PhatAlba

So late this spring I tried to get back into running. When I was younger, I really enjoyed running and actually used to run 3-5 miles on my own just to run.

I found running to be an outlet for my busy mind. As you can tell by my writing, I don’t hold thoughts well as my mind is usually racing from thought to thought. When I run it isn’t much different as I first thought, but as I get into my groove, I find my thoughts begin to disappear and I can focus on one thing. Right now that one thing is reaching my goal of making it 2.5 miles of jogging w/o stopping.

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It was an exciting week. One of my sites gained some great notoriety the other day as it was featured on several big blogs. My favorite place to see a link to my site was on www.woot.com. This is one of my favorite sites as it is and the fact that they picked up on my site just made my week.

All of the hoopla is over now though and traffic to my site have dwindled almost back to normal. It was a great ride while it lasted. It has even given me some inspiration for another single purpose web site, but we will have to see how that pans out. Until then … www.sadtrombone.com

According to published reports, more than 130 million households will be receiving their share of over 168 billion dollar economic stimulus plan this year.

How most people spend their money is being debated by the economist, but the targeted recipients historically will not use all of the funds to pay off debt, but instead will use it to purchase more goods and services.

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I have this bet going with my wife this spring. She has been on and off the weight watchers plan more times in the last few years the Britney, Lindsay and Paris have showed their vajayjay. It is really a win win if you ask me, but thankfully she never reads my blog, and we won’t tell her that I think her thinner makes me a winner too… will we!

The bet is that if she loses another 10 pounds and I lose 15 pounds before June, we are going to take a little trip away from the kids. I tried to think romantic so I told her I was thinking about renting a room for a few days at a nice hotel somewhere between Dilworth and the Twin Cities. Her response to me was that if I did that we could “Go all the way!” I guess that means she wants me to drive to the cities. [rimshot here]

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Ok, so a few weeks ago, a co-worker sent me a link to www.instantrimshot.com and I had a blast with it at work. We would use to end about every other sentence to make it funny. As we became more desperate to find something to use the rim shot for, we came up with some extremely LAME punch lines.

So with the help of my co-workers I was able to find that “wah wah waaah” sound and found that it is referred to as the “sad trombone”. Wanting to share all of this with the world I went and purchased the domain name www.sadtrombone.com and posted the sound. It is a great partner for the rim shot.

You be the judge!

www.sadtrombone.com

My baby sister is finally gonna get hitched. She just recently got engaged and the couple has decided to get married soon. I mean very soon. Beginning of May soon.

Just another motivational factor for losing some more weight. Of course I have only lost 6 pounds in the last two weeks. Funny that it only took about five days to gain close to ten pounds but takes three times or more longer to lose the same amount.

Well, the one good thing about this diet is I hope to be able to save a little money with the lunches I am not eating to go and get a nice gift for the bride and groom. I am a practicle person so probably will get them a toaster

On the fitness front, I purchased a Wii the other day and might start bloging about some of my Wii adventures with the family. It can definitely give a work out. My son and I played a game of baseball and he was winded and sweating when we were done.

Before Christmas, I caught a nasty bug that plagued me for a week and a half or so. During those days, I had no appetite for real food and the only thing that seemed to appeal to me was soup. So I drank lots of water, ate little and craved soup. Before I knew it, I lost 10 pounds.

I don’t believe that is anyway to lose weight, but it worked… that is until Christmas. During the Christmas break I went home to “Grandma’s” house and it was a non-stop eating orgy. We had breakfast followed by snacks between breakfast and lunch, followed by lunch followed by snacks between lunch and dinner, followed by dinner AND dessert and topped off with snacks after dinner.

The bad new is when I got back, I had almost gained all 10 pounds back. So back to healthy eating I go. I don’t know how long it has been since I had a good carbonated beverage, but I hope I NEVER go back to drinking several soda’s a day like I used too.

Water, coffee and cold tea are my choices through the day and they seem to make a dramatic difference. I enjoy my coffee with some toast in the AM and maybe another cup of joe during the morning hours of work. Then I drink water or some instant Lipton diet green tea for the remainder of the day. I know I probably still don’t get the amount of water recommended during the day, but it really starts to affect me about 16:00 CST as the trips to relieve myself come frequently and without much warning.

I have more motivation for dieting now this year as well. I purchased a truck and have a nice little payment each month on it, so I need to cut some expenses and my “dining out” expense had gotten out of hand. My wife has been gracious enough to purchase some healthy lunch alternatives and I have been packing them more often in stead of heading out of the office for lunch.

Today I get to enjoy some of those Tamales we made last month (have to eat them before they go bad :))

Saturday morning the wife packed the kids and we braved the weather for our long Journey to Kenmare, ND. The trip was good and other then a very strong Northwest wind the weather was cooperative. Of course the strong wind and truck loaded with goodies resulted in only 14 mpg on the way up. It as a very strong wind though, so good chance we will have better mileage on the way back.

We spent Saturday evening visiting with the family and on Sunday we went to a late morning church service in Trinity Lutheran Church in Tolley, ND. It was really great to see a full church as the Sunday School children put on the service. We came back and I was able to watch football all day. Of course my Dolphins lost their game to New England which I should have expected, but for some reason I thought they would make a game of it. In the evening we went out to Coulee to visit with the Kings as most of them were back to spend Christmas together. We were only out there a few hours, but I know I could have stayed until the early morning and visited. We promised to visit Paul and Kim on our next trip down to the Minneapolis area.

We made it back home to see the Redskins pull away from the Vikings in the fourth quarter. It was a bad day for my football teams, but a good day for visiting family.

Today is Christmas Eve and all the children are excited to open their gifts and I am excited to see their face when they do. I have to finish charging my phone so I can make all my phone calls this evening to wish our family a Merry Christmas.

Of course all of this is related to the blog because I don’t think I have stopped eating since I walked in the door to Grandma’s house. It will take a lot of work to get all of this weight off

Last year we didn’t make Tamale’s and did we ever get crap for it. I guess everybody likes my “Minnesota” Tamale’s.

Today is Tamale Day in the Alba home. The kids are off with Christmas Church program practice and we are going to be hard at work cooking all day. Oh what fun.

OK, this has to be one of the most amazing things I have ever seen with an image. When I first saw this, I didn’t even realize that they had resized the images in the manner in which they did. I am a true believer in seam carving.