the calorie counter

so im trying to lose a few pounds. i joined a mens' small group at church about 6 weeks ago and we're supposed to  be doing the first place diet.  my mom is leading the women's group and stacie signed up.  i dont know why she thinks she needed to sign up for that particular small group, i can only suspect it was more of a "lead by example" kind of thing.  she makes losing weight look way too easy.  anyway, i'm 32 and have been overweight almost half my life.  with two kids who i can barely keep up with, i figure now's the best time to make a lifestyle change. 

i haven't followed the diet like i should.  i have, however, cut out the soft drinks and i'm now trying to eliminate the fried foods from my diet. im also trying to reduce my portion size and have started walking around the lake.  after six weeks, i have lost 8 pounds.  i still find it discouraging trying to keep up with calories and fat grams and all that stuff we should be doing with the first place diet. 

that is until recently when stacie showed me the "calorie counter" app for our htc hero cell phones. whoever came up with this idea is a genius.  you can enter the foods you eat throughout the day and it will keep up with the calories and other nutritional infomration in order to give you a picture of how you did for that particular day.  if you register on the website, you can sync your daily diet calendar and track your progress.  here's the coolest part...instead of plugging in the serving sizes and calories, you scan the UPC label and it will tell you the nutritional information for that food.  the app also has all the major restaraunt chains and their nutritional values. 

today i ate lunch with stacie at her school. i'm convinced her third graders thought i was a complete idiot or at least extremely OCD when i took out my phone to take pictures of the food labels for the baked doritos and cholcolate milk.  i was pleased to find that after breakfast (5 ritz cracker for 80 cal.) and lunch (five dollar footlong=570 calories, baked doritos=90 cal. and two cups of chocolate milk =320 calories), i had only had 54% of my "RDI" ( based on a 2000 cal/day diet).  in the past, i have been known to take down 2000 calories at breakfast.

so we will see how it goes.

where were you at 12:01 on march 20?

so, stacie is an avid twilight fan.  i think she has read the series twice. by my calculation, that's about 5072 pages.  while i haven't read a single word of the series, i have seen the first movie...more than once.  if you know anyone that is interested in the movies, you know that new moon has been released on dvd and went on sale at 12:01 on saturday, march 20. so i ask, where we you?

i was at the local walmart, just as any other loving husband should would be when asked by his wonderful wife to go with her to be one of the first to own it on dvd. i have never been the type to camp on the sidewalk for concert or movie tickets.  i have never been shopping on black friday.  truer words have never been spoken when i say that i have never been involved with anything like what i witnessed at walmart on saturday morning around midnight.

we got to the store about 11:15 to assess how this deal was going to go down.  the parkng lot was relatively vacant.  we got a parking spot really close to the front door.  as we were walking in, we fell in behind two early-20's young ladies and knew right away that we would be seeing them again back in the electronics section.  by the time we made it in, we had some call-in orders from carrie and jennifer. under no circumstances were we supposed to leave the premises without four copies of new moon and one copy of twilight. so we made our way to the back, just to see if they had put the displays out and already had the movies on the shelf.   at this point the crowd was sparse.  but at 11:45, it looked like a mini-convention.  folks of all ages and from all walks of life. 

you got to give it the folks at walmart.  clearly, this was not their first rodeo.  they were trained in the finer points of crowd control and misdirection in order to avoid pandemonium.  a sales associate gained everyones attention by handing out a pop quiz on new moon.  fifteen multiple choice questions that could only be answered by the most devoted twilight fans.  whoever got the most right would get a free edward or jacob water bottle. the mother of all contests.  especially when taking into consideration that the questions were based on the movie version of new moon instead of the book version.  10 minutes to answer 15 questions.  i was less than surprised when one of the two girls we had seen coming in won by answering all but one question correctly. based on her confidence and demeanor, i am convinced that the answer key was in error and the girl had really answered all the questions correctly.

now i have absolutely no training in the social sciences.  anything that i might think i know comes merely from brief research skewed heavily in favor of my bias for what im trying to prove or convince others about. i'm sure clinical therapists and academics would have had a field day with the behavior of the customers waiting to get their hands on the coveted two-disc special edition new moon dvd.   when those who missed the first several questions realized they were not going to win a free water bottle, they started trying to figure out where the pallet would come from and angle for position closest to where they though the displays would end up. 

so im sitting back watching all this unfold when i realize stacie had wandered off. i noticed the familiar screeching sound of rolling display racks and see something heading in our general direction.  it didn't take long for everyone to know where they needed to be.  i was fully expecting at least a fist-fight between the ones that absolutely had to have the first one sold. much to my disappointment, all that happened was the cranky sales clerk telling a lady that she need to back off and just be patient, that they had enough for everyone.  apparently the lady in question had snatched four copies off the display before the sales clerk could stop her. (did i mention that under no circumstances were we to leave without four copies of the movie.) by the time the remaining water bottles were given out, the display was behind the counter manned by at least two clerks to assist in rationing out the movies.  the customers were ordered asked to  make a single file line at the register and advised that they would be receiving some kind of free twilight/new moon fan poster or something like that.  thankfully, stacie wasn't interested in the freebies and suggested we go ahead to the front of the store to check out, which was all in all uneventful. we dropped off one of the call-in orders at the hospital and made it home by 1:15.   

Viking Cooking School

so i've never been interested in cooking. as far as i was concerned, it was a means to an end. stacie seems to get quite a bit of enjoyment in creating cakes for friends. as for me, i just didn't get it. that is until we went to the viking cooking school in greenwood. i've never had any interest in going. as a matter of fact, i had never heard of it until jim took kristy for a weekend get away. kristy seemed pretty impressed by the gesture. when i was trying to think of something stacie and i could do togther for our anniversary, i remembered how much jim and kristy had enjoyed their experience.

on wednesday, i bought tickets for the friday "enchanted evening" date night class and made hotel reservations. i broke my hand thursday night. on friday we left vicksburg at about 3:45 and rolled into greenwood at 5:45. i expected the cooking school facilities to be tied into a viking manufacturing plant for some reason. much to my surprise, the school is located in a non-assuming store-front building nestled in the heart of down town greenwood across the street from the famed alluvian hotel.

when we got there, we perused the wares store and discovered there were alot of must haves that we simply don't have. once everyone showed up, we were taken into the hands-on kitchen where we would be preparing our meal for the evening. for some unknown reason, i was under the impression that each person was going to be cooking their own meal and it didnt take me long to come to the conclusion that i was at a severe disadvantage with a busted paw. clearly, i would be relying on stacie to cook both her meal and my meal. much to my relief, the five couples were split into a group of three couples and a group of two couples and each group would cook the meals. thankfully, our group took up my slack.

we started with a salad made with avacodaos, brown sugar bacon, grapefruit, lobster tails and fresh greens. hands down the best salad i have ever eaten. next we made grilled veal chops with angel hair pasta. i'm not exactly sure what a truffle is, but i did learn that truffle oil does wonders for pasta. we finished off the meal with a mint custard with chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate covered mint leaves. probably the best meal i have ever had a hand in making.

stacie and i are almost done with our new kitchen and i'm starting to think i would enjoy us cooking meals together. we might have to start shopping at williams sonoma if we can ever get done at the home depot.