When I do it, I enjoy it, but then other projects come and go and before I know it I haven’t written anything in months. Rather than pretend that I’m going to blog for real reals, I don’t really see any point in pretending that I’m going to come back at any regular interval and update the site.

I’m really excited about some other projects I’m currently working on. I’ve been writing more fiction and writing more music than I have in the past 15 years. I have connected with people I’m not related to in a more significant way than I have since high school. My wife and I are closer than we’ve ever been (which I didn’t think was possible).. but other parts of my life are slipping.

There are still only 24 hours in every day.. and sadly I spend at least 3 of those strapped into my car every work day getting to work and back. That time is excellent for podcast listening, but not for just about anything else given the concentration needed.

At the beginning of the year I made a list of all of the ways I spend my personal time and started making some changes. I created a very strict schedule of activities which I started off well with and slowly let slip. This does not surprise me.

So, I’m working on version 2.0. The two most significant time sucks that took a hit last time were TV and video game time. I went from following two dozen tv shows to maybe a dozen. Of course, they’re staggered across different seasons, so while its a lot, its not quite as bad as it sounds. I also went from playing games from about five nights a week to two.

TV is still a significant time sink so I’m dropping to just 4 shows that I don’t think I can live without. That ends up being about 45 episodes per year, or about 45 minutes of television a week. Not counting 30 minutes of brain rot at the end of each day which isn’t really consumed but is more of a lullaby. This generally takes the form of Seinfeld reruns or Family Guy.

Game probably won’t change for now. What will change, however, is consumption of other media. I’m significantly reducing the number of blogs that I’m following and the number of discussion forums that I’m frequenting.

All of this, presumably, will give me the time to pursue the projects that I find the most fulfilling. Unfortunately, updating my own blog isn’t one of them. While I like the romantic thought of having a place to hold my memoirs and review in future years to remind me of where my mind is at — the truth is that I’ve NEVER looked back over blog posts that I wrote 5-10 years ago, so I don’t see what the point is.

I suppose it makes sense if friends and family follow the information, but it’s so difficult to know if that’s happening, and few do the same, so… there’s a loop that is left open, and time and energy goes spilling out.

As the man once said “and that’s all I have to say about that.”

There is a collection being taken for him, both to help with his expenses and to also show our love and condolences. Here is the link if you’d like to contribute. Donations for C.A. Sizemore.

An acquaintance came home this morning to find his wife had passed away. It’s not anyone you would know, so no need for you to worry about who it is.

I’m passing on this news about an anonymous couple to you, in the hopes that you will take a moment to share your feelings with your loved ones and friends.

Whether family, long-time friends, or new friends you all hold a special place in my heart and I’m grateful to have you in my life.

Feel free to share this with your friends, I can think of nothing better to honor Kelly than for love being shared today.

Love today.

The Tribe is made up of writers, musicians, painters, photographers, hackers, and many other disciplines. For most of us, our creative side is not applied as part of our “day jobs”. And perhaps we’ve lapsed in our art, have never created something tangible, or don’t consider ourselves “artists” however we all have a creative spirit, similar sensibilities, and similar tastes.

Whenever possible portions of the Tribe try to come together in meat-space, which usually occurs at sci-fi/fantasy/literary/media/tech conventions. I’ve never been able to attend such a gathering, but I have met a few members of the Tribe over the past 9 months.

This last weekend Mur Lafferty, her husband Jim Van Verth, and their daughter The Pink Tornado were coming to the DC area and I was able to attend a gathering at the Dogfish Head brewery and restaurant. I’ll have a complete listing of those in attendance with links and some pictures below.

This was my first time to a DFH, though I’ve enjoyed some of their beers purchased at a Total Wine near our home. As expected, the beers were excellent drawn from a keg. The food was quite good as well, however it was rather expensive. My burger, fries, and two beers came to almost $40 after tax and tip.

Don’t get me wrong – the food and drink were well worth the quality – however what made the afternoon was the company! I started the festivities off when Scott and Mae Breakall came to my house to carpool to the restaurant. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Viv couldn’t accompany us We headed up to the restaurant and met everybody else, having laid claim to an entire section of the second floor.

Meeting these people that I’ve spent so much time corresponding with through Twitter, chatting, voicemail, and recordings was such a treat! Everybody welcomed me with open arms and a huge smile. I felt immediately at home, and fell easily into conversation. My only regret is that I ended up spending most of the time at one table and didn’t get to spend as much time with many at the other table. This isn’t so bad because the people that I ate and laughed with were such a pleasure to be with and I know that I’ll have more time with everybody as con season progresses and we have more meet-ups.

Attendees included:

• Marc Bailey; host of Grailwolf’s Geek Life
• Heather Welliver; Marc’s wife and an amazing singer
• Scott Breakall, hacker and musician
• Mae Breakall, Scott’s wife; singer; and Executive Personal Assistant to Scott Sigler (go buy Infected – on shelves at your favorite bookstore)
• Dr. John Cmar, infectious disease Director person
• “Sci-Fi” Laura Burns, a bona-fide rocket scientist who works for NASA.
• Paul Fischer; host of the ADDCast and the Balticon Podcast
• Martha Holloway, Paul’s wife and producer for Dancing Cat Studios
• Brand Gamblin, host of the Calls For Cthulu Vidcast
• Allison (unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to get acquainted and I’m not sure what projects she’s associated with)
• Paulette Jaxton, writer; and fellow Tribal Fit Club member
• Mur Lafferty, author of Playing for Keeps, the Heaven series; Secrets of the Podcast Masters; as well as many published short stories and RPGs; host of many podcasts including Geek Fu and I Should Be Writing
• Jim Van Verth, Mur’s husband and host of The Vintage Gamer podcast
• The Pink Tornado, their daughter.
• Tee Morris, author of Podcasting for Dummies; Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies; Morevi; and the Billibub Baddings series (among other podcasts).
• Nat, Tee’s wife (unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to get acquainted and I’m not sure what projects she’s associated with)
• Sonic Boom, their daughter.

You can find some more pictures on my Flickr feed.

After lunch many of us headed to Paul and Martha’s to visit some more and do some ADDCast recordings, which will be detailed in another post.

Such a wonderful afternoon and a wonderful group of people. I can’t wait for RavenCon !!

As I may have written here, we’ve been doing a lot of work in our basement. After three years of sitting there, we’ve finally cracked open most boxes and started sorting things to keep, give away, or toss. We resolved to re-carpet one room who’s floor was beyond redemption, and re-purpose most of the basement rooms to other purposes.

Each weekend we have a set of goals to complete little pieces, all leading up to a completion sometime mid to late April when we’ll have some greatly anticipated guests staying with us. Last week’s goals were first interrupted when we discovered that our dishwasher had broken. We had been contemplating replacing it for the last year or more, but its been working well enough that we decided it could be put off until we were done spending money on the basement (and see how finances for Con season held out).

So, off to the stores we went and bought a new one. I disconnected and removed the old dishwasher and started preparing to connect the new one as Viv started moving stuff around the basement and moving things to the garage. Unfortunately, she took a misstep and twisted her ankle very badly. Thus starts Emergency Room trip one for X-rays to ensure nothing was broken (which thankfully it wasn’t!). Then I completed the dishwasher installation which ran until just after midnight (do we know how to party on a Friday night or WHAT?!)

This made for a very interesting Easter luncheon with family as Viv was on crutches, an air cast, and Vicodin

This led into a very busy Monday as I had extra temporary duties and had to report early each day, as well as an expanded plate of responsibilities to tend to. As Viv was ordered with no weight bearing on her ankle for the week what would happen?? Our tween broke out with a strange rash and had to be rushed to urgent care one morning. The rash turned out to be nothing serious and was left to relieve on its own. Though he was subjected to a throat swab to check for strep.. and somehow I was subjected to a blood draw to check on my cholesterol (our Doc is so thoughtful you know.. didn’t want me to have to make another trip!).

The rest of the workweek was filled with little sleep (much of which was my own fault staying up to late) and early mornings. Friday night I made a trip after work to purchase carpet and pad for the aforementioned trouble floor. A friend of a friend was scheduled to come and install it for us on Saturday. That morning I did a major rearrange of remaining boxes in one room to move a couch out of the room getting the carpet, and removed everything else from the room.

As luck would happen, a twitter-friend was coming into town and an impromptu lunch outing was quickly brought together for many members of our Tribe to gather, meet (many for the first time) and socialize. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reschedule the carpet installation and Viv sacrificed the event to stay home and oversee it while I ran off to lunch (more about the lunch, and pictures, in a future post).

On Sunday we were prepared to turn the newly-carpeted room into the new video game room. I moved a TV and TV stand into the room, but to decide how we would arrange everything we needed a new reclining love seat moved from upstairs to the basement. I was able to remove the backs and the teen and I manhandled it down the stairs where it promptly got stuck at the bend in a hallway at the bottom. The teen hoisted it up sideways and got it swiveled around, however it cause one of the seats to start reclining and his finger became stuck in the reclining mechanism.

We quickly determined that setting the couch down would make things worse, so I pick the couch up a little higher (not sure if that really helped) and he was able to free his finger and immediately put pressure on a rather deep cut. I laid the couch down and we ran him upstairs to the kitchen to run the wound under the faucet. We wrapped a bunch of paper towels around it, as he returned to applying pressure and headed to the Emergency Room.

His hand received its own set of X-rays to ensure nothing was broken. The evaluated the cut and determined that no arteries or tendons were cut and he received three stitches. Poor guy. He was concerned as we were driving to the hospital that he may have gotten blood on the new carpet! Very sweet kid.

Through the whirlwind of activity the past few weeks I’ve only had one workout session. I forgot to weigh in this morning, so will have a weight update tomorrow. I’m fairly certain that I gained, as I consumed a lot of Easter candy and haven’t done much to burn calories. I’ve eaten mostly well, with the exception of a Chinese food dinner and the lunch outing on Saturday. Oh and pizza Saturday night.

Hmm….. never mind, my weight loss is doomed :-/

At weigh in I’m down a pound from last week so I’m down 12 pounds overall! I’m excited about it because I thought that I was going to be flat (or maybe gain) this week. I know I over ate all week. All healthy stuff, but I just can’t seem to get my portions down. I eat the “proper” amount and wait a little bit but feel sooooo hungry that I eat more. I need to get over that and just deal with the false hunger.

After moving boxes around all weekend; bending over to strip parts out of computers; hanging shelves and the like; the backs of my legs are burning more than the Couch to 5k runs and my abdomen feels like I did a thousand crunches. We got one room completely emptied; sent another 20 cubic feet of trash to the curb; moved a couch; and relocated the podcast studio to a temporary location.

Viv did an amazing job staining our new “desk” for the studio – it looks beautiful. We made a run to Guitar Center and got some new desk stands for our microphones and a headphone amplifier – oh and a groovy rug to sit under the new work surface from Target. Pictures to come after everything is in place!

If I feel better tomorrow then I’ll kick off week 3 of the Couch to 5k program and just run Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday though I think I may have to put it off until Wednesday:(

It actually went really well. We did some parking practice, lining up with spaces and not cutting too close to where another car would be. Then he parked next to another car. Finally we did some general driving around town which included going down a country road then unmaintained gravel; and a small stretch of highway at 55 MPH.. at night…

We decided that was a good time to turn around and head home

Like I said, he did great. A little nervous at times, but smooth acceleration and breaking. Remembered to use the signals and check blind spots. And when things were a tad hairy once or twice he stayed calm and moving straight.

We capped the night off by going out to dinner all together (Viv and the tween) and had some great conversation. What a wonderful night.

We’ve purchased a new scale that shows total fat % and stuff like that. The weight measurement is more consistent than the old scale, but I’m surprised to find the old scale was accurate, averaging the variance

I started the second week of the Couch to 5K podcast. I say “second week”, but we actually repeated the first week so I’m a little behind but there is still plenty of time before the Richmond race, so that’s fine. The running sections are longer (from 60 seconds to 90 seconds) but my legs don’t feel as bad as they did in the first week.

And the biggest news was that during my after-workout stretching I actually bent down and touched the ground!! Granted my legs were pretty far apart, but I haven’t been able to bend straight over and touch the ground since High School! I was so excited. Viv had to stop me from overdoing it.

This week I was feeling better and I exercised every other day. I did, however, splurge on some of my eating. Valentine’s day brought sweets and a mexican feast. The feast was on the healthier side (whole wheat tortillas, etc.) but had real queso Also, earlier in the week I had eaten out when getting side-lined by icey-road-induced traffic.Unfortunately I cannot escape the siren song of Applebee’s Chicken Fajita Roll-up.

All of this just means that I gotta work a little harder. I still have the biggest struggle with portion control. I eat way too much, even if it is mostly healthy. In addition, I have an unhealthy addiction to crackers. I loves me da carbs. I’ve been hooked on the Cheez-It Party Mix for awhile. It has a decent fiber to carb ratio, but I know I eat too many of them. The flavored Wheat Thins also rock most hard. Check out the Ranch and the Parmesan Basil – my favs. So I need to work on that as well.

The running training is going well. We’re going to do another run today. Still on the week 1 program, but I have a feeling the running spurts will come a little easier. That’s the dream at least.

Here is a weight loss ticker. I’ll try to find a way to make it part of the website.. Hmm, I’ll at least place it on my “About Chooch” page. It dynamically updates. I’ll include it with each of my updates though for sure.

The ticker shows a goal of 200 pounds. That is my first goal. The second goal is to get to the “ideal weight” for my frame according to the health sites which is about 175. I know that the more you lose, the harder it gets so I figured I would break the ticker into two goals to make me feel better watching the numbers move. It would help if they kept moving down

I’ve never done any kind of marathon, or much running of any kind past PE class in Junior High and High School. I’ve done bouts of jogging as a form of exercise throughout my life but its always been short lived.

With our renewed emphasis in our health that started this year, I think that a goal, such as the RFTC is a great motivator to stay on top of our diet and exercise routines. Viv tweeted about our participation this morning and was given a link to a workout plan to prep for a marathon in two months. There’s even a companion podcast to walk you through each run.

It looks pretty aggressive, but with such a short period of time it seems it needs to be. She actually started on it today. I will likely start tomorrow. Of course, I’ll post the progress here!

Oh, and speaking of scales: as of my weigh-in last week, I dropped another two pounds. So my total weight loss for January was 10 pounds! Hopefully the lack of working out this week won’t bring a bring a backslide.