Starting the Defatification Process

Yesterday, Megan and I put ourselves on somewhat of a diet. When I first moved back Minnesota in March 2005, I weighed 255, but managed to get down to 225. Now, after the mandatory post-wedding weight gain and lots of extra food during the election time, I am up to 236. Megan is hoping to lose 5 or 10 pounds, and I am hoping to lose *gasp* at least 30 more pounds. I am still a little chubby, so I should have lots of extra weight to lose. :)

We are increasing our vegetable intake (and reducing - temporarily eliminating - snack foods), and increasing our exercise plan. We'll be doing basic exercises three times a week and walking three times a week, and swimming in the apartment's indoor pool once a week. Swimming is both good fun and a good workout.

My goal is to reach 200, which might be a decent weight for someone of my size. But who knows.

On an unrelated note, I get to work from home home Thursday and Friday of this week. Ah, life is good.

I'm Impressive

Well, not too impressive really, but I do get to improve my resume some more. In addition to the database and SQL courses I am taking, today Jay (my boss) told me that he would like to enroll me in a few other classes as well. He had previously wanted me to do some ASP and .NET programming (I have some ASP experience), and now I get to take some courses in that and other courses in web development. Also, I will have access to quite a few other classes that I have the option to take, including other types of programming languages, like C, and maybe some others, I'm not exactly sure. Within the next week, I will be getting access to another "library" of classes - like 25 courses or something like that - and after I take the ones that Jay wants, I will be able to take any of the other ones I wish. My current "library" also has access to other classes I can take, such as web design, TCP/IP, computer graphics, hardware, networking, UNIX/Linux, and computer security. Not that it'll be as impressive as a Master's degree in this area, it will beef up my skillset and improve my resume a little. And, you know, it's free education. Sweet.

To answer Tim's question, Band of Brothers is a TV miniseries that I believe was aired on HBO, dealing with a bunch of guys in World War II. It's pretty good.

Yesterday we went to Red Lobster. We splurged and got a lobster pizza for an appetizer, then we each got a type of linguini alfredo. Megan had shrimp and lobster, and I had cajun chicken. They were both wonderful. In fact, I have leftovers here today for lunch. And I'm getting hungry.

Six Months

Holy cow. We've been married for six months already. Time flies when you're having fun. But everything is going great, and my wife is still wonderful. We're yet to have a fight. Which is very good for me, as I'm not looking forward to that at all. Tonight we're going out to eat for our six month anniversary - to one of these 3 places: Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, or Red Lobster. Not sure which yet, but we'll probably decide that tonight after I get home from work.

We had a nice Thanksgiving. We drove down to Megan's mom's house in Geneva on Thursday morning, and had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner with (of course) mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Megan had actually made the pumpkin pie (I helped). It turned out very good. We sat around and relaxed the rest of the day, and played Scene It, which I won in rather convincing fashion *evil laugh*. We had supper there and drove home Thursday night.

I had to work on Friday, but was able to work from home, which was good. I did about 15 minutes of work between 7:15-7:30 in the morning, and had nothing else come in the rest of the day, as I expected. Megan and I decorated our apartment for Christmas, including putting up our tree (which we got for free at a yard sale - what a deal). It's a five foot tree. I took a picture of it, and will post it soon.

On Saturday, we had game night at Tom and Katie's, which was great fun. It went from 1:00 in the afternoon until about 11:00. We've started keeping track of the wins - Cooper vs. Marlin - and I will be creating an all-important spreadsheet to contain this valuable information. The Marlins defeated us quite handily on Saturday, but we had been leading before that. I think, overall, the Marlins are winning 8-7 or something like that. Very exciting.

The Marlins' daughter Kira is very cute (of course, not as cute as Jenna!), and this is a very cute picture of her. She is about five months old now (not sure of her exact age in the picture). She is my honorary niece. Yesterday was Kira's baby dedication at Tom and Katie's church - Cross of Glory in Eden Prairie. It went well. I had never been to that church before, but I can see why they like it - it has a very Clarks Grove-like feel to it. After the dedication, we went to Godfather's for a pizza buffet. Mmmmmm.

And also, to answer Gina's question in the comments - 'Aesculus Glabra' is the scientific name for the Ohio Buckeye tree. :)

Every other week, I go over to my friend Dan Van Kampen's house. We've been watching Band of Brothers. I do enjoy it, but it got me in the mood to watch something that I like a bit more - Saving Private Ryan, which I granted a score of 9.5/10; Megan gave it an 8.

Go Aesculus Glabra!

Go Buckeyes!! On Saturday, the Ohio State Buckeyes defeated the Michigan Wolverines 42-39. It was an excellent game, which my most excellent wife allowed me to watch. :) It was a little too close for comfort at the end, but I was impressed that the Buckeyes were still able to pull out a victory despite giving up three turnovers.

That leads us to the next question... should there be a rematch? The BCS Championship Game is meant to showcase the top two teams in the country. Ohio State is, of course, number one, but the bit question is who is number two? The answer to that is still Michigan, in my opinion, despite their loss. But do they deserve another shot? I don't know. Part of me says yes; if they're still the number two team, they deserve another shot. Then part of me says no; they had their chance. Give someone else (USC most likely) a chance. At this point, it is my opinion that if USC beats Notre Dame (especially in an impressive fashion) that they should be in the championship game. If USC loses, however, I think Michigan should get the call, as Notre Dame should not get it above Michigan when the Wolverines flattened the Irish earlier in the year.

On a purely selfish note, I hope USC gets the championship game bid, as I think Michigan is a better team, and the Wolverines would have a better chance of beating the Buckeyes. And beating the Buckeyes is bad. :)

WARNING: Fast unexpected subject change

I am taking online learning classes at work. They are database classes, dealing with SQL (database programming), database design, and database administration. There are a total of 12 classes. These are self-paced classes from New Horizons. I'm not sure how long it will take to get through them. This is good for a few reasons. In the near future, we will be (hopefully) moving our databases from Visual Fox Pro to Microsoft SQL Server, and I will be needing to write lots more SQL (most of what I've done thus far is in Fox Pro's native language). This will also be a nice resume builder.

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November

I don't really have a point for posting this, except that I liked the movie V for Vendetta (giving it a 9/10) , and today is November 5th, which is an important date in that movie. And I thought the picture was kinda funky.

Anyway, it almost seems that both the Wolverines and the Buckeyes were caught looking forward yesterday, winning by 8 and 7 points, respectively, over unrated teams with records under .500. Hopefully (for the Buckeyes at least), they don't look too far and have another close call against Northwestern next week.

Here's a few more thoughts about college football. I'm not that big of a fan of the current BCS system, as it is subjective in choosing who plays for the national championship. If I were in charge of the BCS (they've yet to offer me that position), I'd add in some kind of playoff system to allow more teams a chance at the championship. At bare minimum, four. You could even do this within the current bowl system, to a point. Perhaps designate two of the BCS bowls as playoff bowls, and the top 4 teams in the country play in those bowls. The winner of each of the two bowls plays each other in the championship game. It's only one extra game total, and would allow two extra teams that chance. You could even expand it up to 8 teams and make each of the BCS bowls a championship game, then you'd have an extra round of semifinal games before the championship.

I've worked about 16 hours each of the last two days (Friday and Saturday), and today is Sunday and it is most likely I will be working around that length again. Maybe for Monday too. Whoooahh. If that's the case, that will put me at 106.5 hours of work in a 7 day period. Ah, fun!

Anyway, lunch will be here in a little bit (I hope). Yesterday we had Pizza Hut for lunch and Olive Garden for supper. We had gyros from Dino's on Thursday. It's all very exciting.

Just Vote Already

Well, here we are. Six days away from the election. And its been a very exciting (as in busy) week. Monday I worked from 5 am to 6:45 at night. Tuesday I worked about 6:30 - 6:30, and today (Wednesday) I came in at 6:30, and it is now 7 pm, and I'm not exactly sure when I'll be heading home. I must remind myself - six days left. Then the election will pass and things will return to normal. In fact, our business will take a nose dive. Whooah!

Since Olive Garden, they've catered in from Buffalo Wild Wings, Quizno's, Pizza Hutt, Famous Dave's, and Taco John's, plus food from a few other places that I didn't catch the name of. It's very exciting. Today we had pasta. Mmm.

In a week and a half, we'll be having a card and computer gaming extravaganza. This will include large amounts of StarCraft and Rings card playing. We're also having a Star Wars: CCG box tournament. We've each bought a box of cards (the first set, which now sells for about $12), and we'll each open our box and build decks from those cards. It'll be good fun. I'm pretty excited.