Heavy dude

Saw my friend Sean's band Pentagram the other night at House of Blues. Great show! I really liked one of the openers, Radio Moscow. Great guitarist/singer. Heavy, blues-based, early 70's rock with a real organic, even earthy sound.

Pentagram jammed as well. Their guitarist is killer also, but I think they should have turned him up a bit. Sean of course is still banging the drums like a madman. All nice guys, got to meet them and some guys from the other 3 opening bands as well. Bobby Liebling is also totally NUTS. Fried is more like it, like he's not firing on all cylinders.

Got a little VIP treatment and got to hang backstage.

I ended up buying 2 of Radio Moscow's albums. Great stuff. Check out the youtube clip for some live footage. I don't listento a lot of heavy music any more, so it was awesome seeing some live. Great crowd too. All black t-shirts, jeans, and boots. Long hair! Don't see many people with long hair in one place any more.

New tires on the road bike

Took them for a spin last night. Nice and smooth. Has to be the softer rubber. We did 6.5 miles around the ghetto, up to the beach, and back. Nice autumn day.

The Browns are back

...the sad/bad Browns that we've known for so long. We'll see what happens.

Happy Monday

Busy September

Rode some miles, jogged on the treadmill, went to a wedding, caught a good movie, got out to the islands, made some good food. I even biked into Vermilion and caught some of the Wooly Bear Parade.

My buddy Mike married off his youngest son last weekend. Nice reception.

I roasted these veggies and tossed them on top of some quinoa. Delicious!

Meanwhile...EBOLA!!!  Good thing I got a flu shot a few weeks ago.

Janis

I love Janis so much. Her voice gives me chills, every time. My favorite female vocalist. These 2 songs especially.

Craigslist find

Got a cheap-ish treadmill on CL today. $125 delivered. Works great. Did 15 min on it after dragging it to the basement. It got nice and chilly this weekend so it couldn't come at a better time. I was thinking of joining a fitness center for $25/month for the winter months (mid-Sept to early May) where I can't ride outside. The cold air really gives me headaches when exerting myself, so this will pay for itself in 5 months. My goal is to do 3-5 workouts a week for 30-45 min each, between the treadmill and the bike trainer, which I tinkered around with today and got centered/balanced very well. WTF?? It's Sat night and I'm home watching sports and blogging about treadmills.

Bike pics

Just thought I'd throw these up...also went to see Colin Dussault last weekend. Still sounds great but he looks really bad. Sickly bad.

Oh yeah...PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean?

I'm melting away

Now I'm having trouble gaining weight. I have started taking a tbl of coconut oil every day and it's supposed to burn fat, so who knows. I'm now so used to eating light that overeating is almost painful. 2000 calories a day is now a LOT.

Got some new tires for my hybrid bike, they ride nice and smooth! I only put 4 miles on them today with a run to the grocery store but they seem nice and comfy, although with the deeper tread they may slow me down a bit. I just need the puncture resistance more around these ghetto streets filled with glass and the bones of dead babies. 

Happy September...200+ miles in August!

Got some miles in on the bike, not to mention some walking and softball.

I'm definitely UNDER my goal weight. Got blood results back from doc a few days ago and my cholesterol is down to 240 from 310-ish. I guess my B12 and D are low so I am taking a supplement for those but everything else looks good!

Yeah

This is pretty much how it went..

Feeling good!

I'm now actually below my target weight. I Was at 171 lbs this morning, even after a huge dinner last night, though it did have a lot of veggies in it. I biked 16.4 miles after work as well, in 90º heat. Put in 45 miles last Saturday...rode into Rocky River via Lake Rd, had lunch, and biked back.

The Jack White concert in Toronto was phenomenal. Probably the best guitarist I've ever seen, even after seeing Page several times, Clapton, Santana, Iommi, Perry, etc. TOR is also a fantastic town. Completely modern with a developed lakefront, lots of parks, and a big cycling community, which is very cool considering their weather is about as bad as ours. I was amazed at all the new construction, and most of it is high-rise apartments in the downtown area. So many people living in the heart of the city.

So my cousin got into a life-threatening accident in late July. Had a seizure while driving and drove into a house. Broke his back. Was in ICU for 10 days. He's laid up at home right now. We're doing what we can to help him out.

School is back in session and as always, my job SUCKS right now. It's so disheartening to be so busy. People get pissed off because it takes too long for us to get to their issues, but we just got 100+ PCs delivered very late in the summer, so we're still installing those, and one building is an absolute clusterfuck after some construction/remodeling. Of course, they never planned for network cabling or anything, so I still have wires running down walls in all of these new rooms. Pretty typical.

Food porn: baked ziti with the meat gravy!

A new record!

Trying to get to 172. If I can stay there, that would be cool. Problem is, as soon as I start eating like a normal human again, I'll likely puff back up. And I'm dying for some chicken paprikas. 

Been hitting the bike pretty good. I even did 30 min yesterday on the trainer because it was cold and rainy. Here are a few pics from a couple rides. Getting to the top of that bridge is always fun. From home, I can do the bridge and back in about 15 min and it's still a decent workout. 

Bottom pic is paella. Turned out great. 

Lowest weight in almost 20 years (?) ...I think.

It's been a long time since I weighed 176 lbs. Probably close to 20 years. When I got an IT/desk job where I sit a lot, I started packing on the pounds. Then I quit smoking 7 years ago and it got even worse. I used to WANT to weigh more, but that's when I was around 160 and thin as a rail. Even at 176, I still have a bit of a gut, though it's not nearly as noticeable as it was several months ago. My goal was 177 lbs, but I am thinking 170 should be OK, and if I can tighten up my abs and arms, 180 isn't terrible either. Just need to maintain where I am and keep up the healthier eating and exercise. I am worried about the cold weather months, since I can't bike 100 miles/month in the snow. Need to figure it out and keep fit. I have biked 200 miles since 5/1.

Fit and trim again

I'm down 27 pounds! Caprice has lost over 30. We've been eating so much better and getting lots of exercise. I biked 13 times in June, and I've been walking to lunch a few times a week, as well as keeping a drawer full of canned healthy soups and Triscuits in the office.

Feeling good again. Just need to flatten this gut out a bit more. My legs look great from all the biking but my upper body still needs work. I also cannot seem to get down into the 170's. Last time for that was the week my dad died, which was 4 years ago today.   :(  Still think about him every day.

I've been studying the ITIL Foundation handbook, I want to get certified to keep my value up at work, and get better organized at the same time. There's a lot of jargon and mumbo jumbo but there are concepts I really understand.

Enjoy some food porn! Chicken with light lemon/garlic/oil/wine sauce over cous cous, and my first attempt at jerk chicken, which was amazing!

That's also what 105 Chromebooks look like. I got them configured and loaded with software all from the Google Apps admin console. Cool stuff. I even got myself a Chromebook for home after selling off the cracked Surface RT. The battery life is crazy, like 7-8 hours.

New website for side projects

Put this together over the weekend. Hoping to expand my side work to earn some extra cash. Stop by, check it out, and then pay me to fix your stuff.

http://www.lake-effect.squarespace.com/

I've also been sick again for about a week now. Gotta love it. Went to doc, got antibiotics.

I have to do this

http://www.keylargobike.com/Florida-Keys-Photo-Gallery.html 

I'd take 2 days to bike it all.

Easter and better weather

Finally some decent weather! It hit 78 today, Got out on the bike a couple times over the last 10 days for a little over 20 miles.

Caprice is taking a spin class once a week and I joined her last Thursday. That was a tough workout! The girl running it was a bit like a drill instructor, but kept us motivated. I wouldn't mind doing it a couple times a month if the weather sucks but real bike rides are much more fun. Went out to the Brew Market on Bagley afterward to meet Hip, TK, BC, Crina. Turns out BC knows Greg Zola, a guy I worked with at the Bomb Group 25 years ago. Check out the pic of the fish tank they had there.

Caprice is killing it on the diet and exercise lately! She's lost a bunch of weight and is eating "clean" and healthy. I'm trying but it's going a bit slower.

Had a great Easter weekend. We spent Saturday cooking and cleaning, and had brunch on Sunday for about 10 of us. Everything turned out great. We had a TON of food.

Here's a few pics, and a video of Pup going nuts trying to eat water from the hose.

No love in recent tourney

Played a $140 tourney at Marc S' place over the weekend. Played solid for 2 hours, and made a couple of blunders to bust out. Made a horrible call on my last hand, but Crazy Joe still made a terrible preflop call with bad cards and got lucky, and I flopped top-top.

Team tourney is coming up. Gotta be ready.

Got out for a bike ride this weekend, did 11 miles. MAP

Of course, we got 2 inches of snow last night. It was 76 degrees 2 days ago.  I even busted out the sandals. Mother Nature can suck it.

Hooked up my cousin with an LCD TV that I got on CL for $40. Great TV...32", a little old and the remote doesn't work the best, but it beats what he had.

More pics from CHI Town...and food porn

Enjoy...