Friend Making Monday–Getting To Know You

If you’ve taken part in FMM then you know the rules. If you’re new, please take a moment to answer this week’s question on your own blog then add your link in the comments section here and over at: www.alltheweigh.com so we can all see your FMM questions and answers. Please invite your blog readers to add their links here too so everyone has to opportunity to be seen. The idea is to connect with other awesome bloggers so take a moment to post your own FMM post and comment on a couple of other posts. Now it’s time for this week’s topic!

Getting To Know You

1.  Have you ever been skinny dipping? 

Yep, I used to have a pool in my backyard, and did that couple of times.

2.  If you could choose an exotic vacation destination today, where would you go? 

Today? Somewhere where they have a cure for a cold!  Failing that I’d go to the Caribbean and get something spicy to eat.

3.  Do you prefer to live in the city or the suburbs?

Neither!  The country, I’d classify where I live now as ‘the country’ even if it is a town of maybe 5000(?)  I have loads of space and privacy but still access to all the necessities within a couple minutes, and it’s only a 15 minute drive into town for all the rest.

4.  If you could paint, draw or illustrate any masterpiece in the world, what would it be? 

Like a landscape painting?  I’d probably head out west and do something with the forests of British Columbia and the Rockies in it.

5.  What is your favourite dish to cook when you’re cooking for one?

Now that we have a pizza stone again I think it would be pizza!

6.  Who has recently influenced you in a spectacular way? 

I don’t know if I would call it spectacular, but I’d say Phil Robertson, Amber knows why.

7.  Have you ever considered dating a person who’s younger than you?  If so, how young would you go?

Yes, four out of five of my relationships that have been longer than a few months have been with younger girls.  Most of them only a couple years.  One was when I was 28 and she was 21, that was the biggest gap.

The rules for the gap are, half your age, plus seven.  So now the youngest I should go is 33/2+7=23.  Of course that point is moot since I have Amber.

8.  What do you typically wear when you’re at home with no plans to go out? 

Depends on the temperature, but usually pj pants and a t-shirt or sweater.

9.  Do you prefer a shower or a bath? 

Shower, what I need though is to have more than one shower head so that I can be warm on the front and the back at the same time.  I used to have one of those.

10.  When you meet strangers are you outgoing or more introverted? 

I am outgoing if it is one or two people and introverted if it a larger group, or I get the sense that they are not my type of people.

 

Now it’s your turn to answer this week’s questions.  Don’t forget to come back and link up in the comments!  Say hi to someone new this week, and have a happy Monday!

Budget Cuts

Owning a house is an expensive endeavour!  This is a fact I have learned many times over but no lesson has been as harsh as getting a new furnace and having to trench around the house to fix the basement!  We are talking into the teens of thousands of dollars here!  What does that mean?  I means that our somewhat ‘decadent’ life style has to change a bit. 

Really it should have changed a while ago, but up until now we have been making steady progress with finances, albeit slow steady progress.  It is amazing though how much you can cut out of the budget when all of a sudden you need to save nearly $800 a month.  The good news about all this is that it will go a long way into teaching us what we need and what we don’t.  The bad part is, some of the things that were once deemed necessary have to fall on the cutting room floor.

And so, for the first time since 2010 I have no gym membership.  Can’t afford it.  That might seem horrible!  But honestly, the plan for the summer was to suspend the membership due to the home gym I have put in place anyways.  And I have been using that home gym for over a month now with no adverse effects.  Thanks to running and biking for cardio, and the heaps of workouts I have stored up from all my time spent in sessions with Jodi workout ideas are not a problem.

In the nice weather.

I’m kind of dreading the winter, freezing in my garage lifting weights, having no choice but to run in the cold.  It will be character building if nothing else.  Or I’ll simply have to find a way to make $50 a month and get back to the gym come December.

Money is not all gone, don’t feel sorry for me or anything, I still get my ‘allowance’. Everything I want, or want to do has to come from it now though.  For example I am going rock climbing today, planned before the budget cuts.  Originally I would have gone, paid for the actual climbing out of my allowance but got lunch on the way there at subway or something and then gone to dinner with the people after just with the bank card.  Now I’m paying for the climbing, bringing a lunch and trying to keep dinner under $10 as well since that will also be from my allowance, and I need to have the cash to renew my Batman subscription!

I’m hoping to approach this whole finances thing the same way I did getting in shape.  I know Amber would like it if I was able to that’s for sure.  Though I make no apologies for how I spend my allowance.

Touring The Blogs

I think this blends nicely into this bit.  This morning I clicked a couple of links and found a blog that is ‘critical’ of a couple of the other blogs I read.  I think critical is putting it nicely.  I’m not going to give the name or a link because I don’t want to drive traffic there and I think reading things laced with as much hate as there seems to be is not good for the soul.

Basically the blogs read like this.  “Hey did you read what *this person* wrote on their expletive blog?  They say they want to lose weight, but then blog about eating 5 expletive cupcakes! What a lying expletive expletive expletiver”  Of course the commenters jump on board for the most part.

My ‘I make no apologies for how I spend my allowance’ line there makes me think of this.  Some high and mighty financial blogger might read this and be like, “Hey look at Chris over here, he says he wants to pay off debt but then goes rock climbing and reading comic books!”  And to that I say, I’m going to still live my life!  I’m not cutting out every expense in order to do this, I still have to enjoy things.  Maybe someone else would live with no heat, hydro, and internet to get this bit done, but I am not that guy.

It makes me think of when I was losing weight.  I was that guy in that regard, I ate about 1400 calories, which is nothing for a guy, and I was at the gym every day.  When my friends asked if they could come to the gym with me did I scoff at them?  Did I attempt to use my fitness as a way to make them feel bad?  No.  I encourage them, or try to though sometimes it comes across wrong.  I’m trying to build people up, not tear them down.

Is having a cupcake when you are losing weight really all that bad? And even if it is, does it effect you (you in this case being a person separate from the person losing weight and eating a cupcake)? 

I’m all for tips and advice, I’m all for motivation and being honest with people about workouts and weight and all that.  I’m all for calling a spade a spade and constructive criticism. But you don’t have to be a jerk about it!

I recognize that it is not our mistakes that define us, but the efforts made to correct them.  Or I really hope so at least for my own sake.

Play Ball!

Amber found a mixed 3-pitch league for us to join and I was happy to be in on this for a couple of reasons.  A) We would be playing together and B) I figured that 3-pitch would be more fun than the slo-pitch that I played a couple of summers ago.

Amber mentions in her blog the concerns I had about our team when the captain arrived, more than half in the bag, and probably a little baked.  Our scorekeeper, her boyfriend, was also hammered and while the rest of us were able to keep batting orders straight and such it was a bit annoying for him to be perpetually confused.  It was also kind of fun though.  I only have one other team experience to compare this all to in my adult years though, hockey, and Todd runs a pretty smooth ship at hockey and all the guys that are on our team are generally my kind of people, so it was a bit to get used to.

Amber got a hit her first at bat, I was proud but not surprised as in 3-pitch you pitch to your own team.  I got up and ended up striking out my first at bat, Amber will agree it was because the pitches were terrible – this made me a bit surprised that she got a hit!

The game continued, hits, catches all that stuff.  My next at bat the bases were loaded, and we had a different guy pitching.  He put it right in my wheelhouse and I really tagged it! Over the fence! Grandslam! I haven’t hit a ball over the fence in like 21 years! (of course in those 21 year I have only played a dozen games of baseball, and the last time I did it, the rule was that you were out!)  Either way it was awesome!  My other at bat of note I hit it to the fence at center field and got a triple, then sprinted home on the next batter.  I was 2/4 at the plate.

At the usual time for the game to be over it was 13-13 and we all decided to play one more inning and we ended up winning.  I said to Amber ‘See isn’t it more fun to win?’  She disagrees, she was just happy to play, I was too honestly.  I find baseball to be a sport were you just do your best and hope for a good outcome, when I am playing hockey though you are actively competing for the object you need to score with, and so it’s more competitive for me.  Ball is a good sport then for Amber and I to play together as no matter the score last night, I had a good time and would not have been bent out of shape if we had lost (she seems to think otherwise).

It was a good night, and I hope future weeks are even better!  Next week we might ride bikes over since we play the 6:30 game that would be fun too, and a good warm up to not pull muscles when running!

Finally, I Can Run Again!

So two and a half weeks ago you might recall that i ran a half marathon.  In doing so I hurt my left Achilles badly enough that I was limping for about a week and in quite a bit of pain any time I had to stretch the back part of my leg.  The second week of that injury it was just sore to stretch it. 

Sunday I set out to run 5k and only made it 3 before I put the brakes on that endeavour due to the fact I felt the tightness in my leg.  I stretched some at home and decided that what I really need to do was stretch my leg a bit every day until it permanently loosens up.  It turns out that doing push ups and the position that your foot goes in while doing so is the *perfect* way to stretch out my Achilles, or seems to be to me at least.  So I’ve been back on the push ups and at the same time helping out my leg.  Nice.

Last night after work I did a few errands(which turned out fruitless – you can’t just get a couple cheques at the bank any more, and my new shirt was not ready yet), and then came home and ran.  I thought about stopping at 3k again, my leg did hurt a little bit.  Then typical me thought, no, I can do this, I can’t let this injury rule me.  So I went further, passing by the house again and completing my 5k run.  Has it happens, it was my fastest pace since the 5k Kms For Care race, and I finished in 22:55!  Any time I am over 13km/h I would consider that success!

This morning my leg is a little bit tight, but I don’t think any worse than if I had stopped at 3k.  Was it my smartest idea to just go all out and test my leg like that?  Probably not, but hey, I’ve got to build character somehow.