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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Playing with the phone

I received my Christmas presents from Julie a week early this year. Ever since we visited Julie's parents in October, I've wanted a bread maker. Julie's mom makes great bread and it tastes way better than store bought (mainly because homemade has less sugar). On Friday we were at the mall to buy Julie's Christmas gift (she picked out these cool knee high leather boots) and we stumbled upon the Zellers blowout madness event literally when the doors opened. I couldn't believe the crowd that had been waiting to get in! Anyway, Julie Scored an awesome bread maker for 50% off and I picked up Christmas pjs for us.

As for the new phone, I've been complaining for a while now that I pay $55/mo for just a voice plan on a plain Jane phone. I rarely used it so I finally decided either I cancel it completely or get a fun phone that I can access the Internet on. Fun won out and Julie found me an iPhone 4. The plan I'm on now is $60/mo so For $5 more I get the Internet and now evenings start at 6 pm. Sweet. I'm enjoying the phone so far and my family is happy that I'm finally answering all the calls that come in. : )

Saturday, December 4, 2010

A race to lose

My mother and sister recently joined Weight Watchers. Since I'm tight on money and cannot afford the join-up and meeting fees, I follow along more or less with them using online websites that have the calculators and points lists. About a week after they started WW, I received my next surgery date (will be #3 for my stupid finger) in March 2011. As much as I'm glad I'm having the surgery, I'm terrified of being put under again because I was so sick after the last time. The very first time I ever had a surgery (for my smashed nose/sinuses) I had a meeting with the anesthesiologist and was told that it's harder to get the dosage of drugs accurate the heavier the patient is. This can cause side effects like severe nausea or even death. That surgery was a breeze though and I was not sick at all afterward. However, since then, I have not had good experiences. This got me thinking about what I can do to reduce the chance of getting really sick off of the anesthesia and I realized if this can't motivate me to lose some more weight, nothing will. Plus, this is a short term goal rather than a long term goal so it's easier to keep focus on it (in theory).

After I decided to set a goal of losing as much weight as I can before the end of January (I chose the end of January because I have to get a physical sometime in February before the surgery and they will take the weight on that paperwork as what I am at the time of the surgery) I decided that I could keep even more on track if I had others losing with me. Since my mother and sister started WW, I asked them if they wanted to have a competition as to who could lose the largest percentage of weight by the end of January. I wasn't sure if they would go for it, especially considering there is no prize except bragging rights, but they did. Every Saturday (after their WW meeting and weigh-in) we compare where we are in our journey. Having the competition is actually benefiting all three of us because I know my sister has started going to the gym for some work-outs because my mom is beating both of us and she wants to beat me to the 100's (right now I'm 205 lbs and she's 203 lbs). In four weeks the three of us have lost a combined 37 lbs. They've each lost 14 lbs and I've lost 9 lbs.

Last week and the week before I had been getting up early and using the Wii to do The Biggest Loser workouts but this week has kicked my ass at work so I've been sleeping in this week figuring it's probably better if I get some more sleep to combat the stress. Still lost 1 lb this week and I didn't eat any junk or drink alcohol so I think I did well. That hasn't stopped me from thinking about going to the liquor store every day after work though... but I know if I stop by once, I'll end up going back again later in the week and then again the following week, etc., etc. and I don't need the extra calories nor the headaches nor the false feeling that alcohol helps after a hard day. I think that's what I'm afraid of the most, so I want to keep it as a treat rather than a numbing agent during the busy season.

Julie put up our Christmas tree today and I decorated it. She decorated the bookshelves with random Christmas stuff we have (i.e. a book showing the Christmas story as illustrated with legos, a singing and dancing snowman, a St. Nicholas that lights up, our stockings, another book about Christmas, a Grinch snow globe, etc.). Later tonight or tomorrow we will watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation which is our tradition (this is our fourth Christmas together so I guess we can have bonafide traditions now).

I decided to make my family Christmas gifts this year rather than buy stuff because I just can't spend much this year. I have seven family members to make gifts for and after thinking about it for a few weeks I decided to do the same thing for everyone. I bought glass frosting and stencil stuff from Michaels and wine glasses from Ikea. I've been making personalized wine glasses for each family member for the past week. The ones I've done so far look so cool and I'm really happy with how they've turned out. I think my family will really like them considering they're all wine drinkers and whenever we get together there are always abandoned glasses of wine because nobody can remember who put down what glass where (possibly too much wine, ha ha..). Plus nobody has any kind of glasses that are personalized so this will be a new novelty for them all.

I am going to put each personalized glass in a gift bag and with it a bottle of wine (red or white, depending on preference - luckily we're all cheap wine drinkers!). I will also include some baking that I'm going to do that will be packaged up in cool Christmas baking bags I found somewhere. Everyone will also get a tree decoration that Julie and I are going to make (we haven't gotten to those yet) and Julie is painting each person a little picture. It's been pretty fun working on it so far so I'm hoping the gifts will be well received!

Julie has the television on TLC which is showing this special on people who take outdoor Christmas decorating to a whole other level. They make the Griswold house look like nothing... holy cow. Their power bills must be insane!!!

On that note I'm signing off... still fighting off the last of a bad cold. Time for some cough medicine!!