A New Sure Fire Diet Aid!

I think I figured out a great way to deal with the temptation to eat.

Our house is about 50 years old, and along the basement ceiling is about a 20 foot section of drainpipe from the kitchen sink that goes towards the sewer stack. That's where the 50 year old part comes in because over time, that drainpipe has had all sorts of opportunity to corrode, to the point that it was leaking pretty good. This weekend was finally time to change it.

Now... I'm not especially adept at plumbing. There's a reason I'm not in that business! But somehow we managed to cut out the old pipe and get it replaced, and so far (knock on wood) no leaks in the new piping (the much lighter, much easier, black plastic pipe they use now).

As to the diet aid: I may have to keep around a small piece of that old pipe. 50 years of gunk and ick and... well, we could use more explicit language here... is built up in these pipes to the point there was just a very small hole through them. Gross is a word that does not come even close to doing it justice. Between the smell and the look and all of that... just the general ook of it all (if that's a word)... we'll just say my appetite was not very powerful. That's why I need to keep a piece of it, because if temptation strikes all I have to do is look at it and I'm quite un-hungry.

If anyone else needs help fighting temptation, I may put pieces up for sale. Let me know...-

Good weekend

Okay, so I finally decided to step on the scale for the first time in a few weeks. It's been that kind of time where, I've not done great the past few weeks, though not awfully either. I've kept up the exercise for the most part, in fact I think that's improving. But I know i've not been super faithful diet wise.

Soooo.... 356. 3 pounds up, but honestly I wasn't sure if i was 5 or 15, so 3's not bad, hey?

Yesterday I wondered if I overdid it. Well, not on the exercise bit itself, I went out on a 3 mile walk around noon. I did decide to mix in some jogs, basically 30 seconds of jogging, 2:30 walking for about 2 and a half of those 3. It felt pretty good, didn't feel like i overdid it at all, and felt pretty good later in the day.

It was the later part, and not really overdoing it. My daughter's high school choir is fundraising for next year's choir trip and the school's traditionally raised funds by working concessions at Invesco field. Now that will mean REALLY working come Bronco's games, but last night was just a Lacrosse game. Very small crowd really, and the work wasn't too hard. But it was the getting there at 3 and leaving at 11 and being on my feet the entire time, that as i'm shuffling slowly to the car i'm thinking to myself... maybe that run earlier wasn't such a good idea.

This morning I woke up with a sore ankle, though through the day it was getting better. We went out tonight to Bear Creek Lake which is a pretty neat park, and walked around. It was about 2 miles total but very leisurely. It all went well except for Kaylee (daughter #2) who took her bike along and went riding. As we get back, no one has seen Kaylee.... so as we start looking around the lady at the park entry station waves me down and asks if I've got a daughter named Kaylee... turns out she ended up at the golf course several miles away and someone there thoguht of having her call the entry station to see if anyone was looking for her. (along the same trail that went through the park). So there's the one side that is, good for her for getting a good ride in... but, that part about turning around after a couple of miles and going back musta slipped out the other ear.

All that said, I feel good. And am a little encouraged about the scale thing, though I'd much rather be under 350. (Granted, I'd much rather be under 250).

Time to dig through the plateau though....

If I can't keep up with this blog....

How do I expect to stay current with another?

My track record on blogs isn't so great. I've got primarily this one, another one that hasn't been posted in since January (I do a website called Heavyweight Football Champs and I blog about my opinions about the whole college football national championship thing, something i've not really blogged about much lately as it's not been on the top of my mind with all other things of life going on...) So now, I'm starting a new blog. What am I thinking??? This one's for my new business, so it will be more about business communications and phone systems and all that fun stuff.

It's fun, and slightly terrifying, getting this whole thing started. The fun thing is that I'm seeing some passions come out, I'm seeing these visions of what I want to see in the business and how it is so very different than similar types of businesses (aka the competition). But the terrifying part... well, one of course is the whole thing about whether it will actually make any money, the other is always wondering if i'm up to the challenge.

And yet... somehow I just know i am.

Went out last night bike riding... about 14 miles total, which was really good. My cellphone GPS program has a little elevation screen that shows the elevation along the way. There is one spot where there is a line almost straight up... if you compare that to the speed graph (showing how fast you were going at different parts)... that line straight up would coincide to the line straight down where i walked this.... really nasty hill. Someday.... I'll be making that hill just fine!

Kittens, scraps, plateaus and new beginnings.

Not sure what all those have to do with... well, with anything? Not to mention this blog, although, this blog is just about life, and... okay, let's be really really honest here. It has been a long long time since I posted anything at all and I'm totally clueless what to post even now but I'm trying to get back into the discipline, so... I'm just going with what's going on with life lately.

so, kittens and scraps... life around here lately has been consumed with 5 little furballs all with extreme cases of A.D.D. They're fun, they're maddening but too cute to get too ticked off at. I'm thinking life will seem very different soon though as they're almost old enough to find new homes. 3 of the 5 already have homes waiting for them, and while i know the kids are really hoping to keep one if not both of the remaining, we're defnitely going to be more than willing to let the others find homes as well. That becomes more true as they tear into my wife's fabric stash and leave scraps all over, or as they leave little gifts everywhere except the litter box. all that said... they're definitely fun to watch.

Plateaus... Was chatting with my daughter's doctor during a visit a couple weeks ago and she'd known I'd been doing this whole dieting thing, so she asked about how I'd done so far and all that, so she asked if I was at a plateau right now. i thought that was an odd question, but the truth is i've been fluctuating up and down about 5 pounds or so for awhile now. so, how'd she know? did i look like it? did someone tell her? I think she could tell I was wondering that by the look on my face and she said that just the point i'm at, the amount i've lost, the amount of time i've been at it, that it seems a pretty typical place for a plateau.

great. i don't want to be typical right now!!!!

i'm wondering in some ways if the blog and the plateau are a bit related? actually that is a thought that came up as i started this post because i used the word discipline. So I've fallen out of the discipline of writing in this, at the same time i've fallen off some of the disciplines otherwise... things that make you go hmmmm, huh?

I make a lot of excuses right now, for both. Most of the excuses center around life being rather busy lately, and around that new beginnings part. Which I'll get into here in a moment. But here it is May, and when there's a total of 10 kids between us things can get crazy. I'm sad right now for having missed my stepdaughter's college graduation just because it coincided with other school activities that required my attendance. But this is one of those times when life gets crazy. But you know the amazing thing? It's great! It's hard to explain, cuz it's mind boggling at times to the point where people wonder how we do it... but... it's life, and life is something that is very, very good. I'm relishing in having all of this going on. Even if it is sometimes exhausting, there's something at the end of the day where i'm left thinking... this is what it's all about.

ahhh, so... new beginnings. Part of the reason for being so busy also has to do with launching out now with my own business. Barnabas Communications! For me it's not a new name, I've somewhat launched it before doing some different things over the past few years. All of that has always been testing the water with one foot while keeping the other foot in other pools or seeking out other pools. But now, I'm diving in. It's scary and exciting all at the same time.

Put simply, i've spent too long being part of an industry where you have to really hype up the high tech aspects of what you do when in the end it still just ends up for the vast majority of customers pretty ordinary. And yet, having been involved enough in both the marketing AND the technology/service side of things, I know all the stuff we promise is there and can be pretty extraoridary. The problem is that we don't put the emphasis into making it extraordinary, we just put the emphasis into selling it.

So I've spent a lot of time on... how do you make it extraordinary? Over the past few months as the economy has tightened, the company I worked for had to do some cutting back in December, and I survived the cut. As things slowed down more, I ended up thinking, what if there's another cut? NO ONE in this industry is hiring right now, in fact... not many people at all are hiring. But the amazing thing in those thoughts became... that it didn't turn into fear or panic, and there was this understanding that it was in fact maybe an opportunity waiting to happen. And recently the time came when we talked at work about changing to more of an independent contractor at work. And in the end, that opened the door to the opportunity. And thus, Barnabas Communications LLC is a reality. I still do a lot of work for my former company which gives me a chance to develop the business.

Right now I've got the framework put together and the basic concepts. I have the website, www.DenverPhoneSystems.com. It's what I figure to be a temporary one, because there's a constant evolution in how I think it should be put together, but this is a good start. I think anyway....

So yeah, life has gotten busy. And yet... exciting.