It was hard to admit at first. You hear the comments, you here the snide remarks. But still, you refuse to face up to it. But deep down inside, it stings. It stings that you are reduced to a mere mocking point all while pretending to be unperturbed by the banality of it all. So face it - you're fat and you're getting old. The six pack abs have since been replaced by an unforgiving mass of jiggling fat. It's not like you can tune out and ignore it.
You have to man up at one time or another. So that's what I did. I decided to run. Cancel out all the PR's and endless training, for me it all boils down to losing weight. And in 6 mos of running I think I have been relatively successful. I stand about 5'10 in shoes, and I ballooned to 195 lbs already. Eeek. 6 months of blood, sweat and guts later I'm at 167 :) My original target was 165, but now I'm adjusting it to hit my college weight of 155 :) Wish me luck!
At Takbo.ph we have an abundance of weight loss success stories as well, people like Timmy, Natz, Sam, Carlo, Rodel to name a few. We are all fighting a common malaise, and while the battle appears to have been won, the war is far from over.
I was one of those adamant people who always declared that they hated cell phones, and would never get one. Not for me the stereotypical rude customer chatting away in a line-up, the loud conversations increasing in volume with each, NO? They didn’t? REALLY? Just so not us.
Living up here in a rural area we realized that they are rather handy if your vehicle needs assistance, or you are far away from home, so we got smart phones, not the latest and greatest, but these are pretty amazing. They do everything but the laundry, really truly they do. Funnily enough mine gets more use as a social media device then it does phone calls. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, it can do all of that, it’s very fun. They are miniature computers, full of abilities, and apps. Did I mention that they take amazing photos? Almost as good a quality as my expensive DSLR… and a lot lighter in weight then dragging around a heavy camera. I was playing with my phone, pressing buttons, and getting lost inside the maze of computer options, when I discovered voice to text. I had no idea this existed… I might have known about it, but didn’t think that these phones could do that. Press the microphone icon, speak into the phone, and watch your words get jumbled onto the screen. Seems the computer has a few issues with spell check, and understanding exactly what it is I am trying to say. Simple commands like call Mary… it tries to call anyone else with a name that sounds similar. And a disembodied voice will repeat what it thinks it heard. The voice is called Lexie, because these are Androids, not IPhones with the charming voice of Siri. I think I’m going to call mine Darth Vader. Me, whispering: “Phone, call Mary.” Phone: “OK, call Carrie.” Robot voice over. Me: adamantly, No “CALL MARY.” Phone: “OK, call Sherry” Darth Vader robotic voice. Me, loudly: “CALL MARY” Phone: “Call Terry, dialling Terry now.” Me, raising my voice: “ACK!” Phone: “Call Astrid.” The phone usually wins and I end up hanging up, while it drunk dials someone called Astrid, that I have never talked to before, but more then likely called numerous times and hung up on. Sorry about that Astrid, it’s a learning curve for us.
The phone can even take your conversation and turn it into a email, perfect for those heavy gardening days when you are collapsed on the couch with exhaustion, but still want to return emails to friends. Only problem is while waxing rhetorical about the garden blossoms the phone can use it’s own judgement and occasionally turn a innocent sentence into something not quite as flowery. It has a habit of putting words into my mouth so to speak. Many of which I am very surprised to find out are not nice. Bad phone, wash your mouth out with soap. And a good thing I didn’t tell you to send that yet. I wanted to let you know about a fun app that has been getting some attention lately from other bloggers. I’ve had it for a few weeks, and absolutely love it, and use it all the time. It’s called Pocket, it’s simple to install on your bookmark bar, or as a app in your cell phone. Imagine that you’re browsing your favourite blog, or see a great image, or article, but you don’t have time to stay and look further. Used to be that you would bookmark it, and read it later, scrolling through your lengthy list of bookmarked sites to find the one that you were looking for. If your list is anything like mine, it’s huge. Pocket makes it fast and easy to take a screen shot of the page, apply a label if you want to organize by subject. To go back and visit that page, click on the pocket icon to find your page, read it and afterwards you can delete it easily.
Today’s Monday Matchup is Julie who writes at Julies little house. She’s a Canadian blogger, who is going through a few changes in her life. She likes knitting, and loves Downton Abbey. She’s also just gone through the stage where you start to question if you want to continue to blog. It’s something that you might have encountered if you have been blogging awhile, and it’s nice to see her continue on. Meredith from Meriknits, and Linda from Crafty Gardener, I know that you are amazing knitters, and thought that you might like to meet Julie. Downton Abbey fans go on over and say hi!
