Tag: activity app

Morning Fail

Guess what I didn’t get to this morning before work.

323/365
323/365

I managed to finish my daily exercise, watch this week’s new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (excellent!), and finish the Library episode of Doctor Who that I started last night but fell asleep during the second episode.

No music though, so the morning goes down in the books as a failure.

Another Long Day

Another long day filled with a gaggle of long, frustrating meetings and problems. 18 minutes until the weekend. I think we’re in a position right now where we will be able to call it a day at quittin’ time, but I’m not going to count my chickens until they hatch.

What’s in the queue for the weekend? Not sunrise at the ocean pictures because the weather forecast is crappy. Tonight we’ll have our third Hello Fresh meal. The first two were excellent and I expect good things from the turkey meal we have lined up for tonight.

I have to mix a song. It’s the last day of the month so I need to finish off the second of two songs I worked on this month before midnight so that I can complete my personal write and record a single challenge. The first song was done a couple of nights ago. The second song isn’t as good, and the performance is worse, but it’s still worth finishing. Tomorrow is April 1st so the Record Every Month challenge resets and I can start working on something new. I’m thinking about using the tremolo built into my amplifier this time. I never use it… so maybe I should.

Jen has a project in her office that we’re going to work on. She wants to change a bunch of things on her desk. We haven’t done that in a while so it will be fun to mix it up. I am thinking of changing things up on my desk too, but I think I want to wait a month until the window replacement project is complete. I don’t know why but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

My exercise and calorie (move) goals are done for today. My liquid intake goal is also done. I have a few more hours before my stand goal is done, and almost half of my protein goal is still outstanding. I’m behind on that one, by quite a bit. I’ll hit it though.

Okay, time to sign off. I still have nine minutes left in the work week. The weekend is so close… so very, very close. I’m ready for it.

Vocals are Done

Last night before bed I added quick and dirty lyrics to two of the four outstanding songs. This morning, after exercising, I went out for some car music. I recorded the vocals for those two songs and then improvised a vocal part for a third song.

That’s it. I’m done with the vocals. I mentioned a few days ago that I was thinking of dropping songs before they are finished. That’s what I am doing with that last song. Song #3, if you must know. It’s just too crappy to continue. That’s going to leave me with 14 songs which, years ago, would have given me a complete FAWM. I don’t do FAWM anymore, but it’s still as good a goal as any, right?

The exercise this morning has a funny story to go along with it. Last month, thanks to walking for hours around Disney World, I doubled my 30 minute exercise goal nine times. This month, my Apple Watch activity app challenged me to do the same in February. On Friday I doubled it for the seventh time. That gave me four days to do it two more times. I had every intention of making yesterday the eighth but I failed miserably. This morning I decided to get it done right away and not leave anything up to chance. I ran for a full 60 minutes. I set a bunch of personal work out records on the various Watch apps. I need to do it one more time over the next two days. I mean… I feel pretty lame getting worked up about stuff this stupid but… there you have it.

Episode seven of The Last of Us airs tonight. Three more to go. The serious is stellar. Absolutely fantastic. The Mandalorian season three kicks off on Wednesday. I started watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 from the beginning the other day. As I am typing this I am eating breakfast and watching the first episode of The X-Files. I guess you could call it binge watching season now.

Back to music, but this time guitar gear, I have spent the last couple of years trying to find a suitable replacement for an overdrive pedal that I removed from my board because the designer/owner of the company that makes it is a racist piece of trash and I can’t in good conscience use his products anymore. I have two pedals that are damn close and I think I found another one that I want to try out. It’s a very small pedal builder somewhere in Canada called KO Amps. How much is 140 Canadian dollars in US dollars?

Okay. Let’s finish breakfast, let’s finish this episode of The X-Files, and then get some serious work down on the ol’ RPM Challenge. Three songs complete, between seven and 11 left to go.

179/365
179/365

I Overslept

Today is Sunday and I did what many of us do on random Sundays… I overslept. My alarm was set for 5:30am. I got out of bed a couple of minutes before 7:00am. I also had a minor hangup that kept me from getting the day started for about 20 minutes and both of those things together mean it’s way too late for me to tackle car music today.

My exercise is done for the day. Yesterday I bumped my four mile morning jog (pronounced “yog” with a soft j) to five miles. Mostly because there were many days over the last month or so where I was not reaching my move/calorie goal without doing extra exercise, so for now I am just going to build that into the morning routine. I am eating breakfast right now and when I am done I will take a Covid test. I have been symptom free since my two exposures on Monday and Tuesday so I am confident in another negative test, but I am still going to test for another couple of days. Just to be sure. I have to go into the office on Wednesday and I don’t want to risk passing anything on to anyone.

What does the no-car-music-today change mean for the music project? I still have five songs that need lyrics, so I can take care of some of those. I think I might also try to add another song or two. Yeah, it’s overkill but I am seeing guitar leads on the horizon and my playing is so incredibly rusty that I could really use an excuse to just play/practice a little. That would be a good thing.

I did something silly yesterday. I started watching the directors cut of Star Trek the Motion Picture. Shatner’s Star Trek V is often considered the worst of all of the Star Trek movies, and while that may be generally valid, that first movie is pretty awful. I’m only halfway through the director’s cut but I haven’t seen anything obviously different. The endless exterior establishing shots are still endless. Endlessly endless. The acting is often less than stellar in Star Trek movies with the original series cast, but this one… this one is bad. Overall though, the movie isn’t quite as awful as I remembered. Maybe really is the worst of the bunch.

Okay, let’s get the ball moving. I need to get myself something for breakfast that is more substantial than the protein bar I just finished. I’ll probably post a film pic too before I really get the day rolling. For now, talk to you all later. Good Day.

Back to Reality

Oh boy, is this a bummer.

It’s Monday. Vacation is over. It is time to get back to the week day routine. Crud.

I tried very hard to close all three of my activity rings over the course of the vacation. Unfortunately, on Thursday, our last park day, I hit a level of exhaustion that I don’t think I’ve ever hit before. I lost the ability to focus my eyes. It was scary. My stand and exercise rings were closed, but my activity (calorie) ring had quite a ways to go. It couldn’t be helped. I was thinking I was at the start of another migraine so I got into bed, buried my eyes under the pillow, and went to sleep with my third ring still open.

My success streak had come to an end, and over the next two days we were going to be in the car all day. I made the choice to just not worry about it until we got home. Then when we got home I was so out of sorts that I decided to take the weekend off too. Well, the weekend is over. It’s 6:48am and my exercise ring is closed. I jogged (pronounced “yog”, with a soft “J”) in place for 31.5 minutes which closed the exercise ring and 64% of the move ring. I plan to start lifting the hand weights a little again today too. I fell off that wagon months ago and it’s time to start that up again.

A couple of other points on this random Monday morning. Last night I watched the first episode of The Last of Us and HOLY CRAP was that good. So good. I am absolutely riveted. I never played the game so all I know of the story is from the trailer, but that was enough to know that the first half hour of the show was leading us directly to something gut wrenching and boy did it ever. I am so psyched for episode two next week. I am going to find every podcast covering the show that I can and queue them all up today. I am 100% on board with the hype.

I placed an order with the film lab I’ve been using, Old School Photo Lab in Dover, NH, on Saturday but I haven’t had a chance to drop the film in the mail yet. I was thinking of doing it this morning, but we got a little snow last night and I just don’t want to deal with it. Tomorrow will probably see me starting my work day super early, so maybe at lunch time tomorrow? Maybe at lunch today if the ice from last night melts a little. I haven’t checked the forecast yet. We’ll see. I have six rolls from Disney World and I want to see how they came out. I also have two rolls of black and white from around christmas that are going too. Once all of that is back I am going to slow down on the film for a while. I have a roll in progress in Dad’s camera that I would like to finish, and a roll in my camera that I haven’t taken the first shot with. That roll is going to sit there for a few months, I think. Once Dad’s roll is done I will take a couple of months off again.

Okay, it’s almost 7:00am. Time to go upstairs and start the day for real. My two week vacation is over. Pity me.

Week 29 Weigh In

Hello my friends and loyal readers! Welcome to the official Week 29 Weigh In post!

It’s amazing how gun shy one less than impressive week has made me. It’s also amazing how stupidly unpredictable weight loss can be. Yesterday I stepped on the scale as soon as I got out of bed. I was down about two pounds since last Wednesday. I did not record my weight, I was just paranoid about having a bad weigh in this week so I snuck a peek early to get a glimpse into the future. The number was good, but not spectacular.

I did it again today, but this time it’s official. I got out of bed and stepped on the scale and I am down 4.2 pounds for the week. Wow! That means I lost about two pounds yesterday. How ridiculous is that? Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining at all. It’s just that losing two pounds yesterday implies that I could gain two pounds today. I need to stop stressing about this and just go back to one scale moment each week.

We’re in a state these days where three pounds a week feels epic. Now we hit four pounds and it’s like, Wow! I now weigh 263.6 pounds which seven months ago was absolutely unimaginable. I have lost 167.8 pounds since the surgery on May 4, 2022. I have lost 188.4 pounds since the first visit to the clinic on January 19, 2022. My BMI is down 0.5 points this week to 32.1. Like I said, ridiculous.

I was thinking of a sort of mini goal of seeing if I could hit 200 pounds overall by the time we go to Disney World on January 4, 2023. That’s only 11.6 more pounds. That’s an average of less than two pounds per week for six more weeks. That’s doable, but the real goal should be hitting 200 pounds by the anniversary of the first weigh in. That date is eight weeks from tomorrow. If I somehow manage to average 4.025 pounds per week for those eight weeks then I could hit 200 pounds since the surgery by that date. I’m not holding my breath on that though. Four pounds per week is not happening, despite hitting four pounds this week. We’ll see how close I can get.

My exercise routine got weird yesterday and it continued to today. I stopped at 30 minutes because my pace was all screwed up. The first mile was faster than eight minutes. I kept the pace consistent and the second mile pace was almost 20 minutes. It wasn’t that extreme today but it was just as dumb. I stopped at 30 minutes again, then watched the second half of Andor while eating breakfast and then ran for another 30 minutes. Same thing happened, but the two trots-in-place were enough to close my Move ring (calorie count) so I’ll take it.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Back in the pre-surgery diet days that would make tomorrow a massive cheat day. Not this time. Those days are over. I am going to have about four ounces of food and that’s it. Last night I had more than that for dinner because I was WAY behind on my protein goal and it made me sick. It wasn’t due to a mistake like eating too fast or not chewing enough (which are my two common mistakes), it was just because I was completely full and my new little stomach didn’t like that. So I am cutting myself off despite the holiday. Four ounces is all you get, Robert.

That doesn’t change the fact that Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday of the year though. I just love it. Food or no food. It’s almost time to punch into work, and the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally the slowest, most agonizing day of the year… so duck and cover, kids. Good luck to you all, and may you all have a happy Wednesday is Weigh In Day today.