Post Op Week 13

12.30.2013

Pretty much 2 weeks after the last update and I'm (only) down 2 more pounds. It was about time for me to hit a plateau.

Part of the plateau has been me eating a wider variety (ie carbs) while letting the cold weather slow down my exercise. The holidays would also be a great excuse, but I didn't pig out on anything (although some sausage balls at my aunt's in Greenhill were calling to me).

One of the nice things the holidays brought was that this was one of those times I needed some new clothes and I lucked out on a couple of presents and holiday sales. Back on Black Friday I bought some work-appropriate Polo shirts that were 3XL instead of the 4 & 5 XL I've been wearing the past 2 years. When I bought them they were still a little too snug, but at 75% off what I normally paid I knew I would fit in them soon enough.

Gina and her mom got me some exercise shirts, too. This sounds trivial, and more than a little vain, but I like nice shirts for exercising. I trick myself into exercising. To motivate me to walk, I first got a Fitbit (since dead) and now have a Nike Fuelband to give me feedback on my daily walking around. When Gina and I go for our walks at night, I've started using the Nike Running app on the iPhone (they don't make a Walking app) and then go look at the Nike website to see the path and little bits of data that got collected along the way (I've walked 21 miles since I started using the app on the 17th!).

But, back to shirts. Gina and her mom picked up some Under Armour shirts for me. I didn't know Under Armour had shirts that would fit me, even in my newly rediscovered 3X size. Granted, they're tight, but they're supposed to be tight. They're performance compression shirts! I have no idea what that means except it that it shows off how freaking massive Dwayne Rock is when he wears the shirts.

I have way more curves than Dwayne Rock, but he is my exercise inspiration. In my head, I have a body like Dwayne Rock. That motivates me to get out and walk around the track at the school when it's 37°. That gets me bangin' and clangin' the weights at the Wellness Center when I'd much rather sit home and watch a movie, even a Dwayne Rock movie.

Even though I don't look like Dwayne Rock in my Under Armour shirts, I look better than I did 3 months ago. The shirts fit my arms well, though. I'm still packing some guns. Not big, massive guns like Dwayne Rock, but not spindly dainty arms either.

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Holiday Hours

12.24.2013

I've gotten off-kilter on my scales pictures (today managed to be exactly the same as last Tuesday, but I'm supposed to be doing this on Mondays!) so I'm going to skip this week's "official" weight update and try to get back on track next week.

Maybe I'll have some pics of my holiday vacation project to show off. It involves a tabletop battlefield for Dust, that's all I'm saying. I've got to get back to some hobby crafting with way too much glue now.

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Post Op Week 11 + a day

12.17.2013

The above weight is a big deal for me. February my weight maxed out at 441, I emotionally bottomed out and decided that gastric surgery was the route I needed to go if I wanted to realistically live a couple more years. 6 months and 40 pounds later I had gastric sleeve surgery, with no complications, and wondered what would happen next. 11 weeks and a day after surgery, I've lost another 60 pounds - still with no complications.

100 pounds gone since February, total.

100 f'n pounds.

Yesterday this would have been a different post. My weight was 2 pounds higher. Mentally, I was all over the place - halfway to work I realized that I forgot to bring my vitamins that I've been taking 4 times a day for the past 11 weeks, so I turned around and went back home to get them. Once home, I found that I had about half the gas in the car that I needed for the day. Holiday & financial crap (nothing bad, just things to take care of) kept popping into my head. The one good thing to come out of this was that I decided it was a walking Christmas shopping day after work so I got my walking for the day in (13,000 steps!).

Today is a better post. Skip the paragraph above and I'm not bitching. Instead, I'm relishing 100 lbs lighter and I'm bitchin.

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Game Count

12.15.2013

Yesterday I mentioned trying to focus more on playing the unplayed games I have in my collection over the next year and how I doubted that we had played 20% of the games I own. Thanks to my anal meticulous bookkeeping I actually know all of the boardgames I've played since 1984. They are:

1. 1st & Goal
2. Battleball
3. Car Wars
4. Cards Against Humanity
5. Catan Dice Game
6. Cosmic Encounter
7. Dungeon Run
8. Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
9. Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
10. Flame War
11. Fluxx
12. Formula D
13. Frag
14. Galaxy Trucker
15. GOLO
16. Heroscape Master Set: Rise of the Valkyrie
17. King of Tokyo
18. King of Tokyo: Power Up!
19. Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
20. Leviathans
21. Lost Cities
22. Munchkin
23. Pirate Fluxx
24. Risk (Revised Edition)
25. RoboRally
26. Scrabble
27. Sentinels of the Multiverse
28. Shadows over Camelot
29. Skirmish Tactics Apocalypse
30. Space Cadets
31. Star Fleet Battles: Captain's Edition Basic Set
32. Star Wars Miniatures
33. Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles
34. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
35. The Settlers of Catan
36. Ticket to Ride
37. Zombicide
38. Zombie Fluxx
39. Zombies!!!

Games listed above in italics I have played but do not own. Of the 39 games above, I possess 36 of them. According to my current collection tally on BoardGameGeek, I currently have 234 games. Math-wise, that comes to roughly 15% of my games have been played.

So it looks like I was right to doubt 20% have been played.

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2013 Widgey Season Wrap Up

12.14.2013

Wednesday was the last game of the 2013 Widgey boardgame season, our 7th season of the modern era. Somehow, Keith managed to Two-peat as back-to-back champion, an unheard of feat.

It was a good year for boardgaming - we finally starting making a dent in the amount of shrinkwrapped boxes I developed into collecting. Not all of the new games were winners (we're looking at you Level 7) but for the most part the games have been fun. This has led to the latest challenge for the upcoming year - focus on getting more of those unplayed, shrinkwrapped games played, and hopefully cut back on procuring every new game that is released in the next year.

That's my plan. No idea how well that'll work out. According to my collection stats on BoardGameGeek I've got over 200 games and I doubt we've played 20% of those. Let's up that percentage!

Just to let Keith brag, here's the standings for the 2013 season:

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	9	10	56	1		47.4%	6		-2	2
Jer	7	4	36	3		63.6%	5		1	3
Keith	9	5	46	2		64.3%	4		-3	1
Joe	3	0	12	4		100.0%	1		2	4
Steve	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5
Richard	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5

Overall Champion Lowest combined points in rankings. Champion with -3 points Keith

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