Category: Projects

.. and I Have a Problem

Happy New Year Everyone!  Hope you had a safe return from all your festivities last night and if you are lucky, you are not a Big 10 fan as we took a slaughtering today.  I have not made a decision about the fate of this blog yet, but for now, everything as usual and with that… the first entry of the 2011.

“Hello, my name is Brian and I have a problem.”  There are those things that kind of bother you and eventually you find time to address them and get them resolved.  Sometimes those things are like icebergs and as long as you accept the part you can see, you don’t get a feeling for how big the issue is under the waterline.  Of course there are issue that are right in your face each and every day until it starts to fill you with disappointment and regret.  In the latter case, I think it is jut better to accept it, come to terms with it, and recommit yourself to lifting that weight off your shoulder.  This is where I am at with my problem so her goes….

“Hello, my name is Brian and I have a reading problem.”  There, I’ve admitted it.  For clarity sake, it isn’t really a reading problem, but rather a reading BACKLOG problem.  I actually enjoy reading books a lot, but they do take a time commitment of sorts.  I am always finding new titles to read and my hobbies tend to have a prolific amount of written word on them.  My Amazon Wish List always has a number of books on them and I find myself in bookstores from time to time perusing the latest offerings (which generally leads to purchases as well).  As a result, there is a steady flow in, which is great, but that means there needs to be steady flow of information from the book to the brain or you start falling behind…. waaaay behind in my case.  Every day, I walk into my den and look at my bookshelf and sigh.  That is about to end because the new year has brought a new commitment to get through THIS:

hit the jump to see my 2011 goal:

Continue reading .. and I Have a Problem

Project: Thinner by Design

This has been an very odd day.  I actually woke up without any plans for blog entries and as it turns out, I now have two.  Unfortunately it is a situation of the Yang and the Um in the sense that a joyous blog topic was countered with a bummer of an entry.  After an internal debate as to which topic to lead with, the decision was made to go with the order in which they occurred in the day.  This means we’ll be starting with the happy event.  So most of this year was spent rehabbing my messed up hamstring.  With the exception of a few important races, there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity to hit the pavement for any extended time.  In fact, after the Bix7 in July I don’t think there was one run over 3 or 4 miles until October.  Definitely nothing up to race pace which means it was difficult to keep the weight in check.  By the middle of October I’d managed to gain 6 pounds putting me at 166 (one pound over marriage weight and 19 under my martial arts weight).  This was pretty depressing and the scale was nagging at me every single morning.  Something had to be done.  At the same time a friend of mine (Pakage) had made a personal (and probably doctor approved) decision to reduce his weight and had employed an iTouch app called My Fitness Pal to help him do that.  I was totally impressed when he showed me this app because it had an extensive DB of foods both from restaurants and grocery stores.  Through a simple interface you were able to track your calorie intake, exercise along with a breakdown of key indicators like sodium, fats, vitamins etc.  Oh, and the most important thing is …. it was FREE.  All this brings us to October 20th when I made the personal commitment to getting myself back in running shape again.  There was something coming up the week of Thanksgiving so decided that was going to be the target date to eliminate the unwanted 6 pounds.  The software asked me a few questions regarding my lifestyle and goals and set a target calorie consumption of 1710 per day.  From October 21st to present I documented every meal, every snack, all drinks and detailed my workouts as much as possible.  First thing every morning I stepped on the dreaded bathroom scale and updated the app with the result.  Curious as to the results?  Let’s cut to the chase and show you the weight graph.

I wish there was a way to change the scale on the myfitnesspal website, but you should be able to tell that the goal was MET!  Today’s weight was indeed 160 and even a few days short of the self imposed duration.  In celebration I hit McDonald’s on the way into town and ordered sausage and egg bagel and a medium hot chocolate.  That was one of the best tasting breakfast sandwiches ever.  For now, I’ll transition to maintain mode and with the hammie finally coming around, the runs are already in the 4-5 miles range which means the daily calorie count will need to increase a little.  There are some more details after the jump, but a lot of the graphs and such are more for me to analyze how things went.  Honestly, this was not the easiest thing for me to do.  We eat out a lot which makes healthy choices a little more difficult and there were some sacrifices which led to some frustrating moments.  Swapping out my tasty muffins for oatmeal every morning was hard enough, but giving up some of my favorite desserts and reducing the portions on some of my favorite meals was a true test of the willpower.  At this point, the hammie feels a lot better, my cardio is getting back to par (think there may have been only 2 or 3 days that I didn’t get a core workout in or a run) and can pretty much work out in the lot for hours and hours without tiring.

Some analytics after the jump

Continue reading Project: Thinner by Design

Operation: Break on Through

In a desperate attempt to get back ahead of schedule, here’s another operation that has been underway at my house. All of the land we purchased to build our house on had pretty much been untouched woods. As a result, it has basically grown into a tangled mess of rose brier, brush and untamed trees.

If you recall from a previous post, I had built a bridge to get past a stream that ran through the middle of the 15 acres.  Now that the bridge is done I can finally get access to the back 7 acres of the lot.  the problem is, it is difficult to navigate around back there because of the overgrowth and quite frankly impossible to keep out of the brier if you are going any distance.  Often times, Linda and I head out there on photo shoots, but it turns out being quite an effort to actually get a picture of any wildlife we find.  Here is another random picture of the woods.  Although you can’t tell, the stream is just to the left of the picture frame.

It was officially time to do something about this situation.  Hit the jump to see the results of Operation: Break on Through to the Other Side.

Continue reading Operation: Break on Through

Let the Ghoul Show You the Way

Let’s just keep the Halloween theme going.  The previous post was driven by our annual Halloween Cookout Party.  While I was gathering up the materials for the fire pit patio, I decided to go ahead and pick up some extra items in order to attempt a new decoration  idea that I had been kicking the tires on for some time.  Each year, we try to add one new decoration to the collection.  Typically these are the latest air blown offerings, but this year we went in a different direction.  Living out in the country, it can be difficult to actually navigate to the house.  This is even more difficult at dark since there is little ambient light in the area.  This makes for a great stargazing, but not so great on the driving.  Oh, and to top it off, the GPS directs everyone to my neighbor’s driveway which is a down the road a bit.  What started as a internal debate on how to ease the difficulty for our guests resulted in this new decoration:

This particular shot was taken before darkness fell making it look a tad less scarier than it did once the guests started arriving.  Not only did this fit the overall theme of the party, but due to the clever hand placement, it also provided a functional role since it was placed at the road as an indicator for drivers to turn left into the correct driveway.  I wanted it to last from year to year, be able to withstand various weather conditions and (most of all) be relatively easy to disassemble and store away.  I don’t know about you, but those types of conditions almost always lead me to PVC.  In the sharing spirit, hit the jump to see how it was built.

Continue reading Let the Ghoul Show You the Way