Tag: Famliy

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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 11/18/19

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.

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Weekly Post 10/14/2019

Highlights:

  • Pizza Party With the Famliy
  • Chicago Marathon
  • NO work on the weekend again!
  • Bears Bye Week

Lowlights:

  • Missed out on a skins golf tournement
  • Bears Bye week

Goals for next week:

Stay under 230 LBS for 2 days this week

With the Chicago Marathon taking over the city this week there was a ton of fun energy building all week. So the family decided Saturday would be a great say for a pizza party! The apartment complex where my brother lives have a pizza oven/grill outside next to the pool deck. It was way too cold to take a dip in the pool, but I was eyeing the hot tub pretty hard all day lol. My mom made enough dough and brought all the topping you could think of. We were all jacked up for this stellar pizza setup. The wind turned this adventure into a major struggle. The wind gusts were the overpowering heavily vented casing of the pizza grill leaving the inside temp close to 420 degrees and taking close to 22 min to cook a single pizza. I was shooting for 500+ degrees and hoping the pizza would be cooked in 12 to 15 min. With the extra time in the oven, the crust was becoming undercooked compared to the toppings. After two pizzas in the in grill, we decided to move into one of the party rooms that was set up to be a kitchen that you would see on the cooking channel. The kitchen is equipped with a super nice Wolf range oven. This monster of an oven was able to cook three pizzas at one time and have no problem keeping the temp over 480 degrees letting us catch up and get all 7 pizzas out in a short amount of time so everybody could enjoy their pizza at the table together.
The day after, Sunday the Chicago Marathon ran right past my house and gave me a great opportunity to practice my photography skills especially shooting in manual mode with some very fast subjects running right past me. This exercise turned out to be very hard, keeping the runner composed in the frame while panning seemed almost impossible. I tried to use the eyepiece, the back screen and just holding the camera in my hand without aiming at all. Pictures taken using the eyepiece kept the subject most centered in the frame. While not using any of the assets on the camera and panning using my hand and keeping my eyes on the subject yielded the best-looking results since the camera speed most accurately matched the runners at full speed. Not sure if I’m ready to share my photos just yet. I am still pretty new to this hobby and do not have the best practices for hosting and displaying pictures that are 75-6 MB each. Once I have that process figured out I will update this post and start making a gallery page for everyone to view.

My weight has continued to trend the right way and I am looking to have the scale stay in the high 220s. The breakfast smoothies and lunch salads are making the difference in my weight loss but, alas the salads are becoming boring. How long will I be able to stay with the ultra-consistent meals??? I’m not sure but the progress on the scale is making the fight that much easier to win.