Happy New Year

Happy New Year All...


First order of business in 2012, a new blog.


Not because the new year deserves a new blog, but because blogger.com has angered, enraged, just p!$s#D me OFF one too many times.


So, off we go to a new home; please do follow me onward as I move here>>>

http://responsibility199.wordpress.com



Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Summing up 2011...

Picture below sums up only my enthusiasm for my weight loss relapse in 2011; beyond that I am all smiles about the year that ends in less than 4 hours...

So Long 2011

Be safe this NY Eve!


Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Wake Up!

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Good Start, Good Bird

First full week of this the 10th month of 2011. October is always a month of tectonic demand for our time, patience and sense of humor. Our family has six birthdays to celebrate, our kids make up half of them. Hunting season resumes so we have deer & turkey to harvest. The kids have school events to attend. Hockey season resumes so we have a Hockey game to go to. Tectonic I tell you!

In honest reflection of my mission here, it was this time last year my progress slowed to a point of inconsistent ups and downs beginning a string of months of clumsy maintenance. Was is the increased external demands of the final months of the year which contributed to that result? Certainly it did influence it, but, the result was something I allowed. Had I stayed sharp mentally and kept my mission prioritized properly the result would have been better.

That learned experience is a tool I now have to use my quest to emerge from the final months of this year healthier, happier and handsome. No tool is useful if not used, and proper prioritization of my own mission with all else October brings is the only way this quest will succeed.

Thanks to the challenges I've joined (Go The Distance and Fall 31 Day) I am off to a good start this month. Each of the first two days saw me get in a couple of miles of combined walk/jog activity. Yesterday I also put in an hour in the gym working on upper body pulling exercises.

Exercise is good, very good. But we all know sustained weight loss or maintenance is a combination of exercise & diet. So on the diet front I'm off to a good start too. I won't bore you (or myself) with a list of everything I have eaten. But I will share a dish I had fun with. We need to remind ourselves that when food is fun we use food more successfully. Oh, to be clear, having fun with food does not mean 'food-fight' fun, but rather using fun creatively and outside of the norms that most dull diets prescribe.

Saturday's dinner was Bacon & Apple Roasted Pheasant:

Raw pheasant ready for some loving attention...

Spices, soy sauce & water will become marinade in no time...

Two pheasants marinade the day away...

Each marinaded pheasant gets stuffed w/ apple & hit w/ apple wood seasoning...

Trussed, draped in bacon (I was told I needed to use more bacon), these are ready for bagging...

Oven roaster bags work on pheasants & birds of all kinds...

Ninety minutes later we have Apple/Bacon Roasted Pheasant...

And the final photo is the one way up at the top of the post, my dinner plate; Breast of Pheasant w/ Salsa Dressed Romaine Salad. A mighty tasty and healthy meal it was.

Are you off to a good start this October ?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

A Challenge, No, Two Challenges

Wow, did September move fast or what? It sure did in my eyes. A down right blurry flash of light is what I saw most September days.

Being blurry & busy is great, I prefer busy to not-busy. Actually, a quick sidebar; I am not looking forward to those retirement years because I just cannot wrap my head around being not busy. Oh I am sure when those years arrive, I'll adjust and find things to busy myself with. But for now, retirement is just not something I long for.

Back from the future to what is at hand now. October is now. I am now, you are now; our lives & livelihoods are now. The greatest hurdle to my livelihood continues to be my weight because I've allowed it to be. If you could see me typing right now, you'd see me shaking my head east-west in my own direction.

Enter October, enter opportunity to right that which I find wrong within. To make this right I need tools, many tools. Accountability is one tool which I need to leverage with greater consistency. Accountability will come from many avenues. From family, myself, bloggers, myself, our cats... well maybe not the cats.

To foster Accountability I considered organizing a challenge. But no sooner had that thought arrived when I was presented a number of challenges from fellow bloggers. I participated in a few challenges in 2010 and had good success with them; nope, I have no idea why I stepped away from them when the calendar turned to 2011. Therefore I've decided to enter a pair of challenges for October to amp up Accountability and get this mission rolling again.

One challenge is the always popular Go The Distance challenge (logo up top) organized by FatGirlVsWorld. This challenge leverages a tracking tool, promotes the importance of reward, and has an air of competitiveness within it that can be quite inspiring.

The second challenge is the Fall 31 Day challenge (logo below). This is a challenge that Clyde and his friend Jessica have partnered up on and they've been so kind to invite others to join them. The essence of this challenge; do something, anything, daily for 31 days to achieve a desired goal.

Why two challenges? Simple, I have great respect for the organizers of them, and I figure my chance of success increases when I put myself in their company. It's that simple. I know I can't do this solely on my own volition, otherwise I'd be where I desire to be by now.

If you need the benefits of a challenge, check them out and sign up. Otherwise, at least follow along with us and do us the favor of lending a hand with Accountability.



Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Aren't Kids Sneaky Inspirations?

A great weekend for my wife & I. We went to see Ashley at college & got there just in time for her soccer game. They won, but she did not play. Being one of two freshman on the team playing time has to be earned. She played in their first two games. Go figure that the game she gets zip time is the game we drive 4 hours to go see. Oh well, we went to see her much more than we went to see her play.

After the game we went back to her dorm room; not as neat as it was when we dropped her off there a month ago. We met some of her new friends who were on their way out to go bowling. We took her to dinner somewhere she loves to go; Olive Garden- yuck! There we chit chatted for a couple of hours and just hung out. All seems to be going well with her at school. She adjusted much quicker than we expected. Not that we expected her to have any serious issues with the transition. It is very pleasing to know that your kid was able to leave home and take flight in a big way. Oh she has a long flight ahead of her, but so far she is soaring.

Here is a fun picture I snapped on the way home yesterday...

A tanker truck filled with coffee; wonder how many cups that equals?

We didn't take too  many photos on the trip, and I don't have anymore to share here right now; but there is one photo that I wish I had taken but didn't.

When we were in Ashley's dorm I was reading what she had scribbled on her white board. Allow me to note here that her white board looks marvelous as it was expertly hung by a master of stuff hanging a month ago. Ok, the hanging bit was not really the marvelous part. What was marvelous was what she had scribbled. Any guesses what she had written there?

Nope, not how much she misses us.
Nope, not when she is coming home next.
Nope, not even what she is going to buy us for Christmas.

She had goals writing on her board. Those objectives she considers so important that she wanted daily reminder of them. Huh, what a novel idea...

Decide what is important to achieve, commit it to writing, and display it in a place that when you wake everyday, you remind yourself of what is important to you.

Aren't kids sneaky inspirations? 

I'll be buying a white board today after work.

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!