A Spiritual Feast

I am excited for the 2012 LDS spring conference sessions.

You can listen or watch them for free online. Consider accepting my invitation to attend conference and pull up your own chair to a spiritual feast.

The tomato harvest

Keeping your resume fresh

Image: Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Your resume and portfolio is a marketing tool for you. Keep it fresh with your latest victories. It does not look good for a resume to only have three year old accomplishments (it's akin to a neglected castle). It is a shame when the best candidates for an opportunity are overlooked because of a stale resume and a lesser-skilled but better documented person will get the job instead. I have not been perfect at this, but I do keep a screenshot archive of web applications I was involved with. Each time a big project is completed or even when a big undertaking is conquered, I take that as a cue to update my resume with some important descriptive words about the project and what I did to help bring it home. I usually pick up a few new technologies with each project that also have helped fill out my documented developer skills.

Keeping it fresh is also a good idea because you never know when you will be asked to pack up and get out, US companies are loyal only to themselves and their shareholders and will layoff good employees at the first sign of trouble. Letting your resume go stale or failing to document your completed projects, new skills, and personal wins will impact your own professional success.

I also solicit feedback from managers and developers I work with and use the positive comments they make in my references section. I try to time my request for feedback such that I get a good positive note and the person can easily remember a specific positive thing to say about me. The manager or developer is usually are happy to do that for me, after all, I just helped them out.

Awesome Personal Finance Tool

I have been using an online personal finance software program for about 5 years now and love it. The tool is called Mvelopes and was started by a company in Draper, UT (Finicity). The CEO is Steven Smith last time I checked. The biggest reason I have continued to use Mvelopes is because I am lazy. I don't ever want to manually enter in receipts. I don't want to keep a log book of checks I write either. Mvelopes takes away 99% of the effort required to keep track of your family spending because the software crawls your online banks, credit cards, mortgages, 401Ks, auto loans, student loans, etc.. and digests the transactions from them presenting all of them in a consolidated simple interface. I don't have to do anything but setup my accounts in Mvelopes and login once or twice a month to reconcile spending to my budget goals (or the buckets I have setup for types of spending.)

If you are looking for a tool that can help you plan and coordinate your spending, reconcile purchases so you can always pay off your card balances and always have money for the charges and checks you and your spouse make, Mvelopes is it. You can use if from any computer, Linux, Windows or Mac (you just need a browser with Adobe flash extension.) I would recommend getting coaching sessions as well to help you get the most from the tool. Mvelopes does provide free online chat support as well.

If you use the software consistently, then it will pay for itself 10 times over time.

I think another similar web-based tool exists called Mint but I have never tried that one to know how it compares.

64th Tuesday weigh-in

223.0 lb

Up 0.5 again. So I was sick and stayed up too late and missed some workouts, and yes, I am like a broken record on my blog writing that. Winter sucks. Ran 3.5 miles in under 30 minutes today so I am still feeling good about my exercise, I just need to be consistent about going to bed and going to the gym. I am torn a bit because I want to work on a side project for my company (and my career) which cuts into my family/sleep time. I did track my food on the daily plate, but I really only track M-F and don't track dinner, which I plan to change to track EVERYTHING... the annoyance of having to input and track my chocolate-covered almonds should help me from eating them, right? I do feel good when I am able to track exercise on the dailyplate, seeing those extra calories show up is a nice bonus, seeing some better results would be nice too.

I hope when they say, "You change from the inside out", it is really true. Nothing big or earth shattering has happened to myself on the outside, body fat and scale measurements don't seem to move much for me either. But on the inside I am establishing a habit to exercise and monitor my food intake.

39th Tuesday weigh-in

photo courtesy of http://photodaisy.blogspot.com/

226.5 lb

I really need to post my weight on time. Same as the previous week, no change. I am not fazed by it. I had a camping trip scheduled and have planned on being extra cautious so I am not up for my personal trainer weigh-in next week.

A certain neice told me something

Shortly after I got married in 2005, this niece said to me, "Now that you're married, you're going to get fat." I took it as a challenge and complement at the same time.

While I am not thin now (..yet), what she didn't know is I certainly am not as fat as I was before marriage, BEHOLD:

The above is me on the left "living the dream" at 320 lbs. So yes I am down about 100lbs from 2002 and I did it without surgery or personal trainers/expensive diet food etc... I do owe a lot to a Nordic Track recumbent bike and a book called "Body for Life" by Bill Philips.

In your face niece! She's probably too busy and/or cool to read my blog anyway.

Last Sunday in June

This year has been unusually wet. I think today has been a more typical June weather day and so I got the urge to take some pictures.

Our peach tree and "baby J" honey crisp apple trees also look fantastic this year; I wish we had thought to plant a tree the year E was born as well.

I took some shots in the garden of our tomato, zucchini, and squash plants.

I started two batches of no-knead dutch oven bread last night and baked them today to go with dinner.

E helped pick carrots out of the garden. Which we peeled and put into a crock pot for a roast tonight.

Rebecca and I want to start planning our landscaping (not that we have money to invest in it yet..) We need more shade in the backyard and want to put in some shade trees.

Rest in Peace Layton E

He could play the guitar so well. I owe a lot to him, growing up I wanted to be like him, specifically I wanted to be smart and make good money in the computer industry. He was an inspiration to me. He loved to play music. Layton was a brilliant engineer and designed processor chips with a drafting table, pencil, and ruler! He was a math genius and could prove if a chip had been designed with flaws that would cause heat issues by doing matrix inversions of the transistors (or something way more cool and complecated). He designed chips that could run on mili-amps or even pico-amps of power. He had some niche knowledge that was in very high demand and rare to find and could work with other very smart people and hold his own. Layton wasn't perfect, none of us are. I am not perfect and have just as many flaws as Layton, if not more. Rest in Peace Layton, I hope they have rock music in heaven. I miss you.

Ran a 5K on Saturday

My feet are super sore, bruised, swollen and stiff after running a 5K. Do I need to run more often? Or only run on flat treadmills/track surfaces? Rebecca says I am banned from running on pavement.

I think I did it in about 35 minutes, it was a disorganized 5K... but free so I can't complain. Next time, if there ever is one, I will take a watch so I can know how long I take to run it. I did it pushing E in our mountain buggy jogging stroller, and no walking or stopping. Bad news is my weight is still high today. I hope to break even tomorrow on the scale. ...Run a 5K and still gain weight... that ain't right. We also helped clean the LDS chapel after the 5K, so it was a busy morning Saturday.

Doh! Forgot something

I forgot to kidnap my wife and take her with me... But I also forgot to take the cable to transfer the pictures from my digital camera to my computer, so I can't submit my receipts for my expense report like I planned. I can at least take the pictures so they are ready to send, oh well, I blame Hillary because her laptop had a card reader built in.

Sometimes life is just a game of hurry-up-and-wait. I hurry, hurry to the airport to be on time or early, then wait at the gate because my flight is delayed at the last minute. I hurry exercise and get to work, then wait in boring meetings for people to stop flapping their lips without saying anything new. I rush to get back from lunch but have to wait around for two hours because of unforeseen events.
I hurried all morning last Saturday to get the house ready for Christina to come and for me to be gone again, but I eventually gave up and spent some down time with Rebecca once the kids were asleep.

On a side note, I am proud that I have not turned on the TV in my hotel room yet.

Schedule controversy

Linc you are right, this is a controversial approach but can you see the advantage? It is absolutely as mathematically "fair" as possible (no more, I always get so-in-so complaining) Their is no element of chance or luck in who gives you gifts or who you give gifts to, which you say removes the fun. I think the other element of fun you experience is in keeping the secret about who you have until the big day and using stealth/espionage to find out what the person might like to receive.

I suggest random draw often results in giving to the same person year after year after year, which is not as fun. Furthermore, several people work in concert to expose the complete givee/giver list by sharing their secrets with each other. If people want to know who has them, they can always find out. Finally, with the luck of the draw approach, you could very possibly never give to some members of the group. This is especially the case when you add in the requirements for no self-gifts, no spouse gifts. It is tough to get a good random draw with this inherent tampering with the random draw.

Could we maybe combine the preplanned and random? Take these seven preplanned lists and randomly draw one out, keep the names secret, and keep the other six lists for next time? I don't see how it is much different from what we do now, except by doing this you can ensure no repeat gifting.

Regardless of random draw vs preplanned, I think we should do it now so we have 8 months to make a gift. The holidays are busy and stressful enough without having to come up with a handmade gift idea for a specific person, then create the gift from that idea before the gift deadline. What I am saying is: not all of us operate lathes, cross-stitch and solder on a regular basis. So it may take time, for me at least, to research and "learn how" to even make a certain handmade gift for someone because I am pretty sure some people do not want me to give them origami for Christmas.

New Baby

I took these, Rebecca took better ones so bug her to post them. Our daughter Eleanor is a big sister now. She is so big when you compare to her little brother Jameson.

Anti-Support System

Waaay back when I first started trying to lose weight, this was years ago before I met Rebecca or graduated college, I bought a Nordic track recumbent bike. I bought it new from Sears and it barely fit in my car on the way home. One door was partially open as the box laid across my back seat. My Dad helped me put it together but told me I should have bought a used bike and saved some money. I just said I wanted a new bike that no one else had sweat on and one that I could get replaced if it broke.

It got out at work that I was not going out to lunch with my coworkers because I was trying to "lose weight". It was sudden, I didn't talk with my lunch grub team about my plan before hand, just one day, no Harley. Which brings me to the anti-support system. I was very surprised by the behavior of many of my coworkers/friends after I started dieting. My friends were doing everything they could to sabotage my efforts and get me to give up and quit my diet. 

Everyday team members would come by and ask me to come with, try to guilt me into coming with them to lunch. Telling me how much I was missed by the group. Telling me, "It didn't matter if I went to lunch, as long as I was exercising I could eat what I wanted." Telling me they wanted to talk to ME about important stuff. Offering to pay for my lunch, offering to drive, letting me pick the place. It was insane! When holidays or work parties came up, I would lay low to avoid the temptation but coworkers would go out of their way to bring me plates of food, or eat food in front of me, spilling it on me in one instance. It was like they were getting desperate for me to give up for me to cave in. It really made me mad and more determined to see it through.

I think part of the reason why this happened is I was doing something they wanted to do but believed they couldn't do because of some obstacles. Seeing me fail would validate their beliefs about how "hard" it is to lose weight or give up food additions and bad patterns of behavior. I was showing them their obstacles were imaginary and that they could lose weight too. They did not have an excuse for not exercising / eating healthy because I was doing it and proving it works and is possible to change. I was showing them it wasn't as hard as they believed it was. This made them uncomfortable, made them question their beliefs about exercise and diet.

Right now a lot of Republicans hope Obama fails, this for me is the same thing. They believe it is too hard to succeed or success has to be achieved through a pattern he doesn't follow and to validate this belief they need him to fail. Otherwise the barriers to their succeess are in fact imaginary; the failures in their own life are due to their choices.

Twelfth Tuesday weigh-in

226.0 lb

Loss of 1.5 lb from last week. Goal is to lose 4 more pounds to weigh 222 lb by Feb 17th. 

I really think this could have been a 2.5 lb loss this week but I ate out at Thai House in Lehi then ate me a  JCW's toffee bar shake. Plus a whole bunch of candy and junk on the Super Sunday party. Hannah's brownies were worth it. So was the layered dip and I guess my hot wings were ok... not fabulous because I was rushed.

I have a good scam going where I do cardio at Legacy Center or Golds then workout with weights at lunch at Golds M-F and Saturday do cardio in the morning only. Hopefully this exercise plan will continue to allow me to post good numbers next week and the following. It would be nice to buff up while slimming down.

Wish me luck as I push these next two weeks to hit 222! I do not plan on stopping at that point but 222 is a goal I set back in November so it would be nice to get to that point. I really think weekly weigh-ins has made this effort more successful for me. Nothing is more frustrating for me than to exercise, diet, sacrifice for 3 or 4 weeks then step on a scale and be told I didn't make a detectable dent. That I weigh the same or worse I somehow got heavier. It can really kill my motivation and make me want to quit (as well as want to damage property.) Weigh-ins every week keep me honest and are a much smaller let down when the scale tells me I didn't do as well as I thought I was doing a particular week.  Don't get me wrong, I still get mad when a weekly weigh-in sucks, the anger just doesn't last for as long and I don't get as depressed.

My Pills

Every morning at breakfast I take the following:

2 acetaminophen (tylenol) (400 mg)
2 ibuprofen (advil) (400 mg)
2 Kirkland Signature Daily Multi Vitamins

I think it has made a huge difference for me. I don't like to think I am a wimp or lazy but pain management since I started working out has been very useful to keep me exercising when I would otherwise be too sore. I have a couple of Costco size bottles of these three and just take them at breakfast everyday. If I feel sore at night, I take 1/2 of the same amount.

One reason I stopped exercising was because of heel pain (plantar fasciitis), which was causing me to limp and made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. I think I can remember when I injured my foot, it was in a weight room and I was doing calf exercises using a seated calf raise machine. I loaded up too much weight and bounced the weight up with my calves and then kind of caught it on the way down. This put too much strain on my heel and probably tore a tendon connection to my heel. I should have known better than to do that. I messed up my shoulder doing something similar. I think using proper form and slow controlled lifting is the best way to prevent injuries in the weight room. My ankle would be very tight, like no spring in my step, and I could only shuffle along the floor until my foot loosened up. Each time my left foot hit the ground when I was running, it hurt. I tried to rest it for a month, then two, but it didn't help. Neither did any ibuprofen or over the counter pain medications. Rebecca's cousin happened to be a podiatrist and gave me a heel injection while I was in Texas which took the pain away completely for 6 months, but by that point I had not been consistently exercising (or eating healthy) for several months. The heel pain has slowly started coming back but is not as severe as before.

I take the vitamins because when I lose weight I tend to feel sick and empty. I know I am breaking down my muscles and using up fat stores and that my body needs to have the right nutrition to rebuild itself while I am not exercising. Eating vitamins is a way to compensate for the damage done to your body with exercise. I really do believe that when you exercise, what you eat matters even more than when you don't. Eating junk because "you'll burn it off" at the gym is self-defeating because you cannot rebuild your body with unhealthy fat and sugar. That being said I think it is important also to be flexible and make small compromises over time to your meals. If I feel like I am sacrificing all the time, I will eventually quit completely; and I will be a grouch until I do.

The other day I was running on the treadmill and on TV I saw someone skiing down a slope, but they only had one leg. It reminded me of how lucky I am to have two legs that I can exercise with. I thought about how much some people wish they had what I already have. I thought about how I had taken my legs for granted most of my life and decided to work on appreciating everything I have more. The best way I can think of to appreciate my legs is to use them.

Eleventh Tuesday weigh-in

227.5 lb

Loss of 0.5 lb from last week. My goal is to lose 5.5 additional pounds to weigh 222 lb by February 17th.

Eleanor's birthday cake, oh I mean cakes, were my doom this week, but I still managed to eek out a loss. I was shooting for a 2 lb loss and missed by 1.5 lb. I did work out all 6 days. I tracked meals on my daily plate web page during the week. The graph above is from the site and shows my progress since the first Tuesday weigh-in back in November 2008.

In other news, right after I renewed my legacy center membership, my company announced it has negotiated a deal with Gold's Gym, the employee memberships are super cheap. I love Gold's but it is not as close to home as the Lehi Legacy Center. I really don't need two gym memberships... but it is so cheap, it is really tempting me. It would cost half as much as the legacy membership was (and that is including the one day only 20% discount and Lehi resident discount.)

President Obama

I too am glad for the inauguration of this man, more for the rise of a no-more-excuses generation of racial minorities in this country. It is about time racial minorities expect more of themselves and their children. President Obama is and should be the final nail in the coffin of failed affirmative action programs and other policies around government dependency and so called fairness through special treatment of minorities.

They haven't worked. They'll never work. I love Bill Cosby's comments at the NAACP's celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing."

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set -- they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

The church is only open on Sunday. And you can’t keep asking Jesus to do things for you. You can’t keep asking that God will find a way. God is tired of you. God was there when they won all those cases -- fifty in a row. That’s where God was because these people were doing something. And God said, “I’m going to find a way.” I wasn’t there when God said it -- I’m making this up. But it sounds like what God would do.

We cannot blame white people. White people -- White people don’t live over there. They close up the shop early. The Korean ones still don’t know us as well -- they stay open 24 hours.

I’m looking and I see a man named Kenneth Clark, he and his wife Mamie. Kenneth’s still alive. I have to apologize to him for these people because Kenneth said it straight. He said you have to strengthen yourselves, and we’ve got to have that black doll. And everybody said it. Julian Bond said it. Dick Gregory said it. All these lawyers said it. And you wouldn’t know that anybody had done a damned thing. 

Fifty percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse? I want somebody to love me. And as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child, and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid -- $500 sneakers -- for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.

Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York -- just looking ahead. Thank God he doesn’t know what’s going on. Thank God. But these people -- the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother." Not, "You’re going to get your butt kicked." No. "You’re going to embarrass your mother." "You’re going to embarrass your family." If you knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. We are not parenting.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack -- and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).

Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house.

They sit there and the cousin says, “What are you doing here?”

“I just killed somebody, man.”

“What?”

“I just killed somebody; I’ve got to stay here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, give me some money, I’ll go….”

 “Where are you going?”

“North Carolina.”

Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.

Five or six different children -- same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.

I’m saying Brown versus the Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now -- no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’re laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read, “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it.

I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time. And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do -- get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it? 

What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody....” This is a sickness, ladies and gentlemen, and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees: “He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on, too.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award -- and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done -- they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education -- these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English. I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that‘s not my brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city, and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.

We have to begin to build in the neighborhood, have restaurants, have cleaners, have pharmacies, have real estate, have medical buildings instead of trying to rob them all. And so, ladies and gentlemen, please, Dorothy Height, where ever she’s sitting, she didn’t do all that stuff so that she could hear somebody say “I can’t stand algebra, I can’t stand…" and “what you is.” It’s horrible.

Basketball players -- multimillionaires can’t write a paragraph. Football players, multimillionaires, can’t read. Yes. Multimillionaires. Well, Brown v. Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it? The White Man, he’s laughing -- got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out -- rest of them in prison.

You got to tell me that if there was parenting -- help me -- if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t have. Not if he loved his parents. And not if they were parenting! Not if the father would come home. Not if the boy hadn’t dropped the sperm cell inside of the girl and the girl had said, “No, you have to come back here and be the father of this child.” Not ..“I don’t have to.”

Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature -- raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you. Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you. [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm ]

Mr. Cosby continues to get flack for his comments at the NAACP, he's a comedian by trade but a better leader and inspirational speaker than all of the minority leaders I have read about or heard from. I don't consider Obama a minority leader, he's our nations leader and a great example of what it takes to succeed.

How I throw it away

I am definitely not perfect at this, but these are some strategies I use. The self-talk I use to throw out food is "I'll eat this again." At a restaurant when I have food left over and am full, I toss it (no doggie-bag) because "I'll eat there again." Plus I don't have a dog so I don't need a doggie-bag. I think somewhere in my brain I get the idea that, "If I don't eat it now or save it for later, then I won't ever have it again for the rest of eternity." That isn't true, the truth is I can have it later when I will enjoy it, rather than now when I am too full to enjoy it.

Having said that, I do like to give food away to others when I can and the food is in condition for someone else to enjoy. Most of the time the food ends up in the garbage or down the sink disposal. It seems wasteful to throw it out but really, it does no good to continue to eat something your body does not need.

So the situation starts with leftover food, then I start to think, "This leftover food was good so I should eat more of it or put it in a bag for 'later' (usually five minutes later). This was expensive so it is wasteful to get rid of it plus I want to get my money's worth; good thing I have a hollow leg." Immediately I STOP that thought pattern and CHALLENGE the truth of it, the thinking is always false: 

• I don't need more because I ate plenty,
• I don't need it "later"; I have eaten the calories I need for the meal and will have meals ready "later" to eat.
  
• No one else needs to have it "later", that is why it is leftover. Everyone is done with it and meals will be prepared "later" for when we are hungry again.
• It was good and I can make it (or have it) again later when I can enjoy it the most.
• Just because it wasn't all eaten, doesn't mean it wasn't "very good". Sometimes it was just "very rich" and people were satisfied with a small amount. I can make less next time.

Then I FOCUS on what I should do instead. 

• I don't need access to this food anymore, it can be given away or tossed in the garbage. If I can't think of a specific person to give it to, it is probably better to just get rid of it.
  
• By throwing it out I can clean up all the dishes to keep the house clean, and it is easier to clean off plates before stale food gets stuck to them.
• When at a restaurant I think, "By throwing out the food, I don't have to carry it around and carry it home in the car, or store it in the fridge. I can come back to eat here again another time. I got my money's worth because I am full and enjoyed the meal."

Some dishes use a lot of ingredients and make more than the portions I need for one meal. If I make a meal that has a large portion (like chili), I put away the extra portion at the start of the meal, not the end. I planned on making extra for lunch so I take out the lunch portion before I serve it so that I indeed have the lunch portion I planned to make.

Tenth Tuesday weigh-in

228.0 lb

Loss of 1.0lb from last week. My goal was to lose 6.5 more lb to weigh 222 lb on January 27th

Finally, down a pound. It would have been more but I discovered Rebecca's hidden stash of Pure Cane sugar Dr Pepper from Waco, TX. That stuff is so good! I did well on staying away from store bought candy, but I did splurge some on Rebecca's homemade-from-scratch chocolate birthday cake with ice cream and Hannah's cherry pie Sunday. I threw some cake away so I would not eat it. I also did well on workouts, missing one workout of six on Monday. I am slowly adding back in weight lifting, I was so sore just from lifting upper body that I am waiting to start lower body. Rebecca is so helpful but I really need to step it up because she is getting me out of bed every morning during the week. That won't happen once the baby arrives and I really need for my exercise to continue because, once I stop, it is months before I finally start up again.

One big challenge is sleep, when I play video games until 3:00 AM; I can't get up to workout in the morning and my sleep schedule is thrown off. I probably don't help my goals by staying up so late but I will be grumpy if I never get to relax and play games. Life is not as good without junk food and video games occasionally.

Since I have not been losing at the pace I was hoping, I am again revising my goal to compensate for lost time. New goal is 222 lb by February 17th. which is slightly less than 2 lb per week. My plan to accomplish this is to eat only what is served on my plate (no second trips, no finishing Eleanor's food.) I think it is going to be neat to compare the Tuesday I started with the Tuesday next November 52 weeks from then.