A system of fluid-filled bladders...

Been a scary and draining last few days... yesterday morning, Mom drove herself to the emergency room with severe chest/back pain. They ran some tests and discovered that her gallbladder was infected and her gallstones were acting up. This, of course, meant that she needed to have surgery to remove the blasted thing. I stayed with her from 4:30 until about 10:30 when she went in for surgery. The surgeon called around 12:30 with good news: the surgery went well and she was doing fine. I called her early this morning and talked with her a bit, then went to bed and couldn't really sleep. The phone calls from family started pouring in around 8am, and I ended up sleeping intermittently until about 3:00. Now I'm waiting for my aunt to come over and we're going to head over to the hospital together for a bit.

The surgery was laproscopic, so there are only two or three incision holes and they're very tiny. I've been out of it ever since she told me she was going to the emergency room... can't really focus on anything for too long, can't keep the house in shape... oh well. Things'll be back to normal soon enough.

Allez Cuisine!

I figure I should update this sumbitch with some news... I've lost about 8 inches or so off my waist since september. I'm heading to the big & tall shoppe tomorrow to buy some new pants, which will hopefully be too big in a few months. I've started exercising a bit for the first time, and, though I'm sore, I can tell it's helping.

Also, I've decided to take action and give my life direction for the first time in god knows how long. I'm going to do everything in my power to enroll in culinary school by fall 2008. It's probably going to be the Art Institute of Orange County's culinary school, and I'm going to see if I can get my associates in culinary arts and pastry arts.

I'm excited! Things are looking up.

Lights! Thisses! Action!

I sold my extra Wii (I had three, including one that's not portable and you can't play Zelda on) on the eBays, and promptly had an extra $350 in my paypal account, to go along with the $140 that I had previously. The first thing I did was buy my dream compact camera, the Nikon Coolpix s51. 8.1 megapixels, 16" x 20" pictures, one-touch portrait mode, high ISO shooting, vibration compensation, and one hell of a zoom. And it's everything it's cracked up to be.

There are a few gripes that I've got, the first of which being that Vista *spit* doesn't play well with it when you plug in the USB cable. It asks for drivers, of which there are none, so you can't get it to recognize that it's a camera and/or a portable USB storage device. This can be overcome in two ways. 1) Remove SD memory card from camera and plug into printer's SD card slot, or 2) Boot over to the Mac side and just connect normally and let iPhoto take care of everything automagically. The second gripe is that it doesn't come with a dock for charging. I got spoiled by my previous camera, a Sony that I bought 2½ years ago, that plugged into a dock that was plugged into both the power outlet and the computer via USB, charging the camera and connecting to the computer at the same time. This one just has a standalone battery charger that you have to put the battery into, and a loose combination USB and RCA cable. It's a bit of an inconvenience, but it's not dealbreaking, especially when you get what this camera brings to the table in return.

I'm gushing, I know, but I'm so very happy with this thing.

My plans for it? Well, I'm glad you asked. First and foremost I'm going to be taking food porn every chance I get. Speaking of which, there's a bunch of Thanksgiving pictures up on my Flickr so give those a look. Secondly, I just bought a Gorillapod and am going to use that and the record video feature of the camera to possibly maybe put together a cooking show demo, and edit it together with iMovie HD. Just something I'm throwing around in my head. Just an idea.

With that, i'm off to bed, with thoughts of food dancing all through my head.

Lesser Man

I have good news to report! I've gone down 2 shirt sizes since I first saw the nutritionist and started eating healthy. All my pants (shorts) are all athletic drawstring shorts, so I can't really measure how my waist has gone down, as the strings untie after every wash. Still, though, I'm losing a bunch of weight, and that ain't not nothin' to not shake a stick at none.

Fwoosh!

Okay, there are some huge fires about 5 miles away from here, and the santa ana winds are expected to be 35mph sustained and up to 75mph gusts. There's a chance we'll have to evacuate if the winds push it forward. I am not looking forward to possibly having to jam my life into my new beetle and high-tail it out of here. I've been thinking what I need to take, and I think I have the list down.

2 guitars and 1 bass, computer, external hard drive, iPod, camera, wiis, DS, phone, dad's recipes.

The hardest part is going to be getting the cats into the car. They're... not outside cats. And one doesn't like being picked up at ALL.

I'm a bit anxious, if you can't tell. I'm going to try to sleep now.

Beard-death experience

I've got about 3 months worth of beard growth going for me right now, and I have to say, I like it. The only problem I have with it is that the moustache is getting in my mouth when I eat things, and getting ketchup and/or other condiments in it when I eat things with those on it. This gets annoying after a while. I think I will trim the moustache.

Back to the Future

Thursday, I was feeling great. More energy, happy attitude, the works. I was finally starting to feel the effects of eating healthy, and all was good. I was considering moving around the furniture in my bedroom the next day, even.

On Friday, my back went out after I woke up. Naturally, this was very, very painful. It had done this once before with this particular spot in my back, and I didn't quite recall how I got rid of the pain. By the time I woke up, my doctor was already out of the office for the half-day that Fridays are, so that was out of the question.

I put a heating pad on it and Mom brought me some aleve and some excedrin back and body ache. Let me tell you, the combination of the heat and the aleve made it completely bearable, and the pain was practically gone by this morning.

I'm back to feeling good again, and I hope that feeling lasts through the week. I could use it.

Also, I've gone down a shirt size already, and it's been about a month since I saw the nutritionist. Awesome. Awesome to the MAX.

Careering off a cliff

I was just thinking now, after seeing some video of the president in the oval office, that the dream of being president that every kid has when they're young, has finally died in me. There's absolutely no way I'm going to wind up in the White House unless I make some SUBSTANTIAL mistakes in the future.

What am I, like, a clown to you?

Now that Danielle linked to me, I feel all compelled and shit to post something that's not relating to my getting in shape.

I like my new iPod, but it's a pain in the ass to get working with Vista. I figured I'd be an early adopter of the new OS from Microsoft, you know, get to use it before everyone else does so I can become proficient with it.

Mistake.

Let's just talk about the iPod right now. If it weren't for the fact that I've got a dual-booting iMac, I would not be able to sync my iPod with my computer. I cannot get vista to recognize that the iPod doesn't have or NEED drivers for it to work. iTunes doesn't recognize it, nor does the OS itself recognize it as a storage device. Microsoft says that it's aware of the issue with the new generation of iPods, and it'll have a fix out with the new Vista service pack 1, due in MARCH.

Fuck. That.

Meanwhile, I plug in the iPod while booted into the mac side of my computer, and it effortlessly syncs and recognizes it. The downside to this is that I only have my music playlists organized on the PC side of the computer. Two hours later, I've got MOST of the playlists recreated and all 17gb of my music on the iPod. Meanwhile, I'd deleted iTunes on the PC side, hoping that a reinstall would get it to recognize the iPod. I was disappointed in that it didn't. But, of course, the iPod can only be synced to one format at a time, either PC or Mac, so even if I *DID* get it to sync with the PC side, I'd have to delete everything off the iPod and upload everything again, and since I re-installed iTunes, all my playlists were wiped off the map.

There, I have now blogged nonsensically. REVEL IN IT, MY PRETTIES!

Letting it all hang out

So, I went and saw the nutritionist on Monday, and within minutes I had let my guard down completely and opened up to her about my horrible life and the root of my eating habits. We talked for 2 hours about everything that I could eat, should eat and would eat, and we both came away happy. She set up an eating plan for me that I can stick to fairly easily, and I gained a lot of self-confidence and, I'm struggling for a better word, but "gumption" fits the bill for now.

Here's the basic eating plan.

For breakfast, I eat an english muffin (toasted or microwaved) with peanut butter, along with some fruit (peaches or grapes or nectarines or avocado).

There's a snack between breakfast and "dinner" that consists of either some fruit for natural sugars or some nuts for protein.

For "dinner" (which would actually be lunch), I need to have the largest meal of the day, and that'll include either some chicken, a hamburger, jambalaya, risotto with some meat, eggs and sausage... all with some starchy veggies (corn, carrots, green beans).

For the late night meal I take my nighttime pills with, either soup or a sandwich of some sort.

There's a lot of water drinking in there as well. I'm starting at 16oz bottles a day right now, but I'm sure that'll move up to 3 soon, possibly switching up to 24oz bottles after that.

I got some multi-grain white bread, some multi-grain kaiser rolls, frozen chicken breasts, a crapload of marinades, some frozen hamburgers, turkey sausages, turkey hot dogs, sliced deli turkey, sliced deli swiss, some kicked up ketchup, a whole bunch of english muffins, some peaches, some grapes, some carrots, corn, green beans... I'm doing this. I'm actually doing this.

It feels weird to know that I've been eating right for the last 2½ days, because it doesn't really feel any different. Maybe that'll change when I go for longer with the plan, but right now it feels fine.

In an effort counter to common sense

I'm supposed to be keeping a "food diary" for the 3 days prior to seeing the nutritionist, so, of course, I'm eating entirely too much in a subconscious effort to make the nutritionist think that I'm eating nothing but shitty foods and give me a stern talking to, all while I smile and feign concern, saying "Oh, I don't know if I can give up smothered cheesy fries!"

So, as of yesterday, this is what I've been eating...

Breakfast, 9.07.07
3 handfuls of peanuts
1 "formula 50" vitamin water
Morning medications.
Lunch, 9.07.07
4 bun-length weiners put into 2 french rolls, with heinz ketchup.
1 cherry coke zero
1 diet A&W root beer
Dinner, 9.07.07
5 Carl's Jr. chicken strips, Claim Jumper BBQ sauce
1 cherry coke zero
1 diet A&W root beer
Late night, 9.07.07
1 can Chef Boyardee Mini-Raviolis
1 can Chef Boyardee OVERSTUFFED italian sausage raviolis
1 "Forumla 50" vitamin water
Night medications

Breakfast, 9.08.07
3 handfuls of peanuts
1 "Formula 50" vitamin water
Morning medications
Lunch/dinner, 9.08.07
Denny's smothered cheesey fries with bacon
Denny's lumberjack slam, extra hash browns, sourdough toast, english muffin.
2 diet cokes

Rantings of a lunatic

I often find myself restless, my legs rocking back and forth, jumping up and down as I sit in my chair. It's a chore to get to sleep, let me tell you. I don't have energy otherwise. I'm horribly sedentary, moreso than anyone should be. For that I pay the price, of course. I'm a human blob. I keep kidding myself that I'm going to change my eating habits, make sure not to eat fast food, etcetera, etcetera. It's not going to happen overnight.

I'm seeing a nutritionist on Monday, and I've got expectations, however unrealistic, in my head. It'll change everything! Ha. Likely, I'll not care about what she says and I'll be right back to having a toasted Arby's french dip the next night. It's difficult, though. I've got colitis and can't have fruits or vegetables in any significant quantity without paying for it the next day, or even the same night. I'm a very picky eater, as well, and that can't help much with deciding what healthy foods to eat.

I keep thinking, however unrealistically it may be, that once I get thin (wearing a 2XL would be my ideal size... about 235lbs for my frame) all my problems will go away. It's some sort of cure-all for everything that ails me. And I know it's not true, but my head thinks it is, and my head and I don't get along very well. "Never lets me be right" and all.

I've done it before, actually. Lost about 100lbs just by eating right and exercise. Then I gained it all back and then some. Just because of a personal crisis that came up that caused me to lose all hope. So I know I can do it. It's just a matter of how to get started. Things'll snowball and I'll be losing weight in no time after I get into a routine.

For me, the hardest part of ANYTHING is getting into a routine. I tend to be a lazy idiot, and as such, I don't do things that I should with any regularity. It's a chore for me to do anything in the realm of taking care of myself. Really, what should and has in the past come naturally just doesn't happen these days. It's a sad situation. And I need to get into the habit of doing these things on a daily basis. Hop to it, you know?

Well, I would, but my legs are too restless and it's bringing me down.