50

Hi..this is me...I'm 50.. but that's not what this is about.. A lot of my friends are turning 50 right now.. old school mates even newer friends..but still that's not what this is about..

It is about 50 though..

Not 50 cents in pennies..

or 50 cents in quarters..
or fitty centI like the cross and the gun together.. I think it's very american..

and

It's not about 50 dollars for that matter..

It's not about guns..like the one 50 cent has in his pic..or guns like....

Like this 50 cal machine gun..

or the 50 cal shells that go in to it.

Now that's big!!

It's about 50 lbs

50 lbs looks like this...

50 lbs of dog food....

50 lbs of beans

50 lbs of walnuts

50 lbs of pork ribs.. that's a lot of pork ribs...

This is almost 50 lbs... it's 40 lbs.. they didn't have 50 lb dumbells...but it was heavy.

or 2 of these weigh 50 lbs..

or 10 of these..

This is Foxy.. she belongs to my friends Cory and Marlene.. Marlene says she weighs almost 50 lbs. She's kinda fat..

This kid lives in a neighborhood near one of my friends... he weighs about 50 lbs. Wow...

Imagine 400 boxes of these goldfish... that's 50 lbs.. LOL!


Do you see where I'm going with this yet????

This is what 50 lbs looks like on my belt (actually..off my belt).... I used to be on the last notch on the very end of the belt. Now there are 5 holes out there beyond my buckle.

On Jan 30th. I weighed 360 lbs.

Today I weighed 310 lbs. (actually 308.5) but I'm rounding up for impact... 51.5 is so much harder to get your head around...

I started off just eating these most of the time. I also just eat smaller portions. I'm satisfied, I still get to enjoy different kinds of food. I have ice cream every once in a while. I have a beer or a margarita every now and then. I have not felt denied.. and I feel great. Once I got a little lighter I started riding my bicycle regularly. I usually ride 3-4 days a week and I walk a couple of days a week.

I have been down this road before but I'm hoping I can continue this long term because I enjoy the food and I really don't feel too denied. I still have little snacks now and then and I just try to choose wisely. But sometimes I don't and that's ok. In fact..spring break was a week when I didn't choose wiesly the whole time.. too many adult beverages and too many Chic-fil-a shakes..but still I'm at 50 lost now.

I have plans to hike the grand canyon in summer 2011 and I am feeling like I'd like to go snow skiing again.. or maybe better yet snowboarding!! (hint hint nudge nudge Mike O) I want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane one day as well. When I get below 270.. the parachute thing becomes a real possibility.

I'm actually beginning to feel like I'd like to put together some kind of bucket list.. but not because I'll feel like my life is lacking if I don't complete them..just for some focus on some things that would be fun to do. I might put that together in a future blog but as for now.. I'm thankful to my God for giving me the desire to have a positive impact on my health... for giving me the avenue to get healthy in a not to painful way (bicycle)...and for my wife who is now walking daily and eating better too....what a great gift to have the support of a spouse in this. I also want to let you know there are a couple of people who have inspired me to make this happen too. Cory, Phil, Clay and Jessie. They really don't know it but it's true. Maybe they know now. Thanks.

I didn't eat any of this..

Brownies were made earlier this week.. I had none of them..I promise! No... really!!

345

Well.. feeling pretty good... seem to have more energy. Daylight savings time didn't have a huge impact on me.. had more energy dealing with that God forsaken event than I have in recent years. My new pants (a couple of months old..that's new for me) have little buttons on the side.. you can take them up one button on each side. I have taken both of those buttons up the one notch that is on there and they are still very loose.

Hoping that I can be at least to 342 by spring break and payday. That would be 20 pounds off and a nice place to have a celebratory cheater meal. We're hanging around Lufkin next weekend and I'll be at church Sunday morning.. then we're sending Hannah off to Europe early Sunday afternoon..then Donna, Austin, and I are off to downtown Houston. Staying at The Inn at the Ball Park just to try and experience downtown Houston like we have done New York.. find some neat downtown restaurants, go to the zoo, museum, Austin wants to go to The Galleria.. somewhere in there I plan to be bad.. but.. not too much.. I'm really enjoying how I feel and enjoying how my clothes are fitting me. I have one more notch on my new belt then I may be shopping for another new belt. Yeah!!

Those of you who follow me on twitter have probably noticed that my usual 2 x Tuesday (Domino's Pizza) with a Shiner Bock has stopped... I might very well partake in a pizza and some beer.. well some Bock or other dark beer.. while on vacation. I do find God in that little combination!

More to come..

My Friday.. a little late

My Friday was a good day.. nothing really exciting happened but here is a brief run through..





Came to work and I think since we had just had some people visiting our terminal from corporate everyone was a little wired. Everyone was laughing and cutting up and doing our normal "hatin" on each other. We also have one particular member of our staff who loves to get others off of their train of thought and is always hijacking conversations....he was in rare form this Friday.





Later had a very good staff meeting although we didn't bring in Chick-fil-a this time. One of my people had made some awesome chicken spaghetti the night before and she brought the left overs and it was awesome!!! very spicy too!!





Spent the afternoon doing some random tasks and planning music for youth on Sunday night...





I realize I have not been keeping up my set lists.. sorry about that.. I will do better this week.. I think.





Wrapped up the day and met my bride at the house and we headed to .... yes... finally....

Went through the drive through.. drove to the stadium and did some tailgating and went to the LP-John Tyler game. Oh and who are you going to pull for Todd? Lee? JT? or LP? I just thought I'd ask again in case someone missed your post.










Friend of mine (Scott Skelton) took this pic at the game while he was shooting game shots and pics of the band and pride.





LP was underwhelming, but we got the W.





Off to the house and off to bed. Had a busy Saturday ahead...

McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich vs The Chick-fil-a Sandwich

Howdy all...Today I finally taste tested the McDonald's chicken sandwich...but first some history..

I can still remember when the only Chick-fil-a I knew about was in that mall in Houston we went to a couple of times a year. It was always a really cool treat to take part in the delicious chicken they served at that little mall storefront. It was one of the few fast food meals my dad took part in and looked forward to. I guess that's really the reason this food place has such a special place deep down in my soul.

Chick-fil-a is really good. I love the chicken sandwich.. I love their grilled chicken salad... I love their nuggets. I love to buy a nugget tray and bring it in for my weekly staff meeting at the un-named fortune 500 transportation company I work for. I HATE their shakes..because they are so good..

Am I in love with Chick-fil-a? Not really... There are other real restaurants that I really "love" but the thing I like about Chick-fil-a is that it is fast food and it's aways very good. The people are always super friendly, well dressed, neat and tidy. The facility is always pristine. So many positives for a fast food place so it's a good solid choice. The restaurant is also a ritual for me and Donna after band practice (if we don't make it to mid week peak).

Sooo....finally to the alternative.


The McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. First of all..it was about a third smaller than the Chick-fil-a sandwich so when I took it out I was a little taken by the size. I didn't compare prices so I don't know what the "value" is but I just know what I'm used to and that wasn't it. Presentation=strike one

The pickle.. the chick-fil-a sandwich has one.. I used to take it off when I was a kid but now it is part of the sandwich experience. It's usually soft and pretty tart. You know it's there from the flavor.

The McD sandwich has a whole bun covered with pickles.. 3 of them..and they are not as sour as the cfa sandwich pickle.. also..they are almost like gummie pickles.. almost crisp but not quite..a little hard, a little soft, a little rubbery, but a weak pickle. Sorry... Pickle= strike two

The chicken itself had a good texture and consistency and the crust was nice but there was little to no flavor..I never realize that cfa chicken was seasoned but it obviously has some seasoning on it because it was missing from the McD sandwich.. chicken=strike three.

the catcher missed the ball on a swinging third strike so the runner runs to first but....

The bread.. I'll tell you that I was never really overwhelmed by the cfa sandwich bun..it was a tool that held the chicken..it was an effective tool in that it didn't detract from the experience. The bread was fine... the McD sandwich??? As I bit in to the bun it was like the bread crust layer peeled off the bread and wrapped itself around my teeth like some adhesive bread coat...and I mean it stuck to my teeth. I had to work it off with my tongue. That was really weird. Bun??=thrown out at first...the sandwich is out.

I guess I'd eat another if I had a chicken sandwich jones on a road trip and the only place to eat at was McD's but usually if I'm stuck with McD's I'm gonna go for their crown jewel the big mac...

I really like Chick-fil-a.

God is good!

My Friday...

Started off very early at La Unica.. picking up 80 burritos to bring it to work.. It was time to have a package handlers appreciation breakfast but most of my package handlers don't have schedules that allow me to take them to breakfast after the morning sort.. or to lunch. So I brought them breakfast burritos..




It was also National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. So for all the hard work that my drivers do I wanted to recognize them and I brought them breakfast in as well.














I got my morning reports done. Had a couple of conference calls...one of which focused on the Tropical storm activity headed our way. Fun fun fun...

Had lunch with my son at Chen's..bought some stuff for the church at Sound Tech, cashed my check and went back to the place that pays my bills.

Got some work done and did some auto insurance shopping as well.

Wrapped up the day and did a couple of quick look arounds at Lowe's and Home Depot for some potential weekend project work then headed home to spend the evening with my son Austin celebrating..












Where we watched




















12 wasn't on the list but we watched it anyway because it was in sequence..











I also made some facebook flair for Emily Grimes that looks like this..










I really didn't finish 12.. I was tired and went to bed after checking LDN.com to make sure the panthers had won...

It was a good day..spent some real quality time with my son, we laughed and enjoyed the movies.. we made food and ate together..we laughed at Italian when we saw and remembered that spiderman was on the sidewalk when the they blew the street and dropped the armored car in to the subway tunnel..

It was a very good Friday.

God is good.

A comment about Neapolitan Ice Cream..

The following was actually my comment regarding Todd's blog post about Neapolitan Ice Cream...his post was in response to my request on his skribit widget.. After posting it I realized I should have blogged this topic myself.. so here it is.


OK, when I was a kid..we didn't buy real ice cream. We didn't make enough money to buy that stuff. We bought mellorine. From wikipedia... Mellorine is a lower cost alternative to ice cream, wherein other fats are used instead of butterfat. It can be made out of both animal fat and vegetable fat.

Mellorine is produced by freezing, while stirring a pasteurized mix of milk-derived nonfat solids and animal or vegetable fat (or both). Afterwards, it is sweetened with a carbohydrate sweetener and the addition of flavouring ingredients.

MMMmmmmm..... anyway.

Every once in a while we would get Neapolitan mellorine..that's a mouth full.. and I have to say, that because I didn't know any better, I enjoyed this frozen delight. (Mellorine that is) In a way I do not get real excited about Neapolitan because when I was young I didn't like anything but chocolate but it always seemed to me that the chocolate in the neapolitan was very intense. It seemed super chocolaty and super sweet..it was almost like special dark candy kind of chocolate...so with that I was excited when I saw it in the freezer...it was way better than the chocolate in the chocolate mellorine container.

Negative regarding this?.. Dad insisted that we eat all three flavors.. can't eat all the choc and leave the other two flavors. Must dip across the colors and keep it even.

So.. I would eat the strawberry first.. my least favorite.. then the vanilla.. then the awesome chocolaty feast of neapolitan mellorine chocolate.

Yeah baby!!

As for strawberry now?? I love Blue Bell strawberry for the same reason Todd does NOT like strawberry. I mean it's like they dump a tub of strawberries in there and mix em up. Love it.

I feel the same way Todd does about Blue Bell's "Great Divide" as I do enjoy a mix of vanilla and choc but then my wife does not have the same philosophy as to why the product was made. She feels it was created for options. I can have chocolate or I can have vanilla... NOOO it's for the purposeful combination of the two flavors ... and should be dipped across the flavors (a la my dad) and not dug out of one side...taking all the chocolate leaving some poor unexpecting fool with a pile of vanilla on one side of the bucket. You have to love family dynamics..

I think we have bought 3 containers of Neapolitan ice cream in the near 25 years we have been married. Not something we think about much but for some reason this thing popped in my head when the Skribit was up..kinda like the stay puft marshmallow man in Ghostbusters..