We are addicts!

That is the coffee at my office.  There are five of us that drink the coffee.  We might have a problem.
Let me tell you our stock at the moment, from left to right.  1.) Starbucks Espresso Roast 2.) Starbucks Cinnamon 3.) Jack Daniels Tennessee Mountain Blend 4.)  Bulk coffee from the Anderson's - Northwest Dark Roast 5.)  Community Coffee Dark Roast 6.) Meijer Gold Dark Roast (in the canister) 7.) Hazelnut Flavored (in ziploc), that one was brought in to cover a flavor of one we didn't like that much before we had the stock we have now.

Needless to say we like to drink the coffee in my office.

Milestone!

Well I have lost a total of fifty pounds.  Over a year ago I was at 286 lbs and decided I should lose some of it.  I start working out and being more active.  Then in July of this year my friends and wife decided that we should have a "Biggest Loser" competition starting in August, not anything officially tied to the TV show just amongst ourselves.  I decided  it was time to buckle down and go for it.  I wanted to be serious so I cut out a ton of sugar, cut portions down to  probably what should be normal, stopped late night eating.  I also kicked up my working out.  It has been working I have steadily been losing the weight.  That is the way they want you to do it, slow and steady.  I know it has been working.  This weekend I went to Gram's to visit the family and they all noticed it. My Gram even said I shouldn't loose anymore.  That is ridiculous, I am continuing on my course.  I recently started doing the P90X workouts, although I am sticking with my diet.  The workouts have me working and hour plus a day and they are tough, I think the Yoga X had me sweating the most and the Plyometrics X had me the sorest so far.  I didn't do all of them yet because of the holiday weekend but I will.  Something that helped me stay on course was keeping track of my weight weekly on a spread sheet for the last 4 months.



One week I gained and I didn't like it, so back on track I was.  The official competition is over after Christmas, we will see where I end up then.

I am the yeti

My wife was doing some shopping and she came across this cute little fellow.

It is a Nepalese Yeti Christmas Ornament.  I have been called "Yeti" for a while now by a few of my friends.  I believe it all started when I dressed up as a yeti danced around the bar while my roommates band played a song called yeti.  It was quite fun.  Since then it has been a nickname that i have answered too.  For those of you that don't know, a yeti is like big foot or sasquatch but from the Himalayan Mountains, his white fur is to help him blend in with the snow.  The only resemblance I have to a yeti, or what a yeti is believed to look like since they are folkloric, would be my height.  I don't have super white hair, don't even have much hair.  I guess that is was my fault for excepting the task of dancing in costume at the bar.  I don't mind I have been called worse.

Well anyway I would like to thank my wife for buying him for me.

Thanks.

My Favorite!

I know I am dieting but my wife knows my favoritest candy is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.  We also both love goofy novelty items, so when she was at the store she had to buy me a pack of these:

You might say, "what makes this a novelty?" Well if you look at the side closely you may notice that it says 2 half pound cups.  That is right one WHOLE pound of Reese's Peanut Cup.  Here is a picture next to my Blackberry:

It is one giant.  Next a picture in the hand.

And me devouring it.

It was delicious!

The McRib

The McRib is currently being sold at McDonald's for a limited time.  It has been on and off this way for quite a few years now.  They tried it out a while back and it didn't do all they great so they dropped it.  Then it was brought back again on a limited basis from time to time.  They even had a few farewell tours for the McRib, and some "Save the McRib" campains with petitions and such (started by McD's as a marketing campaign I believe).  The Simpsons even did an episode mocking it where Homer followed the McRib as it moved from market to market.  It is now some sort of cult classic sandwich.  I was kind of shocked that my wife had never eaten one, I thought everyone had at least tried it once.  I don't think I have had one in five or six years, but I had to try it and see what it is all about.  Well today I am going to subject my wife to one of these strange sandwiches for lunch.  Whether she wants it or not she is taking at least one bite of the McRib.

More Music Now

Recently I have been downloading music off of Amazon.  Everyday they have a daily deal and I have to check it out.  Yesterday was a super sweet deal:

The Black Label Society Berzerkus Tour Sampler It is a two disc set and it was only 69 cents, how could I turn that down.  I didn't really listen to them, but I like Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde gained his popularity by playing for him before he started Black Label Society.  So for $0.69 I thought I couldn't go wrong, I listened to it last night and was not disappointed.  Really how could you be for that much money, if one song rocks it is a good purchase.  I might have to throw it in a stereo and crank up the volume kick back with a beer on this one.  As of the writing of this post it is still listed for that cheap cheap price so if you are interested click the link and get to downloading.

Now the deals aren't always so sweet, but still good.  I bought one for $3.99 last week, it was a newer release of a singer songwriter guy that I am a fan of, Matt Costa.  I also bought 99 classical music songs for $1.99 a few days ago, they frequently have these 99 essential classical compositions for sweet deals.  Sometimes they have the albums available for download before it is officially released anywhere else.  Also every month they have 100 albums for $5.00.  All in all they have pretty cool deals everyday and I will keep on visiting until my wife takes my account away from me.

I think I have reached a new level of parenthood

I spent an entire day with children cartoon songs going through my head.  In the morning we have been turning on Disney channel on for lil' b and  he loves them now.  If we don't turn them on he points to the remote and makes noises that I am sure are supposed to mean "turn on the cartoons dad!"  At 6:30am on Disney channel (290 on Directv) is Special Agent Oso.  He is a bear that helps kids by splitting up their tasks into three special steps. Paw Pilot is his little guide and she sings the three special steps song.  Well that song goes through my head frequently now.  Here is a sample of the shows super sweet catchy music.


This blog post was accomplished by three special steps, step one: come up with topic, step 2: search youtube for music, step 3: publish!

While searching for music I also found this funny mash up for you SNL fans:


I particularly like the end where Oso holds his hands apart demonstrating the what was worth shouting about.

I love playing with my balls!

BuckyBalls are a totally fun toy that I got a couple of months ago when I was visiting my mom in Buffalo.  Buckyballs are 216 powerful rare earth magnets, you can shape them into all kinds of different shapes and designs. Like this cube:

Or this cone like thingy:

Or this Hexagon:

You can make what ever you feel like, I guess a friend made a dog out of them earlier.  Of course they have a Facebook page, and on there you can submit pictures into contests of things you created.  One person was quoted as saying "This is Silly Putty for the 21st century".  

I got them at one of the sweetest toy stores ever right around the corner from where I grew up.  It has all kinds of neat stuff.  I totally knew they would have these before we got there.  I had seen these Buckyballs somewhere on the internets and thought they were really cool, but they do have a little bit high of a price tag so I didn't order them for myself.  So I see them at this store and started playing with them and they were lots of fun.  One thing that did catch me off guard was the fact that they had a sign on the display that warned that you must be 21 years old to purchase.  This caught me a little off guard so I asked why,  well I guess that you could die if you swallow more than one.  They have a pretty strong attraction to each other and they would tear holes in your intestines, not good.  I have them at work now so the little guy doesn't get into them.  I will probably end up ruining my computer here, I hope that doesn't happen.

If you are looking for an interesting gift for an adult friend these maybe it.

Llamas

Recently we went to visit my wifes family for an early Thanksgiving dinner.  There were out of towners visiting so they had a big ol' get together.  Well they live out in the country on the farm, and on this farm they have llamas.
Like this guy or gal (I didn't check):

They had over a dozen of them.  They were pretty interested to see who we were, and we were pretty interested right back at 'em.  We were in one cage with four or five of them and we were looking into another cage at these ones.  The ones in the cage we were in mostly stayed away from us, one did walk up to the little guy and he got a little scared and ran to me and wasn't followed.  These ones in the other cage were right up against it checking us out.

There were also some alpacas out there in a different pen but they stayed way in the middle.  Since the rumor is they spit we decided to stay out of firing range.  I guess they have deadly accuracy at about fifteen feet, they will hit you right in the face.  We just looked from afar at them.

The cousin harvests the wool of these llamas/alpacas and knits them in to blankets, hats, scarves, purses, rugs and whatever else she can think of.  I guess there aren't the allergies caused by llama wool that are caused by sheep wool and it is softer.  We learned about the whole process, brushing, shearing, picking, part where she sends it out, spinning, then the knitting.  We saw many of the finished products and they were all very nice.

We even saw some dog hair products.  I guess you just brush fido and you can spin it into yarn just like all the other wool and knit it.  Dog hair is hollow so it is the warmest product you can wear.  I found this very interesting, so very interesting that I want to knit a hat out of my beloved Devo now.

My new weakness

I have been looking for some healthier snacks recently, so I tried granola.  I figured it was better than eating potato chips, or cookies which were in my old snack repertoire.  Trying to cut out sugars and get more natural I headed over to that section in Kroger and found some granolas.  First I tried the Bear Naked brand. There were a couple of those flavors that I thought were good, not the Triple Berry Crunch.  Then I grabbed a back to Nature since it was on sale for less than Bear Naked.  Right away I like the Original flavor a bunch.  Then I went back and Sunflower & Pumpkin Seed caught my eye and I thought I would give it a shot.  Well I might have to not get it again, it was toooooooo good!!!  I can't control myself when I am around it.  I just practically licked the bag right before writing this post, it did help me figure out what to write about today.  I take some and say to myself "that should hold me over," then put the bag away.  Well that bag starts calling out to me from my drawer.  I can't resist it and go for more.  It usually happens a couple of times in a row. Until today when I just finished the bag from the get go, luckily there wasn't much left.  I think I might have to buy the bag, I will buy more, and leave it at home and only bring in a regular serving so I don't over eat it.

Practice up for college kiddies!

So I had on the Disney channel for my little guy and I saw this commercial, my first thought was OHH GEEZ, someone commercialized beer pong!  Then I realized that we were on one of the Disney channels.   They are selling kids beer pong?  Get them started early I guess, I didn't play beer pong until well into my twenties.  I could be on the pro circuit now if I had some practice in my teens.

Rocking and Running

I have been doing the diet thing for over a year, more seriously for the last three months.  Over all I have lost 45 pounds, 24 pounds in the last three months.  Last week I started hitting the gym at lunch time again since it seems that the weight loss has slowed down and I needed to kick the metabolism up a bit.  The first thing I did in the gym was run and I got out a half mile and didn't even have to push myself, it was easy.  The combination of weighing less and exercise has made it pretty darn easy for me to run a half mile.  Now that might not mean much for most, but for me at this point in my life is great.  When I first started my running I wanted to quit after a quarter mile, and I had to push through to get out a whole block.  Now let me say I am not going out and running any 5Ks soon, but it is nice to see progress.  It makes me feel good.

I guess it is National Blog Posting Month(NaBloPoMo)

A lot of my wife's blogging friends are participating in this blog month, and recently I have been thinking that i should post something on my blog since it has been awhile.  When hearing about NaBloPoMo it made me think of NaNoWriMo where you write a novel in the month of November.  I guess NaBloPoMo is modeled after NaNoWriMo.  Then I also ran across something that said November is 30 days of  Dead (as in Grateful Dead), where they allow you to listen/download unreleased tracks from their vault, and there are contests and stuff.  Do all months have these crazy things and I just don't know about them?  Maybe every one is just getting crazy because a lot of holidays are coming up and this is a crazy time of the year, or they aren't down from their Halloween sugar buzzes and they have a lot of energy to burn.

Well this is my first blog post in November, while I listen to some Grateful Dead.  I don't know if I will write every day for the month, that would be a huge jump from once a month.  I do have a couple of ideas so I may do few