Isn't it amazing how quickly a month can slip by?
I've meant to write on a few occasions about different subjects but haven't done so for one reason or another, and next thing I know, it's a month later.
First, I wanted to talk about a revelation I had about a month ago:
I'm a terrible writer.
Which isn't to say that I write poorly. I've got a pretty good grasp of the language. I can convey my ideas somewhat effectively. It's just that I don't have any style, man. My writing is very clumsy and random. I gave NaNo a try1 last year and that's when I began to realize it. It really hit me when reading my blog. It's just pathetic.
I'm not sure if that's something I can fix or not. I may just not have any gift for words. That's okay, I suppose. I've got a number of other gifts. But writing is something that I'd previously thought I was fairly good —if not talented— at.
Don't take this as self-pity, or fishing for compliments. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, or so I'm told.
I should talk about my weight loss efforts. I've stayed (mostly) on track for the past month, but I haven't lost any more weight. In fact, I've either gained some weight or my mom's scale was lying to me. I finally got a scale of my own (and verified its accuracy), and it showed me 272 two weeks ago. I'm down to about 265 now. I believe that I've built quite a bit of muscle mass, which could also explain the discrepancy.
We're still eating smaller portions of better foods, although I've stopped watching my calories too closely. We've continued to ride our bikes; Renee actually did 24 miles on the towpath with me a couple of weeks ago. However, the sun has stopped being in the sky at 6:30am, which makes the whole morning bike ride much less appealing. So, we dug out our old Bally's cards and started going back to the gym, M-W-F evenings2. Either because I've become more disciplined about it or because Renee's there with me, the gym doesn't seem the drudgery that it did a few years ago when I signed up. Of course, we're only on our second week, so that could change too.
In other news, I found a better t-shirt printing service. Spreadshirt allows you to upload your images in vector graphics formats which means you can print them in different colors, have actual transparent regions, and they look good on fabrics in colors other than white. So, if you hit the Lurkerwear link on the left, you'll see a much better selection of shit. One feature request I'm going to send them is the ability to hierarchically group items. I'd like to have the front page show a link to each style, then the style page show a link to each type of product, then the product page show a link to each color available. But that's nitpicking. It's pretty sweet. Check it out.
I went to a Halo 2 party down in Canton a couple of weeks ago. I acquitted myself fairly well, playing against a bunch of young punks who play the game regularly. I was fairly consistently 2nd place in the deathmatch games and my team was teh winx0rz in most of the team games, so w00t. I'm having an XBox LAN party at my place tomorrow, so there will be more Halo 2 to test my mettle.
And that, dear reader, catches us all up, I think. Thank you for sharing this time with me. I feel like we've grown together. Can I have a hug?
13Bad, bad, bad. I don't embarass easily; I generally don't mind showing what a dumbass I am, but there is no way that story is going to see the light of day.
2Except last Friday, at which time we were packing up to go camping. We brought our bikes and went on the bike ride from hell.
One of my uncles suggested a route that took us up a hill that was a 90% grade for about 6,000 feet. On coarse, loose gravel. And it was hot. We walked a hundred feet, stopped, walked a hundred feet, stopped, etc.; nearly used up our water supplies— and that was just the beginning. I was supposed to take a turn onto a road that ran along a ridge at the top of the hill, and then back down to join with the (coarse, loose gravel) road that led back to the campground, about 8 miles.
Well, I'd walked this route a few years earlier, and I didn't recognize the road, so we continued on —it's literally named this— Big Hill Road until it went back down. So, now we're careening down a grade similar to the one we'd climbed on —you guessed it— coarse, loose gravel. We managed to avoid death somehow and found a paved road.
For a brief, glorious time there, it was a nice ride. Smooth asphalt, no traffic, and easy hills. But I gradually became aware that we probably should have turned where I first thought we should have turned and that I didn't know where this road was going, exactly. I was pretty sure that if I just kept turning left, I'd find a road I recognized and I was also pretty sure that the road to the campground (Wally Road) extended to a paved road to the south, so I couldn't hardly miss it. Well, that road turned on to a road that was more travelled and hillier. That road eventually turned on to State Rotue 514. 55 MPH speed limit, traffic, curvy, and hills that were worse still. But, I was pretty sure that this was the paved road that intersected with Wally, so I trudged on.
Poor Renee was dying at this point, having not started as early in the summer as me and being quite a bit less fit. I stopped at a farm for directions and confirmed that we were going the right way. Eventually we made it back after 11 tortuous miles. Just as we reached relative safety, Renee had a moment with her bike and wound up hitting the barbed wire which ran around posts on either side of the hiking/biking trail entrance to the campground. Fortunately, she escaped with just some bruises and scratches, but damn.
3I'm also not very creative. I really like what KJToo does with footnotes in his blog, so I'm blatantly ganking the idea. Oh, to have a personality of my own.
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