Load 18 60-pound bags of ready to mix Quikrete plus several pieces of rebar onto one of those flatbed cart thingies (1100+ pounds).  Push the darn thing all the way through the store and past several male employees who must think you’re doing a pretty good job because none of them offer any kind of assistance whatsoever.  Checkout.  The cashier offers no assistance to get the stuff loaded into my van.  Load the van.  Drive home and unload 5 bags at a time onto the handtruck and cart up the drive into the back yard.

Round two…

Go back to Home Depot for the remaining 12 60-pound bags of Quikrete (720 pounds) PLUS one very heavy and awkward 94-pound bag of Portland cement.  With a few pounds less and my legs all warmed up, I fly to the opposite end of the store to the only open register to check out only to hear, “OMG, did you load this by yourself?  Do you need help loading it into your vehicle?  Are you sure?  You might hurt yourself!”

Was I in the same store?  Did I run into the only employee who payed attention to the training video?  Too little too late.  I was all warmed up and ready to continue my workout, so I declined any offer of assistance.

Day two…

Mix, pour, spread, tamp, and level 25 bags of Quikrete.  This part of the job made the previous workout seem like a cakewalk.  Surprisingly once Jen and I got going on the job, we finished it in just a few hours and had the tools cleaned and were in the house by 7:30pm.

Day three…

Removed the forms.  Patted myself on the back for making the executive decision to staple 3mil plastic to the forms as they easily lifted away from the slab.  Did some measuring for my ghetto deck and stairs I intend to build.  Drove back to Home Depot.

All I can say is this… they must have an entirely different training program for the guys in lumber than they do for the guys in the garden department, because all I had to do was look female and helpless, and the guys did most of the work.  They sorted through the lumber for me, picked out the best boards, and loaded them onto my cart.  They answered all my questions, did price checks, and assisted me in finding the other items needed for my project.  What can I say, it was a “lite” workout day!  All Jen and I had to do was load and unload the van.

Oh yeah… for all you “green” people out there who frown upon people with gas guzzling vehicles… um… I loaded ten footers into my van and had a couple feet to spare with the doors closed.  So you can just kiss my ass, ok?  You try doing that in your little matchbox Yugo.  There was a reason why I bought the beast.  My Chevy Cavalier days are way over!  I often joke that my next vehicle is going to be a Uhaul!

Next post:  some pics of the project.

Basically, all I need is a set of steps at my side door.  Well, now I’m in the process of major excavation with the intent of pouring myself a concrete patio area with concrete steps.  It’s what I intended to do all along, but never had the motivation to begin the project.  Now I’ve begun it, and I’m in a race to try to get as far as I can before we hit freezing.  As it is, tonight we’re expecting snow showers and the current temp is 34 degrees!  On top of that, I’m at work during the prime daylight hours.  I’d hate to say it, but it’s times like this that I miss NOT having a job!  Well, we’re supposed to have a couple dry days ahead with temps going back up to the low 50’s (I hope).  I’ll just have to work fast.

Between the digging and shopping for supplies after work hours, I haven’t had much of a chance to even think about working out.  My eating’s been ok for now.  The good thing is I’m broke, so as tempting and convenient as fast food sounds for 3 meals a day, I can’t afford it.

The fun all starts tomorrow when 4 tons of #2 crushed stone will be delivered to my house.  I’m praying that they can dump it in my drive between the houses.  If not, they’ll just dump it at the end of the drive and I’ll have to cart it one wheel barrel load at a time to where I need it.  I just don’t like the idea of it being at the road, because in my neighborhood, it it ain’t tied down with a homeowner on guard with shotgun in hand, it’s free for the taking.  Oh well.

Friday was a disastrous day at work, followed by fielding phone calls from my players saying they wouldn’t be at practice that night.  I suppose the good news is that Jen and I had a whole sheet of ice to ourselves for an hour and a half.

Saturday turned into a major construction day at the house.  I started outdoors by digging a foundation area for my new back steps I intend to build.  Then after dark, Jen and I crawled under the house with all the petrified spiders, scrurrying mice, and who know what else was watching us, and we began excavating under the exterior walls of the house.  It’s a long story, but after years of drainage problems and erosion, my pre-1896 house has some issues.  Needless to say, by the end of the night, we were covered in soot soaked dirt, webs, and other nasty stuff, so eating scheduled balanced meals wasn’t at the top of my to-do list.  So, a single trip to the McD’s drive-thru, and dollar menu fare it was.

Today is just another day.  Hockey at 9am, no time for breakfast, drive-thru lunch while running errands afterwards, and now were off to a friend’s house for chili and a football game.

Like I said, there’s always Monday.

1 tab good.  2 tabs not so good.  Because I’m on my feet +/- 8 hours a day now that I’ve got my job, I’ve taken a few pain management steps to get me through the day.  For years I’ve been killing my insides with megadoses of Naproxin Sodium with little effect for the pain in my back.  So for kicks I’ve decided to try these Lortab things which everybody seems to be raving about, and all these public service announcements are warning about on the tv and radio.  Well, anyway… I can handle being on my feet til about 2pm.  It’s the 2 to 5 (or so pm) which is killing me.  So, I pop 1 Lortab and it gets me through the rest of the day.  Ok, no big deal.  The problem is that these things really don’t kill the pain per se.  They just kind of put you in a state of mind where you don’t care as much about the pain.  Well, as an experiment, I decided to take a second tab 4 hours after the first just to see if it would kill the pain (like people are claiming it supposedly does.)  Uh… well… um, let’s just say I won’t be doing that again!

Within 30 minutes I could hardly keep my eyes open, and 45 minutes I was having sweats.  Because I didn’t eat that much, I decided to eat (pizza of all things) to try to settle my stomach.  I ended up laying down for a short nap; I was so queasy.  Then within minutes after getting up (about 3 hours after taking the second tab) I was barfing pizza into the trash can!  I know people who pop these things like tictacs; how do they do it?!!  But then again, I’m an extreme lightweight (cheap date) when it comes to alcohol, too, with my 3 beer limit.  I guess my body has an aversion towards these sort of toxins.

So, needless to say, I never got around to drinking my 19 cups of water or doing my workout, and my dinner didn’t stick around long enough to be digested!

I suppose the good news is I’m feeling much better, wide awake (and starving) at 6am!  I think I’ll make the best of it and go into work early today.

I think I’m now going to take advantage of my newly acquired health insurance to finally go to the doctor (after all these years) to try to find a way to alleviate my back pain.  To be honest with you, I don’t think there’s a pain reliever in the world that’ll “fix” it.  I think I need a serious (permanent) realignment.  You can read all about my pain issues in this post:  The Gym, The Chiropractor, Hockey, And Being Sidelined With Injuries.

My goal is to get a jump start in the morning before I go to work by drinking at least 2 cups. I have a squeeze bottle I use at work which conveniently holds exactly 3 cups, so I took a Sharpie and marked the cup lines on the bottle so I could keep count.  My work area is right next to the water cooler and the bathroom, so it’s pretty convenient for me to keep running over to do my thing.  But I definitely think I’m going to have to have a cut-off time at night - I’m thinking by 9pm.  As important as water intake is to a diet, sleep (for me, anyway) is just as, if not more important.

My eating went well.  I behaved myself for most of the day, then blew it last night.  I consumed about 1952 calories (which isn’t bad), but my carbs were way too high at about 58.33%.  I think the chowing down on pretzel rods in front of the tv did it, hehe!  My protein and fat came in at 22.38% and 19.28% respectively.  Low fat is good, but so low that I’m munching down pretzels at the end of the night isn’t.

I also managed to get 20 minutes in on the bike, and did a few minutes of lifting.

Today’s a new day.  Let’s see how it goes!

Apparently, the desired normal amount of water intake for a human adult has a formula.  You take your body weight, divide it by 3, and the result is the number of ounces of water per day you should consume.  So in my case that would be 224# /3 = 75oz.  Further divide that by 8oz and I end up with a little over 9 cups of water per day I should consume based on my body weight.  Makes sense.

Liz’s experiment question was: how does water consumption affect weight loss?  So the only variable in the experiment was her water intake.  She made no changes in her eating or exercise habits, but instead doubled her water intake. After 6 weeks, Liz lost 7 pounds doing nothing different other than changing her water consumption.  She did admit that she peed like crazy for the first week or so, but she said her body did adjust to it.

I didn’t get all the details, so I’m guessing she’s about 150#, or in that range.  Wait a minute, I’ll clarify that by saying she’s an athletic 150# with amazing legs (yes, I’m jealous!)  So doing the formula, that amounts to roughly 13 cups of water a day for her under this experiment.  Myself on the other hand, I would have to consume 19 cups of water per day (holy sh*t!).

One of the first things that came to mind when Liz was telling me this was, “isn’t it dangerous to dring too much water?”  So I’ve included a link to an article on hyponatremia - water intoxication.  Basically what happens is when you drink too much water, it draws the sodium out of your cells, blah, blah, blah, read the article - anyway, it can result in death.  But there are certain people who are prone to the condition such as infants, athletes, and foolish individuals who participate in hazing or dangerous radio show contests.

The bottom line is, a normal healthy human adult’s kidneys can process upwards of 15 litres of water per day (that’s about 63 cups!!!)  The key here is that this 63 cups is spread out over a 24 hour period, plus it includes the water which is present in foods.

Don’t take my word for it.  It’s best to consult your doctor as (s)he will tell you if you may have any pre-existing conditions which may have an adverse effect on increasing you water intake as my friend, Liz, is now highly recommending to all her hockey friends.

Thanks for stopping by!

My past diet successes were very short lived as I would quickly gain back double what I’ve lost in short time.  I think the major difference here was that I lost my 25 pounds with just sensible eating (even upwards of 2000 calories a day!) and physical activity - which I’ve continued until now.

My goal is to lose another 20 pounds during the course of this hockey season which ends the first week in March.  Even though my activity level has gone up with playing hockey 3 days a week, working out at home, and working on my feet 40 hours a week, I will have to face many weekends of nasty restaurant food - the main staple of a travel hockey player’s diet.  So my goal is to carefully monitor what I put in my mouth during the course of the week, and hope that I can counteract the weekends.

What’s interesting is that it seems for many people trying to lose weight, their “diet” is the constant, and exercise is thrown in to make the difference.  For me, my physical activity and exercise seems to be the constant, and my food choices are what’s going to determine if I lose or not.  I suppose it’s not a bad thing.

What’s gone so far are the snacks and lunches from the coffee truck which shows up at my work place at 10:20am every day.  In their place are fruit, a Luna bar, and a bagged lunch.  Also out are my several times weekly chocolate runs!  Okay, well, chocolate isn’t on my forbidden list, but I’m no longer devouring Hershey’s bar 6-packs… 2 bars at a time, of course.  I admit it… I’m a bit of a junkie.  Also changed for the most part are my dinners.  I’m no longer so exhausted after work that my only choice is home delivered pizza.  I’m back to grocery shopping a couple days a week so Jen and I can eat real food.  Breakfast is a given.  I’ve been a breakfast eater for years, so no arm twisting there.