A belt notch

Well, I am happy to report that I am down one belt notch. 214 is today's wieght. I don't know how many more belt notches to go, but dieting is a slow process and it does take time. I am on track to be at my goal weight by mid-March. Lori and I both are doing great and not straying from the diet at all- well maybe some un-authorized vegtable chips and salsa, but hey you still have to live a little, right? Right.

The other big news is we finaly got our Christmas present. Yes, the big screen TV. Lori has painted the living room walls and I havemounted the bracket and I am working on running all the cables. I play around a lot with the cables as I get new gear, so I have a plan now that should be good ongoing. Every, I mean every cable that is possible to be run to the back of the flat-screen is being run out to wear I have the gear set up. I mounted it on the wall adjacent to the garage, so I am just running all of the cables out there and using RF remotes or senders to control the gear. I have it all mapped out and the bundle of cables is about 2" around. I am also installing the power outlet behind the set. The look I am going for is like the Jetson's. All I want to see is the picture on the wall and the speakers. It is very radical change over what we have now, so it will take some getting used to. It is nice now to just do a project and not have to go take a nap in the middle. :) Yeah, fatigue is a thing of the past now. : -) :-)

The Diet Still Lives

It has been such a long week. I worked 11.5 hours on Firday and I was pooped out. I am getting caught up on a lot of things at work, so that is good. The toll it is taking is not good.

The diet is going very well. I was down to 217 this morning. 17 lbs down in two weeks; that is pretty good. I still feel fat though. When I get under 200, then I will feeel good I think. It won't be that long off.......

Lori is off on Monday and I am taking the day off and we are going to Universal Studios here in Orlando. We went a month or so ago with my sister-in-law, Bonnie and our Godchild, Summer. We had a great tiem and saw the Macy's (labeled) parade. It was so much fun, we had lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and I had a couple of the famous margaritas and we had a nachos platter for lunch. If anybody goes to Universal, I would suggest doing that. For $15 you get a HUGE platter of nachos and drinks. That is about what one meal inside the park costs. The nachos is enough for four people easy. Since we a re dieting, on Monday, we will be bringin our own South Beach Diet boxed lunchs. Dinner is still up in the air, but I have a pizza recipe I want to crank back up here at the house.

Other than that, not too much going on. Go Packers and Chargers tomorrow!!

Time for football

Today is the big game where the Jaguars take on the previously unbeaten Patrots. Yes, I know how to spell the name of their team, but I am coining a phrase.

Not much time for me to be in here blogging, gotta go get my food supplies for the game ready. Just veggies and some of my famous baked, boneless, skinless, no fat fillet, pseudo buffalo style, chicken, not wings, but breast meat snacks. They taste great, just using chicken breast meat fillets and no fat in the sauce. I bake them as the name states and put a healthy hot sauce on for them to soak up. I have not made them in a while, but I'm sure they wioll turn out good.

GO JAGUARS!!!!

Tabascoed

I was Tabascoed. Friday's lunch was a bunless venison burger and a salad. What goes well on a bunless venison burger? Why Tabasco, of course. So I had my lunch ready and all I needed was my small bottle of Tabasco. The Tabasco in our kitchen livs in the cabinet above the stove. So I opened the cabinet above the glasstop stove and the Tabasco decided to exit the cabinet before I was ready for it. So with the glasstop stove, I had to quickly try to catch the bottle. As I swiped the thin air it occured to me the last time something like this happened, we had to replace the glasstop stove. With that in mind I just hit the bottle away from the stove. Of course the thing gained speed as it absorbed the energy from my hand.

CRASH.

The bottle exploded.

Since we have a tile floor. glass went everywhere from it's impact. One rather large piece bounced off in a rather wierd direction which was right towards my leg. I felt the blood start to flow and I thought to myself "Gee, this will make a great blog!" How sick was that? Even as I swept and mopped I thought I should have taken pictures. My lunch break was almost over and I had still not even started my lunch. :( I got to choke down all of my food quickly before jumping on a 1 PM call. The funny thing later was how much I could still smell the Tabasco in the air in the kitchen. That is some powerful stuff, I have the markings on my leg to prove it.

BTW- I know I posted a pictre of tbasco bottle before, butgive me a "break," I'm on a diet here and my food choices are limited...

This week has flown by, I can't believe that tomorrow is Friday. Work has been quite hectic and I have not had a chance toturn around when anohter issue hits me out of the blue.... Such is my job though.

On the diet front things are still going well. My weight this morning- 226 lbs. Wow, like nine pounds. I better slow it down otherwise I'll be losing at an unhealthy rate.

I got two more Christmas presents that were on backorder in the mail today. I had Lori take a picture, so I will post that tomorrow. I would do it now but I can't find my usb cable for my camera. There is a good teaser that will bringyou back. Right? Right.

I m too tierd to do any more typing tongiht, so... goodnight and have a pleasent tomorrow.

Day three of SBD; only a small grease fire

The diet continues and neither Lori or I have gone astray. :) We have both been eating exactly what we should and not going around hungry. It is really a healty diet and I feel better when on it. I am not sure why I did not stay on it last time. Oh yeah, lazy and "I loves me chicken wings and beer."

Tonight we had broiled sirloin steak. Lori likes her's well done, so I took mine out of the oven at about 4 minutes and she wanted her's left in there. "Ok, you take over from here," I said as I fixed my plate with broiled grape tomatoes- hey don't knock them, they were delish.

Anyway as I am almost ready to sit down with my plate of food, I hear "Oh, mine is on fire!" Great, I look over to the oven and there are small flames shooting up from the pan inside and when she opened the door of course there then was an abundance of O2 and those flames shot way up. So we quickly planned what to do- I was going to open the oven, grab the flaming dinner and put the whole thing in the sink where we could work on it safely. So, I opened it, the flames shot up again and I grabbed and it worked as planned. I grabbed the tongs and removed Lori's steak from the inferno- "just like I like it!" she yelled. The grease on the pan itself was burning and we first were going to just let it burn out, but the black smoke started and we thought we better put it out. Lori said "Don't put water on it," so I said "let me just try" and sprayed a light spray at the edge of the fire and it started to get bigger. Then she said "baking soda should do it" as she reached for the Arm & Hammer. To which I grabbed a different box that was already open and threw a handful on and out it went.

What fun we had. :) Actually, yes it was fun and we had a great dinner to boot. Day three of the diet is now in the books.

The Diet Starts

235 lbs. Day one of the South Beach Diet. The day started out with two spinach/pepper/onion quiches. Those babies were good and dipped in some Tabasco it made every bite (each four of them) more tasty than the last. Ok, they were only the size of half a cupcake, but they were good. Salads and no sugars will be my marching orders for the next two weeks. On the South Beach diet you have three phases;one is the first two weeks and it eliminates all complex carbs and you drop the first segment of your weight quickly; phase two is the gradual weight loss until you get to your goal weight, then it it phase three on going. If you read the book, it really makes sense just eat healthy meals and you can stray when on phase two or three, but just compensate by going back to one briefly. The last time I went on SBD I lost quickly and felt very good about the diet, er ah, lifestyle change. Dinner was good too, we had Tilapia and broccoli, we both had a cheese stick for dessert.

Both Lori and I have been good for day one and there has been no cheating. That is the way it will stay according to Tom, diet Nazi.

Chelsea called yesterday and she is doing great in Japan. She sent us two nice boxes of Japanese things over Christmas. Too bad one of the coffee cups for our neighbors Perry and Mary did not make it in one piece though. She got coined by one of the colonel's the other day and that is a big thing for an airmen. We miss you and love you Chels!!!!

Playoffs, round one

The first weekend of playoff football is a little more than half over now. My Jags came back after leading most of the game to win over the Steelers. Next stop... either Indy or NE. It was a really good game right to the end, I was sitting on the edge of my seat and chewing away at my finger nails(figurativly, not litterally). Meanwhile Chelsea was watching via the slingbox in Japan and would pause the game and went back to the Tivo menu screen sometimes, driving me crazy. If she would have seen me when she paused the TV during a critical portion, ohmyohmy. She said she thought it was pretty funny, but I did not see the humor at the time. Lori said that is something that I would do. Yes, I do see the humor in it now....

Now to see if the other Florida team in the playoffs can advance to the next round. Go Bucs! whoops did I say that? Well a man can have a second favorite team can't he? I do like to root for the football teams in Florida. Of course Miami does not have a football team, so that statement holds true. For the record, I hate the Dolphins and always have. I was really rooting for them to go winless this year. Stupid Ravens. As long as I am rabling about teams I hate.... the Colts. I was a major Colts fan when they were in Baltimore then they slinked out of town in the middle of the night and flushed thier Baltimore ties. I hated them since and will never be fond of them as long as they are owned by the Irsays.

Happy Saturday! I slept in today. Lori and I went over to Beef 'o Brady's last night for our Friday night wings and beer. I went to lunch with Tommy about 5 weeks ago there and we have been back every week since. I love their hot wings. Last night we said farewell as both Lori and I will be on the south beach diet come Monday. I'll post my starting weight and my progress through the diet.

I finally decided on a personal cell phone last week, I got the "old" Samsung Blackjack. I got a great deal on it and I just received it on Thursday, so I am still playing with the features, etc. This phone replaces my HP iPAQ 6515. It was a good phone, but the battery died on it then the backup battery died and after getting a new battery for it, it just started acting wierd and not starting up, would not recognize my SIM, etc. So I was ready for an upgrade.

GO JAGUARS!!!!

Tonight is the big wild card game for the Jaguars. They are playing in Pittsburgh, and the Jags are the favorites, so it should be a good night. Both teams are coming in healthy (aside from Wille Parker- good luck with your broken leg). Jacksonville already beat the Steelers three weeks ago.

Today's plans: The truck has spilled it's cooling fluid on the driveway, so I will need to find the leak and get that fixed before the Redskins/Seahawks game at 4. What fun, it never ends... I also want to put out some food in my new chaffing dishes I just last week as the result of a black Friday sale.

How about all the crazy weather out west? I hope everyone stays safe...

(man, I really need to jazz these blogs up- ok, tomorrow, there will be quite a controversy posted here- it will really make you think) ...stay tuned...

the hangover is gone and back to work....

Whew, I am recovering from quite a Happy New Year. Lori and I both were on the computer as usual until late on New Year's Eve, until about 11:30. I have been working on a spreadsheet for Lori to use for school. She is now working for Seminole county schools as an SLP (Speech & Language Pathologist). She has a bunch of students and four different schools she goes to, so she wanted a template to help her keep it organized. I think I made a pretty good template, all she has to do is enter the data. So we put the computers up long enough to toast the new year and then went to our neighbors, Perry and Mary. They had some friends over and we brought some shooters over and I had way too much to drink... UGH the painful headache was proof positive. Well we had a great time, thanks Perry and Mary!

It is getting cold here, so after work today Lori and I picked all of the citrus off of the orange and lemon trees tonight. I just grabbed a laundry basket and Lori grabbed a paper grocery bag and both are about full. Lori tried one of the oranges and she said she was not normally an orange lover, but she loved these. I think they taste better when you grow them yourself. We had tilapia for dinner and loaded them up with lemon, yum.... :) I guess we will be drinking orange and lemon juice for a few weeks now.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone !!!