Jan
2009
As most people do, I have a love/hate relationship with my scale.
As I mentioned on Scattercast episode 24, like so many people in the world, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to lose more weight this year. I was quite happy with the fact that I made it through the holidays with only 1 to 2 pounds in fluctuation. I worked hard at making sure I didn’t gain, and kept up my work out regimen to make sure that didn’t happen.
Now as we get in to the serious part of the year, I stepped on the scale last night (something I swore I would not obsess about, but yet I step on it every night now it seems), and found I had another of my “What the hell…” moments where I lose 2 – 3 pounds seemingly over night. I always wait a day or two to declare it “official” because it could be any number of very odd factors. If this one holds true, though, I will have lost 70 pounds so far.
There is no denying I had allowed my weight to spiral out of control and I had gotten all the way up to the insane weight of 400 lbs. In my defense, I am built like a brick house. It was difficult to tell I was that heavy because I have a huge body frame (think linebacker). When I realized where I had gotten to, that was when I got serious about losing weight. I cut sodas completely, all fast food was a distant memory, and I began researching “healthy” ways to lose weight.
Pretty much everything I read said you needed to build muscle first, and then concentrate on the actual reduction of fat. As I chronicled in Working Out back in September 2008, I did start lifting weights, and I am happy to say that I have stuck with it. I do 45 minutes every other day (there is a long list of reasons why it is best to do it other day that I won’t bore you with, but believe me, it’s true), and I am thrilled I have gotten to that amount of time as it allows me to catch up on one one-hour show on a DVD set, or two 30-minute episodes of a show. So not only am I building muscle, but I am multi-tasking and catching up on the DVDs I am so far behind on!
On my “off days”, I am trying to go for walks, with the constant reminding that I need to do so from the evil one known as “M”, but the weather has been fighting me hard on that one. I would love to invest in a treadmill, but I am reluctant to do so until I find that I am going to stick with walking. With the insane mix of winter weather we’ve had, it has actually been unsafe for me to walk outside, so we will have to see when that resumes. For now I am speed walking through Walmart whenever I go there.
So, why do I think my scale mocks me? While I am thrilled I have lost 70 pounds thus far, my original goal was 101 pounds so I could actually break out of the three hundreds. Looking at the dial on that scale, the space for 31 more pounds looks like the longest space known to man. Never mind there are 70 lbs behind me so far, that 31 just feels daunting. I even try to remind myself that 20 of the 70 I have lost has happened in just the past five months (I have no idea why it picked up speed), and that means that I could possibly realize this goal in the next 8 months, it just feels like an insane amount of work.
… and then will come maintaining it.


Black Friday needs to be ended as we know it, and it needs to happen immediately.
While I’ve mentioned on this site a few times that I’ve been working to lose weight, but I don’t think I ever mentioned what I was doing for exercise.
There is no denying I am a coffee junkie. I think I got serious about coffee around 14, and I’ve been drinking it ever since. I grind my own beans at home, I know the perfect ratio of water to beans, in short, I am not just a casual drinker of the elixir of life. Heck, I even buy it in cans from vending machines when I’m in Japan… I just love coffee… period.
Why does it take a sporting event such as the Olympics to make the people of the world get along?
Hard to believe it, but
1999 saw us doing so much business in anime products from Japan, we opened a sub-division named AnimeUSA. We were traveling to more and more conventions around the country, and showing up at an anime show calling ourselves “Splash Page Comics” just didn’t make much sense.
Just like
We’ve lived in my current house for 23 years. Also on my property is my maternal grandmother’s house and my company warehouse. All three buildings are serviced by the same county water account, so when we pay the bill, it covers all three buildings at once.
I’ve been getting numerous phone calls and emails asking if I am near the current flooding in my state, and I can thankfully report that I am not. All of it is at the opposite end of the state from me, and seems to be fairly isolated.
On July 3rd they called me and told me the bridge was closed. I still remind them of this.
Why, or why, must cheese lure me in like a sailor, crashing against the rocks to the Siren’s song?



