Hair update

January 2010                                                                                                January 2012

Very Quick Updates

Hi Friends,

Just a quick update, as mentioned in my title...

I am getting married to my wonderful boyfriend of 4 years and 3 months on April 13, 2013. Planning a wedding is a lot more stress then I always imagined.

I have lost a total of 43 pounds. I was reading back through my blogs tonight when I first started and seeing how frustrated I was back then, makes me so proud to know that I stuck with it and am 8 pounds away from my original goal. On another note, I have extended my goal to 60 pounds, which will put me back at my highschool weight, which I will not disclose on this blog, ever...

Well, maybe when I actually reach the goal...very few people actually know the number.

My hair is also growing at an alarming rate thanks to the Biotin and B-12 vitamins I've been taking. This was also another one of my 'goals' in one of my old blogs I'm pretty sure was to let my hair grow out.

Anyways, more gym stories coming soon. Unfortunately, I have not had any encounters with Big Pat and Uncle B, but there are other real life characters to be born.

Nighty night.

The Downsides to Concerts

For anyone who knows me or anyone who has read my previous blogs, my boyfriend and I go to a lot of shows/concerts/music festivals. We are no strangers to the patchouli scented scene that is jam music.  I have attended the following shows:

The Monkees - Star Plaza Theatre, IN - 96'
Paul McCartney - The United Center, IL 99'
Warped Tour - Tweeter Center, IL - 01'
Warped Tour - Tweeter Center, IL - 03'
Summercamp Music Festival, IL -  04'
Particle - The Pearl Room, IL - 04'
Dave Matthews - Tweeter Center, IL - 04'
Particle - The Congress Theater - IL - 04'
Summercamp Music Fesitval, IL 05'
Dave Matthews - Alpine Music Theater, WI - 05'
Keller Williams - Canopy Club - 07'
Umphreys McGee - The Aragon, IL 08'
Rothbury Music Festival, MI - 08'
Disco Biscuits - Congress Theatre, IL - 09'
Keller Williams - Canopy Club - 09'
Umphreys McGee - Auditorium Theater, IL 09'
Phish - Alpine Valley Music Theater, WI - 09'
Phish (Festival 8) - Indio, CA - 09'
Keller Williams - The Canopy Club, IL - 10'
Phish - Alpine Valley Theater, WI -10'
Primus - Congress Theater, IL - 10'
Phish (Superball IX) - Watkins Glen, NY - 11'
String Cheese Incident - The Aragon, IL - 11'

Needless to say, I have been to quite a few shows.  Unfortunately the last show for Cheese was cut short, mainly because some asshole stole Ben's bank card at some point the night before and he didn't realize it until a half hour before we were supposed to leave for the concert. Naturally, that will instantly ruin your night, but also because we finally came to the realization of how ignorant the attendees are at these jam shows.

Firstly, The Aragon is a semi-huge venue in Chicago.  It can house a large amount of people easily, but apparently they never sell out of tickets and over stuff the venue for whatever reason with sweaty, smelly bodies, so Ben and I were literally backed into a wall for the 40 minute duration we made it through the show. I could not move. It's a good thing we didn't move too because had we moved, the asshole in front of us sporting a gigantic, bulging, backpack wouldn't have had any room to maneuver his giant asshole bag around in the crowd.  What are you carrying in that backpack? Your friends? A blanket? What gives? Why is it necessary that you bring a gigantic backpack into a sardine packed venue? It's like a wandering airbag that plows into innocent bystanders and knocks them down steps and into walls, and god forbid you should step into someone holding a dixie cup of beer that they just had to take out a second mortgage to purchase. Shame on you.

Secondly, it is a non-smoking venue. Have a little respect for the sea of people who don't smoke in the crowd, and don't blow your cigarette and weed smoke on us while your flailing around, punch dancing all of us.

Thirdly, If you have gigantic dreads, wear them down for the night. When you put your dreads in a ponytail, it creates a very deadly and large weapon of mass destruction that may have the same effect as the 'backpack guy' or even worse, possibly end up in the persons mouth trying to have a good time behind you. This also goes for girls will extremely long hair. There is no reason you have to put your ponytail up and then swing it around like Jan Brady. You don't pay property taxes on the tiny 1x1 space we all get, so knock the shit off. Nobody thinks you're cute accept all the drunk assholes blowing weed on people and punch dancing everyone. (Which reminds me, what is up with the fairy wings and tutus? You look retarded.)

Fourth, If you are going to throw glowsticks at a show (which I encourage), get the little, thin, glowsticks that you can make bracelets out of. Unfortunately, dumbasses will bring gigantic, thick glowsticks with hooks on them that rocket down and hurt people when they come down. Are you stupid? Why would you get these?  When you are in a store and you see gigantic glowsticks, that weigh approximately 2 pounds a peice, why the hell would you be like, 'Yeah, these will be a good idea, nobody really needs their eyes anyway." Seriously, have a little common sense. Assholes. OH, and don't even get me started on the Sky Lanterns. Do you understand how dangerous it is to bring those to a festival around all those dreadlocks? When you light them, you have to wait until they are ready to take off, but instead, without fail, some idiot will light it and try to throw it like a frisbee and it ends up falling back into the crowd.  These are at the outdoor festivals obviously, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone tried to let one go in a venue.

Lastly, why do you drive from Georgia to Chicago and then stand outside with $20 bucks to get a ticket? I guess I respect the fact that you are a dedicated fan, but shit, you can't wait until they come around to your state? It's not my problem, but still. Wtf? It seems pretty stupid to travel 16 hours or so with $20 bucks?

Other than that, I love shows and I love music, but after being at so many, all this stuff has just really started to get to me. No more indoor venue shows, not for awhile at least.

Comcast Rant

Since I moved out on my own into the big old world, Comcast has been my cable provider. At first, they seemed ideal and the corny commercials seemed legitimate.  But then, they give you 6 months free of a promotional priced package, where I was paying around $80 a month, then shoots up to some ridiculously overpriced amount. Currently I am paying roughly $150 bucks a month for this. Ben and I have ONE box, NO DVR service, NO movie channels, basic HD channels, and "Xfinity" internet.  What in the HELL am I paying $150 bucks for?  I'm not asking to see a copy of my statement, because I've seen it. I GET what I am PAYING for but what I don't understand is how they can charge people $150 a month for cable and internet?


So yesterday, I get another $150 bill and that was about it for me. Not to mention, if you are one day late on your bill, they shut your service off and then charge you $5 bucks a device to turn all of your stuff back on. They shut me off last month because I was a day late, and 2 months before that they shut me off for being $.20 cents off on the bill. Twenty CENTS off.  When I called them to complain, they said, "Well the computer system shuts you off, not the reps."  And still, thereafter, charged me the reconnect fees.  Not to mention, that my internet connection is so unbelievably slow that more often than not, I have to restart my computer because it's working so hard to bring up a website that it just freezes. Two months this went on before I finally called Comcast (I put it off because most of the time when I talk to them I get nowhere so I just kept procrastinating) and the guy was completely confused when I asked him to run a health check on my system.  He kept mumbling weird things into the phone before finally putting me on hold for 20 minutes. I had actually set my phone down, turned it on speaker, and then forgot I was on hold, because I had time to watch almost a whole show before I realized that my phone was still on. He never came back, so I hung up. Useless.


Yesterday, I got online with a rep and asked them why I keep getting bills that were so outrageous. I also wanted some kind of compensation for the fact that I've had the slowest Internet on the planet. I figure if I'm going to get raped all this money, I can at least have a Internet connection that works faster than the speed of my hair growing.  The rep tells me that he cannot talk to me because I'm not an authorized user on the account.  Ben has called Comcast before and told them that I was, and although I've fought with Comcast numerous times, that was the first time I'd heard that one.  I have a feeling that after all my complaining to them, they've blacklisted me, but instead just told me that I'm not authorized to speak to anyone. I told him "Thanks for nothing as usual" and logged off. In a stint of rage, I completed the survey you are forced to take after chatting with an online rep and without even reading the questions, just vigorously clicked 'highly dissatisfied' until my finger hurt. Then in the comment section I went on a long rant (basically what I just typed here) but made sure to end my comment with 'Your service is terrible, Comcast is terrible and I hate you".


That'll show 'em.


The conclusion? I'm still stuck with a $150 bill and nothing is being done about my internet.


Moral of the story: Keep calling Comcast and complaining because it makes you feel better.

Weightloss

Well, I have lost 40 pounds total. After so long, I just started training myself to eat in portions, work out a couple days a week, and just cutting out unnessecary sugar and condiments, sticking to low fat foods and whole grains, limiting red meat and seriously cutting back on diet pop.  It has just become a routine.

I recently signed up to run my first Chicago Marathon 5K in September 2012, and hopefully will be doing others before that.  It's so far away, but I'm already nervous!  I can run 3 miles now, but it's still tough. I figure by then I will be able to do the whole thing, no problem.

It's always been a personal goal of mine and I finally sucked it up and paid the $25 registration fee to run.

Another one I want to run in is the 'Run for your Lives' race in Indianpolis in June. It's a 5k and obstacle course that you run through, all while being chased by Zombies. I can't imagine a funner way to run a race, and obviously it would give you more insentive to finish when you're running from something instead of for something I suppose.

Recipes Worth Trying

So I've been hooked on a website called Pinterest for awhile and I find the best things on here.  I found a few recipes that I made and wanted to share. 

I normally make recipes off of the Kraft website and am more often than not, disappointed with the outcome. I made a recipe one time that consisted of macaroni and cheese, grilled chicken and vegetables. The way they described this 'dish' was to simmer the chicken in a pan, add the frozen veggies, and then put the mac and cheese in the pan once made, then cook all together.  Once finished, I tried to eat it, but it was really lacking a lot of things. The freezer taste from the vegetables basically soaked into the contents of the dish and the chicken with the mac and cheese was just awful. I could only get down a bite or two before dumping the rest in the garbage. Kraft  = failure.  I've never made anything off the Kraft website that didn't end up in my garbage.

I am no expert cook, and quite frankly, I hate cooking in general.  My mom is a great cook, and makes it look so easy. Watching my mom is like watching the food network. I swear she never follows recipes, just a pinch of this and handful of that, and a beautiful, perfectly cooked entree comes floating out of the oven. I feel like I struggle a lot, and then my food always comes out half-assed for some reason.  I tried to make a corn dog casserole the other day and ended up with some kind of stuffing with hot dogs in it. It didn't taste bad, it was just like having a hot dog Thanksgiving. It was more awkward than anything, and once again, ended up in my garbage.

So finally, I decided to switch it up and try some more challenging recipes. Maybe the recipes I was trying weren't turning out good because they were crappy recipes. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I can cook when I really set my mind to it. 

First, I found a stuffed pepper recipe.  From what I remember, and from what my curious co-workers told me when I told them about it, there is supposed to be a tomato sauce simmered into the stuffed peppers. Which is true, because I remember my mom making them for us when we were kids.  The red sauce also works in the cabbage roll recipes. I'm pretty sure it's the same stuffing actually.

Here's the recipe I used from Kalyn's Kitchen. I loved this because she even took pictures which was helpful to a cooking dumby like me! 

The only difference I made to her recipe was that I did not use the ground fennel (I couldn't find this anywhere! I'm sure I wasn't looking in the right place), and I used 3 sausages instead of 2, so I had extra stuffing. I personally loved it without the red sauce. It had a nice texture to it and the Parmesan really brought it all together. We only had 4 smaller peppers, so all the stuffing we didn't use served nicely as leftovers the next day.

The next recipe I tried were creamy chicken taquitos.

I am always iffy on Mexican food because up until the past couple years, I always hated Mexican food. I think I generally was not a fan of corn tortillas and cilantro, but I've aquired more of a taste for it since we have a really good Mexican restaurant at the end of our road.

This recipe comes from Pennies on a Platter

My differences were that I made it with red medium salsa instead of green salsa, and left out the cilantro.  They were very good! I think that some refried beans would have worked on these as well, or even used to dip in.  We didn't have any though, so we used some light sour cream. I also used 1/3 less fat neufchatel cream cheese.

I've added both of those to the 'yes' list for dinner ideas:) 

And....I'm back.

So I was really starting to feel guilty beacause I quit the gym back in the middle of July.  Honestly, I was so annoyed with the other people that went in the morning that they would seriously ruin my morning.  Not to mention some guy was hitting on me every morning and I'd finally had enough. I packed up my mental 'luggage' and left that place.  In place of my work outs, I started hula hooping.  I got pretty good too. It's a really fun hobby to pick up and Youtube is an awesome place to see tutorials on tricks and what not.  I also decided to cut back on red meat (hamburger mainly) and diet pop.  I never believed the myth about drinking diet pop until I actually cut back on it.  I have a friend that works at the gym, so I got a hold of her and asked her about rejoining the gym.  It'd been about 2 months and I was starting to feel really bad about my lack of exercise.  I was worried that I was packing on all these pounds again and whenever I ate something fattening or 'carby' I'd be sitting there imagining the fat just placing itself back into the places it had dissapeared from. She told me that I wouldn't have to pay another enrollment fee since I had just recently quit, so I jumped on it. I was back in there the next day, pedaling away on the stationary bike.  I decided that weighing myself needed to happen because I was anxious to see how much weight I gained or didn't gain since I'd quit the gym. Much to my disbelief, I'd actually LOST 12 pounds in that two months. I guess the mix of hula hooping, no hamburger and diet pop actually did work.  So that now puts me up at a grand total of 35 pounds lost. (Pat on the back). I'm making it a point to work harder at the gym. Over this past weekend, I rode 10 miles on the bike, and over the past few days, I've run a total of 3 miles. Psh, 3 miles, I know, but for a person who despises running at much as I do, that's quite the accomplishment to me.

Aside from the 'no hamburger/no diet pop' policy, I've been trying to train myself to portion control.  Let me break down the Weightwatchers diet for you:

Portion control - Take smaller bites and eat less of something. If you have a giant steak, only eat until you are full and take the rest home for later.  That's why they always say that you don't have to deprive yourself of eating foods you love. You can still eat them, just STOP eating when you feel full.  Something I try to do when we go out now is if I want to get something on the menu (pizza - because I love pizza), I get a dinner salad before hand, or a cup of soup (a vegetable, broth based soup, creamy soups do not work for this idea because they are loaded with fat and sodium). By the time you get your actual dinner (or the pizza in my case) you are somewhat full, and won't devour the entirety of the entree (25 peices of pizza). If you like cheeseburgers as much as I did (remember, I'm cutting back on eating hamburger meat), cut the cheeseburger in half before starting to eat and set it aside. I bet by the time you eat that half, you're full. Then you don't feel as guilty about eating it, and you have some for later.

Dietary fiber - Dietary fiber absorbs water as it passes through the digestive system. In other words, this helps you poop.  Start checking labels, the more dietary fiber that is in food, the better it is. It's easily digested.

That's pretty much it. Portion control, and foods with dietary fiber. The higher the dietary fiber, the lower the point on the system.

By no means am I any kind of expert, but it's just little everyday tactics that get easier after awhile. I do things now and I don't even notice. I got a cheeseburger from McDonalds a few weeks ago for the first time in 2 months out of desperation for the taste of fast food and I actually found myself cutting it in half and saving the rest. Once I put the other half in the fridge, I felt silly. I feel silly even typing it. I also found a new love for fish. Once I got a taste of a good slab of grilled salmon, it's all I want to eat. There are so many ways to experiment with chicken and fish, with different seasonings and breadings. I also switched from regular Yoplait yogurt to Greek yogurt.  Greek yogurt is always recommended by whoever, Jillian Michaels and whatever, but I tried it and I never want to go back to the Yoplait crap. They have such different textures. Greek is thick and pasty (and awesome with fruit or honey I might add), and Yopliat is runny and gloopy.  The only problem I ran into is that Greek yogurt is really expensive. I was pretty bummed about it actually. $1.50 a cup? Gawd.  So I tried Aldis one day and was extremely happy with the outcome. $.89 a cup, and taste just as good as the expensive ones. I will warn you though, you really have to have a taste for it because I tried to get all the girls at work on the Greek yogurt horse and they weren't having it. There were a lot of crushed faces in the room and a lot of wasted yogurt.

Oikos - good
Yoplait greek - shit
Dannon - good 
Aldis brand (Friendly Farms) - awesome

And that's my lesson for the day.

By the way, if you want to watch something that will really change your mind about eating fast food, watch the documentary 'Supersize me'.