Jan 01

So here we are, 2009 is upon us – in fact we’re almost through an entire day of 2009.  Which means that there are only 364(ish) sleeps till Christmas, don’t worry – I won’t be counting down properly until December. 

I usually take New Years resolutions with a pinch of salt, I find them to be meaningless and a bit of a fad.  Just the fact that people “can” break them makes them a little pointless.  So instead, I’ve come up with some New Years targets.  Yes, that’ll do for now.  Targets. 

I want to get back on the losing weight wagon, I’ve been off it for some time and the daily trips into Halifax town centre to either Greggs, McDonalds, KFC, Burger King or Sainsburys haven’t done me any good whatsoever.  In fact I’ve put on a lot of weight since I left Hanson – even with the mile and a half brisk walk round trip to town I take every day.  I really want to get back into my old trousers – the ones I’ve had to buy since don’t really fit me at all, they’re far too big, but I’m far too big to fit into my trousers, so that’s that. 

I’m really not in a happy place weight wise at all.  The plan with buying a load of t-shirts from Florida the last time we were there was that some of them didn’t fit me, but I was losing weight so they’d fit me inside a couple of months and give me something to wear.  That didn’t work out as planned and some of the t-shirts that did fit me don’t do so any longer. 

I know I used to use my blog to record food diarys and weight loss updates and things.  I think I’m going to sign up to WW online and use their online tracking system – that’ll let me record my weight and food properly and will also show me snazzy things like a progress chart.  I will of course post updates here, I’m sure at least one or two people will be interested. 

From the look of it, there are no really great deals on Weight Watchers online membership – just a two week trial and then a tenner a month (after they hit you for an initial £40-£50 for your first three months).  Once that’s out of the way, £10 a month isn’t really something I’m going to miss all that much.  We should be good to go – especially seeing as though the mortgage payments are coming down a fiver as of this month (yay for new lower fixed rate deals) and the sofas are paid off in April – thats another £50 a month we didn’t have before. 

Financially we’re not in too bad a place at the moment, jobswise we should both be secure for the foreseeable future – the only concern is the Disney Vacation Club loan which is in USD – with the exchange rate being at it’s lowest in a long, long time I’m paying about £30 a month more than I was when I initially started in May.  Again – it’s not a big deal because we’re okay financially. 

Speaking of Disney, I can now officially say that we’re going back next year!, yay! That’s something to look forward to now :)

Part of the motivation behind the weight loss is so that I can go on the mummy ride – I couldn’t quite get the test vehicle lap bar down (well I could, but it wouldn’t have been very comfortable for the duration of the ride).  The really cool log flume at IOA was out completely – I couldn’t even get into the sodding log.  I’m not sure just how much weight I can lose in just under 14 months but I’m going to have a good crack at it. 

The experiments with the beard/goatee have now come to an end.  I’m sick to death with people taking the piss and calling it ginger.  You can all fuck off.  I haven’t shaved it off because it’s ginger, I’ve shaved it off because I was subjected to more than enough bullying and piss taking at school for me to be arsed to endure any more of that. 

It’s like the whole PS3/Xbox 360 thing.  People will swear blind that their console is better than yours because that’s what people do.  I’ve got both of them, I know how it is and I can give a balanced opinion about it.  The PS3 is a bag of wank as far as games are concerned.  The Xbox 360 is great for gaming.  The PS3 is great playing Blu Rays.  It might have superior technology powering it but none of it is being used at the moment, with games (fallout 3) looking best on the PC, followed by the 360, followed lastly by the PS3.  Fanboys piss me off.  Unless it’s the film fanboys, thats a great film and worth watching just to see Kristen Bell in a Princess Leia slave outfit.  Awesome.  That’s out soon. 

Also – Yes the iPhone can’t forward texts, nor can it Bluetooth.  Who gives a flying fuck?  Seriously.  It does exactly what I want it to do (apart from being able to forward that text I wanted to last night).  Belittling someone because something they’ve bought isn’t as good as something you have is exactly the same as waving a giant e-penis around.  Nobody gives a shit.  At all. 

So, rant over.  Everybody just play nice with your own toys and don’t rip the piss out of people for no reason.  Or if you are going to rip the piss out of them, do it once, twice maybe, but not persistently all night at three separate family get togethers over the duration of a week.  It gets real old, real fast.

As soon as I stopped this week I came down with something nasty.  I thought it was a cold, it was very flu like – runny nose, achy limbs, didn’t feel like moving around much.  Tuesday, woke up and was much better – in fact all the symptoms had vanished.  Wednesday, I was better still.  Woke up this morning with some fluid on my chest and was very cold.  Spent most of the day feeling dizzy and a little out of it – feel much better now though.  Probably has something to do with having something to eat.  It’s just typical that as soon as I get some time off I get ill. 

Tried some of my humour tonight.  Sue’s mum was looking for the rum, I said “Why is the rum gone?”.  Nobody got it.  I had to retell it to several people before someone picked up on it being a Pirates quote.  Gutted. 

So anyway – targets. 

I’m going to lose weight.  I’m going to join Weight Watchers online and go to the gym in order to help this.  If I can’t go first thing in a morning because Sue is working nights then I’ll go at lunchtime or (god forbid) after work.  I don’t like the gym after work, it fills up with all those people that love themselves.  It’s not too bad in a morning, not sure about lunchtime, but it’d mean eating a sandwich on the fly, running over to the gym, working out, showering and getting back to work inside an hour.  It’s possible I guess. 

At least the personal trainers should leave us alone now.  Arsehole.  If it wasn’t for that incident a few months ago I probably wouldn’t have stopped going.  I know I went a few times after but it’s never been the same. 

I think I’m going to weigh myself on Saturday morning.  Saturday can be my new weigh in day.  I’m also going to start eating cereal for lunch, I’ll also try and make time for a proper breakfast in the morning – even if that means getting up that little bit earlier.  It’s not like I’m that late to bed most nights. 

I’m really looking forward to getting home.  It feels a bit like I’ve been non-stop this last week and a half.  Doesn’t feel like I’ve had any time alone with Sue either – we’ll have to make sure that Sunday is spent watching films curled up on the sofa together (not gouging on chocolate, because chocolate is bad – and pointy). 

Everything will be pointed and counted.  I’m dreading just how many points I’m going to be able to have actually, it’s scary to think that I’ve put weight on and I’m in a worse place than I was the last time I decided to try and lose some weight (probably around this time last year actually).  We were really good up until we went to Florida, we fell off the wagon about the time we got off the plane and never got back on the wagon when we got back. 

This way, when we go to Florida next, I won’t be able to eat half as much food as we did last time (nor will we be purchasing the deluxe dining plan – we had 30+ meal credits left!!)

I’ll post up my weight on Saturday morning.  I guess it’ll be weekly postings after that (the first week’s post will be loss due to water retention obviously)  We’ll see. 

Smaller trousers and smaller t-shirts here we come. 

Bring me that Horizon.

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Nov 28

Thank you very much to everyone who expressed concern after yesterday’s post.  This week hasn’t been the best of weeks but hopefully things will improve from here on in. 

/*Today has been a fairly interesting day, filled with ups and downs.  I’ve had a couple of meetings with my managers who are going to look into the issues I’ve raised.  I’ve also been told that I have to learn PHP.  Something I wanted to do anyway.  PHP ftw.*/

(see what I did there?) 

On to the down.  The car is fucked.  The fan belt went whilst Sue was on her way to the White Rose centre.  I think it really is my car and it didn’t like the idea of her going and spending money :p

She’s fine, she managed to reach junction 28 and managed to get the car off the road.  We’ve got roadside recovery as part of the banking package so we got recovered to a garage and they tried to sort it for us.  They won’t get the part in until Monday so we’re carless until then. 

The other up is that I noticed today that mobile phones are now insured through the bank, just had to register the numbers and the IMEI numbers and I’ve cancelled the O2 Premier insure.  Looks like exactly the same policy to me – same £25 excess.  That’ll save us £15 a month between us on the contracts.  Great stuff.

So, things are looking better at work, my head is still a little fuzzy and I’m feeling physically and mentally exhausted – I can’t tell if I’m coming down with something. 

Hopefully a good night’s sleep tonight and a fairly relaxing weekend will set me up for a better week next week. 

Plus its December 1st on Monday – Christmas decorations have to go up!

Yay!

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Oct 15

So,

I made a decision today. (yay)

I have the Virgin VIP package which gives me:

A HD V+ box
A regular cable box
Full channel lineup including sports and movies
Phone rental and unlimited calls
20mb Broadband

Now this is costing £88.75 a month. 

Jesus Christ

Thats £1065 a year.

Oh my god.

We don’t even watch TV half of the time, most of the stuff we record on the V+ box and watch later.

I’ve decided that nearly everything we watch is on terrestrial – I made this observation when we were away in Whitby and only had 4 channels.  Didn’t miss a thing.

I’ve ordered the Play TV box for the PS3.  Its a USB box which turns your PS3 into a freeview PVR.  It cost me £60 from amazon.  I’ve also bought a 320GB SATA drive (£70) to swap in for my 60GB to give me some extra space (with the game installs theres not much room left for recording). 

So the plan. 

Test out the playTV over the coming days and weeks.

If we have a decent freeview signal and it works as expected I’m going to ditch 90% of the Virgin services.

Do we really need the home phone? We’ve bought got mobiles with 1200 minutes free a month.  The only person who EVER rings me on the home phone number is my uncle Mark and thats when he has a PC problem – the phones can go (although if its only £11 a month and it keeps the cost of the BB down, I’ll keep it but use it for incoming calls only).

The TV service is going completely.  Over 200 channels of shite.  It won’t be missed.  Freeview has Dave and Nuts TV (wahey). 

Broadband.

Hmmmm.

This is where it gets tricky.  I have no BT phoneline, well there is one, but its not active.  Which means Cable is the way to go at the moment.  I also prefer the cable service to ADSL. 

So, line rental should be around £11.  It’ll be around £35 maximum (I’m hoping its going to be less) for the broadband.  So I’ll be looking at less than £50 for the two per month and £600 a year.  Mucho fantastico savings. 

Once the PlayTV has arrived and I’ve had chance to test it, I’ll feedback.  I’ll also post about how I get on with Virgin when I phone them to cancel half of the services ;)

**Update**

Just spoken to customer services and it would be £11 a month for the telephone and £30 a month for 20mb.  New customers get 20mb for £10 a month for the first 6 months and £20 a month after that.  Bastards.

I’ll speak to retentions when I phone back next week and tell them I’ll go get a BT line put in.

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