The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates
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This Blog Has Moved (again!!)
May 17th
CISSP – I has it
Feb 20th
I passed my exam.
It wasn’t easy, I thought I had failed and it was a huge hit on my ego. Passing however has restored my faith in my occasionally questionable memory and my long distant past as an academic achiever.
CISSP – It’s what’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you want to pass.
Red Eyes and Harry Balzac
Oct 28th
Harry Balzac - Wordplay or Starbucks' Newest Creation
Having taken 3 months away from this blog to do the P90X writeup I now find myself having to juggle the two systems as I attempt to merge the workouts into my daily life. I want to keep up with the P90X updates however with the myriad of things going on in my personal life I need to ha ve a place to record what is going on. For the longest time things were pretty stable, I was doing P90X every day, working, had plenty of time to write and even to do home renovation projects. Nicole and I would get to work around 7, grab a Red Eye and a Harry Balzac from Starbucks and life was simple. Then coaching happened. I was shorted 2 days a week, on Fridays I was too tired to workout so I lost 3 days a week to the shakeup. P90X started to drag as the last rest week became more of a burden than a pleasure. We rolled out the antivirus at work (www.kaspersky.com) which presented a great deal of cycles to be worked through. As coaching progressed, the usual problems occurred, now we are picking floor music and the vortex of life has sucked all the spare time from my schedule. I am working on taking P90X into the gym, trying to get my money’s worth from my gym membership while creating a new interesting workout schedule for myself. The days of heavy bench and bodyweight shoulder presses are behind me now and although I refuse to say that they will never return, for now they are retired.
There are so many other things going on that I haven’t had time to write about so here goes.
My seed finally came through for me!! Although the Romaine Lettuce turned into a thistle the leeks started to sprout as did some of the carrots. I guess they are both really sensitive to not having enough water. I will pick some of the (admittedly still small) carrots this week and see if it was all worth the effort.
We are getting more children!! Both Nicole and I are swamped with kids this year, both of our recreational gymnastics groups are up to 9 kids each. Although I have only 5 competitive kids this year compared to her 8 they are still a handful and I am slowly being forced into the role of Party Coach since they are frowning on discipline and hard work nowadays.
Nicole is getting bigger!! Her reputation as a world class motivator and Fit Kids organizer is spreading quickly through the community. This past weekend we did the 30th Annual Howl On The Hill 5K race with some of the Fit Kids children. Although some of them complained through the whole thing they all finished the race! I found myself repeating things I had heard my Dad say to me on so many occasions as a child as I whined about climbing mountains and traversing heather covered moors with a pack on my back. These kids however only had to walk for 40 minutes on the sidewalk. Kids nowadays, they don’t know how easy they have it. Speaking of my parents they are about to become the bionic couple as Mum goes in for her hip replacement in December.
Catch up – The 3 month calendar
Sep 29th
Here is what I have been up to since July, other than the P90X program that I am updating every day here: http://p90x.iamcanadian.org
P90X started week of June 22nd.
Jun 30 – Biggest Loser 3 started
July 8 – 261.3
July 15 – 258.2
July 20 – Phase 2 P90X starts. Dr Alex Appt. Tires rotated.
July 21 8am and 4pm blood tests for Dr Alex
July 26 – Cristina Birthday – Not in calendar
July 31 – Sysadmin Day – DAY OFF
August 3 – Stef Birthday
August 8 – Hastings
August 15 – Penetang for the play and Melissa O’Neil
August 17th – P90X Phase 3 starts
August 20 – Nicole got her eyes fixed
August 22 – Niagara Falls for Anniversary
August 25 – Wedding Anniversary
August 26 – Biggest Loser 3 Finale
Sept 3 – 8 – Hardwood Floor install
Sept 7 – Labour Day
Sept 8 – Coaching Starts
Sept 10 – Fluke demo
Sept 11 – Gerry’s Tea
Sept 14 – late to work – Nicole Sick
Sept 17 – Off Work – Nicole Sick
Sept 18 – Gerry’s Cruise – Nicole too sick to attend
Sept 23 – Biggest Loser 4 Start
Sept 29 (TODAY) – Liverpool Vs. Fiorentina / Fluke Demo 2
Oct 1 – Antivirus Rollout starts
STILL NEED TO HAND IN OUR NUTRITION EXAMS!!!!!
If I have to search for this stupid hotel one more time…
Aug 6th
For some reason I have a mental block when it comes to the hotel we always stay at in Niagara Falls. It is the Days Inn by the Falls but I fail to recall the name. I guess their marketing just doesn’t work on me..
http://www.daysbythefalls.com/
That should make it easier.
Niagara. Niagara Falls. Vacation. Holiday. Casino. Clifton Hill. That stupid hotel I can never remember.
Temporary Blog Hiatus – I have moved for a while
Jun 25th
I am currently involved in the P90X program. It’s 3 months and I am updating every day so in order to prevent the gaping hole in the blog I invite you all to check out my progress:
http://p90x.iamcanadian.org
Also check out the workout itself: http://www.p90x.com
See you in September if I don’t have a chance to post here as well. It’s hard enough keeping up with thekayfamily.com blog and this one. 3 would be too much.
Simon
The daily buzz
Jun 3rd
The saga of the antivirus provider continues, we have meetings and are very close to picking a winner. Not only that, but we are also very close to getting Tim Card support at the hospital which will be excellent at last! The photo contest rages on, I have included my submissions below for the past 5 weeks and so far I have won 3 times! In reality, I think Nicole should have won this week, her picture was far superior to mine.
Mum and Dad have apparently finished the dealings with the house and will officially be Yorkies again soon. This is a major surprise to me, and I am sure still a major surprise to my mother who was convinced that Dad would never return to York.
My back has been particularly sore of late, mostly due to the fact that both Nicole and I were sick since last Friday after coaching at the Burlington competition. Damn those little swine children. All the coughing and going on has left me very tender and sore in some very odd places. I also have not been to the gym for the last few days, for the same reason however I need to get back with a vengeance today because…
Biggest Loser 3 started this week! We have 11 players again this time around, and even Bob has decided to join in. The competition is going to be stiff, the summer is a really easy time to get in shape and so I expect some big numbers from the players. It is only 3 months this time around so the monthly prize is $80 and the final winner gets $200. Not bad at all for losing a few pounds.
Of course that means I have to focus and get back to work. It seems that it was not that hard to get the first 40lbs off but since then I have drifted a little and had a very hard time getting any more off. I am not going to pretend that it is a physical thing, I am far more sophisticated in my evaluation than that. I know that it is simply the “extras” in my diet that are blocking my progress. It is a fact that the more weight you lose, the better you feel but also the more you think you can relax your ways. Not true, in fact, the more you lose, the more you need to stay focused in order not to defeat yourself with complacency.
So it is back to the salads and the smoothie for breakfast. I think I will reduce my weights a little in the gym and add some more cardio since this is the time of year for running. I am not sure how much more I really need to prove in the gym, I am still the strongest in the gym regardless of age and as intoxicating as that may be, it is how I hurt myself in the first place. So I will work on my heart and relax on the 65,000 lbs workouts for now.
We are coming to the end of the year at gym too, last night I had 4 kids off for no apparent reason other than they seem not to care once competitions are done. So pretty soon we will have 2 extra evenings to go to the gym and study for our Nutritionist certification. Another reason I need to lose some weight, I mean who is going to listen to a fat nutritionist??
Some Things I Am Chewing On
May 21st
American Idol blew it again. Having the other kid win when it was patently obvious that Adam Lambert was the greatest star they have ever had on Idol (and yes, I think he will outsell Kelly Clarkson) was a real kick in the teeth for the viewing public. The only person who I think will have a bigger career is Carrie Underwood and that is only due to the irrationally large audience that Country music enjoys in the USA. I said to Nicole last night that Adam Lambert has the chops to go on tour with Queen as a Freddie Mercury replacement he is that good.
Liverpool came up a day late and a dollar short for the Premier League title this year and after a magnificent season I can honestly say that next year we should be back on top. It is about time, it will be 20 years since our last title. Hopefully the lessons of dropping points at home to weak teams will sting long enough to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
What happened to McLaren and Lewis Hamilton? Maybe the Pussycat Doll has been too much of a distraction to the team in the off season but they are an embarrassment to themselves this year. The silver lining of course is that Jenson Button may in fact give British Motorsport the second consecutive F1 Championship win by a British Driver. I don’t know that it has ever happened before but I am keeping my fingers crossed as much for a Hamilton resurgence as a Button Championship. The other grey cloud is the imposition of the 40 million pound cap on expenses. The top 4 teams spend roughly 5 times that each year. Are we seeing F1 getting turned into an open class cart race? Let’s hope not. If Ferrari and others pull out given the cap it will ruin the sport. Interestingly the papers report the cap as an “optional” cap. Hmmm…
My back has been very bad of late, however Mother seems to be recovering well from her surgery. I have had some radiating pain down my left leg, the “other” leg which is disturbing. This all is a constant reminder of my episode 8 years ago which I would prefer not to repeat. However if I do eventually have to go back under the knife I think I will be opting for the same fusion that mum had. If I had the choice all those years ago and of course the benefit of hindsight I would have had that done the first time around. i was up at 530 this morning out for a walk around the block to get the pain to stop. Hopefully I will be able to manage the pain and whatever the issue is in the coming weeks. I am still pretty mobile, but the pain has been unusual and unpredictable which I don’t like. However, I have not taken any of my medication yet, I am actually going to see my doctor today to get refills and tonight I will take an anti inflammatory. Hopefully that will help me get back on track. The problem is that it is affecting my workouts which in turn affects my weight.
Why don’t I just get the weight thing out of the way now? I have been roughly the same for about 2 months now and it is starting to get on my nerves. In fact, I am within about 5-10 lbs of my prize winning weight on Dec 31st. That was 5 months ago!!! You know what they say, if you want to change something in your life you are going to have to change something in your life!! Enough said. I tried to be in shape and at an acceptable weight for competitions this year and I think I just made it. This time next year however I would like to be down another 30lbs or so.
We tried cat yodelling last night, to no avail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLG2wtE7TM
As for competitions, my kids are running hot and cold. Sunday is their final competition and since it is our home competition I hope that they will finally put it all together and get themselves the rewards I know they deserve. Of course it is a very sad time of year knowing that at least 2 of my girls will be leaving me this year. 5 more weeks and it will be goodbye to both Jessica and Brigitte both of whom I have known for quite a few years now. Always a very tough time for me.
We have migrated our TV from ACI since the Evil Overlords at Rogers took over our cute little cable company. We now enjoy Bell satellite TV and as of today, no internet. I wonder just how long we could go at home without internet. I think Nicole would lose her mind quite honestly! So I now have to go to the slightly lesser of two evils and get Sympatico from Bell. At least we will save a little cash both on a slightly lower service speed and a bundle bonus. I had better do that Friday or Nicole may actually become unhinged without the internet especially since she is in a course this week without a computer.
Work seems fine, busy of course and I finally got a few cents increase on my cheque for the first time in at least 4 years. About time!!!!
It is the time of year to get stuck into the house and car again. I have rust holes to fill, broken pieces to fix, and a massive restructuiring of our storage areas to do including the garage. In addition, I am going to try my hand at growing stuff this summer. I am going to try tomatoes, onions and romaine lettuce at least since we seem to eat them the most. Keep checking back to see the progress of the plants. This weekend will be the big planting I hope. I did the lawn 3 days ago and it hasn’t rained since… Maybe it’s me?
Chicago 2009 – Needs to be fixed!!!
Apr 27th
This is all I could find for the Chicago trip. Sad, really really sad. Anyway, I will fill in more details and as usual you can check out the pictures on flickr.
Day 1
Had an uneventful drive to the Buffalo airport. However, since it is now April27 my recollection may be a little hazy. I remember we stayed in our Niagara falls hotel the night before. It was pretty snowy as I remember and we didn’t go to the casino that night I don’t think. That was because it was a Thursday night after coaching and we drive to Niagara at 9pm, getting there at about 11. We were up early and it took 45 minutes from the hotel to the airport. Got some coffee on the concourse and waited for the plane. The flight was fine I think, we had pretty good seats, I think we were 22 in line or something. The flight was only a coupe of hours and we landed in Chicago in cool near freezing weather. The airport was quite nice although you had to walk through some weird areas to get to the Orange line train to take you to “The Loop” where basically everything is. We got off the El, or elevated train downtown and since we were starving we went into the first breakfast place we found. BIG MISTAKE!! Don’t make the error of going there it was awful. I am going to find the name if it kills me… I’ll be back.
Found it, only took me 2 hours of searching but the culprit of the worst breakfast in Chicago, and maybe even the whole of North America (likely tied with Cora’s in Newmarket) is Petros Restaurant (160 N La Salle St, Chicago, IL, United States). What a brutal place. The toilets are in the basement, it’s like entering a scene from Saw (the movie) going down there but that is not anywhere as shocking as the taste of the food. Not only that, a guy came and sat down at the table across from us and ordered an egg white omlette only to be brought a regular one. He told the waitress that he had ordered an egg white omlette and she had the audacity to tell him that he didn’t. Of course, being Canadians we told him that we had heard him order the egg whites and that he was absolutely right. He told the waitress to take the omlette away and get what he ordered. Needless to say, if you are thinking of having food at Petros, DON’T!!!!
Day 2 – original post
Got up fairly early and went of breakfast. For $26 each it was OK I guess, I did have gruyere cheese on my potato which I suppose you wouldn’t get most places. Nicole had oatmeal crème brulee which was pretty darn good. We are finally getting some data on our phones, I had to reboot mine and it started working. So now we can go shopping and go to different stores with texting keeping us in sync. We have to get Nicole some Uggs since she had boots that hurt her feet yesterday. I can only guess they will go in the garbage when we get home. But who knows…
We are going to the 900 store mall this morning and back for a workout around lunchtime. After that maybe the aquarium or planetarium and back here for more working out later. Food is definitely off the list. We had Chicago deep dish pizza, so we are officially up to speed with the food scene here.