Getting down to a size zero can be relatively easy, me thinks... I'm doing it!

A number of fun things happened to me this week, and yet my spirits are lower than they have been in a while. It kinda stinks when that happens; you get engaged in all the fun and interesting and exciting activities that you have been so looking forward to… and yet your life seems worse. It’s like going to a theme park for a day, being all bouncy with anticipation and then you feel upset or discouraged or whatever the entire time you’re there and then depressed (not clinically, simply in a mood dampened relative to your norm) the entire drive home because you didn’t enjoy it. Well, that is somewhat how I feel. There is so much I am looking forward to, but I keep failing my own expectations and falling short.

Well that is enough of the sad stuff, so on to the things I had been looking forward to. I am on a new diet that is actually going fairly well, but I it is a temporary diet at best and I will be making a transition at the end of the month. I have controlled my appetites far more than I have succumbed to the thoughts of wanting a snack or thinking I’m hungry. I have been drinking ample amounts of water, exercising with regularity, added more stretching and some relaxing meditation, and have cut down my body weight from 185 at the end of February to 171 as of Wednesday morning (but I had a very lazy day Tuesday with regards to getting up from watching Dr Who and eating, so I think I am actually generally at about 173). My goal was to get my body fat percentage to 6% by the end of the month, and I have one more week to realize that goal. Huzah!

Then there is Rugby. I have had a conditioning practice and then a full contact practice in the past week. Both of them went relatively well, and I feel more explosive and powerful than I did a year ago when I first decided to play rugby. I have a three team tournament April 13^th, and I have a great deal of work to be ready for it, but I eagerly anticipate the crushing contact of full speed rugby. Our team is a bit small (total member wise and average weight wise), so I believe we will be playing a lot of speed packages, so to speak. This means I should see the field quite a lot.

Then there is football. I missed our second practice because I had to work, but I have been doing a bit of my own training methods (some with rugby) to get ready for the start of official practices so I hope to not be too far behind. I had so much fun at that first practice, and I have been dreaming of playing for my whole life. This is the thing I am most looking forward to. It’s football. It’s freakin’ awesome. It is amazing! It is a sport I love that I have never had a chance to play, and now I am taking life by the horns and yelling in its face that this is something I am going to do so it better bloody well accept it! That was a little bit more fiery than I anticipated.

Then there is news on another front; I have (once again) been re-accepted to St Norbert College. Thank you, thank you, I am really looking forward to those beautiful trees in the fall and the river frozen over and the Zumba classes (but I may no longer be going to Zumba without Sarah Christensen teaching the class anymore :(  ), the cafeteria, the classes, and definitely my dear friends. I will return!

And now; donuts. I love donuts, and I found a recipe for donuts, so I might very well make donuts on Friday, my next ‘cheat day.’ I will attempt to shovel as much food in my mouth as I can that day, and donuts seem like a great thing to shovel. I also don’t work until 11, so I have all morning to make donuts and then I can take them to work and save money by not buying my regular cheat foods; donuts (of course), Little Debbie, Snickers, chocolate milk, Oreos, and whatever other snacks, treats, and goodies jump into my fanciful imagination. Massive sandwiches, fat and greasy burgers, chicken nuggets, disgustingly tasty Taco Bell, Cheetos and chips, whatever my fancy runs I gobble it up. Oh, am I looking forward to Friday now!

I'm so lazy!

So there are technically three posts going into this one, but one is really short, and it is this... it is way too nice out, so I'm going for a run. g'bye!

March 18th

Let me start this post with a simple statement; I love Gaelic Storm. I finally made it to a concert, and on March 14^th, I travelled north to the Meyer Theater in Green Bay, WI, and watched Gaelic Storm perform. They were freaking fantastic. I was singing along at the top of my voice, clapping, cheering, whistling, stamping my feet, and I may or may not have been flirting with the fiddler. It was the first concert I had ever been to, and it was the perfect first concert. I love basically all their music, and could sing along with every song that I had heard of theirs. We called them back out for encore after encore, and a concert that was supposed to be done at 10 didn’t draw to a close until 10:50. My section led a fantastically choreographed dance to one song that drew laughs from the drummer, the fiddler, the guitarist, and the lead singer even gave us a shout out after the song was over to come tour with them. I came home giddy and with a beautiful, leather bound hipflask. It was a near perfect night.

In celebration of this wonderful event, my mom made two great meals; the first was a batch of icing drizzled scones that were the best I had ever tasted. They were sweet and crumbly and utterly, diet destroyingly delicious. It took a great deal of my will power to wrap those treats up in tinfoil and put them off until my cheat day. She also made a Wisconsin style Irish breakfast; fried eggs and Johnsonville ‘bangers’. After not getting to bed until 1am, she woke up early to cook up 14 brats with near perfection, cooking them thoroughly, and evenly and without bursting a single casing. SO GOOD!!!

I then spent the next three days recuperating from my wild partying. I was tired, worn out, and so utterly fatigued. I did almost nothing but watch Netflix with my dad all Friday, with my mom all Saturday, and did nothing but attended meetings and church services all Sunday. Although, I did spend most of Saturday eating beyond my heart’s content. I got up in the morning with the intention of having a good, healthy breakfast of oatmeal and eggs, but those scones were calling my name from their aluminum wrappings in the refrigerator. Their argument was very convincing, so I ate them for breakfast… and washed them down with a half-gallon of juice… and then a bag of fun sized Snickers… and a protein bar… and a half dozen bags of fruit snacks… and a can and a half of Pringles… and then I ate three donuts… then a 1400 calorie milk chocolate shake… oh my gosh I feel like a fatty just listing that off! Then I went out and brought home $40 of Chinese… just to top off my breakfast. I got the Chinese for my family, though, not just myself! And there are leftovers!

Some other highlights of the last few weeks include, but are not limited to, watching Dr. Who, finishing Season 1 of BBC’s now defunct show Robin Hood, playing football in the snow, and not slipping and sliding on the ice as I go for a run, which is not very often because there is ALWAYS ice on the ground.

March 4th

Once a year, I am afflicted with a head cold of rather serious proportions. I feel as though my head is swollen to twice its normal size, sneezes come with  AK-47 rapid fire succession, and my nose runs like a Kenyan hunter. But a thought occurred to me as this latest assault on my health and wellness began; what if I’m not sick? What if I simply spend all year building up an unfair portion of awesomeness, and therefore I must disperse it to the world through nasal explosions as well as a slow yet very deliberate drip from mainly my right nostril. Well, once I realized this, I began to sneeze on each and every person I felt needed a dose of awesome. This did not last very long at work, and it actually got me kicked out of Nicky’s Lionhead just off the St. Norbert campus on Saturday night. I don’t understand, though. Doesn’t everyone want to be more awesome? I am simply attempting to spread the awesome I have with everyone! That’s freakin charity, man!

Anyway, aside from trying to awesomize everyone I met, I also got to spend my entire Sunday afternoon with the Masarik family. They are a family that is dear to mine, and it was absolutely fun to see them. We talked about a number of different topics, but the main topics seemed to be raising children (they have 3 kids under the age of 6 being home schooled), tv shows on Netflix an Amazon instant video (Dr. Who, Merlin, and Robin Hood to name off the BBC ones), and spirituality. We were there for about 5 hours, and even though I felt that I should be disengaging from conversation because it had been going on for too long, I was always drawn back in and my interest was rekindled. I am not entirely sure if that was due to the quality of conversation, which was fantastic and wonderful and engaging, or if I am beginning to change and become more social and conversational. I have already noticed it at work; I am speaking more freely with people and talking to people I otherwise would not have only a year ago. In some ways I am glad, but I am also a bit afraid that I am going to become even more chatty and will get to the point of being overwhelming or annoying (even though I already find a great deal of my conversing to be borderline annoying… is that bad?). So I make a request; please be honest with me if I come off as annoying. I do not think I will be doing the same for you, though. I am still a touch too timid for that.

In other news (meaning actual news), Sheboygan got punch, pounded, and beat down by a rather mean snow storm last week (this information may only be news to those 7 readers who live outside of the Sheboygan area). The name of this storm; Winter Storm Gavin. After Winter Storm Draco pummeled the entire East Coast and dropped a good foot on the Appleton and Green Bay area, it left a very disappointing footprint in Sheboygan; a rain soaked city that froze over the next day. Where 15 miles inland from us there was a lovely thick coat of white fluff fallen upon a picturesque street in Plymouth, we did nothing but trudge through snow washed into our drains by the incessant rain. Last Tuesday night and Wednesday was inversed; it was a quaint pretty snow in much of North East Wisconsin, but the Storm recognized my presence and determined to ruin my week, so he swung back around to drop snow on us and blow a mean wind through our neighborhoods. Well, I was almost certain that work would be cancelled. Lakeland Auto was closed, restaurants shut down, they even stopped plowing the streets and parking lots because they just could not do it! But, Associated Bank pressed on, and we braved the snow to report to our positions inside the bank. We had a dozen customers by the time my day ended.

I also came up with what I believe to be a fun idea; over the next 4 weeks, I will attempt to lose four percent body fat by lifting for 4 total hours, and average of 8 minutes, 34.28568 seconds a day. I think it will be a definite challenge. Anyone want to take me up on it and do it for themselves? I can post my previous day’s diet and exercise for you to mimic.