Gully's Adventures

The Plan: Part A

2012-02-14T18:16:00.001-08:00

So, how am I going to lose 40 pounds in 6 months?

I sat down and broke my goal into smaller, trackable mini-goals. It breaks down to about 7 pounds per month, which is between 1 and 2 pounds per week. That's pretty manageable, right? Then I took a look at what I eat, and my lifestyle, and identified some changeable things. First, what I eat:

I have a bowl of cereal in the morning. My favorites are Cinnamon Life and frosted Mini Wheats. Sugar, sugar, sugar. For lunch I eat a bowl of soup and a salad from the cafeteria at school. Sometimes I get some extras like french fries. My lunch time is 10:30. I get home at 5:30. As you can imagine, I'm starving when I get here, and I tend to snarf down way too much dinner. So, I am making some changes:

For breakfast, 2 hard boiled eggs, a slice of wheat toast with peanut butter, and a glass of chocolate milk. For lunch, I'll continue with the soup and salad thing, but I bought some fat free dressing today to take the place of the ranch that they give me. I'll also cut out the little extras that I like to buy when I'm hungry. Now, I don't like to deprive myself of yummy food, and so I didn't want to say "I won't eat any of ______." I decided for dinner, I'll eat whatever we have, but keep it to one reasonable portion and no more. And, in spite of what I just said about not depriving myself, I'm cutting out desserts.

So there's half of the puzzle. The other half is exercise, but I'll write about that tomorrow.

Thanks to those who have commented already! I appreciate your support!

Kilimanjaro Project

2012-02-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

Hi folks! I'm getting back into the blogging thing in the hopes that it will keep me on track. I had an idea recently, and I'm hoping you'll support me in it.

First, some background.

When I was about 13, I passed 180 pounds. When I was about 15, I passed 190 pounds. I hovered at 195 until I graduated from high school and then I went up to 200 pounds. Then I did the college thing and the teaching thing and I maxed out at 230 pounds last year. I've gotten myself down to 215, but I'm still pretty overweight. I want to get back to 180 pounds: 35 pounds less than what I weigh now. And I want to do it by June. Just so you know, I've tried to get rid of the extra weight many times, but I've only succeeded in getting below 200 once.

Now, my life: I am a music teacher, currently producing a musical for the school. That means that I leave home at 7:00 AM and get back home at about 5:45 PM, with no breaks when I can go for a walk or work out. I am a school board member in the middle of The Budget Season From Hell. (Thank you, Governor Cuomo) I am a volunteer firefighter, and I was recently asked to be an Assistant Scoutmaster. So, I'm busy.

I want to prove that even being very busy, a guy like me can work off his gut through watching what he eats and finding time to exercise. Today I started a new routine that should help me shed some pounds. I am going to post on this blog regularly so that I have someone to be accountable to. That means that I need you to check in regularly and support me by commenting and encouraging. I'm calling this the Kilimanjaro Project. There are many things that I want to do that I can't because of my belly. Rock climbing, ice climbing, running, etc. Carrying an extra 40 pounds makes any task harder. One of my biggest goals is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I figure losing 40 pounds is the first step on the way to climbing that mountain.

So check in and keep me honest and let's see what I can do.

House remodel

2010-01-08T16:48:00.000-08:00

My plan was to build new walls for the second floor of the house while the roof was still on, then take off the roof, erect the walls, and put the roof back on. Then I found that the 2nd floor was so uneven and poorly constructed that we would have to take the whole floor up and replace it before the walls were built. Since the roof was sitting on the floors, it had to come off first. Here's how the second floor looked before we got started:

Sadly, you can't see how the floor goes up and down with each floor joist.

So, the roof came off:

First the tin,

Then the rafters. That's what's all stacked up there.

And the floor was replaced.

We had wonderfully sunny weather through all of this. In fact, Jamie's head was burned to a crisp. As soon as the floor was redone, we started on the walls, one or even half of one at a time. Once the walls were up, we built the floor for the 3rd floor and then put the roof back on. However, long about the time that the second wall went up, it started to rain. And rain. And rain. Every day it rained. We bought a ginormous tarp that quickly tore and the rain came through. A lot. We had to set up some pretty creative ways to keep the water from running straight down into the sheetrock and insulation downstairs. More on this later.

Still alive

2010-01-08T16:45:00.001-08:00

So, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. Life has been a little bit crazy. Here's what happened since April. We bought the house and started MAJOR renovations. Things snowballed a bit, and we're still working on the remodel. I got a job teaching 7-12 choral music at Norwood Norfolk High School. We got pregnant and had a baby. I think that's about it. I'll try to post more details on the various topics.

Diaper Woes

2009-03-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

The other day I was sitting here at the computer when Truman came up and pulled on my sleeve. I asked, "What's up, Bub?" and he pulled up on his pajamas and grunted. He hates to have his pants legs down to his feet, so I thought maybe that was bothering him, but he was wearing footy pajamas. I pulled up on them and asked if that was better, but he pulled and grunted again. I decided it must be he wanted different clothes on so I went to change him. Upon unzipping his pajamas I found that the right side of his diaper had come undone. It was hanging down around his left knee. It was absolutely soaked and he had also peed in his pajamas, so it had all run down into the feet. Both of us said, "eeewww!" and I went and plopped him in the bathtub.

Speaking of which, I just remembered that he was stinky while I was eating lunch. Bathtime!

(He went through a hands-down-the-back-of-his-diaper stage. Here's a picture, because everyone needs some baby cheeks to brighten their day.)

2009-02-23T12:25:00.001-08:00

Just a quick word of explanation about my profile picture. My brother Derek snapped this picture of me during our Christmas festivities. I think it's my favorite picture of me now. It says to me, "Guy Noir, private eye," or "Sing it again, Sam."

2009-02-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, Nichelle and I are in the process of buying a new house. We're getting a home built by an Amish fellow named Joe about 3 years ago. It's right across the road from Mom and Dad and it has about 27 acres with it. We're really excited and really nervous! We went to take measurements of it the other day and discovered some things that had changed since the last time that we saw it. Joe had stuffed insulation around a door and some windows, and one closed window had a breeze coming through it. There was a crack in some sheetrock, and the floor slopes. The upstairs is unfinished, but we discovered that it's worse than we thought. So that made us very nervous indeed.

However, a couple of days later we had a lot of fun. On Saturday we went to a building supplies auction in Potsdam. We got a complete set of kitchen cabinets, granite countertop, bathroom sink and toilet, a new front door, and a chainsaw for about $4,000. We were extremely fortunate in that my student loans came in at the beginning of the week and our tax return came in in the middle of the week so we were able to afford it all. So the discouragement of the less-than-ideal condition of the home was alleviated somewhat by the excitement of the deals we found. I think that had we bought everything at retail value it would have come to about $9,000.

So, it looks like we'll redo the floors on the first floor and bring in our new kitchen, and we'll see where we go from there.

Here's a photo of the house and barn from half way to the road. It's set really far back, which we love.

Of course, I'll have to buy a Jeep with a plow in order to keep the driveway open in the winter. Right?

Handsome Man

2009-02-10T18:47:00.001-08:00

The other day Truman and I were hanging out at the house when he found my sunglasses. He put them on and started posing, so I snapped some shots. He was really hamming it up for the camera. Unfortunately, I think that was the last time I saw my sunglasses.

3 Brothers Campout

2009-02-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

So last weekend we had our annual 3 brothers campout. We try to get in a winter camping trip each year, and sometimes bring along some guests. This year we planned on climbing Hough peak down near Schroon Lake and we brought our cousin Cam and our nephew Trenton. We went in at Elk Lake and camped Friday night. Then on Saturday we started for Hough. There were about 18 inches of fresh powder and the trail was pretty much unbroken. We had snowshoes, but they don't make you float on top! Hough is a trailess peak, but we hoped to find tracks of some sort indicating a path. We didn't find anything until we got to the trail for the next peak, Dix. So we started up Dix figuring we'd cross over to Hough part way up. It was ridiculously difficult. The snow was up to our knees climbing and whoever was breaking trail would have to wade through carrying a pile of snow on their snowshoe with each step. We couldn't see a good spot to split off toward Hough, so we decided to just climb Dix. By 4:00 our view of the top looked like this:

We figured it would take at least another hour to get to the top and since Trenton and I were the only ones who hadn't gotten Dix already, we agreed to turn around. By the way, the view of our original destination from our turnaround point looked like this:

And here we are standing there looking across the valley at Hough. That's Trenton, Cam, Derek, and Bryan from back to front.

So, we turned back somewhat dissapointed, but by the time we got back to camp at 8:30, I don't think that any of us really regretted turning back. We camped another night and then headed for home Sunday morning.

I was quite impressed by how well Trenton did. This was his first Brothers campout and he pushed through admirably. I remember on my first trip I made it through ok, but I complained a lot more than Trenton did and I didn't know what to do with myself.

I've come to the conclusion that most of the difficulty with winter camping is psychological. You have to be able to tell yourself that you will eventually arrive at your destination. You have to convince yourself to take off your sweaty clothes and put on dry clothes that have been sitting in the 5 degree cold all day. You have to understand that a quick burst of shivering and suffering now can lead to blissful warmth a few hours from now.

Tonight I was unpacking and I emptied my pack of everything but my tent and then handed it to Nichelle to heft. It was still pretty heavy. She said that she didn't know why I did that to myself. The only explanation that I could give was to be able to say that I can do it. To say, "I can load up this pack and carry it for 5 miles through the snow and sleep out in the cold and survive for 2 days and then carry it back." The real clincher is knowing that there are people who can't, and that someday I won't be able to. In the meantime, by gully, I'm going to keep testing myself - just to make sure.

A couple of particularly pretty spots in the woods on the hike out.

Welcome

2009-01-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new blog! Soon to come: Pictures, musings, stories, and more!