Boring Blog Entry
No spectacular glacier ice photos, or cute dogs, or wilderness adventures today. My gentle readers will try to curb their disappointment...
Julie spent the past three days in pain with a bladder and/or urinary tract infection, so she camped the better part of the weekend on the couch in pain. She was able to get the on-call doc to get her some antibiotics and pain meds on Saturday, now hopefully she is on the mend. Even so, she did a ton of stuff around the house. I am such a pussy when I am sick, compared to her...
I have been fighting a bronchitis for at least a week. Whatever cold I had two weeks ago morphed into a lung problem, and my co-workers got the full aural concert of coughing and hacking from my cubicle last week. Funny, hardly anyone stopped by to chat...
I actually awoke this morning being able to breathe thru both nostrils and have had nary a cough for a few days now.
Julie has been working hard to lose weight before her June deadline, when the reconstruction surgeon will decide if the donor site will be her gut or her trapezius muscle on her back. If she can lose enuf, they'll take from the tummy area. That way, the surgeon can throw in a tummy-tuck at the same time as she gets the new boobs. She continues to lose, but wishes it was faster. She lost another 3 lbs the last week, and she wears more and more clothes that I've never seen before... She is doing a great job.
My Julie is also doing an inspiring job of getting us to the gym. Three or 4 days a week, working out a good hard hour each time. I am there with her, when not sick or firefighting, but she is the driving force.
Julie also wishes that her husband, who apparently is addicted to food, would support her better. Given the density of the situation, I decided last Monday that it was time for me to start a systematic approach to my own weight loss. Once I started counting the calories and watching the carb to protien ratios of what I was eating, I am starting to see a way forward now. I calculated my base metabolic rate, subtracted out the calories needed to lose 2 lbs of fat per week, and am now limiting myself to 1950 cals a day. There's a pretty useful iPhone app called LoseIt! that we are both using now to track exercise and food.
Nothing like the brutal honesty of a bar graph to let ya know what's going on...
A week into this and I have lost 5 lbs, albeit the "easy" 5. The 'clean' math of calories-in and calories-expended appeals to my engineering brain. And I hafta admit it now, I did eat too much. Crap, I love food... I can still eat the things I love, just less now, and I have to pay for it. I reckon everyone has to grow up sometime and eat like an adult. Now is my time.
Spent Saturday morning at the Fire Training Center again, still learning to pump (operate) the apparatus. The Chief admitted that our 'engineering' class was too big, there's like 10 of us, and it is obvious that there is a bit wider spectrum of learning achievement across the class than anticipated. We have been going Saturdays for more than two months now, and we seem to progress at the pace of the slowest. I get impatient because I am doing the expected calculations in my head, on the fly, and the kids can't seem to keep up. I am having fun, regardless, but the weather is getting ever nicer and very soon it will be time to play outdoors on Saturdays instead, and then this class really needs to be over!!
When I was promoted to Fire Lieutenant last year, I was given three expectations from the Chief: certify as an Emergency Trauma Technician (ETT, or about three-quarters of a basic EMT); certify as a Fire Fighter, Level II; and qualify as an Engineer. The engineering class is the last of these goals for me to finish up. Soon I will be able to pick and choose how I want to get 'smarter, ' and what training commitments I can fit into my busy schedule of work, wife and wild...
Lastly, I enjoyed changing 2 gallons of lube oil on Sunday. No vehicle maintenance is easy anymore... cut my left thumb and two fingers struggling against confined spaces. Well, OK, the fore finger was actually cut trying to remove an oil filter wrench socket from the manufacturer's packaging... as I said, nothing is easy anymore. And then there was the mess on the garage floor... sorry, Babe, I'll sweep up the kitty litter tonight.
Like I said in the title... boring.
KML
Julie spent the past three days in pain with a bladder and/or urinary tract infection, so she camped the better part of the weekend on the couch in pain. She was able to get the on-call doc to get her some antibiotics and pain meds on Saturday, now hopefully she is on the mend. Even so, she did a ton of stuff around the house. I am such a pussy when I am sick, compared to her...
I have been fighting a bronchitis for at least a week. Whatever cold I had two weeks ago morphed into a lung problem, and my co-workers got the full aural concert of coughing and hacking from my cubicle last week. Funny, hardly anyone stopped by to chat...
I actually awoke this morning being able to breathe thru both nostrils and have had nary a cough for a few days now.
Julie has been working hard to lose weight before her June deadline, when the reconstruction surgeon will decide if the donor site will be her gut or her trapezius muscle on her back. If she can lose enuf, they'll take from the tummy area. That way, the surgeon can throw in a tummy-tuck at the same time as she gets the new boobs. She continues to lose, but wishes it was faster. She lost another 3 lbs the last week, and she wears more and more clothes that I've never seen before... She is doing a great job.
My Julie is also doing an inspiring job of getting us to the gym. Three or 4 days a week, working out a good hard hour each time. I am there with her, when not sick or firefighting, but she is the driving force.
Julie also wishes that her husband, who apparently is addicted to food, would support her better. Given the density of the situation, I decided last Monday that it was time for me to start a systematic approach to my own weight loss. Once I started counting the calories and watching the carb to protien ratios of what I was eating, I am starting to see a way forward now. I calculated my base metabolic rate, subtracted out the calories needed to lose 2 lbs of fat per week, and am now limiting myself to 1950 cals a day. There's a pretty useful iPhone app called LoseIt! that we are both using now to track exercise and food.
Nothing like the brutal honesty of a bar graph to let ya know what's going on...
A week into this and I have lost 5 lbs, albeit the "easy" 5. The 'clean' math of calories-in and calories-expended appeals to my engineering brain. And I hafta admit it now, I did eat too much. Crap, I love food... I can still eat the things I love, just less now, and I have to pay for it. I reckon everyone has to grow up sometime and eat like an adult. Now is my time.
Spent Saturday morning at the Fire Training Center again, still learning to pump (operate) the apparatus. The Chief admitted that our 'engineering' class was too big, there's like 10 of us, and it is obvious that there is a bit wider spectrum of learning achievement across the class than anticipated. We have been going Saturdays for more than two months now, and we seem to progress at the pace of the slowest. I get impatient because I am doing the expected calculations in my head, on the fly, and the kids can't seem to keep up. I am having fun, regardless, but the weather is getting ever nicer and very soon it will be time to play outdoors on Saturdays instead, and then this class really needs to be over!!
When I was promoted to Fire Lieutenant last year, I was given three expectations from the Chief: certify as an Emergency Trauma Technician (ETT, or about three-quarters of a basic EMT); certify as a Fire Fighter, Level II; and qualify as an Engineer. The engineering class is the last of these goals for me to finish up. Soon I will be able to pick and choose how I want to get 'smarter, ' and what training commitments I can fit into my busy schedule of work, wife and wild...
Lastly, I enjoyed changing 2 gallons of lube oil on Sunday. No vehicle maintenance is easy anymore... cut my left thumb and two fingers struggling against confined spaces. Well, OK, the fore finger was actually cut trying to remove an oil filter wrench socket from the manufacturer's packaging... as I said, nothing is easy anymore. And then there was the mess on the garage floor... sorry, Babe, I'll sweep up the kitty litter tonight.
Like I said in the title... boring.
KML
posted by Ken at 9:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home