms, the "control." I realized that I was inevitably going to be forced (ahem) to eat cake and be taken against my will (ahem ahem) to lunch at least a couple times, so I might as well not stress over it. So this table is week 0's results to establish a baseline weight that I can hopefully improve on. This is still better than when we got back from Travis and Kim's wedding!

Hopefully you can read that okay. Basically the most important part is on the right under "results." The other stuff just shows how horrible I was this week. For my starting weight of 250 (yes, I gained 4 pounds!) I am allotted 28 points per day. I was at or under that...3/7 days this week. The data is not 100% accurate points-wise, as I had to fill in some of it (okay, days 4-7) from memory, but that's very close.

In other news, I'm still sick. I never really got 100% better from my cold, so today I finally said enough is enough and left work early. I went to the doctor, who decided I have bronchitis and a sinus infection, neither of which is necessarily bad enough to keep me from work (unless the antibiotics knock me on my butt as they might). Yay team. So yeah, I got the aforementioned antibiotics, and for the first time I can remember an inhalator. It's kinda funny.

Hopefully feeling sick will help me keep my points down this week... lol?

Scott is tired!

So yes, I really did have special plans on Sunday; I wasn't being flippant. I went to church, then came back and took on a project of monumental proportions if I do say so myself. I decided since my wife has been working so hard on finals and such that I would do something nice for her so I (with some unexpected help from my mom and my sister) shampooed pretty much all the carpet in the house (minus the bedrooms, which no one but us sees anyway). That required moving a lot of furniture, and I don't mind telling you I am still pretty sore. I'm not used to exercise anymore, so I was tired by the time we were done. Luckily that was still over an hour before Abigail came home. I also managed to do quite a bit of other cleaning as well so when she got here I was rather pleased with myself, as was she.

Matt and Angela came over that afternoon (just before Abigail, actually) and we had good times. Matt began a weight loss competition at work last week that involves measuring his total loss of poundage as well as body fat, so he is unofficially doing Weight Watchers as well as exercising. He went through how it's going with me and showed me how he is doing it, so I decided Monday would be Day 1 of my new diet. While I failed miserably (I had a cheeseburger at our restaurant, and regret nothing), I have taken to the project with much enthusiasm. I designed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything, and so I've decided that in lieu of going to the meetings I will be posting the results here once a week. This is Day 2 (which has gone astronomically better, by the way), and I am really excited about it. The problem is Day 3 is my birthday, and Day 8 is my birthday party, so those two days I'm pretty much screwed. Oh well...

Anyway, it's the end of the month (EOM) at work so I have been super busy and stressed. I ended up getting off at 6:45 today, eep! Hopefully this will get better as the week goes by. My boss had talked about taking us to the movies tomorrow in honor of my birthday (and his 3 free movie passes that we gave him for HIS birthday last week) so we'll see. I'm still not sure we're going but it's a nice thought. I'm not planning on making a big deal about the day at work, but I don't know if it will be up to me. We'll see...