Project New Me: Week #2 or Plateau Hit #newme

Health, Project New Me, Weight Loss

Weight: 201.5 lbs (up half a pound)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6 hours

Total Workout Time: 45 minutes

I pretty much expected this to happen after my incredible first week. I’ve plateaued. Despite eating well the entire week, I actually gained a hhalf a pound. This isn’t going to discourage me, though. Going up and down is part of the whole weight loss process. You just need to make sure that the general direction is down. Given that I’m still 5 1/2 pounds lighter than when I started, I’d say I’m still ahead of the game.

I did work out one day with B using Leslie Sansone but then couldn’t get up the motivation to work out anymore. Finding time to work out after working for 8 hours, making dinner, cleaning up from dinner and getting the kids into bed is a challenge. I’m going to set a mini-goal for myself to work out for a half hour every night this week (perhaps exempting Friday night since Shabbat starts so quickly in January). After all, if I only reduce my caloric intake, my body will react by slowing down its metabolism. Exercising will help increase my metabolism. After all, Weight Gained Or Lost = Calories Eaten – Caloried Burned.

As far as sleep goes, I still can’t get the hang of early bedtimes. I suspect this is going to continue to be a concern. There are only so many hours in the day. NHL usually goes to sleep at around 7:30pm and JSL snuggles with B to go to sleep at around 8:30pm. Since I need to wake up at 6 – 6:30am, I should get to sleep by 10:30pm. So, once B takes JSL into bed, I only have 2 hours to clean up from dinner, do whatever I need to do on the computer, work out (and shower as I’m not going to head to bed all sweaty), and watch what few TV shows I follow. There never seems to be enough time to do it all. At the very least, I need to organize my time better.

Aloha Friday: What’s Your Favorite Disney Attraction?

Aloha Friday, Disney

As I mentioned before, we’ll be headed to the Disney Social Media Moms convention. We’re headed there early so we’ll have time to go on favorite rides from our trip last year and go on ones we missed. Some old favorites that we can’t wait to experience again:

  • Toy Story Mania – This 3D ride/game is so fun we rode on it twice and NHL is still talking about it. One of his favorite video games now is Toy Story Mania for the Wii. He plays it over and over every chance he gets. One of NHL’s first thoughts when we told him we were going back to Disney World was riding Toy Story Mania again.
  • Finding Nemo The Musical – This is a Broadway style, Broadway quality musical included in the price of your park admission. The entire story of Finding Nemo is told using handheld marionettes. Now the Pixar movie was terrific so they had a high hurdle to clear. They definitely cleared it. The songs, scenery…. well, everything is just so high quality that you might think you’ve been transported to an expensive Broadway production. This is not to be missed (though it might be hard to get in as it is very popular).
  • Tie Dye Cheesecake – Ok, not an “attraction” per se, but the Pop Century’s multi-colored desert is just too good to pass up. Red velvet cake topped with cheesecake in various colored swirls. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. Yes, I replicated it, but still a chance for the original will not be passed up.
  • Monster’s Inc Laugh Floor – Mike Wazowski and company are keeping Monsteropolis powered not by screams but by laughter. To aid them, they pull humans (us) into their world and put on a comedy show. While you wait to go in, you can text some jokes which might be used. You might also be picked on to be the butt of some jokes. The show is hilarious and, thanks to improvisation, never the same twice. Plus, now that our phones have texting plans, we can send in some jokes of our own.

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: What is your favorite Disney attraction (be it ride, show or even eatery)? If you’ve never been to Disney before, what would you look forward to were you headed there?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #22

My Geeky Padawan

NHL, Parenting

As you may have guessed from the badge to the right, I’m headed to the Disney Social Media Moms convention in a month. We’re going to go a bit early to have some pre-convention Disney World fun and to go on rides that JSL is too little for but that NHL can ride. One of these is Star Tours.

I had been meaning to introduce NHL to Star Wars for some time. I’ve already introduced him to Batman (via the Batman: The Brave and The Bold TV show), Spiderman (via The Spectacular Spiderman TV series) and other super heroes via the Super Hero Squad video game. He also knows how to use computers and the Internet and is a whiz at figuring out how things work. (For example, how to record on the DVR even when Mommy and Daddy don’t want him recording a dozen new shows!!!) So it seemed only natural to expand his horizons to include Wookies, lightsabers and droids. (Oh my!)

This past weekend, while JSL napped, NHL and I sat down to view a rented copy of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. He’s already had some Star Wars exposure from a game on his LeapFrog Didj so he knows some of the characters. He even chose an R2-D2 figure for a recent prize. Side note: Color me jealous. His R2-D2 makes sounds when you push its button. I’m tempted to get one for my office to go next to my talking C-3PO.

Anyway, we sat down to some protests. He didn’t want to watch Star Wars! He wanted to play Wii! After telling him that R2-D2 was in this movie, he got more interested. Still, the movie quickly bored him. It turns out he doesn’t like things like dialogue and character development. Still, his interest got piqued during the land and space battles. Any time the heroes were in danger or were fighting, he was interested. Any other time, he quickly lost interest in the entire movie.

Overall, I think that he mostly enjoyed it and I still look forward to introducing him (and JSL when he gets old enough) to other Geeky interests.

Project New Me: Week #1 or The Weight Loss Begins #newme

Health, Project New Me, Weight Loss

Weight: 201 lbs (down 6 lbs)

Average Hours of Sleep: 7.14 hours

Total Workout Time: 0 minutes

This first week of Project New Me has brought about many upheavals. First of all, simply needing to track my points again was something to get used to. I couldn’t just toss a ton of snacks in my lunch bag and eat as many of them as I felt I needed during the day. I had to think more about what was going in my mouth. This is a good thing. When you mindlessly shove food into your mouth, you forget about the calories you’re ingesting and you are more likely to gain weight. » Read more

Aloha Friday: See A Penny Pick It Up…

Aloha Friday, Money

P1220422.JPGLast week, I was walking to my car when I spotted some money on the ground. It was only a quarter, a dime and a penny so I figured I’d pass it up. Yet, I found myself strangely compelled to pick up the money. For some odd reason, it brought to mind my childhood.

My sister and I would constantly pick up whatever money we found lying around. Usually, this would be a penny here and a dime there. Occasionally, we’d luck out and spot a dollar bill. One time we spotted a twenty. I thought that a guy standing near it had dropped it so I decided to wait to see if he’d pick it up. My sister didn’t wait and grabbed the twenty.

My father would constantly tell us that it was a waste of time picking up that money, but we insisted that all those pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters added up. We disagreed, of course. In some respects, I’ve proven him wrong thanks to my recent 12 pound coin deposit.

As I got older, however, I passed money on the ground more and more. I found it just wasn’t worth my while to walk across a room just to pick up a nickle. For some reason, however, I felt an urge to pick up this 36 cents.

After picking it up, I began to think. I still wouldn’t pick up a lone penny on the sidewalk, but would definitely go out of my way if I spotted a twenty on the ground. I wondered what was the threshold a given amount of “ground money” had to reach before it turned into a worthwhile amount for an adult to pick up.

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: What is the smallest amount of money that you would pick up off the ground?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #21

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