A goal achieved

I know you all must be sick of hearing this, but I hit a couple of milestones today. First, I officially last 20 pounds since I've started working out again. I'm stoked. I'm under 200 pounds and I'm not that far from my goal weight. The second goal that I accomplished was that I am under 25 percent body fat. Actually, I'm at 23.6% body fat - out of the unhealthy range for men and into the "Acceptable" range. Eventually, I would like to be in the "Fit" range.

All I can tell you right now, is that I am comfortably into size 36 pants and 34s are in sight!

They say nothing motivates like success, and they are certainly right!

We're off to LA this weekend, but it is mostly a social visit which is great. I'm looking forward to seeing our friends and Hal this weekend, sort of a pre-Hanukkah visit.

Have a great weekend!

Thanksgiving Weekend Update

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Weekend. Mine was pretty good.

We ended up with 11 people for Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, Keds' Dad wasn't able to make it this year. His eye issues got the better of him and he wasn't comfortable making the 4.5 hour drive from LA. The dinner was awesome. The food was yummy, the mix of people was just right - everyone participated in some of the conversation.

Then we had a Thanksgiving redux with the Bowens. That was enjoyable. Keds and Jen went shopping while Casey and I chilled at their house and kept an eye on their kids.

Keds is nearly done with our Christmas shopping. I wish I could say the same. I haven't really even started shopping for her yet, but part of that is because I can't keep a secret and also can't resist giving her the gifts.

We started hanging the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations this weekend. The Menorah isn't quite right next to the Nativity set, but they are all up in the same house.

What Thanksgiving weekend wouldn't be complete without a little football. While I've blocked out last Sunday's debacle against New England, today's Jacksonville game was completely different. A 12-man on the field penalty that ends up sustaining a drive that leads to a touchdown, at least two interceptions that lead to six points? Come on. The Bills simply are not a playoff-caliber team right now. I like JP Losman and he is very athletic, but I am not sure he's a good fit for this team. Without a solid running game, there is no passing game. I just hope Marshawn Lynch is back next week against Washington. I'm just hoping we end the season at .500 or better.

Must Read

I think this article is a must-read for anyone living in the Las Vegas valley. It's written by Brian Greenspun, the editor of the Las Vegas Sun. He's one of my favorite columnists and this is something that I think everyone should read.

Read the article here.

Caucus!

Keds and I went to our Temporary Chair Caucus training on Saturday. At first, we were a little apprehensive - not because we don't want to volunteer, but because we weren't sure what to expect.

We showed up at Cashman Center a few minutes before 10 a.m. (which was amazing for us - we usually run late), and are told to park on top of the hill, but we had plenty of time to walk all the way down the hill nearly back out to Washington Ave. where the entrance to the meeting rooms are. We registered, got our name tags and headed into the main meeting room for the introduction.

After starting about 30 minutes late, we got into the meat of the training. The cool thing about the caucus process is that you have the opportunity to support your own candidate, and the fact that delegates are apportioned according to what percent of folks in that precinct support that candidate. The other really cool thing about this, is that it is entirely local. The people in the caucus are those people that live in your election precinct - your neighbors.

My biggest concern though, in this notoriously apathetic state, is that turnout will be poor. The Republicans are having their caucus the same day, so my recommendation is that everyone who is registered with either one of the two main political parties block out January 19th. The total amount of time is less than two hours of your Saturday, and it will keep your home state from being a national political laughing stock. Plus, given the closeness of races in Iowa and New Hampshire, we have a unique opportunity to help shape the presidential race!

Friday Thoughts

A couple of thoughts as we wind down the week:

1. Keds is in LA today to kick the contractor in the backside. Well, hopefully kick him. I'm a little disappointed that it's not done and this guy didn't call us to discuss any delays. I feel like we were taken advantage of.


2. Missed the meeting with Councilwoman Smith. I got my dates screwed up. Oh well. We managed to walk to and from the elementary school, so we got some cardio in for the evening!


3. Has anyone tried the Sugar-Free Gingerbread Lattes at Starbucks? OMG! So good. I was wondering how I was going to make it through the holiday season abstaining from these yummy treats. Now I don't have to!


4. Keds and I watched most of the Democratic debate last night. While the candidates inability to answer yes/no questions was annoying, CNN's blatant desire to illicit soundbites was even more maddening. All in all, though, we enjoyed the debate.


5. Thanksgiving is nearly hear. Keds finished up the bulk of the shopping for the holiday meal yesterday. She just needs to get the fresh veggies early next week.


6. Tomorrow, Keds and I are off to Caucus training at Cashman Center. It should be interesting. We'll let you know how it goes.

That's it for now. Enjoy your weekend!

This was a new one

As someone who has been bad in paying bills on time in the past, I'm no stranger to collections calls. Thankfully, this only happens on the extremely rare occasion that I completely space a bill (like the credit card I never use, but turns out has an annual fee). However, today was something completely different.

I got a phone call from an auto finance place. At first gearing up for a sales call, turns out they are looking for a neighbor of mine whom I don't know personally. This was a first. At least it wasn't for me.

Second, while I don't currently support the Hillary Rodham Clinton candidacy, I think this lunacy about whether or not her campaign planted questions in the crowd is just that - lunacy. Of course they did it. And of course all the other campaigns are doing it. She just got caught. It's no different than making sure hecklers aren't within 100 yards of a camera when a major political figure is speaking. It's the same thing - control the situation. I hate stupid process stories. This is why I am starting to boycott 24 hour news channels

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone out there in blogland had a great weekend. I had a pretty decent one.

Friday started out well. We had dinner and went to Williams-Sonoma with our good friend Jennifer and her two kids to get some things for the house/Thanksgiving. We were hoping to run into a another friend of Jennifer's there, but she wasn't working. Since Jen rarely gets down there, we checked out Gap and Pottery Barn kids. The prices in there were a really good form of birth control, let me tell you.

Saturday was a lot of shopping. We spent 5.5 hours at the mall, mostly shopping for Keds. Since she has lost over 45 pounds and has dropped two sizes, she needs some new clothes. Plus, since we are going to my little cousin's Bar Mitzvah in early December, she needs a pretty new dress in her new size! She's meeting my Dad's entire side of the family, since none of them made it out for the wedding, so she understandably wants to look awesome, which I know she will.

Saturday night, we gambled a little waiting for a table at Cabo, one of our favorite restaurants. The food was awesome as usual, but the service was LOUSY. Our drinks sat empty for a good 20 minutes. He never checked on us, and it's like he disappeared for another 20 minutes when we were ready to go. It was so bad, I was able to convince Keds to ding his tip. She normally starts at 20% and goes up from there. I believe a tip is for good service. You meet my expectations, you get 15%. If you exceed, it goes up with 20%, depending on how impressed I am. But that's me. I'm interested in hearing other thoughts on tipping, to know if I'm just plain cheap or not. After dinner, as we were in line for our 7x points multiplier, we saw Loraloo and her husband, which was awesome, if not unexpected. We visited for like 20 minutes, until the smoke in the casino was really starting to get to me. Normally, I can stomach smoke for a while and only detest it after I leave, but since I'm still getting over this upper respiratory thing, it wasn't good.

Sunday was pretty mellow. Watch my Bills play an ugly game, but come out on top 13-10 over the still winless Miami Dolphins. That made me happy. In the past, they would have rolled over and lost, but the team continued to battle. My only complaint was that DirecTV changed the HD feed to Baltimore-Cincy game, as Dad and I watch the Bills win in *gasp* regular resolution. Oh well. We still won. In the afternoon, Keds and I worked in the kitchen getting things organized in the pantry and moved all of the bar items out of the kitchen cabinets and, well, into a bar. Keds was thrilled to have the cabinet space back, and the casita is becoming more and more complete!

We ran out to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get some shelf thingys for the pantry, and our our way back, we say Cubby and Amanda on their way back from church. Since we hadn't seen them in over a year, we decided to tail them. Well, we were a little slow, and when we got to their house, we assumed they were already inside. We knocked on the door and rang the bell, to no avail. However, on our way back home, we saw them stopped a cookie and lemonade stand, so we stopped and chatted for like a half an hour. They also told us we need more pictures on our blogs, so we'll take that under advisement.

After that, I was off to 4 p.m. Mass. I prefer going either Saturday night or Sunday morning, but this worked out OK. I missed half of the gospel reading because our priest is from Sri Lanka and his MTI is pretty strong, but his homily filled in the gaps. Dinner was soup and grilled cheese, which was perfect, and then we settled in to watch some TV with the fireplace going.

All in all, a pretty busy weekend, but enough fun built in so that it wasn't uber-crazy. This week promises to be busy with dinner guests Tuesday and Wednesday, a thing with our NLV Councilwoman on Thursday (thinking up what questions I can ask), Caucus training Saturday Morning and then having friends over for UFC on Saturday night. Oh, and most of our remaining new furniture should be in this week too!

I'm sure I'll post more later in the week. Sorry for the long one today!

Being Sick Sucks

I've spent the majority of this week either fighting off something or being downright sick. It started last week with what felt like an ear infection. So I did the proactive thing and called my doctor. He sent me on my way with antibiotics and all the other fun things you get with an upper respiratory infection. I thought I was starting to feel better when suddenly I wasn't. Basically, I came down with a cold. I nearly passed out at the gym on Tuesday, and that's when I finally gave in to being sick and decided to take it easy.

I'm feeling much, much better now. Keds took great care of me making Chicken Soup and making sure I had plenty of tea with honey.

In other news, I'm loading all my CDs into iTunes. It's not that exciting of a project. Actually, rather tedious, but this way we'll be able to put the CDs into storage.