So how's that portion control thing working out for you...

Yeah, we won't discuss what I had for lunch. Suffice it to say I'm going to have to take a much sterner look at how I approach ordering food and how much I actually eat and how much I take home.

As for weigh-in this morning I lost 1.7 pounds but gained 1/4 inch. The increase in my waist might be due to the sit-ups, who knows. I'd feel better about the weight if it wasn't coming off pounds I'd put on during the Superbowl and while my parents were visiting. I guess the positive spin is that I'm at least moving in the right direction again without much effort beyond my 3 modifications (no soda, simple exercises, portion control for those keeping track).

More through less

Anyone who knows me well knows that I've struggled with my weight for most of my life. I'm not morbidly obese, but I'm by no means skinny.

With the exception of the first 9 years of my life - when my parents feared that I was malnourished because I wouldn't finish my Happy Meals - I've always been either overweight or dieting. Those Happy Meals I didn't finish turned into Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger Meals that I'd chow down without a second thought just 4 years later, which put me in a weight class in PE Wrestling with all the really tall, really buff guys in my grade. Needless to say, I didn't like PE.

Throughout it all - the weight gain, diets, weight gain, etc - I've remained largely unchanged (no pun intended). Short of restricting myself to veggie sandwiches at Subway, I've tried most of the diets out there, some more seriously than others, but all with the same results... I fall off the wagon and gain it all back within 6 months.

So this year, I've decided to take a different route. No fad diets, not even going to concentrate on weight. I'm just going to make small tweaks to my eating habits and lifestyle to improve my general health. And if I lose weight in the process, great, but it's about getting healthy first and foremost.

To this end, I gave up soda on January 4th and have not had a drop since. My close friends may now pick their jaws up off the floor. My 6-pack a day habit was the stuff of legend. I'm not off caffeine - still drinking green tea at work - but at least I'm off the sugar.

The green tea was an earlier tweak (lifehack?) from last year when I switched from Earl Grey. As yummy as Earl Grey was, I tended to like it with a lot of cream and sugar which I'm sure negated any health benefit. When I also found out that Bergamot inhibited the body's uptake of Potassium, I promptly switched. I'd been suffering from some pretty bad calf-cramps at night and ever since switching to green tea they're gone. I'd always connected the cramps to a potassium deficiency, but I couldn't figure out why I was so deficient.

I'm going to continue to either remove an unhealthy habit or add a healthy habit to my life once about every 3 weeks this year (since they say... somewhere... that it takes 3 weeks for you to turn something into a regular habit). Later in January I started doing sit-ups and push-ups and now I'm into Portion Control...

To see how these changes affect me, I'm tracking my weight and waist measurement (around my belly & love handles, not where I wear my belt). Both dropped significantly after giving up soda, but have since plateaued and actually rebounded a bit. But hey, that's OK, this isn't about weight, it's about living healthier. And I do feel healthier.

Future tweaks will include giving up fried foods (yes, no more french fries, though I may have to make an annual exception for latkes), starting to walk on the treadmill again, eating less red meat, adding more fruits and veggies to my diet, etc. So far it's been easier to remove than to add, but that's to be expected.

So wish me luck and I'll try to post more frequently to keep you up to date on my progress and as an added incentive for me to commit to some of the harder tweaks (since I'd rather not report failure).

Frog In Boiling Water

There was a time when the news of the day was monitored by professional editors who decided what was factual based on research and what was not, what was worthwhile sharing with the public and what would cause unnecessary panic, what was reporting and what was editorial opinion.

And then came ratings. And those decisions moved to producers.

And then came tabloids and "A Current Affair". And gossip became news.

And then came radio talk shows and cable news programs. And the opinion of a single individual could reach millions and confuse celebrity with journalism.

And then came the Internet and blogging. And innuendo and untruths were afforded legitimacy by hacks with personal and/or malicious motivations.

I'm not suggesting that the truth isn't out there, but the filters are most definitely off, and with the death of newspapers around the corner, I cringe at the possible future of what we call "news".

"Where's Elvis?"

A few weeks back we were out at a Chili's for lunch and to keep Connor occupied we were having him point out things in the ubiquitous photos that cover their walls. "Where's the doggie?", "Where's the airplane?", etc.

Then, just for fun, while looking at one of the photos of a couple in Elvis wigs & glasses wearing Elvis T-Shirts, I asked Connor, "Where's Elvis?"

And, *BAM*, his hand shoots right to the picture of Elvis on the T-Shirt.

Shocked expressions followed by raucous laughter. Thinking this might be a fluke, I asked him to point out a few other things and then came back to the Elvis question and *BAM* right back to Elvis.

Now Misha and I have never taught him "Elvis". To our knowledge he's never seen Elvis and has no idea who Elvis is. He has a "Ten Little Elvi" book that was a gift, but since it's not a board book we haven't given it to him yet, so that can't be it.

So this begs the question...

Did someone teach our son Elvis without our knowledge... or is Elvis just something we're all born with.

Sounds like a great "In Search Of" episode to me.

Mulch

Misha and I (ok, mostly Misha) spread pine bark nuggets around the planters in the yard yesterday. Took 45 bags just to do the few spots in the front. Another 35 just to cover up the areas immediately around the plants in the back to protect them from the snow that everyone's saying we're going to get on Saturday. We're estimating another 50-80 to cover the rest of the beds in the backyard. I took a preventive dose of Motrin before going to bed. but still had a stiff back this morning (told Misha we need to start working out).

Days like this I really miss my old townhouse's 15x20 concrete pad.

Connor's First Sentence

Connor's been putting "more" and "please" together for a while now and we have him say "all done" at the table when he's done with his meal, but those have been specifically prompted, so they don't really count.

Yesterday morning, we were getting ready and he heard the trash truck outside moving from house to house and was fixated, saying "car" repeatedly as he got dressed. On the way down the stairs, the truck drove past our front door to pick up our trash and he saw it and spontaneously said "bye bye car". Yup, beaming. Misha told me he also said "bye bubbles" as the tub drained (she had given him a bubble bath).

Next stop: Quantum differential equations

Microsoft Math

We're looking to buy a new PC for my wife, her's is getting on in years and starting to get slow with all these newfangled whippersnapper programs that require more CPU and Memory than her 8 year old machine can provide.

One of the things I'm insisting on is that we wait until after October 22nd so that her PC will come with Windows 7 instead of Vista. Not that I don't like Vista - I'm using it now - but why pay for an on-the-way-out-the-door-to-the-scrap-heap OS when a shiny new and highly-lauded OS is only a few months away?

The thing is, I still can't get over the fact that they're calling it Windows 7. Yes, I know people have been talking about this fact for a bit, but for those who are unaware, sit with me a while.

Windows 1.0, 2.0 came and went but it wasn't until 3.0 that it really got a strong foothold over DOS... at least in my world. There were various flavors of 3.0 (3.1, 3.11) but these are all technically Windows 3.0. The next iteration of Windows would be Windows NT, which was a winner until the dawn of Windows 95 (and all those "Start me up" Rolling Stones commercials... remember those?) For those still keeping track, we're on Windows 5 now.

Anyway, the rest of the 90s rambled on with new versions of Windows that were basically just more stable versions of Win95: Win 98/98se, Windows 2000/Me (or Millennium... I guess the "e" was for "entertainment"? or maybe "eh"?) which fall on the list as Win 6 & 7. Windows 8 would be XP. Vista: Windows 9. And now Windows 7 should really be Windows 10.

So what gives, Microsoft? Why the creative math? Is this all just because Apple beat you to the punch with "OSX"?