I’m Losing Weight!

In an effort to continue with the truly mundane postings, I’d thought I’d let everyone know of my recent weight loss. It’ll also help to keep me motivated in continuing to lose weight.

Every year from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, I just pig out way too much. I just go nuts at all the big meals and with the holiday cookies. So I was at home New Year’s day, having just had steak and lobster tail (actually two and a half lobster tails) the night before, feeling uncomfortable because my pants were too tight. The kids were watching “The Biggest Loser” on some cable channel where these people were losing 40% or more of their body weight over many months. So I felt a little guilty and figured, “If these people can lose over a hundred pounds, I could show a little will power and knock off twenty pounds or so.”

So Eric challenged me to lose twenty pounds by the Ides of March. (He just read “Julius Ceasar” at school.) So I decided too take him up on the challange!

I got on the scale and I’m was 190 pounds. I’m not really sure how accurate our scale is, so I’ll re-phrase that and say it indicated 190 pounds. I thought it was going to be more than that! When I graduated college 25 years ago, I was 155, just to give you an idea.

So I pretty much just stopped pigging out. Didn’t really starve myself, just ate more sensibly. Veronica has limited me to only one box of Peanut Butter Tandy Takes a week (six packs of two in each box). Mary Ann got me a case of 24 for Christmas, so I still have a lot of those I can eat. Veronica has hidden the case somewhere in the house, I’m not sure where!

So after one week, I lost 6 pounds. Sunday morning is my official weigh-in time.

Yesterday, another 3 pounds. 9 out of 20 pounds in two weeks is making me feel pretty good about things with another 2 months until the Ides of March!

I haven’t even begun exercising yet. I hope to throw that into the mix this week.

I’ll update the blog on a weekly basis to let you know how it’s going. I hope everyone finds this mundane enough.

Brian and Andrea’s Wedding Shower




Last night was one of Brian and Andrea’s many wedding showers. The theme was “get them ready for entertaining,” so most gifts were alcoholic. Andrea’s cousin, Anna, hosted the party. She is a pastry chef who works for a catering company. Needless to say, the feast was quite impressive!

It’s the BIG 50 for Mary (and the little 15 for Veronica)!

Happy Birthday to the two of you! Any special plans for either one of you?

Congrats Penn State!

Kelly saves the day (after almost losing it)! I’m sure Larry will give us a more precise report!

Happy Birthday Lisa

Happy Birthday Lisa! Doing anything special today? Hope it’s a great day!

Smashmouth ain’t nothin

This is in response to Gary’s Smashmouth posting. I couldn’t post a picture as a comment so I had to start a new entry.

I’ve posted a picture here of our friend Mel’s snowblower. Many of you know Mel. He owns his own auto repair shop and I get out there every once in a while because I help him with his computers. I was actually just there this morning and had his partner send me this picture of the snowblower Mel created. It’s got a V8 engine and dual exhaust stacks. He said he managed to clear his entire lot of 6 inches of snow in about 15 minutes after last week’s storm.

As Mel said, Gary, “Don’t try to compete with professionals.”

To Pod or Not to Pod… that is the question.

Are IPods really the way to go? I was in Best Buy last weekend looking for a set of replacement headphones for Brandon’s IPod Shuffle. The only ones (that were Apple certified and that matched the original ones) were sold with a useless remote control and were priced at $45. I was highly annoyed that I couldn’t find the replacement headphones sold by themselves. It was at this moment when I realized that I had become a victim of marketing. It never even occured to me that there may be other options out there for MP3 players. So, I began to look around. I noticed several on the market and all at significantly lower prices than IPod. So what’s so special about these fruity little devices anyway? Why should I give them my money?

Birthdays

At the beginning of the month Ronnie made a comment on his birthday posting that he couldn’t remember the year of everyone’s birth. I think that’s a great challenge to post on our blog (we need to start getting some family history here). I’ll give it a shot (correct me if I’m wrong). I then challenge everyone to post their immediate family’s birth dates. Here goes:

Dad (Edwin) – 01/01/21, deceased 01/24/86
Mom (Eileen) – 12/16/24, deceased 12/09/84
Larry – 03/02/45
Marilyn – 02/23/49
Steve – 05/16/51
Kenny – 07/17/54
Gary – 10/04/57
Ronnie – 10/28/58

For history, we should add Susan: 12/24/45 (deceased shortly after birth). Am I correct? OK, let’s get our families on here! Then we can start going backwards and getting other relatives!

Do you dream?

I woke up this morning after one of my typical nights of dreaming. The “star” of this dream was Gary. He had just gotten a review at work and wasn’t too happy about it. So he came to the family for advice. We were living in Chalfont. Mommy, Kenny and Ronnie were in the dream. Mommy and I intervened…kind of like attending a “parent-teacher” conference with Gary’s boss. Kenny & Ronnie were “background” constants; Kenny complaining that he was having similar problems at work and Ronnie just standing there laughing (we were all current age except Ronnie who was a teenager)!

Weird. Do any of you dream? Steve says he doesn’t, or at least never remembers them. I dream nightly. Maybe it’s just a female thing??????

Elliot’s Halloween Pics


After seeing everyone else’s Halloween photos, I figured I had better sign up for this blog thing and show off some of my own.

And by the way, no that was not my alcoholic beverage in the first picture. It was being consumed by an individual of a legal drinking age.

P.S. – Uncle Larry, I’m hoping that your Nittany Lions win out and go to the Fiesta Bowl. I’m trying to convince my Dad that we should make our second straight trip to Tempe on New Year’s if they do.