Cookie.

It has been six weeks since the last time I had an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie from Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s been four weeks since I’ve stepped into the Dunkin’ Donuts near work. I wish I could say that I don’t miss the occasional cookie one single bit, but that would be a lie. I do miss the cookie. I just don’t miss the calories (FYI a hamburger from McDs has less calories) associated with eating the cookie. Even though I ride my bike a LOT these days, I still feel like I’m not doing enough exercise. I envy these folks that can afford to spend three, four, five hours in a gym on a daily basis, grunting and making noises as they fling hundreds of pounds of weights around like it’s nobody’s business.

Skipping the cookie and eating healthy in general has been good for me. My body has some sort of threshold at around 194 pounds. Above 194 and my blood pressure gets weird and I occasionally get little rumbles in the chest area that are not scary but just noticeable enough to encourage my head to say “you’re getting at the upper end of the spectrum, bippy.” Below 194 and the blood pressure settles down to a reasonable level, the rumbles are gone and I have more energy. So skipping the cookie has been a good thing.

But I still miss the taste of a cookie.

Some have suggested making similar cookies at home with Splenda. Not a fan of Splenda. At all. Anything related to the chemical wizardry of Sucralose gives me a headache. I’m suspicious of stuff that tries to circumvent the laws of nature by claiming you’re eating no calories. The only thing worse than Sucralose for me is that Olestra stuff; feel free to ask me to point out the tree along the Thruway that was a makeshift porta-john after eating chips with the cleverly marketed “O-lean” the next time you see me in Albany.

I don’t want fake cookies. I want a real cookie. I’m going to need to schedule a couple extra hours of workout time to take care of this craving.

10 October 2012 by Fitness. 4

Plus.

So last week I declared on Twitter that I was giving up on Google+ as one of my social network outlets. I had had enough with trying to make a go of the service and I was going to swear it off completely. It was a declaration worthy of golden gilt.

I lied.

Over the weekend I decided to give Google+ another try. This attempt goes hand in hand with the app.net (or ADN) service, a $36/year service that is aiming to compete with Twitter.

I have to admit that Twitter hasn’t really been blowing my skirt up as much lately. I use it to share random thoughts and to keep up on what other folks are thinking in the world but I don’t really see it as an outlet for one-on-one communication. Google+ lends itself to that a little more than Twitter. Of course, Facebook tries to do it all, and I enjoy reaching out on Facebook, but sometimes I can see only so many of those cleverly* worded e-Cards before I want to throw a lamp or something. Idiocy tends to make me hostile.

So I’ve been trying Google+ again (I think this is the sixth time or so) where I embrace my geekiness and talk about techy stuff. I occasionally talk about other things as well, I’m not all about bits and bytes but since that sort of thing makes up much of a day, it tends to be my focus. Plus, there are a few tech guys that use ONLY Google+ and they share everything they find on there: news bits, tech news, personal adventures, travel photos and the like. I think that’s kind of cool. I kind of get offended when people use these sites as an outlet for hookups; I think the mainstream social networks should be kept to a PG-13 rating at most and honestly, I’m not looking for that sort of thing so don’t even waste my time. A shirtless pic can be enjoyable but don’t show a photo of your dismount off the pile of guys. It’s just my thing. I’m an old fashioned gay, I guess.

9 October 2012 by Geek 0

Rest.

I didn’t work out this morning. The rational side of me knows that every body, no matter how fit or how bionic, needs a break from working out once in a while, but the irrational side of me feels guilty for not working out this morning. So apparently my way to combat this is to drink extra gallons of water so as to flush the guilt away. I’m trotting back and forth to the rest room like crazy today but I don’t see any guilt in the urinal. I bet that’s not a sentence you read very often in a blog.

My hip is pretty sore after that fall I took on my bike on Saturday. I just realized that I didn’t write about that here, I posted about it on Facebook. That’s not a habit I would like to get in; falling nor posting things only to Facebook. The fall was because I maneuvered a railroad track crossing in a bad way and got my tire caught in one of the slots for the rails. My cyclist instincts kicked in though and I was able to twist my feet out of my pedals and kick the bike out of the way on my way down. I landed hard on my left hip though. Three drivers stopped to make sure I was ok and that was very much appreciated. I continued on with the ride afterwards and rode again yesterday, so all is well but I’m still pretty sore today.

I think taking a rest on a Monday might not be the best way to go, because I need something to kick start the whole Monday experience and the past several Mondays have been acceptable after a workout.

Maybe I just need a nap.

8 October 2012 by Fitness. 2

Saturday Night Dance Party.

Here’s a great track that will always amp up your Saturday evening. From 1988, here’s Inner City with “Good Life”.

6 October 2012 by DJ 0

Goals.

So in mid-August I set some health-related goals for myself. Today I conquered the second goal and because of this, I am feeling quite good today.

The first goal was to stick to a plan while not going off on some weird diet tangent that promised to reduce me to the size of Twiggy in a month but then would blow me up to twice the size if I inhaled anywhere near a Pop-Tart.  I believe eating normal, regular food but at reasonably sized portions (I call it “Leave It To Beaver” portions) is the way to go. With the help of MyFitnessPal (as recommended by our friend Jeff), I can say that I have gone for over 25 days of sticking to my plan. Goal ? So far so good.

The second goal was to get my weight to Army standards. Now I know I’m not in the Army nor have I ever been in the Army (back then they would have asked, I would have told…) but I figured that the goal of being within Army regulations was a good milestone along this path I had plotted for myself.  So this morning I felt quite good to see that the scale gave me the number that put me within regulations. I even jumped on the scale three times to make sure that the number was consistent.

I don’t like throwing out numbers, but I’m going to:

29 Aug 12: 209.0 lbs
05 Oct 12: 191.8 lbs

Watching what I eat because I record everything I eat has been a really good first step. Earl and I have been walking after supper at least three times a week for the past several weeks. We recently moved our walk from the nearby high school track to the mall, where there’s more to see, it’s warmer and we can be like old people racing around the perimeter of the mall.

I have also pledged to continue cycling until the snow plows chase me off the road. When that happens I’ll move the road bike into the basement (for days when we can’t see beyond the front porch) and start taking the trail bike out on days when we’re not having a blizzard. If the snow becomes an issue this winter, I’m going to take up snowshoeing. I hear that’s a great cardio workout.

My next goal is known to only Earl and me and I’ll probably peacock (using peacock as a verb sounds a little dirty) when I reach that goal, but for now I’m feeling good and I’m feeling more _balanced_ than I have in a while.

5 October 2012 by Fitness. 4

Debates.

A couple of weeks ago I was really interested in what was going on with the Presidential race. I wanted to know who stood for what and what money was going to whom and who was going to propose the best ideas for getting this country back on its feet, once they defined what “getting this country back on its feet” meant to them.

I think I ODed on politics.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch the debates last night. I sat down and started to watch the pre-game show on CNN, but with all the technical difficulties they were having, I got frustrated and started sending out Tweets scolding CNN for not having enough tin foil on their Rabbit Ears. But as long as John King can touch a giant iPad to do something that doesn’t really need to be done, all is well with the world, right? By the way, Wolf Blitzer still gives me the creeps and has done so for nearly 30 years. I miss the crossed eyed Bobbie Battista.

Neither candidate really excites me. Of course I’m going to vote for the one that is going to make sure that my marriage remains valid (and any gay man or lesbian that votes for someone that thinks they shouldn’t be married obviously hasn’t experienced the joy of love), but other than the same sex marriage thing, he really is the lesser of two evils. There is something to be said about personal responsibility. While I think that there should always be a safety net, I think people should do everything they can to avoid the safety net. It’s a last resort, not a lifestyle.

So instead of watching the debates last night I ended up just watching the Twitter stream, and to a lesser extent, watching the new ADN (app.net) stream. I’m becoming less of a fan of Twitter and more of a fan of ADN simply because the latter is not ad supported. I can handle $36/year for the service. My withdrawal from my Dunkin’ Donuts habit has already paid for that.

I think the biggest thing about the election for me is that everyone just bashes each other. Spectators are trying to turn it into a reality-show version of reality with everything but brawling at the debates. Candidates have nothing positive to say. They just accentuate the negatives of the opposition. “I don’t know what I’m going to do but look at what that fool did!”

It’s quite disheartening.

I’d probably have to run this by my husband, but the day someone declares my marriage nullified is the day we move out of the country. End of story. Ain’t no debating that.

4 October 2012 by Politics. This Ain't No CNN. 2

Halfway.

So I do a silent little happy dance when it turns 12:30 on Wednesday afternoons. This happy dance is in honor of the fact that at 12:30 we are exactly half way through the work week. Half way! That’s right, we are on THIS side of the work week now and the duration between now and the coming weekend is shorter than the duration between now and last weekend. That’s what being over half way means!

This is how my brain operates.

I probably should speak aloud as to what all this means, this tendency to measure my work intervals by how close they are to the the weekend. I mean some things should remain unspoken and this is probably one of those things. I have learned the important politics of being unspoken and I’m finding that sometimes it’s a good way to go.

However, because we are over halfway through the work week, I will share a little “yee haw!” out loud.

Yee haw!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

3 October 2012 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Lights.

When I ride my bike in the morning before work it’s still rather dark out. I take the usual safety precautions; I have a headlight and a taillight on the bike and I deck my halls with boughs of holly. Add a star and I’d really be lit up like a Christmas tree. People can see me.

Unfortunately, folks appear to not be in the habit of turning on their lights while they’re driving anymore. In a ten minute span during my ride I saw at least four cars driving in the relative darkness without their headlights on. I find this perplexing. Are they confused by the operation of the light switch that’s (usually) integrated with their turn signal? Do they think that the car will perform it’s automatic magic and turn the lights on for them and quite frankly they have no idea how to turn their lights on anymore? Do they just not care? Do they not notice the darkened dash in front of them because they’re too busy texting?

I’m finding this trend alarming. Not only is it dangerous that the driver can’t really see where they’re going, but it’s also dangerous to the rest of us on the road. Personally, I think that cars are becoming too automatic (many turn the lights on for you if you want it to) and therefore people are getting way too lazy. And then the plague of apathy that is gripping this nation is really no help, either.

If it’s dark out, please turn on your headlights. You’d be amazed at what you see when you can see where you’re going.

2 October 2012 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Autumn.

I’m totally getting into autumn. Earl and Jamie sat down for supper last night and realized that the paper napkins had been replaced by ironed cloth napkins. For that extra special touch, Jamie showed me how to fold a napkin restaurant style.

I’ve been doing more cooking. I made a meatloaf the other night that turned out pretty good (Earl said it was delicious) and I approached it in a healthy way, opting for leaner beef and turkey instead of going with my normal approach.

The dining room now has it’s autumn decorations scattered about. I organized the hutch yesterday so that I can easily get to the holiday tablecloth and the like when the need arises.

The washer put on enough miles to get to LA and back yesterday but things are clean in the house.

And I changed the litter box.

I’m always excited about this time of year and part of the reason is because I start to fall in love with the house again. I don’t know if it’s the weight loss, the exercise or the decision to smile more often, but life is quite good these days.

1 October 2012 by Fun and Games Dept 2

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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