day.four.part.two

so we definitely had some exciting news yesterday with the closing finally scheduled, but we were still on this dumb diet. and still are...

breakfast - fruit

lunch - vegetables

dinner - vegetables...

im so ready for this to be over. we discussed quitting thursday and going to dinner to celebrate the house and having real food. but karen has class, so we'll see how that goes. 

for now it seems my weight loss has plateaued at the 10lbs. it hasnt really moved from there yet. but we also havent worked out in two days now. one - because i didnt have any strength, two because of karen's class schedule. she has class immediately after work on tuesdays and it makes it really difficult for us to make it to work out before hand, lol. and then well, by the time shes done its already 8:30 and neither of us are in the mood to go work out. 

instead, we went to the grocery store last night and bought some more vegetables... 

so anyway, today is wednesday and we're just starting day 5 of the detox. i dont know how healthy i do or dont feel at this point, but i know im craving real, warm food.

well i hope everyone is doing well out there.

thanks for all the emails and comments you guys are leaving, i really enjoy them! :]

update@4pm: you guys didnt wish hard enough, we're getting the house for the original 33k we offered. heh, thanks for trying though! we close tomorrow morning at 9am and we've got everything ready, we're crazy excited! ;]

day.four.part.one

we finally heard back from the title company and the realtor and the seller today!

they have the title,and we're clean!

we've finally set a new closing date!

thursday morning at 9am!

we're still waiting on the final price, but keep your fingers crossed for 25!

ahha! this is great news!

post.script: we've already decided that soon after we get the house we'll be having a "before party" and all our friends that are near by are most definitely invited to come over! [before as in.. before we rennovate the hell out of it, lol!] more on that when we have specifics, but keep it the back of your mind! :]

day.three

this wont be a long one. 

thanks you guys for your encouragement, i really need it right now... 

yesterday was not fun.

we had fruit for breakfast. 

there were vegetables for lunch. 

after work i was so drained and felt so weak that i just couldnt go work out. 

karen understood, she's not feeling as bad as i am, but she understands. 

for some reason this diet seems to be affecting me more psychologically (and physiologically) than her, not sure why.

we're pretty much idiots in my book for thinking we could quit sodas, meat, breads, dairy, spices, and sweets. all at the same time. all cold turkey. stupid. i dont think ill make it the whole week, im really loathing meal time. its like, "oh. raw fruit and/or vegetables. again. kill me..." so yeah... we'll see what happens. 

oh and did i mention vegetables for dinner. surprise right?

bleh.

side.note: ive lost 10lbs in 3 days. that cant be healthy...

day.two

so about an hour after blogging last night, karen and i both started getting some pretty serious hunger pangs. she ate some cucumber but i just ignored it and we went to bed. and then a few times in the middle of the night the hunger pangs woke me up, but again i just ignored them and slept it off. 

this morning we were both feeling a little better as far as hunger goes. we were just kind of normal, so we got up and went about our usual sunday morning routine. for breakfast we had an assortment of fruit - cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberry, & grapes. not exactly following the diets plan, but eh, close enough. fruit is fruit. 

then we ran some errands and went to church. after church we came home and had lunch. lunch was another salad, though this time we were allowed mixed greens [ooo, different kinds of lettuce...] and a few almonds with our orange. when it was over i was still feeling pretty hungry, but i just sucked it up and occupied my mind with a movie and working on the house model - meanwhile my AMAZING wife ironed some work shirts for me for this week. love her! :]

after all that we went to go workout again and this time i was seriously wrecked after the run. i was feelin very dizzy, light headed, and faint. so we walked a few laps and then did a light workout before heading home. 

once we got home we got cleaned up and then did dinner, we actually just finished. after my little spell at the rec center im convinced that we're definitely not getting enough protein to sustain our workout schedule, so we cheated a little at dinner. we werent supposed to have olives till tomorrow night, but we had some tonight and then we added some black beans to the salad for protein - which were definitely never mentioned in the plan, but eh, screw it. i think over all we're still doing really good even if we are feeling extremely hungry most of the time.

its the weirdest feeling being stuffed full of food, but feeling so empty and unsatisfied at the same time, just bizarre. i think mentally my health is not quite what it should be. i used to get excited about eating, and now it just depresses me to think about food. meal time is turning into more of a torturous experience than a happy one. but im sure i'll survive. meanwhile, the only thought that is clearly on the fore-front of my mind all the time is this new triple steak burrito from taco bell that we saw a commercial for when we were working out yesterday. just thinking about it now makes me salivate. it looks so delicious.... ugh. diets suck. 

well thats all ive got for now. karen and i are about to go see burn after reading at the local theatre. it looks pretty funny and its got a pretty all-star cast from what i know about it, so hopefully we wont be disappointed. 

all-right kids, play nice. 

tune in again same bat-man time, same bat-man place. 

post.script: have you guys checked out google chrome yet? im giving it a test run right now and so far i dont have any complaints. check it out.

day.one

so for those of you who didnt catch last weeks blog, heres a quick recap of whats going on and then we'll get into the real meat... well, coconut meat i guess. or maybe citrus meat. anyway.

house.
we didnt close yet, we got delayed because of the title search. no update there really, we heard from the title company and they dont actually even have the deed yet from the seller, so we're just waiting it out. oh and we're not being charged the fee for delaying the closing because its not our fault, so thats good.

job.
karen and i are both working, karen is just sustaining from day to day mostly, and my work has been a bit slow to start. this week things did pick up though and i was fairly busy most of the time with mundane tasks that were just... time occupying i suppose.

other. [heres where the fun starts]
karen and i decided we were going to go on a detox diet after some inspiration karen got from my friend claire's blog. [thanks again claire.] the idea is to just do a general cleanse [and it can result in some pretty nice weight loss as a side effect] but i think karen and i are really just more concerned with feeling as healthy as we can, so we're going to give this thing a shot.
well, we couldnt start right away because we did start looking into all the different options for a detox diet and theres some preparation involved - obviously youre significantly changing your normal diet for any of the ones you can find out there. so, we had a lot of food that wasnt going to be on the diet that would go bad if we didnt eat it before hand, and a lot of food we were going to need to procure in order to do this thing. so we spent the week trying to empty our fridge of all our meats and breads and dairy that wouldnt last till the end of a 7 day detox.
we eventually found a detox diet that we decided we were going to try and it basically consists of nothing but raw fruits, vegetables, and a few nuts & seeds. so... no cooking, no spices, nothing processed, and as i previously stated - no meats, grains, or dairy [which is like 75 percent of our normal diet]. so yesterday we went to the grocery store with our massive list of fruits and vegetables listed on the diet and got enough for hopefully at least the first 3 days. we were afraid to get everything for the 7 days at once, because with everything being fresh & raw, if we didnt get to it in the first couple of days we certainly didnt want anything to spoil. plus, we really didnt need to get as much food as we'll need all at once, its a lot.
so basically we found a couple of sample weeks on this website that lays out your meals for the day - one winter/fall week and one spring/summer week. we decided that we would try and follow the food options per day [theres a progression of specific foods youre allowed to have each day] but mix and match between the seasons. for example: day one breakfast from summer, lunch & dinner from winter. if youre interested in reading it yourself, click here for the outline of our detox diet.

day one.
so all that to get to today. and its been an interesting day. well this morning i got up earlier than karen [she hasnt been feeling good for a few days - im afriad shes getting sick...] and had my breakfast. i did a summer option and had a lot of watermelon. it was quite tasty, i hadnt had watermelon in quite some time and it was really really delicious [but as a side effect you have to pee a LOT]. karen skipped breakfast because of how she was feeling.
lunch came around and we did kind of a combo of the winter breakfast/lunch, we experimented with cracking open a coconut and eating the meat of it and drinking the water + i had a spinach salad with half an avocado and a bunch of orange slices [and i added a little cilantro because i LOVE cilantro]. it was really good once you get used to how relatively dry the salad is without and dressing. but quite tasty. the combination of all those flavors really complimented each other very well.
after lunch we decided to go workout, which ill admit was a bit draining [okay, very.] considering the lack of protein and grains we didnt have today that we're used to. but we got a good workout in. we're now running a solid mile before every workout without stopping [which is a HUGE accomplishment for me! when we started i couldnt even run a half mile without stopping and by the end of the half mile i was so out of breath i thought id go into an asthmatic coma.], we ran about an 8 minute mile, and im only mildly winded afterwards. [we've been doing the solid mile for a few days now, twice we actually did the mile before and after the workout - wow thatll wear you out!] then we worked out for about an hour and were so exhausted when it was over we just went home ready to pass out.
but we didnt. we were starving, haha. so we decided to do our dinner. for dinner we followed the winter plan [im not going to talk about the seasons anymore after this post, lol] and had a large spinach salad with cucumber, tomato, half an avocado, and lemon [and again i added cilantro, hehe]. again it was really delicious and very dry. luckily im already starting to get used to the full yet un-satisfied feeling you have when these meals are complete. but the salad really was good, and it looked great!

[and i may have added just a few sunflower seeds on top, but shh! dont tell!]

so now, here we are. ha, just finished dinner and we're thinking about watching a movie or something. but it was a pretty decent first day - and we're hoping they get better.

cheers!


post script: if you havent already noticed, i did change all the images on the left side of the page. they were all just random images i found online of cincy, but instead i put up a bunch of pictures i took during out adventures in house hunting. the first one is THE house we're buying, and yes - i did dr. the last one a little for the fun of it.

post post script: im about to work more on the house model and i thought id give you a little update on where it is at the moment, enjoy. [door detailing at the request of the wife.]

a.short.one

house.
so for those of you that havent already heard, we didnt actually close today like we were supposed to. there was some issue with the title search taking longer than normal and they werent finished by this morning, so we have to delay in waiting for its completion. other than that, as far as we know, everything is in order and we're ready to close as soon as possible. so keep your fingers crossed that itll be very soon, we're hoping this week for sure.

work.
work is going well. ive got enough going on to keep me busy most of the day and the office is slowly getting used to me being here. its an interesting culture though, the architects/project managers in this office dont naturally or instinctively hand down work to the underlings [which took me a few days and a few conversations to really understand] and instead prefer a lot of the time to do the work themselves that someone in my position would normally do. [what we in the industry refer to as the b!%*&-work, lol] so what that means is that where im used to having a handful of project managers eagerly doting upon me the mundane tasks they feel theyre too busy to do, i now have to circulate the office each morning asking each individual project manager if they think they could find something for me to do today. [which is definitely a lesson in humility - i hate asking for b!%*&-work...] however, after a conversationi had this morning, theres a possibility that i'll be getting to put one of my biggest strengths to use [organization! woohoo!] and help the office by giving their project storage system and drawing standards some much needed attention. more on that as i know more.

karen.
karen is good. shes been enjoying her classes as far as i can tell, and work is... well, work. shes still um, frustrated, with her office environment and the work shes doing is beyond mind-numbingly-dull, but its a job and it pays better than mickey-d's, so she tries to be happy with it. things between us are great, we seem to be adjusting to our living situation and this whole marriage thing better than some half-glass-empties anticipated. ill admit i feel inadequate at times as a provider, we havent yet been able to live solely on my income when little things like truck repairs or me getting laid off pop-up, but she loves my in spite of my faults and hopefully someday soon we'll get there. getting the house should help significantly so we can stop throwing money away on rent and storage each month, although the other obstacles with the house are definitely going to be a financial burden for a little while...

im learning to thank god for obstacles he presents me with. ill keep trusting that theres nothing coming my way that i cant handle, and while its extremely frustrating at times and im never clear on the purpose behind some of these hurdles, im trying to be patient. wisdom, strength, patience. thanks...

family.
everyone in texas seems to be doing better. things are slowly getting cleaned up, everyone has power as far as i know. theres still ridiculous devastation that beyond anything you could possibly imagine, but theyre making it. dad just got back to saudi and hes fine. long trip, and uncomfortable next to a rather large woman all the way to amsterdam, but hes there and safe. other than that, i dont have much new information to report on the family, ive been a little out of the loop for whatever reason.

last weekend.
karen and i mostly just tried to catch up on little things weve been getting too busy to stay on top of. we did laundry, we cleaned the apartment, some shopping, catching up on the daily show and the colbert report, some little repairs around the apartment... on saturday morning we went to a tiling class at homedepot and learned everything we'll need to know to do tiling projects at the house - oh yes bathroom-suite, you are mine! it was actually very fun and informative and if youre interested in learning hands on how to do home improvment type stuff, i definitely recommend going to homedepot things. they usually do them every saturday, check your local on for specifics. saturday evening we went to a little dinner party at a friend of karen's and had a nice time. some home-made pizza, a little wine, a lot of laughs, it was nice. we're hoping to get together with some of the people again to have a debate-party for the next presidential go-around. [and speaking of politics. i wont go into it now, but in the near future im going to post a little rant of my views on the current situation...] the only other thing worth mentioning from this weekend was that karen and i decided we're going to go on a little detox diet [thanks to karen getting some inspiration from claire's blog, lol! thanks claire] starting next weekend. we've done some research and theres a bit of planning we'll need to do before hand so hopefully we can be prepaired by next monday.

well "ya'll," thats all ive got for now.

tune in next time...

[for stew: currently listening to p86-rival factions]

your.average.update [+tiny.rant]

well, its been a little while and i thought i should probably update you all on how things are going here.

house.
things are looking good for the house, finally... weve heard back from the realtor that our contract was approved by the bank that owns the property and we're now officially in this thing. our closing date is set for october 6th, [and for those of you about to check your calendars, thats next monday] and everything is looking good. we've talked to the insurance company about things and we're continually touching base with the realtor to make sure we're getting everything we need, so hopefully we wont have any surprises pop up.
additionally, i spoke with one of the architects at work today who deals with contractors and remodelling on a daily basis and he had a lot of good advice for me. he thinks the original bid we got for the brick repair was pretty high and that we should get another quote. and in so saying, he gave me the number of a brick guy he uses very often, guaranteed he'd give be a better price, told me to give the guy his name, etc. very cool. and the more we talked about it, the same situation arose with the roofer, gave me a guy, etc. he says that on any work we do we should get at least 3 estimates on the work and that we should never pay anything up-front. if they want you to pay up-front and wont take no for an answer, say thanks for your time and walk away. so all in all, he's been extremely helpful and hopefully we can get some good work at a fair price. overall, things are going very well with the house and we're getting pretty excited about closing in 5 days! :]

work.
so i officially started my new job on monday and i gotta say, i like it here. things are going very well, everyone is very friendly and accomodating, and im getting into the stream of things pretty quickly. the first 2 days things were a bit slow for me, just doing hr paperwork and getting settled in. i got a computer and desk and got everything set up and customized, got my email working, got introduced to everyone in the office and had the tour, didnt really work on anything, but it was a good day.
the second day i really just kinda hung around waiting for someone to need me to do something, did a lot of the same stuff as the day before and additionally i started putting together some drawings of the house and a 3d model. theyre estimates based on rough exterior dimensions from the city auditors info, but given that this is what i do and i have a pretty good photo archive of the house online to work off of [to visit my online photo albums click here.], i put together a fairly accurate set of plans id say. and i think the 3d model is coming along as well. wed like to use the 3d model to kind of test our ideas about remodeling as far as where we want to move things, what details might look like, different paint schemes or surface texture ideas, etc. ive already got a 3d model in revit of the house thats as accurate as the plans are, but revit really just isnt optimal for doing the sort of multiple idea testing that we're wanting the model for.

anyway, so today the big boss in charge apparently wasnt happy with my not having anything to do and sent out an email to everyone to give me work, so after a short time this morning i was inundated with projects in my lap, lol. its been fun though, ive worked on 3 or 4 different things and ive been kept pretty busy most of the day. also, i talked to kind of the architect in charge of the techy stuff around here and hes really excited about my technical knowledge of computers, software, etc. and i get the feeling ill be involved in a lot of tech support when things pop up. [which is always cool, im a huge nerd and i eat this stuff up, haha!] and not only that, but eventually the office is planning to make the transition to revit and it appears im the only person in the office with any kind of revit experience or knowledge so theres also a very good [or definite, lol] chance that i'll be heavily involved in everything to do with that transition. overall, id say ive got some job security, lol! so im feeling good about things right now.

other.
life at home is good. karen is taking 2 night classes this semester and she seems to like them both. it gives me a little freetime in the evenings to do whatever i want [mainly watch tv shows shes not into, lol!] while shes in class. on and speaking of which, whos watching the new season of heroes?! wow its been crazy so far, im lovin it! and has anyone checked out fox's new show "fringe"? karen and i have watched the first two episodes of that one and i gotta say, im hooked. theres really nothing about this show that i dont love. im eating it up and i cant wait to get home tonight and watch the 3rd episode! [all of which im watching on fox.com since we dont have tv, lol!] id say between fringe and house, fox has got some killer primetime this season and are going to bank on it, but thats just my opinion.
in other news, we renewed our memberships at the rec center this week now that weve both been paid and have a little cash in the bank. we've been going all week and it feels really good to be back in the gym.
along with that something kind of weird happened over my little week off and i guess because i had the option i was eating a few more times a day and as a result eating a little less each time. well whatever the reason, my metabolism has speeded up pretty good and im hungry like every 3 hours, lol. but thats a great thing because my metabolism is actually working and im trimming down a little because of it [and the working out] so if you want my advice [and obviously you do], the only real way to loose a few extra pounds is to eat more times a day in smaller portions and to excersize. [and the best excersize to burn calories is definitely running!] and i dont care what youve heard and from who, i know for a fact [classes, reading, and personal experience] you HAVE to build muscle to burn fat - if you wunna lose that tummy, you gotta build muscle in conjunction with eating better and cardio. so do those crunches and add some weights to it! haha, i think thats enough non-requested personal trainer rant for now ;)

well kids, thats all ive got. feel free to comment right here on the blog or you can always email me [if your fortunate enough to have my email address] with any questions, comments, or just to say hi.

thnx!