I'm heading up to Bonnyville for a few days....
and a few other notes from a Friday afternoon.    more »

3 overweight contestants.
2 months.
1 winner.

Let the Fat-Off begin!!!!


Nic's data, from her comment:
First weigh in this morning is 126lbs
Reasonable target is 120 lbs
Nicole Richie target is 116lbs

My initial weigh-in: 188.8 lbs
Target Weight: 179
Nicole Richie Target: 172

Alex's data has not been collected; he'll need to add his data in the comments for this post...

If you're an uber-fan (or uber-geek) of Transformers, you'll probably look like one of these guys come the movie premiere:

Making their moms proud

Well if it's too hard to drive your car down to the theatre while wearing your Optimus costume, you can at least go with the next best thing:

Make Mom a little less proud

I personally think the Autobot tshirt is better - it's got more steps while lighting up and seems like more bang for your buck.  Plus the Autobot logo is just cooler.

I'm fat.

I know I've gained a lot of fat since I moved to San Francisco - I've not been keeping up with any sort of exercise regimen and so I've pretty much let myself go. But even knowing that, I did not really notice a difference on a day to day basis. It really wasn't until sorting through pictures from vacation that it really hit me. Nothing says "Hey, you're fat" quite like looking at 1000+ pictures of yourself on vacation. In some shots, I had almost no chin. NO CHIN!!!!!! (and no, these pictures will NOT be available to the general public)

I will no longer tolerate this. I have decided to start jogging regularly again, and to alter my diet. Altering my diet is a bit of vague concept as I'm not actually going to go on a diet - it'll be more of a "eat less at each meal" sort of diet. The jogging, though, will be quantifiable. I will go for a minimum of 30 minutes three times a week. I also want to start with modest goals; I would like to lose 10 pounds in a month.

I had actually set these goals last weekend, right before I got sick. At the time, I weighed in at a very hefty 197 pounds. I just weighed myself earlier today and I've lost 11 pounds during the week! Sweeeeeeet - an easy kickstart to my weight-loss program. :)

I will start running and hopefully be able to lose even more weight. I'd be happy to get under 180, and ecstatic if I can hit 172.

Let the weight loss begin!
er, I mean, Let the weight loss continue! (but in a healthy manner, not due to some viral infection)

This past Saturday Sara and I were walking in a dog park and there was an older gentlemen wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses with big honking earphones on.  He was listening to music and as we got closer I saw that he was listening to his iPod. We got closer still, and then walked right by him and I happened to glance down and I saw that he was holding AN IPHONE!!!!! My brain went into instant blubber mode and I couldn't even process what I just saw for another 15 steps or so. I finally leaned over to Sara and said quietly to her: "did you see that guy with the big headset on the bench? He was using an iPhone." "Okay, so?" "It's an iPhone. It's not even available for sale yet." "What's the big deal?" Eh, women just don't understand. The iPhone is the greatest technological device I have ever seen, and I have just seen it live, before it is released! I wish I had gone back to take a picture and to ask the guy about it and maybe he would have let me play with it a bit.

As the iPhone does not go on sale til June 29, I did consider the possibility that I did not in fact see the iPhone but some other device that resembles the iPhone, but several articles have popped up about iPhones being spotted in public so now I'm 100% sure I just saw my first real iPhone.

- got sick last Sunday, slept all day Monday
- didn't get any better, went to hospital on Monday night
- diagnosed as having picked up something viral, told to just take ibuprofen to control the fever and wait for improvement
- three painful days and sleepless nights due to 103F fever (baby temperature monitor has come in very handy)
- back to hospital, this time diagnosed with strep throat, given some antibiotics
- another two days of sleepless nights, but less painful days allowing me to at least work a bit and host Steve, Clara and their girls. Most importantly, I'm no longer contagious
- today was the first night I had more than 2 hours of sleep; I feel human again. Hopefully this means that I'm finally over the worst of it and will be back to normal soon.

So it's been a very painful and tiring week. I'm sure it was no fun for Sara, either. On the plus side, I've discovered Man vs. Wild on Discovery Channel, where it is amazing to watch survivor Bear Grylls catch and eat salmon by hand.

The theme song from the upcoming movie was apparently released and available for download on sectorseven.org.

Not quite sure how I feel about it; it's not completely lame, yet it doesn't have any stand out portions, either.  It doesn't make much of an impact and it feels like standard closing credits fodder.

More likely to be the opening theme will be this track by Mute Math (be sure to play the Transformers theme listed on the right bar as opposed to their embedded video).  My initial impression of this track was that it sucked, but after a few listens, I don't mind it.  I actually like the music, but the vocals sound wussy.

Still, nothing compares to the original movie's kick ass theme song.

London, England.  (just so there's no confusion...  :)  )

Sara and I have just completed our European trip... actually, I suppose we've not officially completed it as we're sitting in London's Heathrow airport on a four hour layover as we wait for our flight back to Toronto.  Thankfully Sara's Elite access got us into the internet-equipped lounge to help pass the time.

What a great trip it was, spending four days with Tom and Tomislava in Croatia, two days visiting Vedran and Milena in Amsterdam, two days trekking through Bruges, and finally two nights meeting up with Doris in Brussels.

Croatia was very different from what I thought it would be - it was very green and lush and had even more development than I expected.  The 130km/h speed limits are wicked (though exciting/dangerous when trying to merge onto highways in little 100HP vehicles).  We visited a few towns/cities in Croatia: Zagreb with its old town centre, Tom's home with it's six-million-kuna view in Samobor, and the coastal towns of Crikvenica (my first couple attempts at pronounciation had Tomislava laughing as I ended up saying a female body part), Krk (names with no vowels kick ass), and Vrbnik.

Amsterdam was also great fun, as we were greeted by Vedran and Milena's excited boxer Bella and their luxurious separate guesthouse.  We wish we had more time as we were only able to scratch the surface of what Amsterdam has to offer, but thanks to Vedran and Milena acting as tour guides, we were able to squeeze in quite a bit of culture and sights: flower market (tulips, anyone?), canal tour, Van Loon museum, the Red Light district, the Dam, and walking Bella in the parks (there are parrots in the park, wild parrots!! soooo weird).

Bruges and Brussels were all about windmills, huge old gothic buildings with soaring towers, and miles and miles of walking.  There were also waffles.  Lots and lots of waffles.

That's it for now; I'll post pics and write more once we're back to regular life in San Francisco...