Category: Generic

Best Thing Ever

I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that one of the main reasons I wanted to play in a band again was jealousy.

Both of my step kids have been playing piano for years. They’ve both dabbled in saxophone too, and my step daughter is very active in her school chorus, while my step son plays bells in his school band. He has also recently started taking guitar lessons. His teacher took a few of the students and formed them into a band. They rehearse on Saturdays and are going to play some Christmas music at an upcoming recital. Their big number is “Jingle Bell Rock”.

The first time I sat in the hallway listening to them play I decided it was time for me to get back into the game again. No more sitting on the bench for this fat boy.

Anyway, last night was my step daughter’s school chorus holiday concert. My wife, step son, and I were sitting together enjoying the show when the select chorus started singing “Jingle Bell Rock”.

That was the moment when the Best Thing Ever happened.

When the song began my step son smiled like he was going to split in half. He was getting a serious thrill out of hearing (what he probably thinks of as) his song. Then it happened. The little rocker dude started air guitaring. Like a Boss. Even better? With his left hand he was fingering the chord changes. He was air guitaring the actual chords!

Like I said, Best Thing Ever.

Temptation

The temptation is always there. The temptation to dive face first into a pile of junk food and begin the surprisingly short process of gaining back all of the weight I’ve lost is always right there.

All of my company’s buildings have kitchenettes on every floor. There’s refrigerators, coffee makers, water coolers, sinks, various supplies, soda machines, and candy machines.

Since my lifestyle changing diet began a little more than three months ago I have, for the most part, only been using the fridge. I have brought my lunch to work with me every day since starting the diet. When I come in each day I put my lunch in the fridge, and that’s it. There are also occasions when I need caffeine. Eliminating caffeine was one of my initial goals for losing weight. That and eliminating coca~cola. I have been 100% successful on the coke front, and maybe 90% successful on the caffeine front. Some days I just need a boost. When that happens I’ll head to the kitchen and get a diet coke, or a coke zero. On average I would say it happens once out of 10 work days. Much more than I’d like, but not the end of the world.

Other than that, I only use the fridge. Around 1:00pm I go to the kitchen, grab my lunch, maybe a paper towel or two if the stack on my desk is getting low, and that’s it. No fuss, no cheating.

Today though…

I let my eyes wander to the candy machine. They immediately settled on the holy trinity of delicious candy bars: Snickers, Milky Way, and 3 Musketeers. They were all there, like a Roman triumvirate ruling over a senate made up of all of the rest of the junk food in the machine.

The temptation to cheat was overwhelming. It was like a physical weight pressing down on me. I would guess it weighed the same as the 33 pounds I’ve lost so far.

I did not give in. I did not cheat. I had my bag lunch and that was it. No junk food additions to the lunch menu. It made me think about things though…

They say you need to do something for three weeks for it to become a habit. Well I’ve been at this for three months. Making my lunch in the morning before I leave for work is a habit. Not stopping at a convenience store to get junk food on the way to and from work is a habit. These are good things that I often focus on when I need to prove to myself that this diet thing is for the best.

Having said that, I was hoping part of the habit forming process would be the elimination of the desire to eat the junk food crap that put me in this position. That is not the case. Maybe I haven’t been at this long enough, but the temptation isn’t lessening. It’s getting stronger. Grocery shopping during the first few weeks of my diet was brutally difficult. My wife and I did it together for the most part, and that helped to keep me from cleaning out the Doritos section of the chips aisle. Now though, the pull to fill up a whole shopping cart with just chips is almost unbearable. Just like today when the pull to blow all of my money on Snickers bars from the candy machine in the kitchenette was all but unstoppable.

I don’t want to cheat. I don’t want to give in to temptation. I am proud of myself for sticking with this as long as I have, and I don’t want to ruin what progress I’ve made. But the urge to cheat, the urge to give in to temptation, is stronger than I would have ever dreamed.

Christmas Lights

I just ran over to Lowes and bought new indoor/outdoor Christmas lights. I just finished hanging them on the tree. I used two strands for a total of 300 lights.

That leaves 750 lights to hang outside.

hehe

I may have over done it a little bit.

Its Going to be One of Those Days

Two things.

I just went on a Dunkin Donuts run to get my wife some breakfast. As I drove toward the end of our street I saw a big pick up truck blocking the road. It looked as though he was driving down the street that runs perpendicular to ours and pulled over, but in doing so he blocked my entire road. The passenger door was open and there was a guy standing by it facing into the truck. I figured the driver pulled over to talk to this guy. No one heard me coming so I beep beeped politely. The guy in the passenger door turned around and looked at me like I was a total asshole. He paused and then slowly started walking toward the back of the truck. At one point he looked at me and said, “You could go around,” meaning go around to the left, into the on coming traffic. Well actually I couldn’t because his truck was so ridiculously big it was taking up both lanes of my road. Slowly he continues to walk around the truck and it became apparent that he was the driver. He pulled over, blocked an entire road that has what, 30 houses on it, got out of the car and walked over to the passenger side. Why? Who does that? Every 16 year old with a learners permit knows that you never block a road or a driveway when you pull over. If the truck was dead that would be one thing, but even then there is this thing called momentum… just roll off the road before you stop.

I… I just don’t… who does that??

The second thing was just cute in a first world problems kinda way. The car in front of me at the Dunkin Donuts drive through was a Cadillac… with a donut on one of the back wheels.

A Cadillac… with a dounut… in the donut shop drive through.

Classic. Just… classic.

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18 Days Till Christmas

There are 18 days left until Christmas. Do I have any Christmas spirit yet? Oh, hells no.

I’m one of those increasingly rare people who enjoy Christmas but get really sick of it really fast. If it were up to me the tree would go up no earlier than December 18th, the shopping would start about the same time, and the whole thing would be packed up and put away by New Years Day.

Having said that, the reality is society won’t let me wait that long. Shopping commenced in earnest last night, and some preliminary decorating will start today. The kids are at their dad’s this weekend so we won’t do too much without them. We’re just trying to get a jump on it to make it easier for them next week.

I’m not happy about it, but I’m resigned to the inevitability. Scroll back through this blog to late September and you will see a camera phone snap of Christmas stuff being sold at toys-r-us. The season has been in pretty much full swing since early October. We live very close to a busy financial district in Salem, NH, and the Christmas shopping traffic nightmare that hits us annually has been running non stop for a month already.

There is nothing we can do to fight it off. Christmas season is a 3-4 month event now and no matter how badly I want it to be reduced to two weeks, it just isn’t happening. There is just too much greed out there to let us have a simple spirit of giving.