Category: Personal

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I’m not doing any New Years Resolutions in 2021

I will be attempting to do Monthly goals that will hopefully be more manageable and achievable. The short sprints rather than the usual year-long marathon goals.

Januarys goal will be completing some fitness activity for every day this month

I found a beginner stretching YouTube video that is less than 20 min. I will try and complete as much stretching as I can this month. Stacking the stretching with my strength and cardio days should give me a good battle plan to accomplish this months goal.

Goals I’m thinking about performing:

Month being Sober

Month of Meditation

Month with out Caffeine

Month of reduced phone usage

Month Of leaning to play Chess (Yea I watched Queens Gambit)

Month of Learning to play Poker

any suggestions? please post below

I will be trying to write a monthly post as a follow up combined with a pre post to the upcoming month goal.

Happy New Years!!

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2 Runs In a Row

Big moves in the running world for me. I felt strong enough to run two days in a row.

On the first day, I extended my new quartine route with a couple more turns and a more scenic route while avoiding the lakefront path. As you can see in from the Wahoo screenshot, I ran on the west side of the Lake Shore Drive to appease the closings Mayor Lightfoot, unfortunately, had to put in place.

The first run was just under 3.5 miles, and the second run was the same route and in the same clockwise fashion. If this route sticks, I will alternate it both clockwise and counter-clockwise when needed.

Two runs in a row is monumental for me. I cannot remember a time outside, maybe college than I ran two days in a row. So I’m pumped and going to try and mix this into the training schedule and get some more miles in peer week.

1st Run 3/31/2020: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Average Mile Pace 163 bpm

March 31st 2020 Run: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Pace
March 31st, 2020 Run: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Pace

2nd Run 4/1/2020: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Average Mile Pace 163 bpm

April 1st 2020 Run: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Pace
April 1st, 2020 Run: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Pace

Both of the runs felt very similar, and no noticeable difference between the two. Looking forward to furthering progress

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2nd Run Back 3/21/2020

3.45 Mile Run @ 11:32 Mile pace

I took a few days off to help let my body have a fighting chance to recover from the first run in forever. The working strategy is to give myself ample rest in between runs in the first couple weeks to stave off any shin splits and overtraining. Overworking is a common issue in beginners that are too excited and try to train at full speed without building up the necessary fitness level to match their workout regime.
Knowing not to hit the ground running (excuse my pun), I will be diligent and not overdo it and push my pace. Persistence will be the key to success here.

Onto the run, 3.45 Miles with an 11:32 average.

The first third and last third was heavy on the walk-run ratios, but the middle third was a steady run with no stoppage or noticeable slowdowns.
Overall this was an excellent follow-up run with an increase in pace with more distance ran vs. walked.

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1st Run In Forever 03/17/2020

Distance 3.68 Miles AV Pace 12:34/Mi

With not having to commute to work, it seemed like a good time to start running again/exercising, reading back through my work out logs it has been just over a year since I last attempted to raise my heart rate in the name of health.

There have been many times I have had to restart a workout regime. The usual fears were there, shin splints, being way to sore the next few days, don’t have the right shoes, it’s too cold outside. After two days of being stuck inside and the cabin fever driving me crazy, going out for a run with all those “scary” excuses was an easy decision to get my butt off the couch and hit the lakefront for an easy peasy jog.

I got super lucky as the day I decided to go jogging was one of the best weather days of the year so far, the sun was out, and the temperature almost hit 52 degrees—shorts and Quarter-zip with a beanie and light gloves at the start of the run.

Run Breakdown: Distance 3.68 Miles – Avg Pace 12:34/mi

  • The first half mile was pretty easy as I was not trying to break any speed records my spirt.
  • Second half mile, I started to feel my abs working.
  • 2nd mile I began to switch between jogging and walking
  • 3rd mile had more prolonged bouts of walking – I was feeling out of breath, and my running form was to deteriorating fast  
  • Last half mile 50/50 run-walk with faster pace on the running trying to get home and get some dinner

This 1st run was lackluster performance-wise, but I was proud that I got out there and got the first one out of the wat. On to the next run!

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Weekly Post 12/16/2019

Highlights:

  • Lunch with a highschool friend
  • Started bringing leftovers for lunch
  • Finished The Wire

Lowlights:

Goals for next week: Try to reduce my lunch budget

Following last week’s post and I had another business lunch set up with a highschool friend downtown. Just to talk about the future and see if our forces could align and expedite some progress. This is still a new experiment for me so there is a lot to figure out and organize before these business lunches will start producing some juicy results. Either way, it was fun to catch up and talk about old times and the present comparing stories at how similar and yet different our lives past have been and how we still have a lot of the same experiences.

 For the majority of this week, I broke out the old’ lunch pail and brought leftovers to work to eat for lunch. To be fair these meals were planned leftovers with the full intention to have them for lunch the next day. In my quest to keep reducing my expenses on food this seemed like the next logical step. We quickly found out that usually dinner is the most expensive meal of the day and having the same meal for lunch the next day just doubles my spending. The good take ways for this habit is that I am now building a routine to bring lunch rather than going out to eat five days a week. If I can keep this habit than the next step would be to meal plan for lunch and be mindful of what the food costs are compared to a usual fast food meal. Those meals range between $12 and $8, If I can get my spend down to $7 or $6 I would be very happy. I don’t have a plan yet other than to keep bring meals from home into to work and once that habit it and nature then start to plan out my lunches.

I watched HBO’s original show The Wire. This came out right at the tail end of Highschool and finished up while I was still in college. Never really heard of it even though around that same time I was watching Entourage and Sopranos every Sunday night. Soon after though, this show kept getting recommend both by acquaintances and on my regular websites. I Started this show multiple times when over the last 6 or 7 years and never made it past the 3rd episode for some reason or other. New shows that come out that “You have to watch” it always got put on the back burner. Then I read another article about the 50 best TV shows you need to watch. I can’t remember which article but it kicked me in high gear and I made it past the first season in one weekend. That first season of The Wire was so good I just kept pressing play.

It hooks, line and sinker me in as I made it through the 2nd season in the by the end of the next week. after those first two weeks, I was on roll watching it every chance I got, during lunch breaks, in the morning before work. I was addicted by the time I finished the 4th season I was burnt out. Only 12 more episodes to in the final season… it took the entirety of that next week at that same feverous pace finish out the whole series.  

This was an awesome show. Lots of intricate storylines that build from season to season, yet each season had its theme that leads to entertaining season finales that almost stretched over the last 3 episodes of each season.

Watching this show blitzkrieg style isn’t recommend due to the 60 min length of each episode, If I had to do it again I would have tried to keep it’s at a season a week. That would have probably kept me from having that burnout feeling towards the end of the series. The Wire would be a must much recommendation from me, I’m sad a neve got into this show when it was airing that could have been fun to witness.

The 2019 Bears season is over. What a disappointment, there was so much hype after last year’s level of play and in the supposed progress we made in the offseason. The offense installed the 2.0 version and Mitch was making leaps and bound type progress. All that hype washed away after the season opener loss to our archrivals the Green Bay Packers. To be fair I did hold on to some hope that they could pull to it together but, halfway through the regular season it a was fools’ errand to still believe that this team was going to be better than where it was last season.  

It will be a long offseason, hopefully, I can fill it up with some golf and baseball and hockey.

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Weekly Post 12/9/2019

Highlights:

  • Steak and Cigar night Round 6
  • Family Birthday Brunch
  • Great business lunch

LowLights:

  • Can’t drink like I used too

Goals for next week: Keep inviting people to business lunches.

This was an action-packed week with tons of lunches and dinner and things to celebrate. It wasn’t easy on the pocketbook but lots of fun and some action items to follow up with that should lead to greener pastures hopefully in early 2020.

We celebrated the wife’s birthday with lunch at a new spot in the west river north area called Pacific Standard Time. It had a very west coast feel to the interior which wasn’t overdone and overall it was very pleasing to the eye and had a great contrast with the grey Chicago winter weather that has now settled in for the rest of the year. The brunch menu has the usual staple items that were decently priced for a river north restaurant. 

I ordered the steak and eggs, always nice to have a breakfast steak in my opinion. The highlight of the meal was the hot sauce they gave with the eggs and it was liquid hot magma. Passing this around the table to see who was brave enough to try and watch their face melt after only ingest a small was too funny.

The last big meal of the week was at GT Prime for the 6th semi Quarterly Steak and Cigar night. There will be a full recap post on this meal that will be published shortly that will give a full break down of the most expensive steak I’ve ever eaten. With all the steak, bourbon and cigars mixed with a late-night, I paid the price for it on Friday morning through the early afternoon. I can’t swig them back like I used too, and for the most part, I’m kinda happy about that. I’ve always been a big drinker and now that my life priorities have taken my attention elsewhere not going out and getting blasted every weekend night has been a hard adjustment but one for the better. Both for the here and now and the future. I will now need to learn drink at a pace that is new to me but this will be a necessary tactic to have when I’m out with boys for fun night out and not have to pay for it dearly the next day.

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Weekly Post 12/2/2019

Highlights:

  • Haircut and beard shape up

Lowlights:

  • Feeling all the repercussions on all that thanksgiving food

The goal for next week: Get to the gym

With No-Shave November coming to a close I decided to the beard through the holidays. To get ready for the Christmas and Holiday party season I needed to get a haircut and for the first time, I was also going to need to get my beard cut and shaped. The usual story is that I don’t touch my razor at all for the month of November. As my jobs have been getting more and more professional, walking around with a raging neckbeard was not appropriate. I compromised and kept the neck nice and clean but left the length of the beard as long as it could grow out. This lead to some issues around my mouth, it became very hard to drink anything out of a cup without a straw. The liquid would just run out the sides of my mouth and down onto my shirt making a huge mess every sip. In the era of the war on plastic straws, I am most certainly not going to be carrying around a metal straw in my pocket all day every day. 

The only choice was to get to the barber and let them do their magic. After my guy was done it felt like I had a whole new face. No hair would hit my lips or get in the way of my breathing or tickle my nostrils. The real mega moment though was when I had poured myself a nice big glass of ice water at home. It was an oddly refreshing feeling that I can only describe as one of the most comfortable drinks of all time. I had not realized how annoying drinking was when all the beard hair kept getting in the way my drinks.

For next year not only will I continue to condition from day one of growing out the beard but will also try and trim the edges as well to keep drinking from feeling like an impossible task.

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Weekly Post 11/25/2019

Highlights:

  • Went to the gym
  • Bears win!
  • Thanksgiving leftovers

Lowlights:

  • So much traveling

Goals for next week   Go to the gym again

I made it up to the gym for the first time in a long time. I found my old condo gym routine that hits the whole body with all of the weight machines at my home gym. It’s a basic 3×10 protocol with roughly 15 exercises that I can finish in almost 35 minutes with little rest. I need to make a concerted effort to make it the gym though. I don’t find the lifting and exercising to be that difficult. It seems that my brain doesn’t like getting healthier or put it at the top of the priorities list as I think it should be. There is time in the later evenings with my work and family schedule, but in the past working out late and taking a shower has made it difficult to fall asleep. To be fair back then I was getting an ample amount of sleep compared to now maybe this time will be different?

The Bears beat the New York Giants, but it wasn’t pretty we are still struggling and it this was a game we should have decidedly won but, we were so very close to losing I was on the edge of my seat for the entire game. This season is running of games and the Bears still is playing like trash. There are glimpses of hope but they are sporadic and we never seem to capitalize off them or put 2 good drives together. I’m hoping the Bears offense will start clicking so I can enjoy watching the games rather than biting my nails for 4 hours straight.

I had a great Thanksgiving with my family in downtown Chicago. Easily my favorite food of the Thanksgiving meal can only happen the day after Thanksgiving. The stuffing sandwich has been my go-to post-turkey day lunch for about the last 18 years. My Grandma whipped it up for me one year when she stayed over for the holiday weekend. It is a real game-changer combined with most of the food groups. Two toasted slices of white bread both have cranberry sauce spread like jam. Stuffing that was reheated in a frying pan giving it some crunchiness. Ham slices that are also hot, I mainly eat ham in Thanksgiving rather than turkey. That is the gist of the sandwich the hard part of the sandwich is cooking the stuffing into a patty and not burning them since you are working with leftover and you won’t have any more stuffing until next year. If you get that stuffing just right with the right ratio of ham this is my favorite sandwich of all time.

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Weekly Post 11/11/2019

Highlights:

  • Beard is coming in nicely
  • Bears beat the Detriot Lions!

Lowlights:

  • Only ate fast food for lunch

Golas for next week: Find a place to eat my bring from home lunch at

After a week and a half, this is the best shape my beard has been in since I started participating in No Shave November. The major tip I have learned is to stated conditioning the beard as soon as you can. I started after day 5 of no shaving and my beard hasn’t itched once. In the past years, it would develop this horrible itch underneath my beard. It would always sneak up on me before I knew it and the only remedy would be a couple of days of conditioning in the shower.

This year has been the most comfortable by far also due to the constant brushing whenever I walk past the bathroom. I read somewhere once that the brushing also stimulates growth which would be difficult for me to judge since this is the only time of the year that I will rock the beard. I will keep you guys posted on the beards progress in the coming weeks.

Finally, the Chicago Bears won a game, I was really about to lose all hope on this season and pretty much lost general interest in most of the NFL games while were all enduring some really bad football played by the Bears in the past weeks. It is nice to start the week with a little pep in my step on a victory Monday.

The new work location is still making my lunch decisions pretty limited to fast food only options. I still haven’t found any better/healthier options yet and starting to worry that I will have to mine the menus of a restaurant to eat more responsible. This is a task I have never attempted and don’t have much confidence that I will be able to do without just ordering fries all the time. The quest will continue until I find some good lunch options.

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Weekly Post 11/18/19

Highlights:

  • Quick Family trip to Disney World

Lowlights:

  • Cold and overcast in Florida
  • Bears Lost to the Rams
  • Horrible Mochas

Goals for this week:

    • Breakfast smoothies all week and find a place for lunch salads

The family and I headed down to Orlando to spend some time at Disney World and get some good extended family time in before the holiday gauntlet comes barreling down. Having two families within driving distance means that every Holiday equals 2 holidays. 2 Thanksgiving in one weekend is fun but a lot of time spent in the car when all you want to do is sit on the couch and digest lol

It’s nice we can get together before all that starts and enjoy our time together without being time-crunched in a natural spot where everybody can chillax and have a relaxing time without the usual hosting pressures.

The highlight of the trip was Brunch with Mickey and Friends. Tons of great photo ops with the OG Disney crew, they all came by one by one once the table had finished their 2nd plate of the buffet. The actors did a great job handling all the little children and the varying age of the groups. They mad sure every guest that wanted a picture got one and we’re very aware that I had the Sony A7II camera and not iPhone and the charterers made sure to give me the majority of the poses so my camera could do all the hard work and send off the pictures to everyone after the brunch.

I was pretty happy with how most of the pictures came out. I can tell that I am getting better at composing my pictures. I am starting to see how a picture should be framed before I raise the eyepiece to my eyes. In turn, I’m becoming a lot more efficient at taking pictures. I use to take 1000 pictures and the only handful would be worth editing or post right out of the camera. Where now am constantly moving to be in the best shooting position resulting in a better sample of pictures without having to wade through 95% to find the better-looking pictures. Now it’s about 20% decent looking pictures with about 1/2 the number of total pictures taken.

There happened to be a coffee shop that masqueraded itself as a full-service Starbucks when I did my trip due diligence to figure out my food, drink and golf options for the trip. I was very stoked to see there was a full-fledged Starbucks on a property within walking distance to get my Mocha fix all week. As soon as we walked up the first time I knew something was up as there were no building architecture ques of the usual Starbucks look. Then I saw it, the sign that put me in a 5 min depression “Starbucks Coffee Proudly Served Here” I didn’t have any hope for the Mochas after that, but since I’m a glutton for punishment I went ahead and got a Mocha each morning I was there. The mochas scored 5 to 6 out of ten on my scale with major points being deducted due to the overuse of nasty chocolate syrup. The other major factor was the expresso tased like it was over roasted burnt and gave some off-flavors that I didn’t enjoy. I was happy to get back to the airport to have a decent Mocha at a real Starbucks.

The weather did not want to cooperate while I was in Orlando. It just happened to be record-breaking cold weather while we were in Florida, seriously it was low 50s and high 40s on one of the evenings. There was one night when it wasn’t freezing, but still pretty chilly I was able to sneak away and hit the hot tub and smoke a cigar.

It was a fun night to smoke one on vacation but it was most certainly against the rules to be having one in the hot tub. I was on edge the whole time, all nervous that I was going to get busted and ruin the family vacation. Looking back what were they going to do? Lock me up and kick my family out of the Villa?? 99% sure they would have just told me to put it out and leave the hot tub.

Overall this was a great trip and something I look forward to all year. Yea the weather could have been better but if you need nice weather to have a good time- change your fun parameters and start having even more fun.