Where I Am: In my house, in the living room

What I’m Doing: Being Gluttonous

Ribs…is there any diet you can’t ruin? I blame the ribs but it’s really the result of laziness and poor self-control.

You see, I’ve been on and off my diet since I got back from my month-long wedding/honeymoon at the end of August 2006 and I’ve been a lot less strict about keeping to it.

On January 22nd, 2006, having returned from my wedding planning session down in Walt Disney World, I weighed myself for the first time in ages. I had vowed that I would start my diet in preparation for the wedding when I returned from the vacation and this was the first step. I weighed 312 pounds.

Let’s repeat that: 312 pounds.

I’m not sure how I convinced myself that I weighed anything less than 312 pounds: the American Astronomical Society considered me a walking eclipse. The size after Venti at Starbucks was named Lou. My bellybutton echoed. That kind of fat.

It was startling. So startling that I actually followed through on my diet for the better part of a year (until July 10th, to be exact) and managed to lose 80 pounds. I gained 28 pounds of that back on my wedding/honeymoon (which means I consumed, on average, 3500 calories more than I burned on a given day. The only rational explanation I can think of is that I accidentally swallowed a deer every night in my sleep) and have managed to lose 22 pounds of that weight since my return (74 total pounds lost in a year if you’re keeping count).

The urgency to lose weight isn’t as strong as it was last year. The only major event I have coming up is my first trip to Europe. It’d be nice to finally take my shirt off in front of other people after several decades of shirt-swimming but I don’t see that happening even if I keep to the same rigorous diet from last year. I still have another year of strict dieting before I consider the tanning and hair grooming that would be necessary to combat years of poor body image (which is, unfortunately, entirely valid).

So here I am, being Fatty McWillpowerless again, dining on ribs. I know, normal people on diets allow themselves a treat every now and then so that they don’t go insane on their diet. I can’t do that. Food is my drug and I get the shakes real easy. I’ve had Nathan’s hot dogs twice since the ribs incident and managed to eat every last Twix and Kit Kat leftover from my New Year’s party. I have no one to blame but myself.

Hopefully a year from now I’ll be able to look at this post and those surrounding it and laugh at what an amazing porker I was, just as I can do now with last year’s pics:

That’s Andi and Adam’s Wedding Dessert Party which they were nice enough to let us attend so we could see what ours would be like. I think when they saw me they briefly considered a stun gun in order to not go bankrupt. That’s another story for another time, though, and probably on my severely neglected Disney Wedding blog. It’s so severely neglected I won’t even link to it.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 11:21 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: Deja & Reg’s Place

What I’m Doing: Cheating on my Wii, Bowling Poorly

The loss of my Wii was somewhat offset by the fact that I had ready access to another one a few hundred feet from my front door. This was in turn offset when I walked in to Reg exploring the Desert Temple in Twilight Princess. I should be playing that!

Wii Bowling and I don’t get along. It is a testament to the accuracy of the Wiimote that I suck as much at virtual bowling as I do in its real-life counterpart. In the virtual world I have a natural hook that I must compensate for when I aim. I had actually gotten it down to a semi-science when my Wii decided that practice makes broken and went belly up. The skills I had learned do not translate one-to-one at Reg’s place: his sensor bar is on top of the TV as opposed to below, like mine and the finesse that I must put on the ball is different as a result (or at least that’s the convenient excuse I’m using). Since I can’t practice at Reg’s house the way I can at home, I’m stuck finishing last and getting by with 8-1 frames and the occasional spare.

My wife, however, is a natural at the game despite the fact that her bowling style, if translated into the real world, would kill her and anyone within a 5-foot radius. We would never be allowed near a bowling alley, let alone in one. In the virtual world her style translates to unfailing strikes and spares and nary a Mii loses a limb (which they don’t have to lose in the first place, but still.)

Reg has worked out his style to whatever lies between a semi-science (which I just invented and therefore should be able to invent this one too) and a science such that he has a position from which he bowls that, if he gives it the right amount of power, equates to a strike every time. The trouble he seems to be having is in getting that power consistently, or at least within a range that doesn’t make it seem the Wii is just guessing every time he bowls. This is one of the biggest shortcomings in Wii Sports: although the game is very forgiving when you make mistakes doing what it wants you to do, it never actually tells you what you need to do. For example: we’ve both had the game for a while now and not one of the four of us knows how to control the direction of the ball in Wii Tennis. Not even a clue. We just hit it and hope it goes where we want it to. We try hitting it to the left or the right as the opportunity presents itself but more often than not it just goes in the same direction it always goes in. This particular night I hit the ball into and off of the net so many times that we thought we had cracked some sort of code but instead just ended up baffled.

Deja, unlike the rest of us, confidently and seemingly effortlessly beats the shit out of us in Wii Bowling. Well, to be fair, Lisa and Reg give her a run for her money and win occasionally, but she’s so consistent in her score that she must have sold her soul to the devil for a better-than-average virtual bowling score which, when you think of it, is about as useful as a gold fiddle, especially since she doesn’t trashtalk.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 10:54 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My Kitchen (love that wallpaper!)

What I’m Doing: Holding an Xbox 360 Controller lovingly

There’s a disconnect in taking these photos and posting them here on the blog that I didn’t count on when I started this project: although I’ve kept faithful to the project for a stunning 8 days (I know, amazing!), I’ve somehow managed to retain the incredible laziness that ensures that any project I undertake will fail and as a result I’m writing about these photos on the blog days after I’ve taken them. This is, however, not the case over on Flickr, where I write an entry about each photo when I post them.

Today’s photo offers this problem: what I wrote on Flickr and what I’d write now about it are two different things. Here’s what I wrote over there when I posted it, the day I took it:

Ah, the rebound. My relationship with the Wii went south and who was there to pick up the pieces? The XBox 360.

Sure, it may be a bit heavier and we don’t share a lot of interests but damn, does it try hard and that counts for something.

While that may have reflected my view of the Xbox 360 at the time, now that I’ve actually played a game on the thing I unabashedly love it. We do share a lot of interests and when we don’t, it’s more than willing to sit and do things that I want to do just because it cares. If you can’t tell by my eerie anthropomorphization of the thing, I’d have sex with it if it had a big enough hole and less electric insides.

My experience with the old Xbox was much like my snowshovel: the two or three times a year I needed it, it was great, but for the most part it was just taking up a lot of space. The 360 and I are going to be good friends. When I actually have money to spend on myself (damn you xmas!) I’ll be delving deeper into the Live Marketplace. For now it remains just out of my reach, full of things that I know I don’t need but also know that I need.

There’s a lot to explore and a lot of promise from the system. I’ll get into that more in a later picture post wherein I spend the better part of the day repelling invaders from with the planet’s core. Hominids rule!

This post brought to you by the Italics Group: Slanting for a New Tomorrow.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 9:38 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My car, parked outside the UPS store

What I’m Doing: Cradling my Dead Wii

The extension of my lower lip cannot hope to convey the soul-crushing sadness that I feel over the loss of my Wii. After a launch day of frantic searching spanning two states that turned up empty, I drove down to Manhattan to the Nintendo World Store and was able to snatch up a Wii after waiting in line with a couple hundred others. I not only bought a Wii but an extra controller, an extra nunchuk, a Classic controller, copies of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Excite Truck. I had already purchased Red Steel, Super Monkey Ball and Rayman: Raving Rabbids in anticipation of the launch and had subsequently purchased Elebits along with an additional two controllers and nunchuks. Oh, and $100 in Wii Points. My point is that my inner-fanboy had gotten the best of me and I had invested far too much money and time for it to die on me.

And die it did.

I should’ve seen it coming. It had died a few weeks earlier and I was somehow, through a mixture of hope, tears and blood sacrifice, able to resurrect it. I should’ve known that, like Jesus, it would only be around for so long after it rose from the grave.

To add insult to injury, it also took my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess with it. It lays trapped in its cold, lifeless core in this photo, taken outside my local UPS store.

permalink January 5, 2007 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My house, in the Dining Room (that’s a mirror, it’s not eternal)

What I’m Doing: Holding Bowser, just returning from the funeral of Lisa’s cousin Louis

Failure after a single day! A remarkable but wholly expected achievement!

I’m cutting myself some slack as I spent the bulk of the day at a funeral for my wife’s cousin Louis. He was only 28 and his family is understandably devastated by his loss. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the guy very well.

One would think that attending a funeral for a person who shares your name would be a sobering/profound experience but I didn’t even make the connection until it was pointed out to me. I’m named after my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born, and thus have seen my own name on a gravestone with no Ebenezer Scrooge-like revelation resulting from it. Several people thought that I was the one who had died when they received the phone call and even that fact didn’t do much to alter my conception of the world. I don’t know if this is a bad thing.

That’s our 8-month old chihuahua Bowser (named for the bad guy from Super Mario Bros. and not the guy from Sha Na Na) with me in the photo. He’s my proof that I was interested in accomplishing the 365 photos task as I scooped him up as soon as I walked in the door to take this photo in my dining room. In retrospect, it’s not much proof at all, but he is adorable.

permalink January 5, 2007 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My House, in the 2nd Bedroom (the “Office”)

What I’m Doing: SleepilyFollowing Through on an Idea

The first photo of my first project of the new year (not counting this blog). This was taken, literally, as an afterthought. As I was about to go to sleep I remembered that I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of myself every day for a year as has been all the rage among the internet denizens with far too much time on their hands. This was one of thousands of “good ideas” I have while showering or driving my car or performing other tasks where my wandering mind could (and eventually will) get me killed. These ideas usually are born, flourish and die of old age within my head only to be resurrected whenever I need a quick fix of potential-but-ultimately-unrealized creativity. This instance, however, was not creative or original in the least and therefore it makes perfect sense that I have resolved to bring this one to reality.

This photo was taken at the end of New Year’s Day. Lisa and I had thrown a party New Year’s Eve which saw us consuming copious amounts of ribs, candy and alcohol hidden among much younger tastes (Hawaiian Punch, Chocolate Chip Cookie flavoring, etc.) in a sort-of 21 Jumpstreet-style inebriation.We began our New Years Day in an equally healthy manner, joining our party guests (Deja, Reg, Jon, Becka, Sheepy [don't ask] and even Kristen and Ditter, who did not join us but showed up unknowingly) at Denny’s, where we all consumed various Slam-related breakfasts. After this we all returned to our respective caves to enjoy napping and non-nap-related lethargy.

These events taken together (the revelry and the bedtime remembrance) might help to explain why I look like I do in this photograph. It seems as if my facial features had snuck away when I went to bed and had returned suddenly in a haphazard manner when I suddenly awoke. Unfortunately, the right side of my smile did not return with the rest of the gang.

permalink January 3, 2007 at 10:56 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project