Author: admin

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Losing Weight, for real.

OK, it’s time.   I’ve slowly grown over the past 20 years to a weight that I’m no longer comfortable with.  3 weeks ago I weighed myself and it wasn’t pretty.  I’m wearing 38-40 inch pants…  Which is 12-14 inches large then when we got married.  (Yes my Tux had a 26 inch waist). 

It’s not that bad, I can still walk, even jog, but it’s just bothering me.  I also don’t fit into a good portion of my clothes.  I’ll need to be in a suit for a wedding in a couple months and I really don’t want to buy another suit.  I have a couple good ones.  I just need to fit them.

So it started.   ‘The diet’, although it’s more of a lifestyle change than a diet.

About 2 years ago we joined the YMCA near us in an attempt to ‘work out more’ and eat better, etc, etc.   About 3 weeks of that netted exactly 0 lbs of weight loss.  I did feel a little better though, but just wasn’t convenient.  Needless to say it didn’t last long.

So I was a bit skeptical when Claudine decided to take over my menu.  I didn’t eat large proportions to begin with.  My caloric intake, at least from my perspective, wasn’t all that high.   But what I wasn’t doing was eating all the time.

I often skipped breakfast.  Well actually I never ate breakfast, apparently a pot of coffee is not equal to breakfast, and I often skipped lunch.   When I did eat lunch it wasn’t healthy about 70% of the time.  Then came dinner, which because of our lifestyle with 5 kids and someone always doing something means we generally eat late.  Like 8-9pm.  Of course I’d like to snack a lot too when watching TV and playing PS3.

Well no more.

I’m eating breakfast everyday.  Cheerio’s no less, and Claudine has been packing my lunch.  Has it always been tasty?  Uh No, but it hasn’t been that bad either.

So with a decent breakfast, if that’s what Cheerios is, and a reasonable lunch and snacking throughout the day on somewhat healthy stuff (a banana here, an orange there, a reasonable portion of pretzels, etc.) followed up with a reasonable dinner.  (mostly salad, and some decent meat and a good portion of veggies).   It’s working.

It didn’t work right away, in fact the first two weeks saw a lb gained, but then like magic over night 3-4 lbs have vanished.  This is good.

I think the rule of thumb is for every 10lbs lost it will feel like a 5 horse power gain on my motorcycle.  Given my goal of 30-40 lbs that’s a 15-20 hp gain.   (I might even get better gas mileage as well).

So that will be huge.  🙂

I’ll keep track of what’s happening.  I do feel better, although I still have a cold that’s lingering and starting to piss-me-off enough that I might actually go to the Dr.

But so far, all is good.

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Yep, the deer is still around

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Only this time it was my turn to get up close…

She was just hanging out eating mulberries.

I approached her slowly and as I got the the tree a bunch of birds took off and scared the crap out of me.  Didn’t phase her though.

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No I wasn’t choking it, though I probably should.  I hope she doesn’t jump out in front of a motorcycle some day.

-MD

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When we left earth…

OK, so I’m a ‘real life’ extreme documentary junkie.  Yes, I enjoyed Axe Men, watched the entire series, I also enjoy Ice Road Truckers and The Deadliest Catch, though the latter is somewhat redundant.

I’ve been looking forward to When We Left Earth, the NASA Missions since it was announced.  For some reason or another Time Warner has upgraded our HD DVR and I can’t find Discovery in HD, so that’s aggravating me somewhat.

I watched the first couple shows yesterday and late into last night in complete awe of the work those men accomplished in the lat 60’s

They got shit done (sorry, there’s no other way to say that).  I would give anything to be able to go back in time and be a fly on the wall during their management meetings.  Something between now and then has left us.  Corporations today can’t get it done with the same fervor that they did back then.  I’m sure it wasn’t all fun and games, but they got it done.  Nobody, including NASA could pull of the the things they did back then, today.  It’s not possible with modern management techniques, rules, guidelines and red tape.

I would also like to state for the record that anyone that thinks we didn’t go to the moon is an idiot. 

I so wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.  I was a toddler during the space race, and I’m looking forward to rest of the series.

In fact I’m probably going to buy the DVD, it’s that cool to me and I’m not a DVD junkie.  I don’t own that many.

If you haven’t watched it, I would encourage you to do so.

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Alternative Heating, so what do you know about…

Pellet stoves and other alternate forms of heat?

Our dilemma.  We live in this drafty old 1850’s farm house.  It needs windows, but it has 23 of them to replace so that’s not going to happen any time soon.  We have covered them in the past and that’s helped, that’s a lot cheaper than the cost of new windows for us right now.

When we moved in, the cost of heating oil was $.68 a gallon  (68 cents).  That’s what we paid the first time we put oil in.   It’s now hovering at $4.20 per gallon.

Last winter we used 750 gallons of heating oil.  It was a cold winter, but for crying out loud.

750 gallons at $.68 to $1.50 a gallon would be something we could live with (and did).

At $4 a gallon (or more) it’s not happening.   $3k to heat a home is crazy, so we’re looking at alternatives.

The top of the list is a pellet stove, something that can hook into our existing ductwork and take over the bulk of the heat. 

At current prices it looks like this could save us about 1/2 the cost.

I need someone with smarts in this area to check my math and if you have any insight please share it.

Based upon the BTU’s available in a Gallon of heating oil, and our usage, it looks like we’d burn approximately 7 tons of pellets.

At current prices ($240/ton) that would run us $1680 vs $3200 in oil.   The popularity of pellets means they may be hard to get (so I’ve heard).

I also don’t look forward to manually moving around 7 tons of pellets (or 750 40lb bags).   That seems like a LOT of work to me.  Would I pay someone $1000 to move that around?  I don’t know, but I do know I already hate moving (4) 40lb bags of softener salt into the basement each month.

A wood burning stove offers the same issues.  I don’t want to spend my free time cutting/chopping/splitting wood.

A stand alone unit is fine for an occasional fire but it isn’t going to heat our house.  It’s only going to make the room it’s in hotter than hell and the rest of the house cold.

So I’m looking for advice.   Corn isn’t cheap, in fact it’s up there with heating oil right now so I don’t think a corn burner is the way to go.

anyone?

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Construction Update

First the air conditioning in the attic.   the PTAC unit is installed, and wired.  It’s working really well.  Because of the long dimensions of the attic and the fact that it’s probably not as insulated as it should be, we could probably use two of them.

That being said it’s a world of improvement, it’s actually very livable up there.  It is warmer on the opposite end but it’s manageable with fans and what not.

The unit is very quiet.  I’d highly recommend this over a window unit.  For what it gives you AC and Heat, it’s pretty economical too  ($700ish).

Just know this:  You’ll need the wall sleeve ($40) and the outside grill ($25) neither of those come with the unit.

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The kitchen is done, I need to take photos of that.  We’re still dealing with the stairs.  We ripped the carpet off, and painted them.  I then screwed up the installation of a stair runner.   We thought we could do it w/o tack strips and padding.  That’s not a good thing.

We’re considering painting a runnier or design on each stair step but I’m somewhat afraid of that.  The stairs are now pretty noisy without carpet.  And painting each one seems like the never ending project.

More as it unfolds.