A Three Day Work Week.

I spent the day doing some laundry and taking care of a couple of bills.  I'll take care of some more in the morning.  I did some more window shopping and had some lunch at Nathan's Bar and Grill.

They were willing to accommodate my needs since I'm on a low carb diet at the moment.  I had some grilled chicken (sautéed mushrooms and cheese topped it) along with a side salad (sans croûtons and onions) and some steamed broccoli.

The food was excellent.

I then did some more window shopping before cruising around for a while.  It was mostly another day to myself, but there is some news on other fronts.

A couple of people I know had an official wedding ceremony today.  The couple in question is of the happy variety, so hopefully things will work out wonderfully.  I also made sure that my dad got his birthday card during a phone call I made this morning.

It looks like he'll be coming up.  It's a good thing I have some more time off this March.

May tomorrow be more eventful than it was today.

Weekend's Over Wednesday: Mental Marination

Here's another picture of food to wet your appetite so to speak.

In Kissing Jessica Stein, one of the many great quotes from Jessica's girlfriend, Helen, was as follows:

"Don't decide right now, just let it marinate for a while."

 There's been quite a bit on my mind as of late, but before I get to that, I'd like to share what's been happening thus far this week.

Monday

I visited my friends Steve and Seffy on Monday.  Unfortunately, it was very cold outside (of course it warms up the next day too), so even I had a hard time not shivering at 18 degree weather.  I can take the cold, but I have my limits.

One of my new favorite places to eat now is the local Burger King in Warrensburg.  They have options on the menu that accommodate those who are on a low carb diet.  I had three double cheeseburgers without any condiments or a bun along with a side salad without dressing or grape tomatoes.

After hanging out with my friends, I had to go home, because I was having trouble falling asleep that Monday.  For whatever reason, I tend to want to stay awake when I'm off work for the next couple of nights.

Tuesday

I took my work clothes to the Washboard Laundry Mat so I could have clean clothes for the week.  While clothes were washing, I did some shopping and filled up my gas tank.  I returned, put clothes in the dryer, and then went to Muttly's Gun and Pawn to look around.

Pro tip: If you're looking for a cheap place to stock up on anime, a local pawn shop should be on your list of stops to make.

Last night, I checked in on the anime club.  There were some friends that I haven't seen in a while and I wanted to check in on them to see how they were doing.  We had a wonderful time and it was good meeting one of the new officers.

Nate's a pretty cool guy and I think he will make an excellent treasurer.

The cool thing is that the group has been communicating with other anime clubs as well.  This is something that I wanted to see happen, but things happened when I was still in college that prevented that endeavor from being successful.  The organization is in excellent hands.

After the club meeting and hanging out in general, I did a little bit more shopping in the early hours of this morning before going home and falling asleep.

That brings me to this morning.

I have successfully upped my repetitions by two.  That's 33 with the dumbbell and 23 push ups off the wall.  A week from this Saturday, I shall increase everything by three.  The pattern will continue until I can do 100 reps with the dumbbell.

The weight will increase and I'll work my way up to 50 with the higher weight before increasing the weight one more time.  The goal is eventually use all three weights in the entire routine.

From there, I'll eventually increase the number of sets by one for even more muscle building.  Speaking of transitions....

Mental Marination

Like my exercise routine, I'm treading carefully in terms of getting something off my chest.  I won't go into it today, because it's prudent to actually brainstorm the ideas that are floating in my mind and organize them into something coherent.

I'll still work on the website.  After all, I have yet to write the first article (hint: it will mention Piers Morgan).  I'll even do a test podcast.  I have the know how to record and edit audio.  I just need to do the rest, and that plugin for e107 just might do the trick.

In other words, I'll be taking a brief break from personal blogging until sometime in February.  When I return, I'll have something important to say.

• Some may like it.
• Others may not.
• Others may honestly not care.

That's the nature of the Internet.

There's some things that I discovered about myself that explain some things that have happened to me over the last couple of years.  It was quite an epiphany that will be channeled to make myself better than I was before.

Those who are curious will get one hint.  In life it is important to have that great adventure which the individual explores the self as well as their surroundings before everything else occurs.

Allow that to marinate in your mind for a while, and I'll see all of you in February.

It May Be Friday, But Not MY Friday.

Today is Friday, and I know people are excited about their upcoming weekends.  My weekend isn't here yet.  My nights off are Mondays and Tuesdays.

I have three more shifts to go.

In the meantime, I've been making some changes as evidenced in the picture below.

I had three chicken breasts topped with pepper jack cheese for dinner.  It was absolutely scrumptious.  Here's a couple more pictures below.

I've been bringing my lunch to work as of late, which saves quite a bit of money in the long run.  Both have fish in a can (salmon and herring).  I also ate some broccoli and baby spinach.

As far as the website goes, I'm going to switch back to e107.  I'm familiar with it already and can re-learn it within a short period of time.  I notified those who contributed that they'll be able to archive what they wrote as I'll be waiting for a couple of days before embarking on the task at hand.

Perhaps I'll return to Drupal one day (if the site gets big and famous enough to warrant a dedicated server).  I considered using WordPress, but e107 has built in forum functionality.

For now, I'll relax for a bit longer and go to bed.  Have a good Friday, everyone.  ;)

Weekend's Over Wednesday: Mmmm, Pizza!

While the weekend is technically over for me, I still feel excited.  That's because I'll be selling somebody a computer that I don't use anymore.  In turn, I'll be able to purchase the Samsung Galaxy S2.

Exciting times indeed.

Monday was no less exciting though.  I got to spend time with good company and excellent food.

Home made pizza.  :)

Dinner involved a variety of home made, home baked pizzas.  Of course, they weren't the traditional round pies, but they were still delicious.  There was bacon cheeseburger, pepperoni and pineapple, and even desert pizza.  My friend De Lena has a wonderful philosophy when it comes to cooking.

1. Use real butter.
2. When in doubt, add more butter.

The meats were turkey based too, so I had no issues with eating at least one of each variety (I don't eat pork).  The company was fantastic as well.  We shared jokes and had a grand time conversing with one another.

Cora and De Lena (De Lena's the one wearing the jacket)

 I stayed there until the early hours of Tuesday morning.  I slept for a bit, then I woke up.  After spending some time in the apartment, I decided to do some laundry and have some McDonalds (yeah I know... bad for me, but it tastes sooooooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooooooooooddddddddddd!).

When all was said and done, I gathered my clean clothes and came home.  The rest of the night was spent blogging about controversy that was generated by a Facebook post.  Hopefully yesterday's post will add more balance to the dialogue at hand regarding fandom of any sort.  Only time will tell.

For now, I'm wanting to relax for a little bit, and eventually go back to bed since I have to work tonight.

It's a Hot Pocket Kind of Day.

I've already eaten some Hot Pockets.  After the shift I had at work, I might go ahead and eat some more before going to sleep.  Before I decide on that, here's how my shift at work went.

Seeing as how I work retail at night, I get a walkie talkie depending on what part of the front end I'm on.  It allows me to communicate with supervisors if need be.  The only problem is that some interference must have been occurring somewhere.  Some people could hear me loud and clear, while one of my supervisors couldn't.  For some reason, that issue seemed to resolve itself after lunch.

I ran some freight in the celebration department, which gave me a nice break from the monotony of where I was at before.  There's always one or two items that irritate me, because I just can't find them no matter what, but I still things still went smoothly.  I volunteered to keep working on the floor, so I was asked to zone frozen.

In retail, when one zones, they pull merchandise to the front and make it look as presentable as possible.

I took cardboard and overstock to the back and went on my last break.  After that, I went to frozen.  I always start with the first set of end caps I see so I don't forget them.  Then I did my best with the ice cream side of things.  Right before I was going to do the end caps on the other side, two individuals were spotted, and I told them that the wall was already done.

Naievly figuring that frozen was going to get done at a faster rate, I told them they could start the next isle if they wanted to.  I tossed a frozen item that I knew was likely in the other isle to one of them, and they proceeded to that isle.  I took care of the other end caps and started on the other wall in the isle I was working on.

When I found a couple of items that were not in the isle I was working on, I took them to the other isle thinking they would be located there.  What I found was one of the most irritating scenarios of my life.  The other people who were sent to help me had disappeared.

Oh joy.

The same thing had happened to me on Monday morning when I was in frozen trying to make it look presentable.  One person appeared to be helping me only for them to disappear soon after (with a different person showing up and staying to make sure it was done).

I was not about to do somebody else's work for them, so I simply took the items that didn't belong in frozen to their respective places (another person in the deli department helped me locate where one of them was supposed to go).  I then took some ice cream to the back to be properly disposed of (broken seals) before telling one of the supervisors that the one isle looked like it hadn't been touched.

Another worker stayed to finish the job, bless his heart.  As for me, it was time to clock out.  Hopefully the situation of the disappearing co-worker is resolved at some point.

Now that I think about it, I believe I will have a couple of Lean Pockets before going to sleep.  ;)