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Showing posts from February, 2011

Cakes by Nicole

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A plug for my 16-year-old daughter's fledgling cake decorating "business," which is really just a fun hobby at this point. But she's pretty proud of her first two big creations, and she should be. (Beaming dad!)

The Amazing Race Unfinished Business Episode 2 Recap

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It's basically part 2 of the season premiere and when last left our heroes, the Cowboys were stuck on their task long after everyone had moved on. The teams had to find a giant anchor at town hall with only the phrase "to sail to stop" as a clue. Some of the teams thought it was a travel agency. Mel and Mike has a breakdown but still got to the anchor in time for the first flight. Jet and Cord finally completed the first leg after everyone else had signed up for their flights at the anchor. And judging from the way the show was edited, they may still be wandering Australia at this very moment not knowing what they're looking for. Actually, the Cowboys did find it and ended up the last team on the last flight. All the teams ended up in the Outback (not the Steakhouse) where they had to build rock mosaics, dance and, apparently say the phrase "Get me some children!" By this point, the Cowboys worked themselves up to 7th. Amanda and Kris had to do both p

UFC 128 promos - Shogun vs. Jones

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Here's two videos for UFC 128. Both are awesome, but the first one is unofficial (fan made by NickTheFace2 on YouTube) and the second one is the official UFC trailer. These vids will sell PPV buys. Extremely well done. I'm so stoked for this show!

Sunday afternoon humor

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Saturday morning weigh-in - 175.8 lbs

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Well, it was bound to happen eventually - a week in which my weight goes back up. I'm up 4/10ths of a pound from last weekend, which I'm not thrilled about (although that's, like, "margin of error" differential, so I'm not freaking out about it). Basically, I'm back to where I was two weekends ago - 175.8. Slightly more troubling is that my two week chart (below) shows not a whole lot of movement outside of a small range. I was really busy at work this week and only got one workout in, and had a few 12-hour days wrapped around six hours of sleep, and I'm pretty sure that didn't help either. I'll keep plugging along. Still trying to drop consistently below 175 lbs. and get to 170. The good news is that I'm still down a net 6 lbs. since I began tracking this here on Saturdays. In reality, it's more than that, as I hit 183+ over Christmas. Plus, I can now button up my suit jackets again!

Survivor Redemption Island Episode 2 Recap

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I was out last night and didn't get to see the show until now, so we're a day late on the recap. Team Russell won immunity again, while Farmer Ralph pulled an immunity idol out of a tree stump without a clue. Rob concocted an elaborate feint at Tribal Council to vote out Matt while pretending to vote out others. Kristina played her immunity idol to keep herself in the game. Rob's plan worked and Matt got blindsided out, separating him from his cute female friend, Andrea. Next week: Andrea's MAD!

The Amazing Race Unfinished Business Episode 1 Recap

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The Amazing Race makes its exciting return with an all-star season that promises to be wacky fun. The opening segment at the windmill farm was awesome because my wife and I drove by that very spot in Palm Springs about 10 days after that segment was filled. The teams had to pick the correct paper airplane (Qantas) from a field of airplanes to get their first clues and then head to LAX to fly to Australia. Amanda and Kris finished the paper airplane task last and were hit with an automatic U-Turn. But plane 2 arrived first because plane 1 had a medical emergency and had to detour to Hawaii. The first road block involved swimming with sharks. All the teams lived. Then it was skiff sailing, which looked like tons of fun. Sigh. I really want to go to Australia. I just noticed that Kynt has become Kent. Guess CBS finally discovered ... well, you know. (OK. Apparently Kent is his real name.) Gary and Mallory came in first and won the Express Pass. But there was no pit stop per s

Sunday afternoon humor

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Saturday morning weigh in - 175.4 lbs.

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Well, I thought this was going to be the week when I finally slam-dunked it below 175 lbs. on my way to 170. It didn't quite work out that way. In fact, after hitting 175.8 last Saturday, it took me all week to get back to that, as I moved four pounds up the scale on Sunday and worked all week to move that back down. But in the process, I found out something quite interesting from studying my weight charts - my weight almost always peaks on Sunday/Monday and then drops constantly during the week. So I think I'm "letting go" on the weekend because I'm off my usual routine and that's affecting everything from what I eat to how much I eat. With that knowledge, I'm going to be extra vigilant this weekend in monitoring my food intake, and hopefully I can go into Monday morning still in the 175 lb. range rather than the 178 lb. range.

Survivor Redemption Island Episode 1 Recap

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Survivor is back! With probably the most gimmick-ridden season ever! Losers get to come back! Duels! Russell participates in what may be his 12th season! Rob is back for what may be his 14th season! And there are some other nameless, faceless people playing too! Actually, that's unfair, as it was quickly clear that this season at least has better personalities than last season. Huzzah! Kristina on Team Rob showed her mojo by pulling a Russell and just finding an immunity idol without a clue. And "former federal agent?" Phil (yes, the producers included the question mark, which was awesome) was instantly annoying. Team Russell won the first immunity challenge. Kristina immediately started plotting using her just-found idol to blindside Rob. For his part, Rob started plotting to get rid of Kristina. Muwahahah! At Tribal Council, Phillip played the "former special agent" card and dropped the bombshell that Kristina has an immunity idol, blowing her plans. R

Sunday afternoon humor

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The computer is dead! Long live the computer!

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The old computer, with its nifty Klingon markings. As the folks who follow me on Twitter are aware, our desktop computer died a death in the middle of the night this week, rebooting itself over and over again between 2:30 and 3 a.m. early Tuesday morning. It woke me up beeping and rebooting and I went downstairs to shut it down and a couple of hours later when I went to power it up, it just wouldn't boot at all. We had been having problems with it for months - spontaneous reboots, mostly. It would take it three or four boots to start in the morning, so I got to the point where I told the family to never shut it down because it may not restart again. And sure enough... But it was old and had served us well and was hardly worth spending a few hundred dollars to get it repaired. I think we bought it somewhere around 2003 or 2004 ... I can't remember and I can't find the documentation on it. But it was a Pentium II running Windows XP (yes, XP) and it was starting to crea

Saturday morning weigh in–175.8 lbs!

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I’m very happy with this, as I’m now down to within spitting distance of my interim target weight of 175 lbs., which, barring a disaster this week, I should be able to do. That said, this coming week is when I get back on my 4:45 a.m. wakeup call (moving it back 30 minutes from 5:15 a.m.) and start back on my Legislature session schedule in preparation for the opening of the new session a week from Tuesday. So it will be interesting to see if my body decides it doesn’t want to lose weight and sleep at the same time. But if I can get down below 175 lbs. this week, I’ll be moving my target weight down to 170 lbs. and then I can challenge Georges St. Pierre for the UFC welterweight title!

Sunday afternoon humor

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Edmonton Oilers - Back to the basement!

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  I was a little worried there for a while that there was no way the Oilers were going to fall behind the awful Islanders team...

Saturday weigh in - 177.6 lbs

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Good news on the scale this week, as I'm down three whole pounds from last Saturday! I got two workouts in (a run on Monday and stationary bike on Thursday and I'll do one of my Nike Fitness Club thingys today). But the real progress was on the food side: really eating less, not just telling myself I'm eating less because I'm not having cookies after supper or something. Here's my TargetWeight chart for the week. If you look closely, you'll notice it says my target weight is 175 lbs. It is. But that's my interim target weight. When I reach that, I'll re-adjust.

Where to watch UFC 126 in Edmonton and Calgary

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It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here's your semi-usual public service blog l ink to finding a bar to watch this Saturday's UFC card .

Mini Darth Vader Volkswagon commercial

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Hilarious!

99% Dark Chocolate

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Now this is dark chocolate. It's really good, if you like your chocolate on the bitter and unsweetened side.