Category: Generic

Room for Improvement

I did all right yesterday.  I had a small breakfast, a smallish lunch, a smallish dinner.  That’s all good.  I did have a snack after dinner.  Peanuts are on the Simply Filling approved list, but a serving size like I had is not.  I had way too much.  I need to stop doing that.

I also failed to get my fat ass onto the treadmill.  I must start using that bastard every day.  Every.  Day.  No excuses.  It has to become part of the routine.  I’m never going to be healthy if I don’t exercise regularly and that’s the only indoor option we have.  I could go outside, but COLD.  So… no.

My goal for today:

Smaller snack portions
Use the damn treadmill

I can do it.

Torture

This morning I had a little you’re-going-to-lose-weight breakfast.

Check.

This afternoon I had a little you’re-going-to-lose-weight lunch.

Check.

Right now I am cooking a little you’re-going-to-lose-weight dinner.

Check.

Unfortunately…

 

I AM SO HUNGRY I COULD EAT MY OWN HEAD!!!!

 

I was only off the wagon for a week and a half.  It’s not like I changed my routine that much either.  I just allowed christmas themed candy and maybe an extra serving at dinner.  That’s all.  Today though… it’s like torture.  I need to eat eat eat eat.

I’ll get past this though.  I am strong.  I am red head, hear me roar!

Play Time is Over

Play time is over, fat ass.  You’ve had your little christmas vacation.  Now it’s time to drag that huge bulk you call a stomach and get back on that weight loss wagon.  The holiday break is over.  You need to eat right and exercise every single day.  You were down 37 pounds the weekend before christmas.  You probably gained 30 of that back over the last 10 days or so.  It’s time to stop all of that horse hockey crap and lose some effin’ weight!

 

 

ps: I figured I’d try the drill Sargent approach and see how it goes.  I’m going to a weight watchers meeting on Saturday and I hope to have a great week which minimizes the damage to the scale.  Think Thin!  WOOHOO

Pedal Board

My pedal board had its first successful test at rehearsal tonight. My hands were cramping like crazy, but my effects were aces.

Next up on the gear wish list is a new pick up switch for my Les Paul, maybe a new tremolo bridge for my strat, a little wiring maintenance for my es-335, and maybe… A Gibson Dirty Finger pick up for the bridge position on the Les Paul. Maybe?

Why?

What is it about New Hampshire?

Whenever I get my haircut at an establishment that is based in New Hampshire, I end up looking like I was given a trim by a new hire on the first day at work who is equipped only with a hedge trimmer.

Furthermore, why do I then continue to forget about the New Hampshire haircut connection and go back?

It’s like she only had one eye.  Either that or she had two eyes and one was set 50% further into her head than the other.  I look… lopsided.

Music Discovery

I miss having a proven source for discovering new music. It used to be radio and MTV (urgh), then in the mid-90’s (for me at least) it was late nights in bars in Boston. That was the heyday for me as far as finding music that was in a separate world from the charts and the land of commercial music. It was glorious.

Eventually it ran out of gas though. Well, truth be told I was the one who ran out of gas. The idea of driving home from T.T. the Bear’s place in Cambridge at 2am started to lose it’s appeal, and musical trips into town became something saved for special occasions (ie: Mission of Burma).

In 2008 I was looking for a site to use to host my attempt at the RPM Challenge and I ended up on both Virb and Alonetone. Both sites lead me to a slew of bands and artist that I otherwise never would have found. Many of those acts still have me waiting with baited breath for the next release even though most of them were very far removed from my usual musical comfort zone. Folk rock became a thing for me, as well as lots of acoustic singer/songwriters (usually women), and dare I say it… some electronic music (for shame, Robert!).

Since then? Eh… not much. I did what I did back in high school when hair metal made me want to claw my eyes out in disgust. I went back in time and found things that have been overlooked. That has resulted in a recent obsession with Richard Thompson, and to a slightly lesser extent Sandy Denny.

But new music? Again, not so much.

This year I am resolved to change that. I don’t know how, but it’s a New Year and resolutions are all the rage. I am going to search the interwebs for music made by people I have never heard of before in the hopes of finding a new musical obsession or two. Or three. Or 100. I might start with the mountain of best music of 2014 blog posts that have been popping up world wide over the last few weeks. After that? I don’t know. Not spotify, or beats, or any of that. I don’t want to be spoon fed the way we were back in the radio and MTV days (urgh). I want to discover, not be marketed to.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Out of Nowhere

I’m working from home today and the kids don’t have school so we all slept a little late this morning. About an hour later than usual the kids and I piled into the car and I drove them to their father’s house. It’s a Dad weekend so my wife and I won’t be seeing them until the middle of next week. That sucks, but it’s the way things go around here.

I came home and sat at my computer with a bottle of water, a breakfast bar, the vague notion of looking for random people’s Best CDs of 2014 lists to see if I could stumble upon some new music, and about an hour to kill before I had to punch into work.

I stood up to take my breakfast bar wrapper to the trash. I sneezed, boom. I immediately sneezed again, boom boom. Then three, one-two-three false alarms in a row. More sneezes were there, but they just wouldn’t happen. I went to the bathroom for a tissue and blew my nose. It was like opening the flood gate. Sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, runny nose, runny nose, runny nose, sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, false alarm sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, runny nose to infinity.

That was about five hours ago. The sneezing hasn’t stopped. The runny nose hasn’t stopped. I’ve used about 20% of the one box of tissues left in the house. Remember the movie Twister where about half of every character’s lines throughout the whole film include the phrase, “we had no warning,” or at least some variation of that? That’s what this morning feels like to me. Just out of the blue, BAM! Head cold. How did it happen? There was no warning! It’s a category five and I had no warning!

I think I know what happened. It’s going to sound weird, but in that Sherlock Holmes method of after you remove every impossible reason whatever left, no matter how improbable, has to be true way it makes perfect sense.

I think I am allergic to January.