PSA

The Dare race report is in draft. I slept most of Sunday, worked on it a bit yesterday, and haven't had time for it since. That's what I get for saying it would be up Sunday afternoon. I'm all about the missed deadlines. :P

just so's you know...

I'm still working on the ride report for the Bluebonnet Express...it got really, really long and sort of boring, so I'm trying to trim it down. Depending on what I have going on tonight, it should be up before tomorrow.

The short version? I rode with the same girl as I did at the Continental ride two weeks ago plus another club girl, our on-bike average was faster but our total average speed was slower. The Space Race century will be the true test, but I think I'm going to be fine on the MS150. Oh, and the bluebonnets were surprisingly scarce, for a ride named after them. :)

no weigh in

no weigh-in today. The line was super long and I was in no mood, so I left. I'm going to try to get to the place tomorrow.

I'm also going to be posting FMF a little early this week, since I skipped the last two weeks. Expect something in the next hour.

honorable mention

For those of you who like diet blogs (which I'm assuming is at least some of you, since you can't ALL be coming here for my bike obsession, random music giveaways, and 'stupid human tricks' stories), my husband just starting blogging again, mostly about his experience with the Rice Diet Solution (based on this book). I didn't think I had the discipline to do it with him, but he's doing so well on it that I'm almost considering jumping on the wagon now. Almost.

So, go check him out!

I hate doing this, because the second I do I end up making myself a total liar, but I don't think I'm going to be posting for a little while.

With the events of the past few months, Monday's drama, the hormonal changes associated with miscarriage and now the birth control pills, I'm in a really bad place emotionally. The bitterness in that last post? Tip of the iceberg.

So, I'll be back when I'm more upbeat. Hopefully, I'll also be lighter.

hey--what's up with the stats?

If you pay attention to such things, you may notice that my progress and sidebars have changed. I am now claiming 186 as my start weight, and here's my logic behind that.

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm starting to get disheartened by my dwindling weekly average losses. I've also been avoiding WW meetings because my nude current weight is still 3.4 lbs above my clothed start weight from the last time I was going to meetings. So in other words, if I resumed meetings now, I would show a gain of at least 5 lbs from when I started. Depressing.

Secondly, it's a lot easier to kick back and relax when I've already lost over 30 lbs. I can say to myself, "you know what? You're not nearly as fat as you used to be. Just have the damned Klondike bar."
In order to get my motivation back, I think I need to forget how fat I used to be, and start over from where I am now.

The reality of it is, I'm still over 50 lbs. heavier than I want to be, and haven't made significant lasting progress on that goal in nearly 2 years. So, I've moved my old successes to the bottom of the sidebar and made January 19, 2006 the start of a whole new journey.

The start weight might change tonight, since I am going to that meeting I've been avoiding. Rather than try to pick up where I left off, I'm just going to register as a new member. I'm also going to go in with an honest effort, and check my "look at me, I've already lost 30 lbs and know I don't really need to treat this shit like it's gospel to lose weight so I'm really doing YOU a favor by showing up" attitude at the door. Not that I was ever bitchy about it, but you can only hear the term "BLT" so many times in a context that does not involve bacon* before it makes you want to punch somebody. And I'm not saying that I'm going to start getting all WW-buzzwords on you, just saying that I'm not going to roll my eyes, grit my teeth and hit the tune-out button every time the leader uses one. After all, they became catchphrases for a reason, right?

So anyway, I'd better get going now if I expect to make the meeting at 7:00.

*well, maybe sometimes. (I was going to link BLT, but work's Net Nanny won't let me google "bites licks & tastes")

things I want to write about when I have free time

This is really just a reminder entry for myself, because I may have some time tomorrow afternoon to post.

-compare and contrast online sporting goods stores that I've bought stuff from recently

-HOMETOWN 20 WEEKLY REPORT

-"my, how far we've come"

-Think of something to put on my donations page for Tour de Pink, then link to it

-post about various products I use, stuff that works for me...basically product whoring, only I'm not getting paid

just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...*

I finally broke down and got myself a cutesy progress bar up there. You don't even want to know how long it took me to settle on the fish. Even now, I'm not completely satisfied with how it looks, but I'm tired of futzing. The graphic's probably going to change quite a few times before this journey's over. Hopefully, the number will, too.

Oh, and you may have noticed that the number on the fishbar doesn't match the number on the sidebar...177 was this morning's (unofficial) weigh-in. I'm not-so-secretly hoping for the 176s tomorrow.

*I've had that Finding Nemo song stuck in my head all morning...now I'm giving it to you! You're welcome. :)

FYI

I don't keep a blogroll on this site, because we didn't know about other weight loss/fitness blogs at the time we created it and paid for the design. There was no place on the sidebar to put a blogroll, and I'm too stupid not possessed of the patience required to figure out how to create another heading in the same font, size, style, etc. I could create another sidebar section that didn't match the others, but it would drive my inner perfectionist CRAZY.

However, until a couple weeks ago I did have a blogroll for this site registered with blogrolling. It contained about 30-40 fitness blogs, and I would use their IE sidebar code to catch up on my reading. And anyone who checked their site stats could see who I was by following the blogrolling link.

Around the beginning of this month, my blogrolling gold subscription expired, and I decided not to renew it. Since AWSI doesn't exist anymore and it was the only blog I was maintaining a public blogroll for, it wasn't worth $20/year for me. Besides which, the service has gone downhill since it was sold to TuCows.

In my true dunderheaded fashion, I neglected to move all my links to somewhere else before my subscription ran out, so now I can't get to my secondary blogrolls to get the URLs even. I've contacted blogrolling about it, but they're happily ignoring me. Not that I blame them...if someone wrote me and said basically, "hey, I've decided not to pay for your service anymore, but could you open up my blogroll for a day so I can move over to your competition?", I wouldn't be too keen to respond either. :)

Why do you care? Probably you don't. But I just wanted to mention it, because I do still visit all the blogs on my workout diaries 'roll whose URLs I could remember. I know I missed some, so if you have a complicated URL and I used to visit you regularly, please drop a comment and let me know what it is. Your URL, that is.

And if you have a simple URL but haven't been seeing my blogrolling link in your site stats as often lately, it's not that I haven't been visiting. It's that I'm too cheap to renew my blogrolling subscription.

FINALLY.

Comments are now closed on entries over a month old, and trackbacks are disabled on all entries. Take that, spambots!

I suppose if I had looked around a little bit, I could have found a script that would close comments automatically after 30 days (and if anyone knows where I can find and install one for MT quickly and idiot-proofedly, bring it on), but I sort of wanted to back through old entries. In doing so, I have learned some interesting things. For instance...

*There are some aspects of this weight loss thing that I "get" immediately (lots of water = good, strength training is important), and there are some things (lots of refined carbs = bad, what my trigger foods are, that I will never get my money's worth out of Champions Fit because I cannot magically become a morning person) that I seem to discover over and over again like it's the first time.

*I'm horribly, abysmally bad at following through on any kind of challenge. Or following any regimented diet plan, even if my body responds really well to it.

*My long range plans very seldom work out the way I expected them to, mostly because I forget about them after about a month.

*I bore easily.

*I will sign up and participate in about 1/2 to 2/3s of the events that I intend to participate in per year. I will forget that I ever intended to sign up for the other 1/3-1/2 of these events (I wanted to do a triathlon this year? Are you KIDDING ME?)

*With the exception of the wedding pictures (because someone else did my hair and makeup, and my abs were bodyweared into submission), I haven't really liked a picture of myself since 1993.

*When I say that I'm not going to worry about the number on the scale so much as the healthiness of my body, I'm totally lying.

*I weigh the same amount now as I did in April of 2004, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

*I think I've finally found a plan I can stick with. (Though now that I've called it a plan, I've probably doomed it to failure.)

I think I love you...

...MT 3.121.

I can delete all comments by one author, all at once! I can delete them before they appear on the site, even! If I knew anything about design, I could set up registration! I'm getting a little verklempt just thinking about it.

Until after the holidays, when I plan to shell out the cash for a site redesign, I'm going with unregistered commenting. However, all comments have to be approved before they will show up on the site, so if you comment and it doesn't appear, please don't send it more than twice. (Honestly, I'm not really sure how this works, so bear with me.)

Don't like the new comment policy, blame the &%$#@! spammers.

UPDATE: Don't like that you get a big fat error when you post a comment right now? Blame me. Sigh. Do know that I'm getting the comments, though...I just forgot to switch to the new comment template in my config file.

UPDATE 2: ...And create a "comment pending" template. But it's all fine now. The design of the pending template is sort of low-rent, but like I say--after the first of the year, I'm planning to get a redesign anyway. I'm getting sort of tired of this color scheme, and I want to change the sidebar. Skinning would be nice, too.

Right now, I'm thinking Moxie is the way to go, but I haven't contacted anyone about it yet. If you do (or know of someone who does) blog design at a decent price, email me...joy-at-allrighthere.net. Thanks!

I'm such a dork

I've been revamping the categories (yes, STILL), and I wanted to create one for posts about my plan (such as it is). I started with "Plan", but that seemed too boring, so I did "The Ever-changing Plan", but something seemed naggingly familiar about that. Then it hit me, and I found my category name--"A Swiftly Tilting Plan."

This is what happens when you spend your entire childhood in the library.

PSA

I'm doing a thing with the categories, so if you use the category archives on the sidebar, they're going to be changing for the next few hours days. I doubt anyone will even notice, but I wanted to let you know just in case.

Stats 6/3/04 - Food: 34.5 Exercise: 4 Flexpoints used: 6.5

PSA

I'm doing a thing with the categories, so if you use the category archives on the sidebar, they're going to be changing for the next few hours days. I doubt anyone will even notice, but I wanted to let you know just in case.

Stats 6/3/04 - Food: 34.5 Exercise: 4 Flexpoints used: 6.5

PSA

This site may go down in the next few days, due to the aforementioned missing debit card. It's the card I use for the monthly hosting payment, which caused the payment to be declined this month. I did notify my host that the payment wouldn't be able to go until I got the new card, and they said they could wait. However, they are within their rights to shut the site down since I haven't paid them, so you never know. If that happens, don't worry. I'll be back to boring you daily just as soon as my new card comes in the mail. :)

PSA

This site may go down in the next few days, due to the aforementioned missing debit card. It's the card I use for the monthly hosting payment, which caused the payment to be declined this month. I did notify my host that the payment wouldn't be able to go until I got the new card, and they said they could wait. However, they are within their rights to shut the site down since I haven't paid them, so you never know. If that happens, don't worry. I'll be back to boring you daily just as soon as my new card comes in the mail. :)

revamp

I've been doing some thinking about the site, and what I'd really like to do with it. I've been thinking about the other weight loss blogs I read, and what I like about them, and what I don't like. There are parts of maintaining this site that have grown stale, and just aren't working for me as well as they used to (Rob isn't as obsessive as I am, so he's fine one way or the other). There are other things that I don't do now that I'd like to put into place, eventually.

So, here's what's going to be changing around here, effective immediately:

No more diet and exercise logs. Documenting these things in detail in two different places (here and WW Online) is tiresome, and I don't want to do it anymore. And let's face it, unless you came here from a google search for the points value of cheetos, you probably don't care about them anyway. Instead, I'm going to incorporate Points summaries into my....

Daily posts. Sometimes, it's going to be just the points information. Sometimes, it'll be more than that. Sometimes, there may even be more than one post in a day. But since, as a geek with no life whatsoever daily browser of many, many blogs, it irritates me when people don't update for weeks at a time (including myself, ironically enough), I figure the least I can do is throw up something every day, even if it sucks and/or I suspect it will be mind-numbingly boring to everyone but me. I'm going to try my best to be at least mildly interesting, though. At least some of the time.

Monthly reports instead of 4-week reports. I'm tired of TOM bloat skewing my measurements. If I stay on a 4-week schedule, it happens every time. Plus, it's easier to keep track of when it's coming, and I can give them names like "Monthly Report - October 2003", instead of "4-week report #14", or whatever. This one goes for Rob, too...since his next 4-week report was scheduled on the first Wednesday in November anyway, it all works out. Monthly summaries and goals will be posted the first Wednesday of every month to coincide with weigh-in day. They will be titled by the previous month (October's monthly report posts on 11/5, for example).

So, when the 4-week report comes out later this afternoon, my short-term goals will be set with an end date of 11/5 in mind. It's just 3 weeks away, but after that, both Rob and I will be in sync, and the reports will go monthly.

And that's just about it. There may be some little tweaks here and there, and if I don't like things this way, I'll change them again. But I think this is going to work.

he's baaaaack...

Rob's temporarily indisposed (read: hurt, on the couch, unable to move comfortably), but he was planning to come back to ye olde workout diaries today, so that we could start his new "Week 1" at the same time as one of my weeks. So here we are.

He's been out of the weight loss game for a while, and sick part of that time as well, so his weight has gone up to 264. He's looking to get down to 250 in 4 weeks, which I think is a little aggressive, but he's confident he can do it. I'm behind him all the way.

Here is his complete set of goals for the first 4 weeks:

1. Eat 30 points or less each day (he has also signed up for WW Online), since he can't work out due to injury.

2. Take lunch to work at least 3 times per week.

3. Cook dinner at home at least 4 times per week.

4. Lose 14 lbs, to make it to 250 by October 8th.

Since my next 4-week report is next Wednesday, those schedules are going to be a little...staggered. My next one is 9/17, then 10/15. His first one will be 10/8. So I guess from now on, after September, his 4 week reports will always be the week before mine. Other than that, our schedules are in sync.

So anyway, welcome back, Rob!

post removal

yeah, there used to be a post about wedding dresses here. It's not here now. There were a couple reasons for this.

1. Rob thought I sounded catty when referring to a link to a dress that I didn't find particularly flattering. The dress had a dropped waist that caused the skirt to bunch up a bit around the hips. I had linked a couple other dresses that had a similar style, and was trying to point out that I was afraid that these dresses would bunch up around my hips, thus making my already-wide hips look even wider. I was not commenting on the model. There was nothing wrong with the girl. But it would absolutely kill me if anyone thought that I was poking fun at some random stranger's body or fashion sense (neither of which I am in any position to comment on).

2. It was only tangentially related to the topic of this weblog.

And hey--my blog, my rules (at least until Rob decides to start posting again). I hereby declare this blog a wedding fashion-free zone.

in case you were wondering

I have changed the "MORE" and "CLOSE" things for extended entries to EAT ME and DRINK ME, ala Alice in Wonderland.

You know, drinking the drink made her smaller, eating the cake made her bigger?

After seeing it on the page, though, it doesn't seem as cute. I'm really not telling you to "eat me" in that insulting sort of way that people sometimes do.

I think I'm going to have to come up with something else.

hey--what happened to Rob?

Robert is taking an extended break from the weight-loss regimen. He may pick it back up eventually, but he asked that his information be removed from the site in the meantime.

So it's just you and me, kids.

it's not hard, people!

Okay, if you're going to join a webring, PUT THE RING CODE ON YOUR PAGE. Criminey.

I've been trying to go around and give some love to the other fitness journals in both those webrings down there, and every time I get through a site or two, there will inevitably be some yahoo who joined the ring but either made the code hard to find, or didn't put it on the page at all. And then I have to go back to the main webring page and hit a random site to get back on track. It's annoying.

Grr. That's all I have to say. Just grr.

ATTENTION ALL COMMENTORS

While we welcome comments from anyone interested in the blog, if you are just trying to advertise a commercial site, read this.

administrative stuff

because the weekly logs get really long (especially mine--all those line breaks and blather...), I've buttoned them up. I'm going to be putting the weekly calorie counts in the diet log excerpts for past weeks, along with a little introduction to anything that's changing...but to see what we're actually eating, you'll have to click MORE>>. Ditto on the exercise logs--Total hours for past weeks will be in the excerpts, details will be lurking under MORE>>.

Everyone cool with that?