It’s just after 8pm on the last day of January, 2010, and my stomach is twitchy wondering what ominous thing tomorrow morning will bring. Of course, I sat so still yesterday at my desk for a total of about 10 hours — working, playing, trying to get ahead on a Saturday home alone — that I was beyond sore last night when I lay down. The slightest twist brought on major cramping down my sides. So far the resolution to “move more” seems to only be on regular work days, and not fanatical-computer-devotee-weekend-bender days. I did, at least, manage to do some household chores today to break up the fanatical-computer-screen-staring.

It occurs to me that I really miss going dancing. *Calls up a last.fm “club dance” tag radio.* Yeah, this music is not suited for sitting on a ridiculous balance-ball chair at your desk.

Speaking of ridiculous balance-ball chairs – which was supposed to keep me from sitting still all day and force me to sit-up more, improving my posture — I got to thinking last night about all the money I’ve put into various fitness trends over the years. How can any person have so much fitness equipment and still look for the next thing? Probably because they’re fresh out of stock on motivation. Wonder who sells that? Oh well, if you need a treadmill, elliptical machine, aerobics step, yoga mat, entire shelf of hand-weights, jump rope, ankle weights, thigh-master, workout bands, or balance balls (I have two) I’ve got you covered, along with a crate of workout DVDs, their older VHS cousins, 6 versions of Dance Dance revolution, Yourself! Fitness for ps2, Wii Fit with Biggest Loser for some incentive to use the gear. I’ve also got workout clothes in a range of sizes for a variety of activities… oh, and the birthday bicycle that I think made one trip outdoors in 2009 — though it was a long one.

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90 lbs in 90 weeks should be reasonable for anybody, right?

February 2010 begins the 90 week countdown to my 40th birthday. A reasonable weightloss is 1-2 pounds a week, and I probably don’t actually need to lose 90lbs to be healthy, but a goal of 90 in 90 seems doable, or at least catchy. There’s no definate plan of action yet, other than weekly weigh-ins, and to start blogging some workout info again.

You should see a weight-ticker below…eventually.

Somehow, in the jumble of my day, this song popped into my head and I continued to catch myself singing it. So, I looked up the video on YouTube to just listen to the whole song and perhaps do away with the one line I knew to repeat over and over.

I stumbled across this little gem.

I don’t remember being terrified of The Muppets as a child, but why don’t I? If we’d had a television the size of our television now, I think I would have been, but perhaps tiny, grainy TV screens helped preserve my sanity.

On a related note, perhaps I was (was?) a little insane, since I did used to (used to?) terrorize people with my animals on a stick!

For Jimmy, I give you Winston and pals.

Yes, one of those is Frankenstein. Just be thankful I no longer have a vehicle with a sun roof.

For the record, I never actually went outside to get any details of what was going on, so the whole story from my perspective is one of randomness  and frustration. That is, the story of whatever malfunction the Bradmobile was having this morning when he arrived at our house to pick up Mr. T for their Daytona weekend. All I know is that his car alarm seemed to be going off repeating some monotone message I couldn’t make out, occasionally there were sirens, and in the midst of it Brad shouted up to James on the porch that “the electrical system is down”. From there, my mind went “techno” turning it all into a repeating “The system is down.” while they did whatever to get it going again. I gave in to the evil/easy Facebook demon to say as much, and it prompted a call from sis, concerned with our alarm system. Once I’d explained, I did tell her I’d probably go get them if they called broken down. Probably.

Perhaps I need to get sis one of my recent toys for 2010, so she can be as on-the-ball as me in getting my weird references. Thanks to this, I’m on-the-ball every day, and it beats the hell out of my uber-squeaky old desk chair.

James asked me last night how I’d enjoyed getting back into gaming again, and I had to say I enjoyed it, even if I did remember how much I hated Cthulhu. I figured I ought to clarify a little. In D&D for example, you’re going to make some kind of adventurer whose life it likely is to seek fortune and glory, so getting you into a story isn’t too hard. But why are we going to sneak into wherever or fight this so-and-so? Because of the treasure/fame/reward/whatever. There you go. 

 In Cthulhu, you make pretty much regular people, who are supposed to start the game with zero knowledge of the existence of any supernatural mumbo-jumbo in their world. Thus, when the gamemaster conspires to put you in a situation where something is amiss, you’re probably pretty likely to accept reasonable explanations for things that you run across. That is to say, why should we go investigate why the train is stopped when the nice man just explained it’s only a temporary delay and they have it under control instead of going to wait in our cabins as instructed? 

Most of our party are just ordinary passengers, no special train expertise to be helpful to the effort, no reason to distrust the nice train employee, so why wouldn’t we go back to the cabin and wait the 20 minutes like we were told? Simple, because we’re all people who know we’re playing characters in the messed up world of Cthulhu and in all likelikhood something is about to eat/appear on/or dimensionally shift the train we’re on if we don’t check it out NOW! In 20 minutes, their “evil scheme” could be done, and since we don’t like to have to roll up new characters everytime we sit down to play, we take our “ordinary people” and make them do things that are really out of character.

You solve this problem, I think, by making only characters that have inherent reason to be curious/insane/paranoid/distrustful anyway, so even as ordinary Joe’s who may not think something cosmically bad is about to happen, are still curious enough to be wary when the nice train official says “nothing to see here! Move along!” so at least it makes sense why they might try to get their own look at the problem instead of taking somebody’s word for it.

Breaking in new characters is always the worst, though. Pretty much anybody, if you slap them in the face with some Cthulhu horror and they manage to not go completely insane or be eaten by it, will likely rethink their current course in life and start to be a little paranoid and curious, and thus become a perfectly good investigator type. More likely, though, your character will blindly go headfirst into the gaping maw of the beast because they simply don’t know yet that such a beast exists and might be hungry, because you as a player have to keep making your character rationalize things into the normal instead of the paranormal you know it is.

Thus, unless you are just danged lucky, despite your own personal knowledge of the world of the weird, your newbie is going to accept the drink from the stranger/let the weird doctor give them the injection/gladly hold the big ugly book for the nice man/go back to their sleeper cabin and relax like they were told, and next thing you know you’re rolling up another character.

My solution this time? A character based loosely on the eccentric Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe it or Not fame. An explorer/writer type in search of the weird, quick to want to investigate things that might seem out of the norm… which can be good to get us into adventures, but will likely result in me lingering too long to take photos of the weird tracks until the thing that made them comes back to eat me. Either way, I expect he’ll be fun once we get into it. I think I’m going to have to add “shrunken head” and “petrified monkey” to my inventory, though, just to add to the quirkiness of my guy. The actual Robert Ripley had the largest car collection of his day, but never learned how to drive, had a collection of weird pets, and enjoyed wearing outfits from other countries, so I think he may actually have been more insane than I can play for my character at this point. Dunno, though. If I survive this and get a few more sanity points down, we’ll see.

Who has a blog they only update every two months? Me, apparently. Damn you, Facebook, your stupid little daily musings and quick link posting is the bane of my hardworking, decent journaling lifestyle.

So, hey, it’s 2010 and stuff. Welcome. Yeah. Most of you knew that already. So far I’ve had more work to do for less pay than I can remember in a long time, put our household on a strict budget, and resolved to take the need for some personal changes more seriously than ever before. As for how all that’s working out for me, well, tonight it took two Tylenol and a Lynchburg lemonade to make the pain go away from hunching over the desk all day, so I could go hunch over a table with some friends and play Cthulhu for hours.

So yeah, there’s that. I’m gaming again, but I’m still off the electronic stuff, I swear. It’s only the good clean paper and dice gaming for me, man. It occurs to me it was only Tuesday I heard Ben was still playing WoW like an addict, and I actually kinda felt sorry for him. After tonight’s few minutes of gaming interlaced with hours of bad puns and tangents, I’m actually thinking the computer games might be a little more immediately satisfying. I forgot how much I dislike “cliffhanger” gaming sessions, unless I’m running them, of course. Let’s just say tonight’s session was a real train wreck and leave it at that. *wink*

A new year always seems like a good excuse for attempting some changes, so why not follow that crowd. The job scare didn’t hurt either. So, I’ve recently brushed up on some PHP basics with the notion of looking into Facebook app programing, and then gotten merrily sidetracked with the phenomenon of social media’s influence on modern advertising, and sort of haphazardly found myself reading up on SEO instead. Heck, today — I wish I could say for fun — I made some photo slideshows with flash, another set of skills I probably ought to have and really just don’t. Essentially so far 2010’s been all about “back to school” for me. Apparently after you go to your 20 year high school reunion you start to wonder if all your knowledge is really 20 years old, and start to seek out new skills. Or it could be just me.

Haven’t forgotten how to write, though. Well, not literally at least, see I’m doing it right now! Grammar is a little out of left-field these days, but I do like to capture what I’m thinking and worry less about what grade I might get. Felt good to stretch the mental muscle a bit to write up the first in my SEO tutorial series, where I’m essentially taking the general concepts I’ve picked up, focusing them for real estate agents, and even further focusing them based on what can actually be done with our websites. I’m actually looking forward to writing up hopefully the next two lessons over this weekend, so I can get ahead in case things get insanely busy again.

I meant when. I’ve put in more hours for work this month than in ages, and it’s nuts when I’m supposed to be cut back to a 24-hour work week. There have been some interesting challenges for sure, and honestly it’s been coming at me from so many sides it’s been hard to decide where to focus. Just when I get the plan in place to use all my idle time to study, somebody goes and takes away my idle time. I guess that’s why I have to resort to making time to journal again at 1AM, when I’m supposed to be on a 10PM bedtime schedule. Shyeah.

So, before the uber-budget hit, I plopped down the dough to sign on for another 6-months of ass-kicking bootcamp, this time at an indoor location. I got three days in, then the snow-ice hit. Then I got kinda sickly. Then I just got really off my schedule, which brings us to now. Tomorrow… er… later today is the last day of January and I’ve been to bootcamp three times! Woohoo! Month one down, right!?

It’s the timeslot. I cannot do getting up at 4:30 daily, fancy new-fangled light-therapy alarm clock aside, I have not been able to do it. Just knowing I’m going to TRY to get up the next morning causes me to have the worse time getting to sleep that when the light wakes me up, I just want to smash the light. I’m seriously considering swapping to the evening class back at Stone Mountain Park, which would be outdoors, but at least would be 6:30 in the evening instead. I have decided to decide this weekend, and make a fresh go at whatever come Monday. Of course, I could just go to the Saturday bootcamp at Stone Mountain park and tell them in person, but that’d mean I’m running come Saturday and I can already feel the notion-of-exercise-induced-insomnia coming on.

In what seems like an unrelated note to the reader, yet is clearly only a tangent in my brain, I’ve also decided to actually do the little photography project I’d considered doing a couple years ago, wherein I take goofy pictures of my favorite things and try to capture their story. Figure out, essentially, what makes them my favorite. Stupid, likely, but either all this crap sitting around on shelves are just toys and junk I’m hoarding, or they actually are “special” and deserve a little consideration.

Alright. I think I can walk away and consider that a big meaty journal entry for 2010 to sink it’s teeth into. Take that 2009! 2010 journal entries are going to kick your ass, and this is just the first one!

I think I’ll take a minute to post a couple resolutions of my own for this year.

1) Move more. As in don’t let myself sit for such long stretches at a time. Get up from the computer, from the couch, from whatever, if only just for a break. It may seem counterintuitive, but time has shown… sitting still too long causes pain, and then you don’t want to move much, and then you’re stuck in a rut.

2) Make time to study. I’m always going to be busy or tired, so just forget those facts and study anyway. Read more, and practice what you’ve read. Studying. You remember how!

3) Save more. I think learning to live with the things we have and not always looking for the next thing is going to be a tough one, but we’ve been eating in for almost a month, and it’s almost unreal the money we’ve saved from the norm. Cooking at home isn’t so bad, even if it leads to more cleaning, because all in all they both add up to moving more, which is goal #1!

Can weight loss be about fun and games?

http://exercise.about.com/b/2010/01/21/reader-success-story-how-julie-lost-75-pounds.htm

The costumes include mullets and your favorite pyro shirt. By day you build shells and rockets and joke about “not giving blowjobs” everytime you have to reach down to pick up something or about how the Chinese would probably be assembling things faster. By night you party and drink by the various campfires and watch people try to fire what they’ve built — some of which look like basketballs and are packed full of the “shells” we usually shoot for the public — and marvel at the CATO rate. Our ears will be ringing for a week no doubt. It’s no wonder the public can’t come to these things…. This is where the pyro-heads go to have fun. It’s a scary, loud place, and if you’re not paying attention, you may just get a firecracker in your pocket. Or down your pants. Or up your shorts. Or… you get the idea. Pay attention.

Had a lot of fun today personally just taking pictures of everyone, the wacky packages of consumer product, and the crazy pyro shirts. Scary mustachioed old-lady from Texas was wearing a “Warning: Hot Flashes! Instant Ignite!” shirt. Will just have to post pics of the fireworks packages, because words cannot do them justice… lets just say, apparently sex sells everything, including consumer fireworks. Also found some “pops” labelled not for children. Never seen such things before, but hear they are fun to attach to car tires, bottoms of toilet seats, etc. etc. Spent rest of day checking under every toilet seat before I sat down.

Have to say, temps in the 70s by day and 40s by night sucks when you’re at an event that takes place on a remote farm in the middle of nowhere and you’re outside all day and night. Was an interesting day, though. Joyce made a rocket, and we watched tons of cool things being built – and helped where we could. Watched the competition this evening, then sat in the cars to warm up while we watched most of the open shoot. Tomorrow the boys have to be in class at 8AM to be shooter certified, then hopefully they find out if we get admitted to FPAG officially, learn the secret handshakes and all that. Then they get to go to another class to build a shell to fire that evening, and then dinner, awards and the “really big show” goes down … where they expect all 350 or so registered folks to attend.

Lastly, it’s not all over yet, but if ever I thought Pete and James were crazy with some pyro notion… this crowd makes them look safe, sound, sane, clean and sober. We’ve learned a lot this first time attending, so next year… IF next year… for us, should be more fun. Layers. Flashlights. Cooler. Camp chairs. Blankets! Firewood! The bus Pete is bidding on… etc. etc. etc.

Okay… past time to pass out. Just wanted to get all this down in case I get impaled by a falling stick from a rocket tomorrow.

Last night I dreamt that we hadn’t really shot the show for “Fall Festival”, only a rehersal. This was because it all went down so smoothly that it could not have been real. We carved the three leftover pumpkins to take over to the show, then they got a strobe-pot in each and lit them to start the show… and they were awesome! They were on a hill off to the right of the show, and the smoke just came up out of the tops and crept down the hill, each pumpkin flashing a different color. Cool and creepy! Then we had a close-up, near deafening six or so minutes of fireworks, complete with ash and paper falling on the crowd with the wind change. AWESOME, for serious! We had scared children from the *booms*. Some people said it was the best show they’d seen, but it’s all about the proximity to it. This was nothing bigger than a 3″ shell, so we could be relatively close, and the crowd in the parking lot was on higher ground than the shoot site.

But anyway… I do babble. Shot at 7pm, cleaned up site and home by 8:30pm. Thus, it just felt like we’d done something wrong because there was still so much evening left to burn. At least we had Joyce & Pete’s newly lightning-replaced big screen to watch.

This morning we did a final disposal of our three carved pumpkins, with a couple of entertainingly dramatic quarter-sticks of dynamite for two of them. The lids seemed to fly sky-high with a slow rotation, while the rest of the pumpkins just chunked and blew in all directions.

The third pumpkin had a leftover titanium salute placed inside, which James proceeded to attempt to shoot. It was my favorite, carved with a smirky smile which we originally thought just looked like he was oblivious to the fact that he was about to go boom! After emptying a couple clips trying to find the salute shell inside the pumpkin, however, he just seemed to be mocking the shooters. After having shot enough to put us all off guard, and leaving the pumpkin looking more like swiss cheese, James finally hits his mark with a rifle. EVER so much more efficient than a quarter-stick, instead of flying chunks you could see, the salute exploding simply caused the pumpkin to cease to be, replaced by a huge puff of smoke. Almost looked like a magic trick… now you see it, now you don’t.

Anywho… trapped now in Winfield with the Talladega race crowd between us and home, we’re still hanging out. We’ve already gotten to go through a huge collection of Barbie’s and Ken’s today, and I have a couple pictures to post of their fabulousness. Unfortunately, only camera phone pics this weekend. James and I both neglected to pack a camera, and Joyce’s seems to have died. This was the first paid show we’ve done that I haven’t filmed. =\

Last funny note: When Joyce told Angela by phone that we were blowing up pumpkins this morning, Angela said we were retarded. Dennis, however, thinks we are the coolest people ever.

On the occasion of having survived another year of life, I wanted to take a moment to think about some people that help make it happen. Friends and family, near and far, I feel your love and I hope you are receiving mine. No matter what life throws at me, it is all of you that helps me get through every single day. Mostly, though, I still can’t believe my luck every day when I wake up next to JamesT. Love you all!