I haven’t really exercised since mid-May. Since then, I’ve probably gained back 5-6 pounds (which may not sound that bad until you consider that I lost some muscle weight probably put on closer to 6-10 pounds of fat!)

Need to get back to exercising regularly and watching what I eat. At least the good news is that I can lose weight pretty easily (if i’m committed to doing so).

Here’s my plan:

*6-7 servings of fruit/veggies per day.
*drink more water.
*exercise 4-5 times a week (30 minutes at a time). Treadmill, swimming, weights.
*no carbonated beverages/sodas allowed (except 1 serving on my ‘cheat’ day)
*no ice cream/frozen yogurt/sorbet allowed (except for 1 serving on my ‘cheat’ day).
*no pastries/cakes allowed (except for maybe on my ‘cheat’ day)
*drink one cup/bowl of soup per day (preferably, during dinner).
*drink 1-2 cups of unsweetened cranberry juice per day (mix with black currant juice, 1:1)
*eat between 2/3rds-3/4ths of what you ordered/what’s on the plate.
*no seconds or refills.
*drink at least 1 cup of tea per day.

Need to get back to updating my traineo logs.

Until recently, I’d usually go for the cheaper food item at the supermarket (except for chocolates). Heck, who doesn’t want to save money? However, I found that while this strategy may work for non-food items such as shampoos, deodorants, and personal care products, going for the cheaper products usually costs more in the long run, assuming that the level of disposable income remains the same. A lot of the cheaper items are probably worse for you-healthwise–than the more expensive products, for the most part. For instance, the cheapest TV dinners probably cost less than $1. One that comes to mind is the Banquet Fried Chicken Dinners. Before you know it, you end up buying like 5 to 10 of these (I say 10 only because your freezer probably can’t hold much more than that). When you’re hungry, you’re reminded of what a great deal you got the TV dinners for, so in the back of your mind, you’re open to the possibility of eating even 2 of these TV dinners at a time, or having one for a midnight snack.

Or consider the issue with spaghetti sauces and pastas. You can go for the ultra-cheapo brands such as Ragu or Prego, or the mid-tier Classico and Newman’s,…yes, good bang for the buck, but like the cheap TV dinner example, you’ll be tempted to buy more sauces at a time and you’ll soon be eating spaghetti every other night (your waist won’t exactly thank you for that). Instead, I found that if I buy the premium stuff that goes for uprwards of $9 a jar such as Rao’s or the overpriced organic stuff, then, you’re less likely to go crazy and buy multiple jars at a time. Again, while it may cost you more upfront (and thus, may prevent you from overeating), you’re actually saving more by keeping your body in better shape, which will likely prevent your medical costs from getting high down the road.

Before, I would envy those who had a cartload full of snacks, hamburger helpers, and other artery-clogging munchies and wonder how their bill only came out to $60. Until I saw the figure of the person pushing the cart. I still maintain more or less the same weekly budget for groceries and eating out. However, with the higher prices of healthier foods, I’ll probably end up buying smaller quantities and therefore, eat less.

Note: The above only works if you minimize consumption of carbonated beverages and guilt-inducing foods such as ice cream and chocolates.

I went to the dog track today to play some poker ($1/$2 no limit, $100 max buy-in) and suffered what was my worst bad beat in a live cash game. I know, I usually roll my eyes too when I hear people sob about their bad beats, but this one was particularly bad, considering that I trapped the guy and how my opponent makes the huge calls to catch his inside straight is beyond me. Here’s a replay of the hand.

Player in mid-position (who has >$500 in front of him) raises to $12 preflop. I call (with about $170 in front of me, and I have position on the mid-position player) holding 6,7 offsuit, and one player behind me calls. The flop comes out 5s,6c,8c,. The original raisor bets out $20. I raise to $60. The guy behind me folds. Turn card’s a 9 of spades. My opponent checks. I bet out $80. (leaving me with $30 left) My opponent calls. River card is a 7, putting a straight on the board. My opponent moves all-in for the rest of my chips. I have no choice but to call. My opponent shows pocket 10’s.

I looked at my opponent and congratulated him on his ‘nice hand’ (although I wanted to say “nice catch, you moron!”) and called it a day.

How this guy called my big raise and caught his gutshot (actually, a runner, runner, if you consider the 9 that gave me the straight on the turn) at such a prohibitively-high ‘cost’ (with little to no implied odds) is really beyond me. But whatever. I hope I have more bad beat stories to tell, because that means I’m at least making the right play and over time, these donkeys will pay me off.

1. Who was your favorite teacher?

Ms. Finlay

2. Why was that teacher so special?
She was the first teacher to really get me to really think about the lesson material, despite my mind being on other activities at the time. She made me play different styles of music and apply a holistic approach to piano playing.

3. Do you think teachers get paid enough?

I think music/piano teachers don’t get paid enough.

4. Do you have a favorite year of school?

Probably the first half of 7th grade. Ran a baseball card ring and even got cute girls into it. Why did I have to move!

5. If you could travel back in time and tell yourself something now that would have helped you get through school, what would you say?

Don’t believe everything that read or are taught. A lot of it is either not accurate, outdated, or biased (especially History).

This has gotta be the feel-good story of the year! Gosh, I’ve been waiting so long for this (you have no idea). Finally, that idiotic twit/clown that everyone thought was so cool, that cheated off your test in 6th grade, finally got what s/he deserved. Not only did this woman use someone else’s credit card (that belonged to her then-boyfriend’s dead mother, no less!) to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket, but she continued to use the credit card even after she found out that she won (as if no one would notice)! How dumb can someone be?!

Well, instead of winning a millions dollars, she now has to serve time in jail, poor thing!

Craigslist sure does have a lot of, umm, “interesting” stuff. Just out of curiosity today, I went to their Divorce forum to read about the kind of stuff some people are going through (for the record, I’m not married or have plans on divorcing). The discussion posts really read like a bad reality TV show, but in discussion forum format. Some really sad or messed up stories. A lot of those are divorcing because of infidelity (cheated with a coworker or got involved in online relationships–chat rooms, IM, and Second Life) or just lost interest in one’s spouse, for financial issues, or for no apparent reason at all. While I know that this forum is not a representative sample of the general population, these are self-selected posters to this forum so there’s some bias, it’s still pretty sad (yet interesting) to read about the stories….how it got to that point, the nasty court battles, fighting for custody of the kids, the greed, and of course, the kids who get hurt the most in all of this. Are all these people suckers for marrying who they married? Or is this just today’s reality?

It’s interesting reading about their opinions on pre-nups…

In a strange way, I feel pretty lucky being single after reading those posts (”better to be alone than to be with someone you don’t want to be with”). At the same time though, I wonder if reading this will only make it more difficult for me to want to be with someone long-term, enough to want to get married…I’ll admit, there are times when I wonder whether I’m just being selfish by not wanting to ‘love’ someone else or whatever. But then when I think about my environment here, I’ve usually made the correct play by folding early on, so that the relationship or whatever doesn’t continue on. It’s “correct” in the sense that I probably wasn’t all that attracted to that person in the first place…or just knew that it wouldn’t work out, or there were some big question marks going in. There are times when I wonder if I should lower my standards when it comes to personality, attitude, values, smarts, etc (not necessarily looks, although let’s be honest, looks is something we all consider) and try to ‘like’ someone who I normally would not be interested in. Nah, $#% that! That’s like trying to convince yourself that I should eat dog poop because it just might taste good if I tried it.

I also find it quite ironic that the people who tend to give me crap for not being in a serious relationship now and thinking about marriage, are those who I know are probably having problems with their marriage themselves (whether they realize it or not). In fact, I don’t know many people who can say that they’re happily married (other than my parents).

Do you?

I met up with my parents and a couple of their friends last night for dinner. One guy was a former classmate of my parents, who was diabetic (barely ate anything). He talked a bit about how he nearly died after complications from surgery a couple years back, something about his skin turning different colors, and having to go to the hospital almost daily for 3 months. At its worst, he heard the doctor tell someone that if he didn’t get better the next day (the 15th day), he’s not going to make it. He couldn’t sleep after hearing that. He claimed that night he saw ‘ghost-like figures’ and one of his parents huddled around his bed… (maybe in a dream).

A lot of people would probably say that his out-of-body experience was due to his hallucinations or that he simply had a bad dream. Or that there’s some kind of biochemical/neurological explanation for this. Perhaps.

Another person at the table mentioned how he’s heard stories of how animals would bark/howl (in a strange manner) when someone was about to pass, as if the animals could see the ghosts and was trying to ward them off.

I thought it was very interesting. Although I’m mostly an empiricist, I probably believe in ghosts 60/40.

I’ve been going to the bookstore cafe more lately since I’m studying for a test (can’t study at home b/c of comfy distractions such as sleeping and snacking).

Today at the bookstore cafe, I saw this one woman wearing dark sunglasses while reading a book. This is not the first time I’ve seen her do this. She’s done this after dusk before too.

So why would anyone want to wear sunglasses indoors? Is it a fashion statement? I can understand if you’re playing poker and don’t want to give off tells. Does she have something to hide? Or she has a health condition or maybe wearing sunglasses indoors makes it easier for her to read? Pink eye everytime she’s at the bookstore cafe? It’s interesting b/c everytime I see her, she’s by herself and sometimes she’ll have it off and sometimes she won’t.

Barry Bonds is closing in on Hank Aaron’s home run record. The commission, Bud Selig, has not indicated whether he will try to attend upcoming Giants games, mainly for PR reasons since he doesn’t want to make it look like he condones steroid use. It’s ‘highly probable’ that Bonds injected ‘roids before, perhaps regularly, but I find MLB and the commissioner’s stance rather hypocritical since it’s not like no one was aware that players were sticking needles in their butts. Many owners, coaches/managers, trainers, players, you name it, knew about this problem for years but looked the other way, because 1) they liked how juiced balls were generating more ticket and merchandise sales, and 2) of the potential backlash and lost revenues.

While I’m not in any way condoning Barry’s likely use of steroids to get to where he is, the reality is that anyone in the vicinity of hitting 500 to 700+ home runs over the last 10 or so years has likely used steroids to get to where they are. Look at the others on the list: Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, etc….Are we hating Barry or are we hating that entire group?

Let’s analyze this using game theory: It’s like one big ‘ol fraternity mixed with prisoner’s dilemma. Many players do steroids, but each is afraid to rat on another, because by doing so, it’ll draw attention to himself and increase the odds of him getting caught too! And the retired ones don’t want to tarnish their legacies….Well, unless your name is Jose Canseco.

I think what’s saddest of all is that many of those in the stands who boo Barry, probably would have done the same were they in Barry’s shoes. Human nature, greed, egos, etc…just sick.

I paid the art supplies store a visit recently and will start drawing again after a 4 year hiatus. I kinda miss it, and with a lot of stuff on my plate lately, I need a good relaxant, and this is ideal (provided that it doesn’t take too much of my time…). My new drawing will be kinda ambitious…It’ll require that I learn how to draw human figures/facial features (which I’ve never done before).