Ducks & Geese at Richfield Lake

That's A Big Ass Bolt

Not the greatest picture but...my new robot elbow

Well, ouch. :(

Well, that was a sucky Sunday, January 6th. I fell down on a patch of ice while walking to the grocery store, fractured and dislocated my left elbow, and spent the next 3-4 days in the hospital in surgery and recovering.That was the most EXCRUCIATING pain of my life, especially when they were putting on the splint. They kept asking me to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10. I figured the pain couldn't get much worse and then it'd increase alittle more. "7...8....YEEARGH! 9!9!9!" Ah, well. It could've been worse. A hip, leg, or vertebrae would've been far more irritating and dangerous.

January 4, 2013

Meh, I decided to pass on that 'photograph everything you eat' idea. It's too much work to carry the camera around everywhere. And, besides, eating this way actually makes it difficult for me to eat enough, not the other way around. I ate most of a Totino's cheese pizza yesterday and I was still under 1000 calories. I need to get some avocados into the fridge. They're calorie-dense but still healthy. Added bonus: They're one of my favorite foods.

January 2, 2013

Bleh. My cable modem was doing strange things and crapped out on me today. I was so concerned with that that I completely forgot about photographing my food. I did follow the diet pretty faithfully though. One exception was the 2 Boca Chicken patties that I had. Soy really isn't allowed. But, I still had some leftover in the freezer and I couldn't waste them without feeling guilty. Do you know how expensive Boca products are? I'm also going to finish off the frozen pizza tomorrow even though I shouldn't. :-p I was tracking my food on SparkPeople's website and I didn't eat as many calories as I should. Just under 1000 for the day. I really dislike the thought of eating less than 1200 cals/day.

I have zero clue what was wrong with the modem but turning it off and then back on again reset it and it started back up again.

New Year's Resolutions

I didn't actually mean to make a New Year's resolution this year. It simply happened that, around this time, I decided to try to get rid of the extra 20 pounds I gained after I quit smoking.  One of my coping strategies when I quit was to eat bag after bag of Jolly Ranchers and Dum Dum lollipops. Not the best coping strategy but I probably couldn't have quit without doing it so it's really not a big deal. And I quit the candy a few months ago.

My New Year's Resolution isn't actually to lose x number of pounds. I'm simply going to cut out as much refined sugar as I can. White bread, pasta, rice, and, of course, sweets. At first, I was going to do the paleo diet but I realized that would cut out greek yogurt and cottage cheese, two fantastic sources of protein that I really like and are actually healthy. So, it's paleo with the addition of dairy and no meat. Eggs, nuts, some dairy products, fruits, and vegetables are all allowed.

And I made a second resolution to exercise 5-6 times a week. If I stick to both resolutions, I should lose pounds or inches. If I don't, I won't angst over it. I'll look over the numbers at the end of the month and start calorie-counting if I'm not seeing any progress.

Normally, I wouldn't even blog about this sort of thing but I came across this idea on Facebook

to take a picture of everything you eat. If you really hate those Instagrammers and Tweeters who post pictures of their food, you may want to run from this blog now. :-D 'Cause I'm jumping onto that bandwagon.

I missed a few items because I didn't decide to do this until later in the day. A Boca Chick'n Patty sandwich (with mayo and the forbidden white bread. :-p), 2 more eggs, and more carrots.

Snow Day

I probably shouldn't post 14-second videos but I did. :-p Last I heard, there was eight inches of snow on the ground.