Tired...

I’ve been a father for nearly 2 months now, and the sleep situation has been rough.  At first Kiwi slept pretty well, going 2-4 hours each nap and his sleep times were steadily creeping up.  Then a few weeks ago, he started getting up after 30 minutes to 1.5 hours throughout the night, and this was just absolutely brutal.  He’d be really upset when he got up, too.  Fortunately, this week has been a little better, because I was going out of my mind.  Bunky cut tomato sauce and milk out of her diet to see if that would help, and we started Kiwi on Gripe Water, although he spits most of it out.

I’ve gotten much more skillful in all manners of baby-handling.  I’d never handled babies much prior to the birth of my son, but I managed to figure out a lot of tricks on my own.  It’s not too different from figuring out a tough nonsensical quest in a game like FFXI, but life is going to be much easier once Kiwi can tell me what the heck he wants all the time (or so I think).

I’m very slowly trying to get back into my daily routine.  I haven’t exercised in about 2 months, and it bums me out.  I just don’t have any energy to do it, but I’m trying to walk more so that I can work my way back up to weight-lifting and real cardio exercise.  Getting back on the diet has been tough too, although I managed to keep from ballooning too much post-pregnancy (although my weight fluctuated a lot more than usual due to infrequent meals).

So much better with pictures

A few months back, I tried out an exercise/nutrition log called FitDay.com with some pretty good success.  While the idea of a log is really great and worked wonders (I lost between 15-20 lb in a few months using the log), the site was very plain.  I used to avoid snacking because I dreaded logging the snacks; it was that annoying.  It was hard to find exactly what you ate/did, and the site was pretty much all text.  Eventually I got tired of logging everything so I stopped and gained the weight back. So now I’m giving the logging idea another go, but this time I’m using DailyBurn.com instead.

While the idea is the same, the execution looks much better.  There are pictures of the foods (great if you eat some kind of packaged food), and the database is much more extensive.  The exercise log is also easier to use and features pictures as well, so you can be sure you are logging the correct exercise.  The other feature that I thought was cool was the motivator feature.  It gives specified people access to your activities, so they can check if you are keeping up.  I set Bunky as mine, since I know she will nag me if I slack off.  I’m much more excited about this log, especially since I know even a boring log is pretty effective.

The other change I’m making in my exercise program is to try to burn the same amount of calories but in less time.  In other words, I’m going all out for a very short period of time.  I don’t know if it will be any better, but at least it won’t take as long.  It’s not like I really need any endurance, as I just want to burn as many calories in as short a period as possible.

We even got a chance to go to the mall in Norfolk. Unlike the crappy local malls, the MacArthur Center has more than one floor, and more than 4 stores that you would actually want to go into. I went into a walking shoe store and had a computer analyze my feet. To my disappointment, I had normal feet (ZOMG, the soreness in my arches was all in my head). Bunky learned she had high arches. It was kinda fun. And for the first time, we didn’t get lost on the way home. This was the first time we made this trip in the new Scion xA, so I was pleased that the gas cost was about 1/4th what it would have been in the old Blazer.

Even the cat was getting in on the holiday cheer. Sydney got his picture taken with Santa at a crappy local outlet mall, and the pictures came out very nicely. Bwark, bwark, bwark, all those leash training sessions really came in handy. Sydney also got a stuffed fox toy (it’s for dogs, but he loves these things) that he has been wrestling with a lot.

In an attempt to combat holiday fatness, I renewed my membership at the gym. More importantly, I finally (FINALLY) convinced Bunky to go with me. I usually just run around the track or play basketball, but Bunky prefers to use the machines, so I tried them out for the first time yesterday. We have our orientation of the weight machines tomorrow, so we just rode the bikes. I hadn’t been to the gym in a while, and I was reminded of why I prefer to wear workout clothes to the gym instead of changing there. Prodigious amounts of old nakedness were burned into my brain; why does everyone feel the need to carry on loud, long conversations while scratching their nude bodies in the changing area? JUST PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES PLEASE!

And to complete the holiday spirit, it snowed last night. Nothing enhances a Monday morning like having to scrape ice and snow before heading to work!

Really I’m just not movitavated to do anything to better myself without having someone push me. I am a lazy lemming! My freshman year of college, Bunky and I used to run together and I got quite good and even ran by myself over the summer. Recently, my friend ADscion and I have been doing a sorta informal… “art buddy” thing. The term still causes me some pain because it sounds so goofy, but I have really been motivated to draw lately. In fact, after her guidance, I completely redid the coloring on my Chiriri fanart piece to more accurately reflect watercoloring. Of course if you want to see skillful watercoloring, you should visit Sandara’s site, but I am still proud of the results so far. The last iteration of Chiriri was an example of me having no clue what I was doing, but forging on ahead anyway. ADscion, who has actually used watercolors before, let me know what types of effects to strive for in the Photoshop brush, and I think it helped a great deal. I switched from a dry bristle effect to more of a wet airbrush look. It’s still not done as I have to finish the belt, gloves, flames, and background, but prior to this experience I only had been averaging 4 and then 2 pieces of art a year (which is pathetic). Meanwhile, she’s been learning the arcane intricacies of Photoshop CS and may be getting a tablet soon. Her Gaara piece is very good, and she even whipped up a spoof of it with Gaara’s sand bottle/jar covered with silly bumper stickers (a joke that we had while planning our pieces). I look forward to both of us finishing our works and comparing!

So here’s to friends who push us when we are too lazy to push ourselves!

I’m playing the waiting game with Amazon, cause the camera I want (the Canon Powershot S400) is currently out of stock. Curses! You’d think they’d hurry up and get more of their best-selling 4MP digital camera…

The cardinals and mockingbirds are out in full force, both in the courtyard at work (right next to my desk!) and in front of the cottage. It’s like an avian choir =).