Viva Las Vegas

There is a new website called Weight Loss Tips and they asked me to do an interview for them, bascially to know how my journey has come along so far and what program I'm using. If you want to read mine or any other people's interviews be sure to check them out!!!! Here is the link my Interview.

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This is Elvis week in Las Vegas. It was 29 years ago on August 16th that Elvis died. There are those days in your life where you know exactly where you were and what you where doing at the time of that event. For me it was when man first walked on the moon, I was just a little kid but for some reason that event stands out in my mind. Then the next as the death of Elvis and the last was 9/11.

When Elvis passed on I was still living in So.Cal and my dad had this motor home and used to take us (the family) on long vacations. I was in high school and we were heading back to California so I could get back in time for the new school year. We were spending the night at a campground behind Circus Circus here in Vegas of all place. I remember I was in the motor home, getting my swim suit to head out to the pool when the news came across the radio my sister had on that Elvis was dead.

For those of you who are old enough, do you remember what you were doing the day Elvis died???

In honor of "The King" I've put my Elvis video back for this week.

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Saturday

Went out to dinner with some friends last night. Ended up not getting home until almost midnight. But I ate well, I had crab legs with no butter and no sauce. I enjoy just the taste of the crab legs so to me I can eat just those.

Wow, Vegas is having a cold spell. It's like 98 today!!!! brrrrrrr...... I need to dust off my winter clothes I think. :)

Well, football starts tomorrow night and that usually is the unoffical end to my summer. However, this year I'm taking a five day trip to where I grew up in the San Fernando valley area of Los Angeles. I'm going on the week of my birthday from August 21 to the 26. I'm going to rent a car and drive since I like driving trips anyways. I'm also going to Bakersfield to visit a friend I've known since the 7th grade.



I know I can bring my NS meals with me to LA, but I can only hope I will be good. One place I used to love eating was this little breakfast place in Chatsworth that had the best cinamon swirl french toast. I'm sure there were like 1000 calories in that breakfast. I just need to stay away from there.


Plus I never go to LA without visiting the Farmer's Market on 3rd and Fairfax. I love that place and again it centers around food. They have wonderful open air restuarants. Damn, all my favorite places involve food. Then there's Cupid's hot dog stands and who can miss out on Pink's!!!!!












And I have to stop at Mann's Chinese theatre. Until you've seen a movie in this historic place, you haven't seen a movie. And they have wonderful hot dogs and popcorn.






Maybe I will stay home afterall. :( Just kidding. I need to learn to have fun doing those kinds of things without the food being the focal point. I don't know how I can go to Farmer's market though without eating something!!!!!

August already!!!

I know some of you out there (Emily) are already counting the days to Christmas vacation!!!! Well, it's 137!!! Can you believe it's already August!!! Where does the time go?

Ok, I can't actually complain too much about the heat here now. It's still hot, like 100, but the humity has gone down since the Monsoons have shifted further East and it's actually bearable. I just hate that humidity. I know you East Coasters are laughing at me for complaining about 30-40% humidity, but we are spoiled in the desert, it's only like single digits normally.

For me, this is my busy time of the year. I work in the sports field and football officially gets underway this Sunday with the Raiders (yuk!!) and Eagles. Ok, I'm a lifelong Broncos fan, it's bred in me to hate the Raiders!!! Even though I was born in Denver I became a bigger fan when Elway went there. I played football in high school against Elway and I've always admired him. Ok, so their high school kicked out butts and I hated him on those nights, but after high school I always followed his career. So for you football fans out there you can buckle down your helmets and get ready for another season. For me, it's my busy time of the year and I will be busy from now until March when the Final Four in basketball are done.

Hope you all are doing great on your respective programs and thanks for spending any time reading my boring blog. (great new name, Mike's Boring Blog)!!!!

Week 14

Well, week 13 wasn't very lucky and not productive at all. I guess once the honeymoon is over you have to work at bit harder. At least I slept a bit better last week, getting about 6 hours a night and for me that's pretty darn good.

I decided to stay away from the gym last week too. It was such a hot and humid week here (which the entire country seems to be in the grips of) that I just didn't feel like going out. That and eating out too much didn't make for a good week.

But, this week no matter of the temps, I'm heading back to the gym, doing just my NS foods and making week 14 another good one.

My gym workouts aren't back up to the same intensity I was at last November, but they are getting close. Last year I was doing about 40 minutes on the treadmill and then a circuit of 9 different weight machines. The entire time at the gym was about 90 minutes.

Right now I'm doing about 20 minutes on the treadmill at a lower setting and I'm still doing the 9 machines of weights, but the weight was less. I'm just about back to the weight levels from last year but the treadmill I'm increasing at about 5 minutes every few weeks. I know I could go longer on the treadmill than 20, but I'm not pushing it, not over doing it. I'm still heavier than I was last year when I was working out harder. I figure by October I should be back to about the same place I was last October. What a waste of a year!!!! That's another one I'm never getting back......

Well, my NS foods are easy today. I have a NS bar for breakfast and a NS bar for lunch. That's it for my daytime meals. I'll include veggies and fruit tonight.

Sleep, is it over-rated???

Ok, I sure hate when I have battles with Insomnia, which lately seem to happen more often than not. Last night I was up at 3am and couldn't go back to sleep. I can do very well on as little as 3-4 hours of sleep, but it does catch up to me and then I need a day (usually Thursday) to get extra sleep. And when I got up at 3am I was a bit hungry so I did have a NS bag of Pretzels. i didn't feel guilty since I came in around 250 calories under my 1800 for Monday. Still, I hate snacking in the middle of the night, a very bad practice to get into.

Without having to resort to Ambien or any other prescrip sleeping pills, does anyone have any tried methods of improving their sleep? Warm milk, camomile tea, counting sheep.... been trying them all. I did take 2 of those over the counter PM meds and it did help, but I get up so groggy that I hate that feeling. This has been hurting my gym workouts too since I am so tired at the end of a work day that I just want to go home and collapse.

Anyways, NS has been good so far this week and yes, I didn't forget my NS foods today. I had the frosted oats with skim milk for breakfast and lunch was the Pasta Parm. With the added fruit and carbs I'm at about 700 calories through lunch. I have one NS pizza left so I think that will be dinner tonight. I will add some lean sliced turkey I got yesterday, onion and maybe even some polenta. Stir fry some spinach, onions and tomatoes and that will be dinner.

Week 13 Begins

Ok, as Paul said, the first "Dirty Dozen" weeks are behind me. I'd like to say week 12 was great, but it wasn't. I made some poor choices last week, mainly eating out too many times. But this week I'm committed to only doing my normal one time per week eating out - and that's for breakfast which is simple for me. I didn't get on the scale today.... ok, I'm chicken!!! I will, but I need to sneak up on it first. I'm thinking of a stealth attack tonight after dark.

So, week 13 has already begun on a bad note. I left home this morning, had all my food for today and tomorrow ready to go...... guess what? yep, left it sitting on the counter. I even had my non-fat milk in a thermos in the fridge along with my fruits and veggies. So here I sit, no NS foods for today. DOH!!!! I do have some oatmeal in my office, so I will likely have that, but it's nearly 11am and I haven't eaten a thing yet today.

I called Fedex to see what they would do with my computer since I won't be home. First, Paul suggested (a good suggestion) that I call and see if the package could be re-routed to my office. So I called Fedex and they said I had to call the shipper to re-route. So I called HP and they said to call Fedex, there was nothing they could do since it already left their facility. So I am SOL!!! But, I was able to convince my sister Vicky to go to my place and wait for the package to come. Otherwise Fedex said they would bring it back to the facility and then try to re-deliver tomorrow, which I will be at work again. Deja Vu anyone!!!

Hmmm, I wonder if my sister would be willing to drive across town in 110 degree heat and bring me my NS foods???? I seriously doubt it!!! Sisterly love has its bounds. :)

Anyways, when she calls me to tell me it has arrived I have already decided to drive home and get it. The faster I get rid of this piece of trash I'm using now, the happier I will be. If I didn't say so before, I use that laptop for both home and office use. I take it with me back and forth, so this one I'm using now is really getting on my nerves. I have to keep my fingers crossed that the new keyboard does the trick and it's not a motherboard problem. Don't think those thoughts Mike!!!!! Happy thoughts, Happy thoughts!!!!!

Ok, I will let you know how the PC turns out when I get it today.

Can't post a menu, since I haven't eaten yet today.

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AFTERNOON UPDATE :

The Good news is I have my own Laptop back again, fixed, new keyboard and everything seems fine. I feel like I just went from a Ford Pinto to a Corvette. It sure is nice having my own computer back.

Well, I did finally eats something around noon. I went up the street to Smith's Grocery and got a bag of lettuce, some low fat turkey slices and made a salad. I had dressing in my office (low cal). No NS entrees to go with it, but at least it was something. I did go home and get my computer after my sister called to say it arrived, but I decided not to bring back food since I had already eaten lunch. I will just eat dinner tonight when I get home.

Week 12

Today closes out Week 12 on NS. I had a couple of days last week that weren't very good, but you have to expect those on occassion. It's how you handle those days that really count. I attribute those bad days to more eating out. But this week I'm back to my regular schedule and I won't be eating out except one morning on Wednesday.

The good news is that HP has shipped my computer to me. It shipped Friday night but I won't receive it until Monday around 3pm, according to their web site. I didn't figure to get it until later in the week, so it will be nice to have it back. The only problem is that Fed Ex will likely leave it on my doorstep and I will be at work. I hate to have my expensive laptop sitting on my doorstep for any passer by to pick up. I think I will keep monitoring the Fed Ex site and when it says it has been dropped off, I will drive home and get it.

At least by tomorrow evening I should (hopefully) be back on a computer that doesn't need five minutes to load pages. Then I can begin posting more regularly and also visiting other blogs again.

Till then.