May Goals

April was a weird month, I feel like I didn't really do anything at all during the entire month.
I stopped reading the "backlog" of comics that I was hammering away at for the first 3 months of the year and instead I've been slowly trudging through Insomnia (and you've all read this like 5 times already so I'll shut up about it starting now).
The only thing new was that I started going to the gym but I know I need to go more often.
Baby steps, much like with the rest of my self improvements, Baby Steps.

May just feels like it's going to be a big month for me.  I've got some plans and hopefully a big announcement coming within the next few weeks.


So - Lets set some goals for myself for the month of May.
Ending Weight Goal 230  (Starting Weight - ????)

Trips to the gym - 10 Minimum (2 weeks of 3 and 2 weeks of 2).
Miles Logged on the Elliptical - 60 Minimum (this will force me to get some extra gym trips in).
TV Seasons Watched - 1 (Pick from Dexter Season 4, Game of Thrones Season 2, Prison Break Season 2).

Books Finished - 1 (Started and finished within the month)
Comics read - 100 (going to be tough with adding a book to the mix)

Poker Sessions - 4 (Minimum)

October in the Rear View

On the weight loss front I'm still recovering from my buddy's reception.  As I talked about before the food was amazing and I really couldn't stop myself from forcing more and more into my mouth and swallowing.  I knew the results would sting a little bit but that it was only a one day minor set back in which I would lose again over the course of the next couple of weeks without an issue.

Of course, it takes some time to make up for a 4 pound gain out of nowhere but whatever.  Now that a week has passed I've lost about 2 of those pounds back and by the end of next week I expect to be back to where I was before.

Octobers Monthly Goals were a disaster and I'm going to blame this on my budding social life.

By social life I mean I've been spending my time with mostly one person outside of work instead of spending that time at the house and on the computer or playing Video Games.

I had a goal to beat one Video Game which I later changed to playing a certain amount of hours.  I am going to write this one off as a Win.

I put in a couple of hours of Skylanders. I put in a few hours of Borderlands 2 and I played 2 games of Strat-o-Matic football which takes a couple hours per game so I hit my goal but just the minimum.

Read 2 books - FAIL - bit fat fail with a side of "not even close."  I started reading a book on my lunch breaks at work and just really couldn't get into it and thus lost interest in reading in general.  I've got a bad habit of not being able to just switch to a different book.  I generally have to take some time off before switching because I still have the last, horrible, book in my mind.   Blah.

Exercise goal - Fail

Drink Goal - WINNER!   I didn't keep track all month because that got too tedious but whatever.  I realize that I put a lot of bad liquid in me and as such I'm going to make an effort to slowly change that.

Budget goal - Passed.  I put together a budget for November and will carry it forward to December as well. I need to make a few tweaks to it as my insurance at work is going to be going up a bit and I've begun contributing to a 401k plan again.  Plus I completely forgot to put anything in there about Xmas...  oopsie, how did that little holiday slip my mind.

Goals for November:

#1 - 10 hours of Video Games

#2 - Dexter Season 4

#3 - Drink More Water, Drink Less Dew

#4 - Weight Below 250

#5 - Read 1 book

#6 - Revise Novembers Budget and stick to it, Complete Decembers Budget

Now, one more small tidbit before I go find something else to do before work today.

Earlier in the year I had talked about finally trying to reach one of my life long goals of giving Stand Up Comedy a try.  I wanted to be able to do it by the end of this year but there were way too many life complications in the way for me to reasonably be able to do what I wanted.  However, all of my challenges have been eliminated and I've begun thinking about it again.

That being said - Over November and December (two extremely busy months in their own right especially if I take on a second job for the next two months) I'd like to start trying to write a few jokes and organize some thoughts and figure out how this whole process works.

So, that means I've got an email to send out to Linda Lou who so graciously volunteered to help me reach this goal and start getting some advice and direction.

Publicly - I hope you are still willing to have me and take me under your wings Linda!!! :)

Twas the night before Monday

The good news is that this morning I was actually able to sleep in.  After a nice long rest I Jumped on the scale and took note to the fact that I am rapidly approaching 255 which will put me at 45 lost pounds.
That's great considering I hung around 265 for about 2 months but now appear to be back on track and consistently dropping some pounds again.  By this time next week I will be under 255 and working on hitting 250.  I'm currently over half way to my goal of getting down to 220 but I'm pretty certain the closer it gets the harder it will be as I haven't been that low since College.


Early in the week I had made a concerted effort to actually drink more water after noticing the first set of results for what fluids I've been putting into myself.
Now that it's Sunday lets see if that effort was wasted or if it made any type of difference.

375.6 oz Diet Mt Dew
371.8 oz Water
32 oz Monster Rehab
16 oz Orange Rock Star
16 oz Fruit Punch Rock Star
12 oz Sugar Free Red Bull
16 oz Lambrusca delicious mess you up Red Wine


Running Totals
Diet Dew: 675.6 oz
Water: 591.5 oz
Gatorade: 64 oz
Orange Rockstar: 48 oz
Miller Lite: 36 oz
Monster Rehab: 32 oz
Bud Lite: 24 oz
Diet Pepsi: 16 oz
Diet Coke: 16 oz
Fruit Punch Rockstar: 16 oz
White Rockstar: 16 oz
Red Wine: 16 oz
Sugar Free Red Bull: 12 oz

At this point I have drank over 5 gallons of Diet Mt Dew this month and 4.5 gallons of Water for the month.
I drank a lot more water over the past week or whatever but I also increased my consumption of Diet Dew - Mainly to keeping late nights and needing caffeine to keep me going.
I'm quite curious if I can push 1500 ounces of Diet Dew for the month.

So, while my Diet Dew consumption is probably off the charts and highly unhealthy I'm still eating better and losing weight which is pretty much the only statistic that I honestly care about at this point.  Once I see the total numbers for the month then I can set some goals towards consumption for November and see if I have the will power to go through with it.

Mountain Dew oh how I love Yew

So, going through my collection of tabs and bottle tops to calculate how much liquid I have been drinking - I do believe that this is a pretty accurate and up-to-date list.  I might have missed a drink here or there but in the grand scheme one or two drinks is not going to throw this all out of balance.

Running Totals
Diet Dew: 300 Oz
Water: 219.7 Oz
Gatorade: 64 Oz
Miller Lite: 36 Oz
Orange Rockstar: 32 Oz
Bud Lite: 24 Oz
Diet Pepsi: 16 Oz
Diet Coke: 16 Oz
White Rockstar: 16 Oz


I have read 3 chapters of a book while at work.  This does not put me on pace to actually reach my goal of reading 2 books by the time the month is over but at the same time it's a start.  Most of my free time has been busy staying out of the house or watching TV seasons.  All I need is a couple evenings per month to read instead of going out or watching shows and getting back on pace will be easy.

Exercise has been nil since the move.  I haven't started sit-ups and I have no excuse other than laziness, but push-ups is just an aging body.  After the move my shoulder bothered me for over a week - the same shoulder where I tore my rotator cuff about 5 years back.  Today I feel like I have a sprained wrist.  I'm getting old and breaking down.

I've played a minimal amount of Video Games but think that I'm over an hour so far for the month.  That number will increase as I have a Strat Game today and need to get that in.

Now, my newly ordered NFL Package is awaiting me.

A Return to Normalcy

The last train to Clarksville has officially left and my life is about to return to the old normal routine that I am used to, and by that I mean my vacation is over and it's time to start earning a pay check again.

Ended up at Aliante watching the Monday Night Football game tonight and after 3 plays into the game there was an obnoxious Dallas fan sitting right in front of myself and my buddy.  We looked at each other and said "this guy's going to be an ass all night and I hope that his team gets whooped."

Prognostication 1, Obnoxious Dallas Fan 0

I know I won't do this daily but I wanted to at least start on the right foot.

I kept track of everything I drank over the course of the day and it was so varied that I thought I would touch upon it just a little bit.

By the end of the month I am hoping to have pie charts to share and dammit I wish blogger had the ability to do pie charts right within itself.  

My number 1 liquid of the day was Water which is good, however I do not expect that Water will be able to keep up with Diet Dew over the long haul.

Diet Dew and Bud Light were tied for second place today.

Third was also a tie between Diet Pepsi and Orange Rockstar.

So, One day in and I've consumed everything but coffee products.  Over all the "Soda's" are in second place.  I'm going to make a concerted effort to actually drink a lot of water this month to get into the habit of it and to actually try to be a bit healthier.  I do know, however, that I'm going to consume a lot of other beverages.  

Water: 50.7 ounces

Soda: 40 ounces (Diet Dew 24oz, Diet Pepsi 16oz)

Bud Light: 24 ounces

Orange Rockstar: 16 ounces

As for the other portions of my challenge I am officially changing #2 from "Beat 1 Video Game" to "Play 15 hours of Video Games."

I realize that it's pretty silly to have a goal to just beat one game when the fact is I could be enjoying multiple games, just not any of them to completion.  I came to this realization while playing games with one of my best friends this past week.  We put a good amount of time into Gears of War 3 (and beat it right before October) between campaign and Horde Mode.  I have a feeling I'll probably play a good amount of Horde this coming month and that would be counter intuitive towards a goal of "beating" a game.  Also, the other games I feel I'll probably play are going to be Borderlands 2 and Skyrim, both which you could easily put 50 hours into and probably not have beaten.  So - Instead I like my new revised goal because it's more realistic with where I am in life currently.

#3 - Read - I have not started yet.

#5 - Budget - While I have not sat down and done anything with my spreadsheet - I know exactly how much I have spent today, all in cash.

Sweet Dreams Children

Hope you all have had a great start to Rocktober!

Goals for October

I'm Exhausted from moving all day and still have to do all the heavy stuff sometime tomorrow.
However, I can't fall asleep and as such I'm finishing this post up and posting it up early in most respects.


Whilst browsing through some of the random stats from my page, who visits it and how people get here I happened upon a blog that I've been enjoying the shit out of - Not Necessarily Something.

I think y'all should visit and read the randomness, there is a lot of fun and joy to be had over there.

However, the reason for the link love this evening is because I liked his post about Goals For September and I'm blatantly stealing it.

You see, I haven't really had a post like this for quite a while, in fact I don't really think I've set up monthly goals for myself since I stopped playing online poker so much (and Live poker to a degree as well).  So, it's a good idea to give yourself goals for a period of time and see where you are at the end of it.  And Thus, A new monthly series on grrouchie dot com is going to be my goals.

Goals for October

1 - Beat 1 Video Game - I have barely played any video games at all this year and I am a self proclaimed video game addict.  I don't know if I've just been in a funk or if maybe I'm getting over my addiction (if I could get over the addiction to stop buying the damned things that would be pretty impressive also) or if maybe my tastes are changing away from this entertainment medium, but I'd like to find out.   So, beating one game is not that hard of a challenge if I truly still do love to play them.  Can I regain the passion or am I doomed to a life of playing Skylanders with children?  

2 - Read 2 books - Reading is something I love to do in spurts and then I just randomly quit for years on end. I'll literally read like 15 books over the course of 3 months and then not read another single book for 4 years - I've done this a lot over the course of my life.  Last November when I got my Kindle Fire I started reading like a fiend.  Through February I read 14 books and then found a boring one that I just couldn't get into.  I haven't read, nor attempted to read, anything since then.  Gotta break this habit.  So, I'm either going to read Insomnia or The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King - or both since my goal is to read 2 books.

3 - Push myself to be-able to do 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups in a single day (not necessarily all at once, but over the course of an entire day).   An exercise goal is great to put in here because if I want to focus on it then I should set a goal of some sort instead of just saying "well, I'll do whatever I can do."  I'm slowly getting to the push-up goal but I haven't even started doing sit-ups yet so this will be very difficult I think.

4 - Calculate how many bad drinks I injest - I liked his #4 so I'm going to do similar, but first I have to get the calculations.  I know I drink A LOT of sugary beverages - like a fucking lot.  I'm pretty sure that if you ran tests on me part of my blood stream would be Diet Mt Dew.  I'm also positive that I have mini Dew cans living inside my liver and kidneys.  I also injest quite a few energy drinks over the course of a month when I'm running on E or when I have to be to work at or before 6 am and I didn't fall asleep until late.  I drink very little Starbucks so I'm expecting that number to be very reasonalbe, but I still have a few and I'd like to see just how many. Then there is Beer - my love, my joy.  I don't drink often, but I like to drink a lot when I do.
So, in october I'm going to keep track, on my phone, the number of non-water beverages that I am consuming and get back to you on what that number means to me!

5 - Budget, Budget Budget - I've gotten away from something that I instinctively should be doing all the time. I have a degree in fucking accounting for crying out loud. I preach to the masses that they need to budget and keep good records and here I am being a lazy bastard for most of this year and not having a budget and not having good financial records or anything.  So, I'm going to create a budget and I'm going to track my spending and I'm going to come up with some sort of plan after the fact.   Yes - this WILL happen probably.

I'll stop this list at 5 because 5 is a very reasonable number.
The only other thing I'd like to do is get on some sort of posting schedule which really works well for some of the others.  You know - Football picks on Weds, jerk off stories on Thursday, Poker on Friday, Weight loss on Sunday, etc...  I'm not going to list this as a goal though - it's just something I hope I put some thought into and if I don't then who cares right?  I mean, I'm cool with being random and all over the charts.