Big Changes

PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET: I RETURN!

It's been over a month since I've posted, and I'd like to apologize for that.  Those of you following on the twitter will have noticed a few messages since my last blog posting, but the rest of you have had reason to be suspicious of my continued existence.  Nothing's wrong, in fact, things are very right, but I've been avoiding posting about them to keep from announcing any news that I couldn't share until things were more finalized.

Those of you who have been with me for awhile know that, since I've been posting, and for the entirety of this year and a good portion of last year, I've been an unemployed engineer.  You also might know that I spent hours of every day applying for jobs, every day since even before I was informed I was to be laid off, more than a year ago.

I am tremendously pleased to let you know that I am preparing to start a new job.  During the time I've been away from you, I've interviewed for and been offered a job in the southeast.  I'm currently in the process of relocating, and will be starting work very soon.

I'd like to note that this is the only interview I was called for in the last year, amongst thousands of jobs for which I applied.  I had assumed that I was not going to get this job, since it had been months since I originally applied for it.  After my interview, I thought I had blown it, so I assumed, still, that I was not going to get it.  Up until the day I received an offer, I still applied for new jobs every day.  In another amusing note, immediately after accepting the offer, I received a call from a corporate recruiter with another company I'd spoken with a year ago asking if I was still looking for work.

Enough about the good news, it's time to move on to the bad/indifferent.  My diet has suffered... profoundly.  Between travel, stress, jubilation, and general malaise at various points, I have been fairly consistently off it since we last spoke.  I hopped back on for a week or two, then went back off.  During that time, I also haven't exercised with anything resembling consistency or frequency.  I haven't gotten weighed in weeks, out of terror for what I've done to myself.

Now, I'm ready to get back to work.  I'm living in a hotel, temporarily, and have my Nutrisystem food with me, along with a microwave and mini fridge, so I'm prepared to act properly.  I picked up some essential extras at the supermarket today, so I should be able to keep myself under control until I get settled into my new place.

I should note I'm thinking about making some changes, now that I'm resuming the diet.  I'm not going to have the time to write morning or lunch entries immediately after meals, as I had been when I was blogging more consistently/without a job.  I'm also not really sure what my schedule is going to be like, so I'm going to call this a very tentative proposed schedule.  I think I'm going to write a morning entry with weigh-in info, and then write evening entries covering exercise and what I eat over the course of the day.  Of course, if I find the time to write more often, I will.

I'm targeting weigh-in resumption for Monday, to keep myself honest once again.  I ate my first Nutrisystem meal in the hotel tonight, and I'm feeling good about getting back on it.

With all this, I have a question for those of you who work and work out:  do you prefer to get up at 5am and work out/eat before work or work out in the evening after work?  When you work out, do you prefer to eat first or work out first (before or after work)?  I'm trying to figure out how to work it into my schedule, and I don't know what is best to try first.  Look forward to responses in the comments or on the twitter.

Lastly, I'd like to thank those of you who are still subscribed, despite my long absence, I look forward to sharing further weight loss success with you.

Still Alive

Alright, me droogs, I think I owe you an after-action report.  Clearly, I've been off the wires for a bit, and I owe an explanation.  The epic road trip had to come to an end, because I ran out of the cash moneys, so it finished up in Indianapolis for the 4th of July weekend, with pitstops in New Albany, IN at the New Albanian Brewery and the Creation Museum on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati (which probably deserves its own entire post later).  The New Albanian Brewery had good beer, and the Creation Museum was home to the worst science I've ever seen.  I will definitely get a writeup of that together at some point.

The Fourth was pretty excellent, as it was spent with good friends, booze and explosives.  I was drinking and blowing shit up for the rest of the day after this was taken, so I have no pictures of the actual explosions, but friends do, and I may post them at a later date.  For now, enjoy the pile of explosives that was completely used that day and night.  4 cakes, 3 300-shot saturn rockets, a boatload of mortars (with custom launch rack), boxes of firecrackers, novelties, roman candles and bottle rockets.  We celebrated the fuck out of this country.

Of course, this leaves the bulk of the last week being spent back in PA unpacking and decompressing.  As of today, I'm back on Nutrisystem and prepared to begin regular blogging again.  No weigh in this morning, as I got up rather late, but I ate a Nutrisystem lunch, snack and dinner.  I've continued applying for jobs and am hopeful that someone will someday want me to engineer for them again.

I'm probably not going to weigh in for a few days, as I don't want to shock myself too much with whatever damage I've done, boozing and eating takeout for about 2 weeks, but I'm fully back on the diet, and will resume the blogging of it tomorrow.  I also intend to resume working out tomorrow or Wednesday, as it has been some time since I have, and fear the result of my laziness.

That is all!

Everglades and Panthers

So I headed over to Key West from whatever Key it was I slept on last night, and headed to the Starbucks to grab breakfast and further use up my giftcard.

Unfortunately, all the tables were taken, so I ate off the trunk of my car, since I'd already payed for half an hour of meter time.  I ate Nutricinnamon Squares Cereal, a juice box (fruit), 8 oz of nonfat milk (dairy), and a venti iced coffee.  Once again, I dumped my milk in the iced coffee to make the milk palatable.  I headed up from the Keys to US-41, where I stopped before entering the everglades to eat lunch.

And lunch was a nice box of Red Beans and Rice that was warming on the back deck of the car all morning.  It prepared me to head out onto the great journey through the everglades.

There was some really pretty country, but there were no good places to stop.  There were a number of restaurants and places with names like "gator bob's fanboat excursions", and I wasn't hungry and I don't have the scratch to finance a charter into the everglades.  This sign, however, I captured by pure accident.  I had popped up the camera to scare that car, for some reason, and that sign came up just as I stuck it out the sunroof.  It was the only one of its kind I saw, and it was awesome.  No panthers or gators were spotted or run over, so we'll call it a wash.

I'm staying with family for a few days on the west coast of Florida, so I had dinner with them this evening.  I had some asparagus, heirloom tomato, zuccini, a slice of wheat toast, and a few shrimp.  I erred on the side of caution and went low on my shrimp tonight, because I didn't want to overdo it.

With the filibuster of the EUC bill yesterday, my trip is in very serious jeopardy.  Unless a new bill is introduced and looks like it will pass next week, I'll probably be returning home and seriously considering something drastic like joining the military or stopping trying to find engineering work and either joining the fast-paced world of transportation services (truck driving) or consumables delivery (waiting tables).

Oh, I got weighed in this morning, but couldn't go barefoot, so I only have a weight number:

Weight: 289.6 lbs

Suck on that.

Sleep Problems

I was up all night dicking with something on my EEE PC last night trying to find a halfway decent solution in Linux to work with the crappy webcam I have.  I was trying to set up software to take an image every 30 seconds or so to use as a dashboard camera, but I've run into too many problems.  The cheap old usb webcam I'm using doesn't seem to like taking stills.  It just returns static-filled images whenever a still process is run, and none of the software I've found that records video rather than stills will allow for a low enough framerate (.05 or so fps) to keep the video output down to a manageable size.  I've wasted the better part of a week getting this laptop to run right and trying to learn enough to get the thing to work the way I want it to, but I think I need to concede that the hardware issues and the solutions needed to overcome them would require too much of my time to learn, at this point, to be worth the time lost preparing other things for my great journey.

Last night, I also went through my ridiculous stack of maps from AAA and put together a next stage route (with a bunch of alternates in various parts) of where I think I'm going, as well as compiling a list of states and major cities I'll be traveling in or near.  I used that list to identify Craigslist locales I should post ads in to find destination ideas, so I've now got an easier to consult list (complete with site links) to work off of as I progress across the country.

Weight:     294.8 lbs
Body Fat: 40.2%
Water:      45.8%

In related news, I ate an appropriate Nutrisystem breakfast and dinner, yesterday, but then I ended up having cupcakes and icecream for dessert, so that went all to hell.  I also ate some Triscuits and pepperoni around 1:30-2am because I was starting to get seriously on edge from the damned computer nonsense and I gave into frustration eating.

I need to make a trip to the hardware store today to grab some stuff to help the fam around the house, and then I'm going to double-check the water seal on my trunk and start a mock packing to see how well everything fits.


I applied for a few more jobs yesterday.  I swear, I wish I had the chops for a software developer job, because the demand for programmers as compared to engineers has always been ridiculous when I've been looking for work.  In related news, a slightly more stripped-down version of the EUC bill will either go in front of congress for a vote today or Monday, so that moving along the rails is a good thing.

Monday Sin

I grabbed a frozen lunch, but the day went downhill after that.

I had the frozen Chicken Quesadilla.

It's pretty good, and it was the last good thing I ate today.

I spent the afternoon sanding some old furniture and looking at a new job site.  There may be some promise in it.

I've been kind of feeling like shit, and let myself go to Five Guys today for a very inappropriate pick-me-up.  A bacon cheeseburger and some fries (I split that plate with another person).  Toppings were grilled mushrooms and onions, pickles and mustard.  I've been craving one of these for a month, and between one thing and another, I just snapped today.  This is no excuse to go any more off the diet than I already have, and I'm prepared to get back to serious business tomorrow morning.

I really hate this kind of diet fuckuppery, but I've learned that wasting a lot of time guilt-tripping myself isn't beneficial, and usually just leads to me running further off of the wagon.  I just say "you fucked up, now get back to your routine, fatass".  Honest to god, it should be that simple, shouldn't it?

Sunday Recap and Unemployment Fun

So it's been a moderately successful day.  I finished fixing the weatherstripping on my trunk, as well as de-cluttering the car and repackaging my emergency car kit to conserve more space.  Made sure a 7-gallon water can I recently picked up held a seal and could be held in place with a seat belt in the back seat (it can).  Also cleaned out my cooler and got it set up out in the car.  I made a magnetized mosquito net/screen to fit over the sun roof of the car, which will have its uses.  All these activities relate to the big project I'm working on, that should, soon, be ready for a grand reveal.

I grabbed a Nutrisystem Carmel Sundae Swirl ice cream treat for a snack, since I missed breakfast and lunch.

I really don't care for care for ice cream all that much, but I'm trying to avoid my shelf food to maintain my stock for the project I'm working on.  It held me over to dinner, which was good enough for me.

For dinner, I had a Lean Cuisine Margherita Pizza, and it was pretty good.

I also had  some cauliflower (vegetable) and light ranch dressing (fat) for sides.  It was a good meal, and fortified me for finishing some of my work with the car this evening.

I just realized as I was writing this (I took a break to file my weekly unemployment claim) that I'm about to exhaust my EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) tier 1 benefits, in a few weeks, which is problematic.  I'm hesitant to mention the joys of unemployment, here, but this is part of the whole experience of me.

Now, running out of tier 1 wouldn't be a problem (other than, you know, the crushing depression that goes with long-term unemployment), I'd normally pass straight to tier 2, except for the fact that congress didn't pass the extension before the Memorial Day recess.  They're starting to consider the bill again Monday, and if they pass it, I should be able to continue receiving benefits without interruption.

For anyone not familiar with the progression of benefits, for most states, the one I'm from particularly, there is an initial 26-week period of benefits provided from the state itself.  Following that, you enter the period covered by the federal EUC, for which you must apply, which is comprised of 3 tiers.  The tiers cover 20 weeks, 14 weeks, and 13 weeks, respectively.  People who qualified for tier 1 automatically start the tier 2 benefits if they do not go off of unemployment before the period begins, and have to file a special claim when their tier 2 benefits run out and they want to apply for tier 3 benefits.  After that point, many states have instituted extension programs.  All told, this is 76 weeks+state extensions.

If they pass the bill, I'm going to continue planning on the big project I've been talking about, and concern over this is why I haven't revealed my plans fully, because it's dependent upon having that small amount of cashflow.  Otherwise, I'll just drop the project, and be glad that I took care of some of the minor projects I've had going on in the meantime.