Page 18 - Slow to Recover

I've always been rather quick to recover from pretty much anything physically or emotionally.  My wife and I actually joke about me being Wolverine because of how quickly I heal.  Right now, however, I'm struggling with this a bit.  It's been a week now since I got the news of my uncle dying, and subsequently going to his house to handle everything with the police and funeral home in terms of his body.  Thankfully the police department is still like my extended family in some ways, and the officers on scene made everything as easy as possible for me considering the circumstances.  Since then, I have been in kind of a haze or fog.  I've dealt with things like this one, maybe two days at a time....but never a full week.

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On top of my emotional recovery, I have a lingering muscle pull in my neck that is making it even harder to sleep.  I tweaked the muscle on Saturday, and it was just a slight pain here or there when I turned certain ways....until Saturday night.  I toss and turn a lot when I sleep, and it was no different that night.  About 3am I turned over as I normally would and felt the muscle "pop" and with it came a whole lot of pain.  Since then, it's gotten a little better each day, but should be completely gone by now.  At least today is a pretty good day with that, and should be the first day this week I don't need any Motrin to dull the pain.

Page 17 - The 5 Month Realization

My head has been spinning for the last week, and it's been hard to focus much on the future.  Today I realized that LM and I are almost exactly 5 months away from our anniversary trip.  True to form, we haven't nailed down anything solid yet in terms of destination or travel plans....but our trips always include plenty of outdoor activity, and at least one US National Park.  One thing they have not included, but I've been wanting to add since our first trip, was another travel companion.  Ever since I helped out a friend by taking pictures in Detroit with Flat Stan, I thought it was a cool idea to bring an inanimate friend along for the ride and some picture taking.  When I first saw the above image in my Google results, I thought it was providence....until I saw the price.  It's a really cool concept and all, but not with a triple-digit price tag.

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Maybe once we narrow down our destinations for this year I will have a better idea of who to bring along with us....and if that friend will be joining us on every trip going forward, or if we'll find a new friend to take with us on each trip.  Well considering we live in a consumer driven society, I'm sure it won't be hard to soon find one or more friends to take with us.

Page 16 - The Funeral

Today was brutal.  I have never liked funerals.  Now, that's not really a shocking revelation....because I don't think anyone actually LIKES funerals, not even the people who make a living from them.  This is a day that came way too soon.  I know my uncle wasn't in the best of health the last few years, but I couldn't imagine a day in the near future without him around.  From the day he died through today, there was so much going on.  Planning, preparing, moving things, searching for things, family travel....but now that the funeral is over and there are much fewer distractions, reality is really starting to set in.
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I can't really put into words what my uncle meant to me....at least not right now, but he was always one of the most important people in my life.  I'll miss him deeply until the day I die myself.

Page 15 - Family Dinner Day

LM and I will be hosting dinner for the family tonight.  I'm hoping just the fact that they are out of the house for a few hours will help them all out.  Plus I know that the early game (only early now because the Pit/KC game got moved back due to weather) will be on Fox, which Michael can't watch at that house.  No matter what, it will be nice to have us all together somewhere outside of that house.
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Seeing as Sunday is pizza night at our house, and that most of my family loves pizza, I'm pretty sure we're going to be having plenty of pizza tonight.  Pizza might not do the body good, but it can do the heart plenty of good....in an emotional way.

Page 14 - Two Weeks or: Too Weak?

This is the first picture that came up when I Googled my title for this post.  While I've definitely had my struggles over the first couple weeks of this year, losing 5.2 lbs. in week 1....then only losing .4 lbs. in week 2, but I definitely can't apply the "Can't do it myself" part of this to my struggles at the moment.  Luckily I don't have to do anything alone, I've got great family and friend support....especially right now.  Even with the all that I am currently struggling with, I haven't lost faith that I will meet my goal come 01/01/18.

Page 13 - Accountability

One thing I've always prided myself on is the fact that I am always accountable for my actions.  Spill something, clean it up.  Do something wrong at school or work, admit to it and work to fix the mistake.  It's really easy to admit your mistakes when you keep in mind that the best way to really learn something is to attempt it and fail.  No one steps out of the womb walking and talking perfectly.  It takes years to perfect those things, and along the way we all failed hundreds or thousands of times.

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Admitting the failure is only part of the process, though.  As I mentioned above, you have to work to fix whatever the mistake was when you want to move on.  This is the part I have always had a problem with when it comes to losing weight.  I'll take credit and feel good about anything I do to make progress, like the first week of this year, but I always have a reason behind my failures....or I just don't care enough about them.  It's very rare that I am unhappy enough about my weight, and all the issues it causes, that I will actually do something about it.  And almost all of those end prematurely for one reason or another.

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I'm writing this now because I can feel myself on the road to Eff-It-Ville, but I am calling myself out to be accountable for my direction.  I'm the one with the steering wheel.  The road conditions my be downright shitty at the moment, but I can still make it to my destination....as long as I travel in the right direction.  I'm admittedly a stress/emotional eater, and I have a lot of both in my life at this very moment.  No matter what I do in the short term, or why I am doing it, I am still holding myself accountable for my direction.  A little blip here and there is completely acceptable.  A complete change in course is not.

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Metaphorically speaking, I'm pulling off at a rest stop right now to have a cigarette and calm the eff down before getting back into shitty traffic.  Once this little break is over, my eyes and mind need to stay on the road.  It's a long journey, and I'm going to need all my faculties to get there.  And I will get there....because there is no one else accountable for this.  Just me.

Day 12 - Against My Will

I don't want to be here.  I don't want to be doing this.  It's hard enough to just exist right now.  I need to do something mindless to keep my brain occupied....and this is pretty much the opposite of that at the moment. 

Page 11 - The Splurge is the Word

Well, that escalated quickly.  Yesterday ended up being an unexpected splurge day.  I had planned to splurge on breakfast, that was going to be my one cheat meal today.  Then I ended up going out to lunch at work.  I limited that lunch to half an appetizer and water, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been....just not ideal.  So I scaled back a little with dinner, just my chicken without the normal side of bread....but then I ate a full bag of Flipz chocolate pretzels while LM and I watch three more episodes of Stranger Things after dinner.

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Even with that, I still posted a slight loss when I weighed in this morning.  It was just .2 lbs. again, but at least it was a loss the morning after a splurge day.  So while I am splurging better now than I would have just a couple weeks ago, I need to be a little more mindful of when I do it.  Splurging that much just a couple days after splurging really big with pizza may very well keep me from hitting my weekly goal, even if I don't go off script at all the rest of the week.

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Speaking of Stranger Things, LM is absolutely loving the show.  I am entertained by it, but not nearly as into it as she has gotten.  We should finish the first season tonight, and I am hoping that most of the questions we have will be resolved....but would not be surprised if there was at least some sort of cliffhanger for us.  Our next binge may end up being Goliath on Amazon.  I've already watched the whole season, but LM has not.  I'm sure she'll be up to trying it out, but we will see if it will come anywhere close to holding her attention as well as Stranger Things.

Page 10 - It's Still Winter

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Some mornings I take my time getting out of bed, relaxing in the hot water of a long shower, or just taking my time getting ready to hit the road.  Today was not one of those days.  Everyone in the area knew we were supposed to get a decent accumulation of snow overnight so when the alarm went off, I knew I couldn't take any extra time since my commute was going to be a little bit slower this morning.  However, not everyone was expecting to see completely untreated roads for the morning commute, due to the fact that it's supposed to rain all afternoon and evening and wash away the snow that we got.
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The drive to work wasn't as bad as I would have thought listening to the people on the radio complain, it wasn't even the worst I've seen on the way to work this season.  I think a lot of it had to do with the attitude of the drivers.  If it wasn't in everyone's head that the plows and salt trucks weren't doing their job that we pay good tax money for, would anyone really have complained?  We went from zero snow to 3-4 inches overnight.  Even without plowing or salting, the roads weren't bad at all.
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So I'm looking forward to that pizza weight coming off soon, but it wasn't this morning.  I weighed in .2 lbs. less than yesterday, which at least is a little bit of a loss....but still not below where I was Sunday morning. 

Page 9 - Avoid the Deep End

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So maybe eating ALL the pizza was a bad idea.  After losing more than 5 lbs. in my first week, by this morning I have given back more almost one full pound of that....and now have nearly 3 lbs. to lose by Saturday to make my 2 lb. goal.  Definitely doable, but that one bad decision yesterday is going to make it hard on me for the next 5 days.  Hopefully I can keep this in mind the next time I want to splurge.  A cheat day every so often is perfectly fine, and in my case very necessary, but I need to keep from going off the deep end on those cheat days, or pay the consequences afterward.
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Boy this past weekend felt very short....and this being my first full work week in nearly a month, I'm sure the week is going to feel super long.  Good thing there's another 3 day weekend on the horizon at the end of this week. 
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Not much more to say about today, aside from the fact that LM and I are going to see what this Stranger Things hype is all about, and finally watch a couple episodes of that tonight.

Page 8 - Not So Wild Card Weekend

This weekend's games went just as expected, with all the higher seeded teams advancing and (most importantly) covering in each game.  Of course, this means the Lions lost another postseason game....but our season pretty much ended with Stafford's finger injury in the Chicago game anyway.  I know it wasn't enough to keep him from playing, but it obviously affected him on a lot of throws since then and he just wasn't the same passer after that.  All in all, though, I can't be too down about it.  At the beginning of the season, I didn't even think we'd make the playoffs.  6-7 wins was what I thought we had in us, and we got to 9.  Without that injury in the Chicago game, we could have won a tenth game and hosted a playoff game for only the 3rd time in my lifetime....it just wasn't in the cards.

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Over the 4 games this weekend, I was 14-0 on various wagers with an outcome of +39 units.  Through the regular season I was a slight winner, but I always seem to make my hay on the first two weekends of the NFL playoffs.  If I could just nail my big SB bet every year too, it'd be feeling great....but I've missed on the SB each of the last 2 years, and 4 out of the last 5 I believe.
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Aside from sports, I did in fact have pizza each of the last two days....ugh I dread what the scale is going to say tomorrow morning.  Saturday wasn't as bad of a pizza night as I expected, since Mark made pizza instead of ordering it.  There wasn't much of it to eat, and I didn't really like it all that much.  Tonight, however, I ate more than I normally do on family pizza night.  That will hinder my effort on my weekly goal, but I'm sure it will still be obtainable.  I didn't eat much before we had the pizza, so it was basically my lunch and dinner and I had it in two different sittings....which is why I ate more than normal.
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One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that I stopped to get LM some flowers on the way home from work on Friday.  I know how much she likes them, and how much better getting them makes her day.  This past Thursday wasn't a great day at work for me, and even though she had a full day of her own, she went out of her way to make my night better after I got home from work.  I figured it was really the least I could do to show my appreciation.  Well, that and watching the Golden Globes with her tonight.  ;-)

Page 7 - One Week In

First official weigh in of 2017 complete.  My goal was to lose 2 lbs., and I lost a little more....weighing in 5.2 lbs. lighter than my starting weight.  I fully expected to lose a bit more than my goal each of the first few weeks this year, because it's really easy for me to lose 10-20 lbs. when I start out.  After that, it gets a little more difficult.  Now, just because I am currently ahead of my pace weight doesn't mean I am going to slow down.  My goal of losing 2 lbs. each week isn't an average....I want to weigh 2 lbs. less than the last weigh in, no matter how much I lost the previous week.  I think it's the best way for me to approach this, because getting ahead of my pace weight and letting up a bit has burned me in past weight loss attempts.
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This weekend will be a little bit of a challenge for me, and could really set the tone for whether or not I get to my goal by the end of the year or not.  With the Lions playing in Seattle tonight in the Wild Card round, a few of us are going to Mark's house to watch it.  Hanging out at Mark's house usually means Joe & Reno's pizza.  I really like their pizza, hardly ever get to eat it....and I eat too much of it.  Sunday is also usually pizza night at our house, which I am hoping to end.  I don't foresee pizza night ever going completely away for us, I really like pizza and all, but I'd like to cut it back to every other week, or once a month.  That could be the biggest factor in whether or not I make my goal, and I have enough of my own internal hurdles to jump over....I don't need to add more.

Page 6 - Check

First weekly weigh in for 2017 is tomorrow, but I was already 1 lb. below my week one target this morning.  All I have to do is not mess that up tonight, and I should be just fine.  2 lbs. is a pretty easy goal to hit in the first week of any weight loss, but it's nice to have that under the belt....you can't hit EVERY goal if you don't hit the first, amirite?  Even if I am down 5 lbs. by the time I weigh in tomorrow....the best part of the day will still be sleeping in.  I'm such a candy ass now that a 4 day work week feels like it drained the life out of me.

Page 5 - Critical

Yesterday afternoon I was all, "hey look at me" and patting myself on the back for starting off the year pretty well....then I got home.  I did exactly what I said I have to stop doing it I am going to achieve my weight goal for the year, snacking after dinner, and did that with the worst snack in the house.  Now, that right there is the key.  It was in the house to begin with, and I knew it.  There was eventually going to come a night where I had my favorite snack, and maybe two nights....because I'm not sure if there is another bag left or not.  Either way, I am perfectly fine with that as long as I keep it under control.  I was probably averaging 3-6 nights per week of snacking after dinner.  If I cut that down to 1 or less, that is a big step.


However, I am critical of myself for doing it because when I weighed in this morning I was almost to my weekly weight goal....and I probably would have hit it without that snack.  I could easily shrug it off and say it's not a big deal, because it really shouldn't be....but I can't let myself get complacent with the nightly snacking, especially so soon into the year.  So, for the foreseeable future I will ABC.  Always.  Be.  Critical.

Page 4 - Second Monday

Today feels like the second Monday in a week of Mondays, that started on Tuesday.  Coming back from the holiday break has been a little tougher than I expected.  I am tired today like I've already worked a full week....and I'm only halfway through a short week.  I guess I can chalk up today's sleepiness to the fact that the I woke up about 30 times last night, and never really got to fall into a deep sleep.  The wind woke me up, the wind woke the dog up....who then proceeded to wake me.  Just not a restful night at all.


Four days into 2017 and I am doing ok with the "eat less, move more" so far.  It's way too early to tell how this will work out, but so far it feels good.  I'm well on my way to my weekly goal of losing 2 lbs.  The first few are always the easiest, and I have plenty "few pounds" I can lose before it will probably start getting tough.  So far my 'moving more' part is just walking a little more than I normally would, but I am hopeful that in the next week or so I'll have a gym to go to again....considering our gym closed on us a couple months ago.


To keep me motivated to walk, I've watched a few hiking/camping videos the last couple of days.  I started with videos of Yellowstone, where we are looking at going this year....but I wasn't as engaged as I was with watching people hike through Yosemite.  It was cool to be able to immediately recognize a few places and be all like, "hey, I was there".  All I know is that I am not going to be able to fully appreciate wherever we go this year if I don't spend the next six months working up my hiking stamina.  It'll be here before we know it, so I've got no time to slack.

Page 3 - Back to the Grind

It's amazing how quickly 4-day weekends pass you by.  I just had two of them in a row, and now it's back at it like they never happened.  This is always a tough time at my 9 to 5 too.  There is plenty of work to do in each new year, and now that the holidays are over I don't have any extended time off work planned until late June.  6 months away.  I always feel better about the grind when I have a payoff looming, and being that far from one just makes things a little harder to bear.  One saving grace is that the weekend following this coming weekend will be a 3-day weekend, so I have that to look forward to and get myself in the right frame of mind for coming back from that, because then I'll only have a long Easter weekend until Memorial Day finally arrives.


I must admit, though, that being back at the 9 to 5 should really help me get into a groove as far as eating better.  Being on a tightly regimented schedule will keep me from just walking into the kitchen and picking up something bad to snack on.  Mind you, I can do that at the 9 to 5 too....but if I get into a strict schedule of having certain meals and certain snacks at the same time every day, I will continue to do that instead of grabbing something not on the daily menu.


So....this post here is #3 for 2017.  That's three times the output of last year, and equal to what I did in all of 2015.  Now I am not expecting 365 posts for this year....the most I've ever posted in one year was 116 in 2009.  2010 was my second most proficient at 90 posts, and no other year has reached even half of that, with my 3rd busiest year being 41 posts in 2006.  If you added the posts of all three of those years together it wouldn't even be closed to 365.  Hell, if I doubled my best year and then added the next two I would still fall 2 posts short of 365.  So I am in no way expecting that.  It would be pretty damn cool, though.


Looking at my stats on the sidebar there, it's amazing how different the first 6 years (5.5 really since I started the blog in July of 2005) of posting went for me compared to the last 6.  From my first post in 2005 to my last post of 2010, I totaled 346 published posts.  About 1.2 posts per week.  From 2011 through 2016 I published 74 posts....almost exactly one post per month.  And for that reason, I'm out.

Page 2 - More of the Same

The slow start to my 2017 continues with another day of rest and relaxation, with a rare Monday off of work.  I slept in later today than I probably will for the next 6 months at least.  I just had to catch up after staying up late two nights in a row.  Now, while staying up late on NYE was fun....last night was not.  I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that we were going to lose to the Packers last night, and took advantage of that on the ML, but there was still hope in me through most of the game that we would pull it off.  I just wish we could pull off a surprisingly improbable win from time to time. 

Today also contributed to my slow start to my weight lose resolution for this year.  I didn't eat nearly as much as I did yesterday, but I still finished off my leftovers from Primo's and had a few other bad things throughout the day.  I also had plenty of fluids the last couple days, so I'm not as dehydrated as I was early yesterday when I did my first official weigh in of the year.  I believe that the fluids are what contributed to a slight gain (.4 lbs) from yesterday, and I'm sure that'll bump up a little tomorrow too....but I should still be under my final weight from 2016 while starting my weight loss efforts in earnest.

We drove around Plymouth today to get some stops and catch whatever was out there.  It wasn't much activity, but it at least got us out of the house.  I also passed my first of many small tests for the year when we stopped at Kroger on our way back from Plymouth.  I didn't pick up a few of the things that I normally would have, and it felt good to walk out of there without some of the foods that contributed to my weight gain recently.  One of my biggest pitfalls the last few years has been snacking after dinner.  I eat plenty of food at dinner to last me the rest of the night.  I just need to get myself programmed to not expect anything but water after dinner, and that right there should get me 1/4 or more of my goal over the span of 2017.

In the late afternoon I tried a couple fixes for the garage door opener that has been giving us problems on and off for a couple years now, but a lot more often of late.  I resolved the biggest issue the opener was having the last time I tinkered with it, and was very happy that it worked....then another, different issue popped up.  I am very close to just giving up on this opener, which is probably almost as old as I am, and just finally replacing it.  With the time I've already spent on this, I could have replaced it twice already.

Revisiting my weight loss goal mentioned above.  My biggest mantra when I pack for hiking, or give advice to others on how to pack, is "Every Ounce Counts".  An extra ounce here or there won't make any difference on a short hike, but when you are out there all day it really does.  It's the same with food.  An extra ounce here or there each day won't make a difference in the short term, but in the long run it will.  My average snack is probably about 4 or 5 ounces.  Extrapolate 4.5 ounces over 365 days, and you get 1642.5 ounces....or 102.65 lbs.  Now, that is just the raw weight for the food.  Not every one of those lbs will end up staying.  It all depends on how many calories are in those snacks (mine are usually pretty dense) and how many I'll burn off, which isn't all that much at my current activity level.  As an example I figured out how much I'd gain if those snacks were always the chocolate covered pretzels that I really like, and if I had 4.5 ounces of those every day and didn't burn them off....I'd gain more than 60 lbs of fat.  So, again, by just cutting out the nightly snacks, I can achieve at least 1/4 of my goal.  The more I think about it, the more I really believe I can drop 100 lbs by this time next year as long as I hold myself accountable.

Page 1 - The Aftermath

If every day of 2017 is a page, the first few in this book are going to be a pretty slow start to the story of my year.  Of course we had the NYE party last night into this morning, with the usual cast of characters.  It's always nice to be able to just hang out with your friends and family on special occasions like that.  However with staying up late and hosting a party, the next day is never fun.  We never get enough sleep, no matter how late we try and sleep in....and the sleep is never all that good anyway.  It's very hard to just be able to rest after a full night of overstimulation.

The dehydration and hunger in the morning is always a bother as well.  Being so hindered from the very beginning of the day leads to little, if anything, getting accomplished.  So it's not too surprising that we didn't do much of anything today.  A lot of chilling out watching football, and recovering from the night before.  In football news, Washington took the Giants lightly and lost.  That eliminated them from the playoffs.  However, that ended up being a good thing for the Lions because we couldn't beat Green Bay in a home game on SNF, so we would have missed the playoffs if Washington had won.  Ideally, I'd like to see both of my favorite teams make the playoffs....but this is the third season in a row, and 4th in 5 seasons, that one of them is in the playoffs.  Now if I could only see another playoff win, that would be nice.

Of course one of my resolutions for 2017 is to lose weight.  A few days ago my wife said something to the effect of "try losing 100 pounds...", so why not?  Even if I only get halfway to my goal, I'll still lose 50 lbs.  Now, she wasn't telling me to lose all that weight, nor do I think that she wants me to lose that much....but it's not a secret that I would benefit from dropping a few.  A couple years ago I was well on my way to hitting my goal of losing at least 50 lbs in the span of a year when I had to stop working out because of an injury, which took the wind out of my sails and I put it on hold.  Now I'm back around the starting weight for that challenge, and I'm upping the ante.

Do.

There are no better words for me when it comes to this damn blog....or anything else for that matter.  The first step is usually the most difficult for me to take but once I get past that, my momentum usually gets built up pretty qucikly.  That first step usually comes down to my desire to do being less than my desire to do not in the moment, without ever considering the regret I may feel later on for not doing.  There's very little in my life, if anything, that I regret doing....but plenty I regret not doing.  The bad thing is that I never seem to learn from that, and continue to do not.

I'll always have plenty of excuses to not post on this blog, and time is a big one for me.  Showing that I can get something up in as little as five minutes, as I did here, though will hopefully motivate me in the future to actually do, and not do not.

Poppa Tomato, Momma Tomato, and Baby Tomato....

I started off my blog year like my ass was shot out of a cannon.  Two posts in the first three days of 2015?  Whoa, son....slow your roll!  Alright, done.  Blink, it's two months later....and not another post since.  Quick update:  The Lions didn't win the Super Bowl (New England did) and as a matter of fact, they didn't even win a playoff game.  Still only one postseason win in my lifetime.  Some other stuff happened too, but that's what my Instagram feed is for.  If it's thoughts or mindless babbling, then it goes here.  If it's something quick and notable that I can use a picture to help explain, it goes there....especially since I need to get at least one pic every day up there.

I guess that part is noteworthy.  I started seriously doing a picture a day challenge on Instagram on my birthday two years ago.  I've stuck with it and taken at least one picture every day, but I did mess up a couple times and didn't post the pic.  I rarely post the pics immediately after taking them, so the posts might not go up for a day or two, or even longer.  As a matter of fact, I'm a little over a week behind at the moment, and hope to get that updated later this morning.  I fell more than a month behind early this year, and have since updated all those.  I found a way to note all the pics where I won't mess it up now, which is really two-sided for me.  On one side, I don't worry about forgetting what pic is for what day and know I'll be able to keep track of it as long as I need.  On the other side, I have a little less urgency to get the pics up, so I fall behind more often.

On a somewhat related topic, Instagram, and my pic a day challenge there, is a big reason my blog posts are so infrequent nowadays.  With Twitter, Facebook, and the Gram there are a lot more places to share different things, all in the palm of my hand with my phone.  Add to that the limits imposed on what I can see/hear/do nowadays with my crazy work schedule, and another super cold and snowy winter....and there's really not much to say here, or time to say it.  It's somewhat disappointing that this blog is on life support now, but things are constantly changing in this world, especially where technology is concerned, and leads to situations like this.

While it's on life support, I doubt this blog will ever completely die....at least not in the foreseeable future.  I'll always have something churning upstairs, and will need an outlet for it from time to time.  If that need arises while I have a quiet moment to just bang away at my keyboard, it's probably going to end up here.  And, of course, there will always be the periods of time I try and MAKE myself get some posts up on a relatively consistent basis....but, then again, I'm someone who hasn't been able to remember to cut my fingernails the last three days.  And those are always well within my grasp....at my fingertips, even.

One thing I will try my damndest to blog about this year will be our anniversary trip in June.  We did pretty well documenting last year's trip through pictures, but I think if I took 15-20 minutes at the end of each day to write about what we did that day, it would add another level to our memories of the trip....and I want to remember as much as possible about the trip.  These places very well could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and getting something down on paper about it while it's still fresh will really be nice.  Even with how tired I was at the end of most of the days during our last trip, I can still identify plenty of days where I could have typed something up about what we did or saw and added that to our other forms of documentation.  Oh well....live and learn.

Hopefully, I will be back here sooner rather than later to make another post....one that will undoubtedly be infinitely more interesting than this one, but I obviously have no idea how this all goes anymore.  At least for now, I have gotten to....ketchup.