You have to see Waitress

Waitress is a new release (Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2008), and I say it is a must see. I don't want to give away the plot, but I thought is was very original, funny, and one of those stories that really draws you in. Jena is a waitress and makes these amazing pies, she names them after different events that are going on in her daily life. Here are some of the best:

—I DON'T WANT EARL'S BABY PIE: Quiche of egg and brie cheese with a smoked ham center.

—I HATE MY HUSBAND PIE: "You take bittersweet chocolate and don't sweeten it. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel..."

—I CAN'T HAVE NO AFFAIR BECAUSE IT'S WRONG AND I DON'T WANT EARL TO KILL ME PIE: "Vanilla custard with banana. Hold the banana..."

—PREGNANT MISERABLE SELF-PITYING LOSER PIE: "Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambé of course..."

Anyway, go get it, rent it, watch it enjoy it. When you are done go looking for those recipes, if you find one let me know cause I can't find them! And the really do look good! I think they subliminally planted the idea of pie in my brain, cause tonight I made Bisquick Impossible Pie!!!

Doing something good, squared

So I don't know how I stumble across these sites, but I found another one. This is called Free Rice, it is a vocabulary challenge where each correct response you give donates 20 grains of rice to needy people. So I thought is was sort of a gimmick or something, and I have not researched where the rice really goes or if there is rice going ANYWHERE! All I know is that it was pretty challenging! I just donated 1000 grains of rice and finished with a vocab level of 29. Think it is easy, think you know a lot of big words? Give it a try, regardless of where the rice goes or who pays for it....it is a challenge. I want to hear your scores! Try it here Free Rice

Project 1/1/100 update

Ok, so I was scared to step on the scale this week. So I skipped it. My goal this week is to have a perfect week in terms of eating, hit all of my workouts, and fit in a few yoga workouts in the evenings. So far so good, although it is only Wednesday. Yesterday I swam, I am becoming pretty confident in the pool! Yesterday I swam 100 yards 10 times in a row at 1 minute 40 per 100. The first 3 I swam in 1:30 the rest were all around 1:35. Well #7 was at 1:40 exactly, but I picked it up after that one. I also did some drills and of course warm up and cool down. I turned in a 2000 yard workout in the end! All flip turns as well!!! Today I hit the elliptical machine and busted out 50 minutes. I tried very hard to increase the levels, and all in all I feel like I did really good. Tonight I'll do some yoga, I have a new DVD from the library that focuses on the core (abs and back) as well as some general stretches. I did it the other night and while it wasn't my favorite it did the job. I ordered the killer yoga DVD for my birthday, but I am still waiting for it to show up. It seems like I have found all of the levels of yoga, I tried one from the library that was really relaxing and focused on the stretching, the killer DVD makes me sweat like I just ran a marathon, and the one I currently have is right in the middle. Anyway, project 1/1/100 is back on track and I am hoping for a big week of weight loss! I'll keep my fingers crossed anyway!

Still more turkey

Gettin sick of Turkey yet? I am, I've had some form of turkey for the last 4 days...and more to come today, 5 straight days of turkey. Next time I am going to cook a ham, so I can complain about having too much ham! My sister makes turkey enchiladas with her leftovers and I found a decent looking recipe for it, but it didn't look very healthy with all of the cheese, sour cream, and olives. So I found another recipe for turkey chili, and AMAZINGLY I had all of the ingredients in the house. Well most of them, was missing a can of tomatoes and green chilies. We'll see how it turns out, it is in the crock pot right now. And most importantly...I used all of the turkey! No more turkey leftovers, unless there is leftover chili. Hmmmmm, didn't think of that. Maybe I should look up a recipe for what to do with leftover turkey chili!

Turkey day meltdown

I think I turned into the biggest turkey on Thanksgiving. I ate a sensible dinner, followed by 2 more servings I think. It was bad. Then my sister left town and we had a TON of leftovers. That translated into a big leftover turkey dinner on Friday and another on Saturday. The good news is that I am back on track starting today, mostly because there isn't much left to eat! I fear my goal to lose my 100th pound by new years day is out of reach though, but I am not giving up on it I just need to get to work on it. I'll keep you posted. I have delayed my weigh in by a day to give me a little time to work off some of those feasts. We'll see tomorrow if the goal is still within reach. Anyway, I found this good article about the holiday eating stuff and getting back into the swing of exercising. I like this line the best "This shouldn't come as a surprise: Thanksgiving is not the green light to a six-week indulgence that precedes the waddle back to the gym Jan. 2."

Cold Turkey 6K run

My nephew, Ryan, and I ran in the Cold Turkey 6K run this morning. 6 kilometers is about 3.72 miles. The race started at 10 AM, despite the late start is was still FREEZING! It was about 25 degrees at the start. Ryan is on the cross country team at his high school, and is a very speedy runner. He finished with a time of 25:12, which comes out to 6 minutes 46 seconds per mile! He is supper fast! He finished in 34th place overall out of 792 racers, 29th male, and 6th in his age group. Pretty studly if you ask me. As for me I finished in 33:35 (9 minutes 1 second per mile) which was good for 224th overall, 152nd male, and 27th in my age group.

Unfortunately our turkey wasn't so lucky as to be holding a sign, so we are going to eat him! I did learn a valuable lesson in turkey buying, get one frozen ahead of time. We had to buy a thawed one yesterday and they were 3 times the price! My sister Liz is doing the cooking and later today we are going to stuff our bellies with the typical Thanksgiving feast. Although I'll have this wonderful thought in mind: Between Thanksgiving and New Years day the AVERAGE American gains 7 pounds!

Go Broncos

Hey hey hey, how about them Broncos? That was one of their best games last night. My favorite part was the fact that they didn't even try to get into the red zone so that they could sputter and kick FG's all night. Nope they bypassed all of that with 4 touchdowns of 40+ yards! Their defense appears to be playing better, especially against the run. The Titans have some decent running backs, and to limit them and contain Young to 72 yards is a pretty big improvement. Now, every team left on the schedule is less than .500 which doesn't mean much, but at least we can say the toughest part of the schedule is behind us.

New Thermostat

Yesterday I installed a new digital thermostat in our house. I am excited as it is a nice upgrade over the 40+ year old one that was on the wall. So I figured I would play it safe and kill the power to the furnace, I guess I didn't want to get zapped. Then I went downstairs to get some tools and noticed the smell of natural gas. Of course with the kids in the house I started to panic that I was going to blow up the house. But I figured out that when I shut off the fuse to the furnace the pilot light went out, and when I was reading about how to relight the pilot it said some gas left in the lines might escape and to give it 5 minutes before trying to relight it. So I went back upstairs and installed the thermostat, it was really simple on our house since we don't have air conditioning...heat only was 2 wires to connect. Then I re-lit the pilot light, turned power back on to the furnace and it was up and running. It is pretty cool that you can program the furnace to come on at certain times and then shut off at certain times to cool off the house. The thermostat was programed from the factory with a set up that save an average of 33% on heating bills in a typical house. It drops the temperature down to 60 at night, but warms it back up to 68 at 8 AM when the kids and I usually get up. We'll see how it goes, at least it should give us a little bit of flexibility in our house and hopefully it saves us some energy and money too!

Why can't Santa be Jolly?

I laughed when I read this, is this really what it is coming to? You can't say Merry Christmas anymore. You can't even put up red and green lights anymore, all white ones are now PC but a little racist if you ask me. The city of Ft. Collins isn't even putting up Christmas trees this year, but snowflakes instead. Now Santa can't say "ho-ho-ho" cause he is going to offend every woman within earshot? I think we are taking all of this a little too seriously and it is taking the fun out of Christmas.....Oh, oops.....I mean the Day On Which Some People Choose to Exchange Gifts and Be Merry....you know D.O.N.W.S.P.C.E.G.B.M. Kinda catchy, don't you think? Maybe Festivus is the way to go, and I'll start out with the Airing of Grievances! It's a Festivus MIRACLE!

Ocean's 13

It was great! We both liked it, and if you have seen 11 or 12 I think you would like 13 too. Although, there were parts that really made me want to take a trip to Vegas.....I would be interested to find out how much of the payroll was paid for by Vegas. There is a fictional hotel in the Movie called "The Bank" which gets computerized into the Vegas skyline, it looked so real we had to do an internet search to see if any new hotels had been built on the strip. Anyway, good movie, go rent it!

Movies

We have been on a real hot streak with movies lately. It all started with Mr. Brooks a couple of weeks ago. Kevin Costner plays a creepy killer guy, and does a good job with the role I thought. Then we saw the new animated movie Rattatouille it was actually pretty good. I don't know if it was the best animated movie, but one of the better ones in recent memory. Another animated movie was Meet the Robinsons, great movie for kids and adults. I thought it was original and had a creative storyline that wasn't all cliche. Last night we watched Shrek the Third, and while it was good it wasn't great. Our family watches Shrek 1 and 2 so much that I think the DVD's are starting to get holes warn into them. So we were eagerly awaiting this release, and it really left me thinking it was just so-so. Over the weekend we watched the final 9 episodes of The Sopranos. Bridget and I were in agreement that is was a pretty good ending to the series, easily better then the conclusion to Seinfeld a few years ago. The "ending" for Phil Leotardo was great, but I was disappointed to see Silvio go. I thought the final scene which got so much press was actually pretty cool, I like the many possibilities that the writers let you believe were about to happen.

Tonight we are watching Oceans 13, the Oceans 11 and 12 movies have been one of our favorite movie series. Again, as with Shrek, we have high hopes for this one. I'll let you know what we thought of it.

Why 29 was really #1

My 29th year on this planet was hands down my best year. I started the year "retired" but really came into my own starting last November. I started becoming a regular at the local rec center, so much so that it is almost like Norm from Cheers now. Of course that led to the whole weight loss thing, you know that pesky little 80 pounds that I have lost this year. The kids and I have found a good groove and have been going to weekly playgroups, getting them (and me) out and seeing other people. I have been organizing the run club through Partners in Medicine which has also brought new friendships and a good outlet for some running. Ahhhh running, in August I completed a marathon in Park City. I also competed in 3 triathlons over the summer, the most I have ever ran in one season.

When people tease me about being 30 and now I am an old it doesn't really phase me too much because I don't feel old at all. With all of the weight loss and all of the exercise and races I feel younger than I did at 25. I think the old saying "you are only as old as you feel" is really true. I don't feel old and I feel like I am just entering my prime.

So what can you expect out of me for the 30's? Well first off I want to continue to be the best husband and father I can be. I want to really make strides in my triathlon races, I'd even like to win one here or there. I want to continue to get out there and make new friends and be active in PIM. And I want to be sitting at this computer at 35 and 40 telling you how each year is my new best year. To keep improving upon an improvement sounds like a great goal to me!

Weekend Plans

This is going to be a fun weekend. It is my "birthday weekend" according to Bridget since she has the weekend off and my birthday is on Monday. She is on call on Monday as well so she won't be around for the actual day. So I don't know what she has planned, but usually she leaves it up to me. I might ask her to make me some lasagna and mashed potatoes for Sunday night dinner. On Saturday I'd like to do another triathlon workout like I did last weekend, 1500 yard swim, 20 mile bike, and 3 mile run. Except I'd like to run 5 or 6 miles instead. I was thinking I'd go for a mountain bike ride this afternoon, if I can find a trail. Other than that I don't think there are any big plans. We have a standing invite to a poker game on Saturday night, but the host is making 2 day marinated ribs and I think that might be too much of a temptation since Sunday's are my weigh in day. We'll see, could be fun and last time I played I was so close to getting my money back or actually taking home the pot. We do a $10 buy in and then the 2nd place player gets their money back and the 1st place player gets the rest. I finished in third last time....maybe I should go just to try to redeem myself!

Lance is the man

Lance Armstrong ran the NYC marathon in 2006 and after crossing the finish line said he would NEVER do that again. Despite his team of world class pacers, he still did not enjoy himself. He did however beat his goal of 3 hours (2:59:36) which is just nuts for your first marathon. Well he ran is again on Sunday and finished in 2:46:42, which was barely 40 minutes slower than the overall winner. A lot of people don't know that Lance was a triathlon prodigy when he was a teen, so he had some running in his background. However at 2:46 he is doing 26.2 miles in 6 minutes 20 seconds per mile! That is truly amazing for a non professional racer. I really can't think of anybody else more inspiring, overcoming cancer, 7 consecutive Tour De France victories with out doping, and now he is dating an Olsen twin! What a stud!

Busy Monday!

Lots of posts for you today. I have one about Project 1/1/100, one about the CSU vs. BYU football game, and this one which contains my first attempt at a stop motion video. Stop motion videos are created by taking a bunch of photos of a subject and making small changes in each photo. Then you play them and it makes it look like the subject is moving. Gumby and the California Raisins are prime examples of stop motion animation. Anyway, here you will find Quicksilver breakdancing...and keep in mind I have never tried this before and I didn't even do trial and error on this project, this is literally my very first attempt at this. So the Quicksilver action figure was part of the cake that Karen made me for my Birthday (he was supposed to be superdad, how cool is that!). So here he is dancing......


Give me your reviews, thumbs up or thumbs down. One star or five stars?

CSU vs. BYU game

So at least CSU beat the spread! BYU was favored to win by 21 points and the final score was CSU 16, BYU 35. 19 points, HA take that BYU! We had a great time, our seats were awesome. We were about 5 rows up and right in the corner of the end zone. We had a good time going with our friends Ryan (CSU grad 2002) and Jason and his wife Beata, they are from the East coast but Jason loves Mountain West Football from watching all of the Thursday night games that the conference used to play before they signed on to their own network (Don't get me started). We were nearly the only people tail gaiting in the parking lot, and I'd pretty much promise we were the only ones drinking beer! When we got to our seats we were the only people in Green while the rest of the Stadium was Blue and White. Anyway, here are some pictures from the game.

Project 1/1/100 update

So I am still right on track to lose my 100th pound by Jan. 1st, 2008! I have really been working hard and staying focused, and the results are still showing up on the scale. So I am a mere 20 pounds above my goal, with 8 weeks left to go. I need to maintain about 2.5 pounds per week to hit that mark. Since my marathon I have lost 25 pounds which is hard to believe at times (especially on a Monday after my day off!). On Sunday I weighed less than I did when I graduated college! I constantly worry about hitting a plateau and failing to meet my goal, but at the same time I feel like I keep increasing the intensity of my workouts and maintaining proper caloric intake....hopefully that plateau thing won't happen.

Check out this workout on Saturday. For starters I got up at 5:30 AM to do this, and was one of those sickos who were waiting for the Rec Center to open it's doors at 6:30 AM (I got there at 6:25). So I swam a 1500 straight, no stops, all flip turns in 28 minutes. Then I rode 20 miles on the stationary bike, 59:30. Then I ran 3 miles in 28 minutes, 9:15 per mile. I was originally shooting for 6 miles, but I was pretty beat so I decided on 4. But then I ran into time constraints cause Bridget and I had to drive to Provo, UT for the CSU vs. BYU game. Regardless it was a GREAT workout, and I am happy with my triathlon progress.

Halloween aftermath

Here are some quick pics of the pumpkins. I carved the Frankenstein too early so he was really wilty. You can make out the bat pumpkin that Sydney helped me carve. And the ghost pumpkin was carved on Halloween day, so he was pretty fresh. We also had them lit up with our cool new pumpkin lights in them that change colors from red to blue to green. Pretty cool! I also put a few pictures of our ghost milk cartons. They were inspired from a magazine, and turned out pretty cool. They got a lot of comments.