I’m getting fat.
When I was in my mid 20’s, I gained a lot of weight. I was working an 8 to 6 job with a two hour commute and lazy eating habits. I had stopped running after I graduated high school and just ate what I wanted in college. Working a full time job like the one I had made things worse and I found myself eating two sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches a day for breakfast and probably the same for lunch. I was 140-150 in high school and ballooned to 215-225. I was fat.
But something happened one day that made me change… a new year’s party where I vowed to quit smoking lead to the following new year’s pledge to eat right. That then followed the next year’s resolution to go to the gym. Within a year, I had lost 65 pounds and gained muscle to boot by getting to 150-155 again. People today wouldn’t even think I was that heavy but I was.
Last year I stopped going to the gym regularly again… I over exerted myself one day and took a two week break from exercise to heal and recover. But I never got back into the routine and I slowly got out of shape again. I’m not even close to the weight I once was but probably in the 165 range with a definite loss in muscle mass.
Not being fit and stressed about things in my life (personal and professional) is keeping me from sleeping. I went to bed a 2AM last night and was exhausted this morning. Knowing that exercise can help people sleep in many ways (better health, forcing one to become tired, etc.) I did get to the gym twice this week and will slowly get back into a more common routine and I think this revelation of me getting fat again will get me there.
This morning, when I tried on my jeans, they were tight. In fact… all my jeans are tight on me. I ripped my favorite pair a few weeks ago and I know that was a sign that I needed to pay attention to. But this morning sent me over the edge. Either its me (or the jeans) are making the fat in my legs extra wobbly and I feel the extra flab there more than ever. It makes me sick, actually, and I want to run out to the gym right now to lift some weights or run a mile.
To make sure I don’t fall off the wagon again, I’m going to use this blog as a fitness log and I will record my exercise activity and post the results of my efforts.
After all, I can’t let my trusty readers down (or me).
Its been a rough week, folks.
My mind, body, and spirit haven’t been in the game and I’ve been dragging myself and reluctantly doing what I’m supposed to. I did manage to go to the gym twice this week - up from 0 time a week for the last 6 months. I was proud of myself - not for going - but not over doing it. So while I’m sore, I’m not hurting.
I’ve been trying to occupy myself with brainless activities like watching Beauty and the Geek 2, doing crosswords, playing Chuzzle, and whatever will get my mind of work and selling my house. I’ve experimented with the blog and added cool new things like the Google Maps, and the streaming video. But nothing really helps me relax and sleep well enough.
This is the first full week of work in two or three weeks - since the Christmas and New Year holidays - and it threw me for a loop; thank goodness that a long weekend is coming up.
Oops… its almost 12:30 and I should be going to bed. I have to be into work early so I’d better sign off.
Lets hope that the weekend is relaxing.
Ok… I deleted the other post that had the map up there. I probably should have just deleted the Google Maps code but I’m an idiot, I guess.
Anyway, as you can probably see from the lower right corner, I got Google Maps to work. I think the reason it didn’t work was because Blogger builds the posts using jscript and the script inside the script was not running properly.
But now it works and it seems kinda boring now. I really wanted to get it to work within a post so if I’m describing a place, I can show you the map. Instead, I have to settle for a static location.
Ho hum.
Because nothing else seems to be worth writing about today, I thought I’d continue the multimedia posting I’ve been experimenting on. So to fill the gap, I’ll post one or two pictures I took while on my vacation/honeymoon to Hawaii this past October. I’ll try to vary the pics up and won’t bore you with pictures of my wife and I. If I post about Hawaii, I’ll keep it to the naturesque parts.
This first picture was taken on Mauna Kea at sunset.
Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain/dormant volcano in Hawaii and rises 13,796 feet above sea level. When measured from its base, under the ocean level, it is 9km high making it the tallest mountain in the world. A top the Mauna Kea summit, are the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy observatory for optical, infrared, and submillimeter astronomy.
I took a group tour up the mountain to see the telescopes, enjoy the 32 degree weather, and hot chocolate before we descended down to do some star gazing in the famously clear Hawaii night sky. Its because the weather is so clear up on the summit - being above most cloud formations - and the little atmosphere that the observatories are there and its a great spot to do some high-tech astronomical research; it was so cool to see all those instruments up close and it made me wish I could spend every night up there.
But astronomy doesn’t pay the bills so I settled for the tour.
Here is one shot of the sunset I took just before there wasn’t enough light to take pictures at all:
It doesn’t work.
I don’t have any .mov files that actually used QuickTime as its CODEC. So I’ll have to figure out a way to test this and possibly buy QuickTime Pro.
My Wife has a Mac; is it free on her computer?
Update: I was able to re-encode the video to the right format.
