I was at 203.8 prior to the Superbowl, the next morning, well over 207. I have managed to get back on track and get back down to 204.6 this morning. That isn't too bad considering that I haven't gone to the gym since last week. I did use my treadmill on Monday, but yesterday I wasn't able to get in any exercise.

I went in to work on Saturday. We were supposed to have a meeting that morning, but we got a huge ice storm so it was canceled. I went in anyway and worked on my program. I probably worked about 6 or 7 hours. It is amazing how much more I can get done when I am not being constantly interrupted.

That ice storm was awful. There was probably over an inch of solid ice over everything. The weather did warm up a little and thaw out a little but of the ice. It still took about 20 minutes to chip out my car on Saturday morning.

204.8 this morning. Woohoo! That is less than when I started tracking it last April. I did dip below this before in that time frame, but gained it all back and then some. What I am doing is working.

We bowled last night and won two games. We won a couple last week as well. I have still not been able to get into a good groove. We would be a decent team if we could all get good at the same time. Seems like I have good games when the rest of the team doesn't or vice versa, so we never maximize our score. I do get disappointed that I never seem to improve, and sometimes I wonder why I shell out close to $20 a week just to make myself feel bad.

Jaime's grandfather had a heart attack last Friday. He doesn't have insurance and goes to the VA hospital. So he sat in his living room and endured a heart attack for 3 hours because he knew he couldn't pay to go to the emergency room here. It is a sad state of affairs with our health care system. He went to the VA on Saturday, then they sent him to Dartmouth. Jaime went down there and took Monday off to visit him there as well. They put in some stents into his arteries. He is now back home. While he was in the hospital, his thermostat broke and his oil tank sprung a leak that was not fixable. So he had to get a new thermostat and oil tank, which was not good. I guess bad things happen in threes.

I have been faithful about going to the gym every day. I don't usually go when I bowl that night though. I have found that I bowl a lot worse when I work out first, it must make me tired or dehydrated or something. And I usually meet with my nutritionist on Thursdays, but I didn't have an appointment this week.

Sarah has returned from her trip to Thailand and Vietnam. I have not been on the computer too much lately, so I have not gotten around to checking out her blog and pictures. We were happy to get a post card from her though.

We went to Mom and Dad's for lunch this weekend. I also went in to work for most of Saturday. I am working basically all day this Saturday as well. We have a meeting on Saturday morning that I need to facilitate, and I simply have too much work to do to get it done during the week. I am sure my efforts will go unnoticed and unrecognized as usual, but at least I can work uninterrupted on the weekends.

We are probably going to watch the Superbowl at Julie and Travis's house this weekend. I am trying to convince Chris Sloan to come. He has been traveling a lot lately.

I cranked up the Madden game and it is still kicking my butt. I think I am gradually getting a little better, but I am still having a losing season. It can be frustrating, but I guess the challenge keeps me interested.

Jaime didn't get her W2 again. That's two years in a row. I don't know why they say you have to get it by the end of January. There seems to be no recourse against the employer who doesn't provide it. I think the IRS should fine the employer for every day after the cutoff. It isn't fair because it causes the government to be able to hold onto your money for longer and you are giving them an interest free loan. But alas, Jaime is getting screwed over by her payroll department yet again. She finally got her 2006 social security straightened out after about 10 months of struggling. The social security office said they had never seen anything like it before, what is happening at her school.

As of this morning, I am at 206.2. I should still be on track to be under 200 by the end of February.

Jaime has been sick for about a week or so now. She did go to the doctor's the other day, but I don't think it was strep throat (they never called us with the results, so must be no new is good news). They put her on amoxicillin anyway. I hope that it clears up for her pretty soon. It hasn't been pleasant for her to sleep at night.

I used the treadmill last night. Jaime was having some kind of aromatherapy foot soaking party or something, so I came home and used our treadmill. I ran on it, which is something that I haven't done in a long time. I was able to push out 20 minutes of running at 6 mph. Not very great, but I will work my way up. I then walked for the rest of the time. I can really feel it in my legs today.

We got a "new" washer this weekend. Theresa had just gotten it like 2 years ago, then needed to get a new dryer and wanted to get the kind of washer that stacks under the dryer, so she was looking to get rid of it. She let it go to us real cheap, so we snatched it up. Our old washer came with the house. We were basically just waiting for it to die, so this worked out well. We called up Julie and Travis to see if they wanted our old washer for the lodge. It turns out that they wanted it for their house because their old washer was in worse condition than ours. So I helped Travis bring it over.

Theresa also had out the whole family for the yearly breakfast at the East Side. I got the buffet. I will say that their breakfast buffet has gotten better than it used to be. I filled up on a bunch of fruit and a little bit of other stuff. More than I usually consume in a sitting, but you gotta live once in a while and I have been doing pretty well with eating right. I spent the rest of the day watching the NFL playoffs. I was disappointed that we are not having a Green Bay / New England Superbowl.

Jaime and I have decided to go on a little getaway weekend for Valentine's day. Besides the possibility of maybe going out to Missouri to see Chris and Laura for Laura's graduation in May, we probably won't be going anywhere this year. So we booked a hotel (unfortunately at the high rates this time of year in VT) and we are going to go down and enjoy ourselves in Burlington. We are just going to stick to ourselves and not go visit anyone, so that should make it better than when we usually go there.

On the plus side (or is it technically "minus"?) - Down to 207 pounds this morning. I have been exercising at least 5-6 days a week religiously and still eating right. We had a meeting on Saturday morning and I was in charge of getting the coffee and donuts and bagels. I was able to resist their siren's call and did not eat either of them.

I have been doing poorly at keeping up with the blog the last few weeks. I blame it on my Madden 2008 game that I got from Chris and Laura for Christmas. I have been spending my free time at night playing it every night. I am leading the Green Bay Packers through a franchise season. I haven't played Madden since Madden 2002, then I got ESPN NFL 2004, which I felt was a little better. But then EA Sports got the exclusive rights to NFL football teams, so Madden it is. But it is still a great game. Some of the frustrations I had with 2002 I think are still in 2008. If I remember correctly, when I played it then, I put it on the second of four levels of difficulty and it was too easy. I think I have repeated this mistake again. I have just had a perfect season with my Packers, 16-0. I haven't really had any close games and most have been scores of like 70-24 or something like that. So I might crank up the difficulty for the next franchise year, if I win the Superbowl, that is. But if I remember correctly, when I did that last time, I got very frustrated because the computer started to become a little unrealistic in making amazing long passes in triple coverage all the time and stuff like that. We'll see. Nevertheless, I am having fun with the game, but it eats into my free time, and thus, fewer blog postings and messing with the site. That's ok.

Man it is cold outside today! Zero degrees this morning. Still only have an inch or two of snow though, after the big melt off a couple weeks ago. Jaime has been sick all week this week with the flu. Hopefully she'll start feeling better soon.

I'm going to say that whatever I'm doing now, I had better keep it up. Since I started my weight loss program last week after New Year's eve (my last orgy of eating), things are going very well. When I began, I was at an all-time high of 217. And that wasn't just after that night, I had been there consistently for a few weeks. I have now gotten down to 210. I know you always lose a bunch the first week, but what has been encouraging has been that it has been consistent day to day, not just a big drop after the first couple of days as my body cleaned out the works.

The keys to my success so far are no mystery: eat right and work out. I have found that for me, a slim fast, a banana, and maybe an egg or some pita chips for breakfast will easily last me until lunch. I know some advice is that you need to eat every couple of hours with little snacks. That just doesn't work for me. I never think to eat the snack (although I do bring them just in case I get hungry), and I'm not hungry. I usually eat my lunch early enough that I don't think it matters a whole lot. I have switched back to eating a sandwich for lunch rather than just a chicken breast. The bread isn't the best thing ever, but I am not downing a ton of carbs all day, so I think it is in enough moderation. Lunch is enough to last me, and I have been including fruit it in. I have been pretty consistent with going to the gym every day, and I have also walked on my treadmill on the weekends. My goal is to do at least something active 6 days a week for at least 30 minutes. Watching football is a good time to walk on the treadmill because Jaime doesn't want to watch it anyway, so I can do that downstairs while on the treadmill. My last thing that is working is to have a bowl of soup before dinner. I have never been a huge soup eater, but since I have done that, I haven't overeaten at dinner at all. Incorporating more veggies has also been a plus.

So right now I feel that I can sustain this. If I keep it up, I will be on track to hit my goal of being under 200 by the end of February. I haven't been hungry and have not felt deprived. Probably my biggest hurdle is drinking enough water. I track all of my progress on the website http://www.myfooddiary.com . You enter what you eat and your exercise and it tells you if you are under or over your calories needed for the day. It does all the charting and everything so it is good to track my progression. It gives you feedback on your ratios of fat, protein, carbs, etc and all the vitamins you get from your food. Probably the hardest thing is to get under the sodium limit. The amount you are "allowed" is quite low and very hard to achieve unless you are a vegetarian and never eat anything that is already prepared. Just eating the soup basically blows my limit. Sodium, like sugar, is in everything nowadays. I don't sweat it much.

Work has been stressful lately. I go through cycles of liking my job and hating it. Right now I am in the latter. I hope that will change soon.

Where to begin? It has been a while since I have had the time to sit down and write a blog entry. With the holidays and work, not to mention that I got Madden 2008 for Xbox over Christmas and have been playing that at night instead of poking around on the internet, I have had a lot of excuses.

Christmas went fairly well. It bit a little for me the way it worked out with vacation and the day of the week that Christmas was on this year. I chose to use all my vacation this last summer when we went to Greece. But that meant that I had to work the three days following Christmas when pretty much everyone else was able to take it off. So I did not really have a whole lot of time to spend with the family, and the time I did have, I was more tired than I would have liked. But despite that, it was good to see everyone all together. We did miss Sarah being there, but luckily we were able to chat with her on Skype on Christmas.

Hump-day is through this week.   And it has been a long week already.  Not in a bad way, just busy. 

Work has been pretty long this week.   You know how some weeks there seems like you have more stuff to do than you have hours in the day?  This has been one of them.  I'm not complaining -- in fact, it is much better to have too much to do than to have too little.  It does make the day go by faster.  But sometimes it seems like a little too fast.

I found out today that one of the guys on my bowling team is in jail again.  He went to jail last year because he got drunk and picked a fight with an off-duty police officer outside a bar.  This time, it seems he got drunk and got into a fight with someone and ended up breaking their ankle.  Now, I'm not the type of person that usually associates with many people who spend significant times in jail, but this guy obviously has a drinking problem.  The worst part of it is that he is my next door neighbor as well!  So I called up dad today and asked him if he could sub for bowling on our team for at least the rest of this year.