Had a good Thanksgiving...etc.

Hello all,

This post is kinda late, but it's all I got.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was good. The girlies and I spent a nice day together. We cooked a full meal, except for a store-bought dessert, including turkey, dressing, waldorf salad, and garlic mashed-up taters. The weather in the morning was very nice. The girlies were playing outside in shorts. It was only 50 degrees, but they didn't seem to mind. The afternoon got breezy and cool so we Redbox'ed some movies and just relaxed. They even let me take a nap. We didn't go through the effort of deep frying this time. Brining has been successful for the last few years and was again this year. Have never had a brined turkey end up dry.

Apparently the ex is finally close to finished with her draft of the divorce decree. It's guaranteed to make for some interesting reading. I get the impression that she's redrafted the entire thing, rather than just take the one my lawyer did and make adjustments. I'm preparing myself for the worst, which would be giving my lawyer a fat check to take the case to court.

I have an appointment to pay the lawyer for the bankruptcy tomorrow. It'll be a couple of months before it's actually complete, but hopefully that's the last major expense I'll have for a while. Right before Christmas even. Yippee. But if I don't do it now, who knows when I'll get to it again.

A local telecommunications company is almost finished building a ginormous addition to their existing satellite facility. It looks like a great opportunity for new employment, but all of the job postings are well outside my scope of education or experience. They're looking for systems engineers and technicians. I might send them my resume anyway, but it's unlikely anything will come of it. They may be looking for facilities managers, which I may be qualified for. Maybe.

I haven't lost my job. Things are sorta looking up. Our plant is actually in the black for the year, which hasn't happened for any division in about 5 years. There have been profitable months here and there, but we're headed into the 3rd quarter and are better than breaking even. On the other hand, the other divisions aren't recovering nearly as quickly. I guess we'll see what happens.

Still sticking with MyFitnessPal. Thanksgiving day wasn't too bad, but the few days after were difficult, as far as eating was concerned. I just had a hard time not snacking. A couple of those lost pounds may have found their way back. Running on a treadmill is proving to be more painful than I remember. There are ways to correct it, but every once in a while my right calf muscles really hurt and I have to stop. If I remember to stretch multiple times throughout the day, I can stay on the treadmill for an hour. Not running most of the time yet, but we're getting there.

Since I've shifted focus to exercising, the whole dating thing is on the back burner again. Every time I get lonely, it seems I forget that finishing all these major life things are the reasons I'm not dating yet. Is this blog starting to get repetitive?

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal (MFP) is an iPhone fitness app, with a large support community behind it. It helps you counts calories and log exercising. I joined a while ago, but just recently jumped in and started using the app as it should be. Since Sunday the 13th, I've lost 4 pounds. My current weight is 184, down from 188. (A whole belt notch!) 188 isn't too bad, but being a skinny guy, all that extra stuff sits right in the gut. 4 pounds in a week isn't exactly healthy though. They say 2 a week is all you should lose. I was beating my calorie goal by quite a lot. By the time Saturday rolled around, I had a 2,200 calorie buffer. Almost 2 entire days worth of calories. The wedding I went to on Saturday eliminated most of that buffer. The groom was a restaurant guy. Italian food galore.

I have a goal of reaching my ideal weight, 160, by February 16th. February 16th is the start of a weekend long beer drinking party some members of Seasoned Gamers are putting on in Texas. Sounds like a good enough reason to take a vacation, get out of town, and lose some weight. (Nikki might be there and I want to impress her, cause she's hot. Shhh...don't tell her I said that. Yes, I know she's dating someone. So what?)

After entering in some personal profile info, including a goal weight and timeframe, it sets a daily calorie goal for you. My current goal is to eat no more than 1,460 calories per day. Not a lot. Since I've been exercising more, it does account for that and adjusts the calculation accordingly. You start out with 1,460 but if you burn 500 calories during exercise, you're allowed a total of 1,960 calories. My calculation is centered around an ultimate goal of losing 2 pounds a week.

Calorie counting is fairly easy with the large food database they have. Not always sure about the accuracy, but it would have to take inputting a lot of bad data to really mess things up. Some of the data is community generated so you have to be a little careful about picking the right food. They have a way of confirming nutritional info for new foods, which helps.

The app is really cool. You can create your own recipes just by scanning barcodes. It will automatically pull the nutritional info for that ingredient. The only thing that can trip you up is incorrect portions, but once you get the hang of estimating measurements, it works pretty good.

Exercise logging could probably use some work, but since burning calories is all about heart rate and duration, I would think it's hard to get wrong. There is a database of almost any kind of exercise you can think of. Except sex. Why don't they include sex? It may the best variable exercise out there. Not that I'd be using it....*rollseyes*

The community aspect is a mix of something like Facebook and a forum. If you can get past the profile pics of guys' chests, it works good. You can 'friend' people and they end up on your news feed. The news feed consists of automatic and custom posts, like when you weight in and you've lost 4 pounds, it'll automatically generate a post for you. When you finish logging food and exercise for a day, it'll post whether or not you met your calorie goal.

Now, about the people you might meet: I'm a little uncomfortable with it sometimes. I friended a very nice woman; 44 years old whose profile describes a very tough life. The thing is...she's very clingy and kind of flirty. I get the impression that MFP is her only online social experience and there isn't much real life socializing happening. I know I don't have to interact with her in any way I don't want to, so she's still on the friends list, but some of the things she says makes me cringe and kind of worry about her.

Then there are the incredibly self-righteous overweight people. I don't want to make sweeping accusations here, but there are more than a few members that think everyone is judging them and others for being overweight. In my experience, that is far from the truth. 90% of the people you meet are very supportive and non-judgmental. On the other hand, maybe 15% of those people are actually supportive enough to confront if their friends are making poor health choices. Human nature, I guess. Not to mention that probably 75% of the members are overweight themselves. That's why they're there.


If you're into the online socializing thing and believe counting calories and exercising is the way to get fit, MyFitnessPal is a great tool. I don't plan on using it forever though. Once I hit my goal weight, I expect to have a good feel for what I should and shouldn't do for calories and exercising. At that point, I'll be focusing on muscle toning and maintaining the weight, rather than losing weight.

If you are a member or join in the near future, friend me! 3GKnight.

Answers to unasked questions (ie: randomness)

- If you're going to take a mirror self-shot of yourself for a dating website, CLEAN YOUR NASTY BEDROOM FIRST! Heck, I'm a single guy who rarely has visitors and even I attempt to make the bed...most mornings.


- Solitary Mama commented on one of ChopperPapas posts and I linked over to find a funny rant on the types of Mommy Bloggers she hates. A few of those are exactly why I don't visit blogfrog any more. Blogfrog, I've asked politely, so why haven't you removed my profile yet? Hmmm?

- I wonder how many times my assistant has caught me glancing at her cleavage.

- Found out the local brewery has fiddy cent wings on Monday. I'll have to try them out today.

- The gym saw me 5 days in a row last week and again last night. Bringing the iPad along helps. I have the Fitness Pal app on it. It's a calorie counter/fitness community. It's helping, actually. Did my weight-in last night and lost 4 pounds in 1 week. Twice as much as the plan I picked allotted me. Probably need to eat a little more, actually. Already dropped a belt notch!


- I feel like life is at a stand still right now. The 3 major items on the list are all waiting on someone else. I've been browsing the dating websites, but until I get at least 2 of those things done, they would just be a drag on any potential relationships. Not that people aren't understanding, but just explaining it would be a pain.

- We are moving along though. We got some car title/transfer stuff taken care of that had to be done before we could start the bankruptcy. Hope to pay the bankruptcy lawyer next week and get that process started.

- Finally closed a door to prevent my office from being a hallway. I'm getting all sorts of crap for it. That's just fine. My office isn't a hallway anymore.

- Had a nice chat with a friend about what I'm looking for in my next partner. Forgot most of it. Dangit.

- Grooveshark has free streaming radio. Found their Dubstep station. Most of it's annoying, but some is kinda fun.

- Had an evening that was really frustrating. The ex wouldn't pick up the phone to let me say goodnight to the girlies. I was pissed that she's not willing to let them take 5 minutes to say hi. Makes me want to refuse the same for her, but then I'd be 'that guy'.


- Punctuation ladies. Punctuation. At Talk City, no big deal. Your dating profile? Big deal.

- G turned 9 on the 17th. 9! Almost double digits.

Talk City review

On to another review: Talk City.

Now that I'm back in PC land, I can enjoy websites that use Java and flash again. One of those is Talk City. Talk city is an IRC host (internet relay chat) morphed into a social networking site. People can join for $7.77 a year and open their own chat room or it's free to join and browse existing rooms. You'll have to create a profile which can include some personal info and pictures, none of which are required.

The site itself is nicely done. It's easy to find active rooms and they have decent descriptions to let you know what you might be getting into before you join. It's kind of fun to jump into a room and start meeting new people, even though the communication is limited. (I'll warn you now, this may turn into a rant about people I've met at Talk City.) You have to be very careful about how you write things. Be sure to include "lol" or something similar if what you're saying is at all intended to be humorous, amusing, or sarcastic. People tend to take it the wrong way if you don't.

One technical problem I had last night was in a trivia room. The trivia rooms are kinda cool. The trivia is run by 'bots' which are programs that automatically post questions, read answers, and keep score, directly within the chat. The problem with this one was lag...I think. More than a couple of people would post their answers immediately after the question got done loading on my screen. So within one second, the question would get asked, answered, and scored. I call shenanigans.

So on to the fun stuff; the rant about some of the people. I will qualify this by saying that most of the people on TC are very nice. They always greet you and ask how you're doing and all that.

One of the first rooms I visited seemed very nice, and they still are I'm sure. But late Friday night it was quickly ruined by one or two very drunk & aroused women. They kept asking for pictures of all the guys and making lewd comments about the pictures they were looking at. I left and haven't been back.

The next room was a similar sized room, but promised to be less promiscuous. The first visit was pleasant. Not very active, but I met a couple of nice people. The next time I visited, there was a trivia game going on. I guess that happens sometimes if there's only a few people in the room. Three of us new visitors were enjoying it and chatting during the game. One of the people I met during the previous visit, the room owner actually, hopped on and got pissy real quick. He didn't like the game going on and shut it off, which was completely within his rights. The bad thing was that he expected people to argue with him about it, so he read an argument in anything that expressed even the mildest disappointment. Nobody really cared, but this guy was looking for a fight. Completely ruined the chat and went downhill from there when one of the other visitors called him a jerk (rightfully so.) I told him I was going to leave and not come back and wondered if he wanted to know why. He said he didn't care, and thought it was because of his rules. I said, "It had nothing to do with the rules, but since you don't care, have a good night." What I wanted to tell the guy was that he's the host of the room and if he wants his room to be successful, he should be the better man and get over it.

Then there was the third room. It was disappointing. It's a religiously oriented room, but the discussion wasn't. The chat was very dry and slow, "God Blessings" multiplying like rabbits, and given the chance, some people would take the opportunity to vent about their problems. I was hoping for more of a 'comparative religions' chat.

So if you want to witness a freak show, Talk City might just be for you.

Alright, that wasn't very nice, but in a way it's still true. Just don't expect a perfect fit, as far as conversation or personalities go. In fact, don't expect anything at all and you'll be fine.

View Profile

Reality: "The state of things as they actually exist."

Not too many posts ago, you got a taste of my attitude towards dating. Pretty much summed it up as a farce. It's people putting the best light on all of their characteristics in order to sell themselves.

That attitude hasn't changed. I still see dating that way, but I'm getting a little more willing to play the game. A little. The problem I have now is trying to define myself in the terms that the ladies use to describe what they're looking for. I ended up writing this with the thought that it could become part of my profile. So let's analyze some of the terms with a question:

"Am I....?"

"Fun Loving" - This is very objective. What does it even mean? I enjoy having fun, but do I really love it? Fun is such a flighty thing. Instead of seeking fun, I seek contentment and let the fun come as it may. I appreciate a woman who can do the same.

"Passionate" - I don't think that I'm not passionate, but rather haven't found my passion yet. I have a passion for my girls, but outside of that, there really isn't anything that I feel very strongly about right now. For a couple of years recently, I was very passionate about trying to save my marriage, but it takes two to make it work. I'm over it now. I take pride in my ability to step outside a situation and analyze it objectively. That's the definition of dispassionate. If you're passionate, more power to ya. Just don't expect it to be reciprocated all the time.

"Driven" - My willingness to go with the flow might come across as a lack of personal drive. On the other hand, if I want to get something done, I'll get it done. How about this? If I have a goal in mind, I either go for it, set it aside until I can, or drop it. I don't pine for things left undone.

"Honest" - Everyone lies. Of course you look fantastic in that dress. :) In all seriousness, my profile may be a little bland because I am honest. I honestly have never thought about this stuff, and am having a difficult time writing it. I expect honesty as well. Not just 'not telling lies', but making a point to speak the truth with compassion.

"Loves sports" - I like playing sports, but there's a conflict between that and my aversion to looking like a clumsy idiot. As for watching? ...meh. If you like it, I'll sit and watch it with you. You wouldn't need to explain the rules either. If I had to pick a favorite team, the choice would be heavily influenced by family or location.

"Not afraid to live life." - Again, one of those very relative terms. I'm not afraid to, but my interpretation of 'living life' may be very different from yours. Only one way to find out I suppose.

"Inspires me." - Can't say I'm very inspirational but I know being good at encouragement is important. Maybe that's what you mean, but I'm not going to be great at inspiring you to be more or become better. I don't really expect it from anyone else for myself either.

"Educated" - Yes. Doesn't mean I don't do stupid things. I appreciate a woman who can communicate coherently. That includes writing.

"Seek adventure" - I really need to do better at this one. I've a bad habit of making up excuses to not spend money. i.e. - Not leaving my house. That doesn't mean I don't like adventure, I love it, I just don't like doing it by myself.

"Could handle himself in any situation" - Does that include stopping a bank heist? train heist? Capturing escaped zoo animals? Giving you a makeover? I'd like a woman who is confident in her abilities, yet willing to ask for help.

"Does not play video games" - I'm out. I don't care if you do or don't, as long as you let me. If you don't like how much I do, just say so.

"Has a sense of humor" - Yes, but I often don't get the joke. I can be funny...if I have the time to write it out.

"Can roll with the punches" - Is that a threat?

"Doesn't have any psychological issues" - Do crazy people know they're crazy? Oh, and same to you.

"Nice handsome man" - I'm nicer than I want to be. And my name actually means "handsome." Does that count? Physical attraction has to be there. That's why God made you so pretty.

"Respectful" - Yes. You are God's finest creation, you deserve the utmost respect. I expect it to be reciprocated.

"Has Integrity" - I believe so. Being a manager puts me in a lot of circumstances where a lack of integrity would make things easier or more profitable, but I learned long ago that it's just not worth the compromise.

"Sincere" - Probably to a fault. I will not say something unless I mean it. I make a point to look for things to compliment. They will not come out 'just because'.

"Amazing eyes" - I don't know. What's "amazing" for an eye? Square? Translucent? Oblong pupils?

"Has an accent" - Ummm...no. Unless 'western white boy' is considered an accent. I have an accent if I speak Spanish. I like hearing a sweet voice. No accent needed.

"Silly and crazy at times" - Yes, but only with my kids. You? I can put up with it, if it's directed at me, but to be that honest guy as mentioned before, I don't really appreciate it. I enjoy classy humor. (Ok, fine..I admit it. I laugh at my kids fart jokes.)

"A godly man" - Yes. Or at least I pray so. Doesn't mean I don't fail at it on a regular basis. I regularly attend church and meet with a group of guys for prayer and accountability (and breakfast.) You're welcome to ask me about this. I'd love to share my story with you.


So what do you think Readers? I'm actually considering putting this in my profile. Maybe with a little cleaning up though. Is it too long winded? Is that comment about my marriage too creepy?

Patience is a virtue....that we're working on

by God's Good Grace isn't a parenting blog but more of a 'self-discovery' blog. It turns out that a good chunk of this self-discovery endeavor has to do with parenting. You don't hear about my girls a lot here. Maybe a few pictures here and there, but not a lot about what I think about parenting.

The last post like that was about discipline. Someone made a comment (not posted there) about how strict I was. That certainly wasn't the impression I wanted to give. I suppose everyone might think this way, but I don't consider myself very strict. Not that my girls get away with a lot, but they get to do pretty much whatever they want, if it falls within the boundaries.

Through the 2 year long attempt at reconciling my marriage, I learned a lot about patience. Patience as it applied to all areas of my life. My mom even told me, "you have the patience of Job." I didn't laugh right in her face, but at that point, it was quite obvious that my lack of patience played a part in the failure of my marriage.

Now, just to be clear, I believe that anyone meeting me and getting to know me would consider me a patient person, but talking to counselors and trying to work through our marriage problems showed me that patience was not a virtue as faithfully applied as it should have been.

During the past year, having the opportunity to parent without the distraction of trying to fix a marriage, I've learned that patience is a crucial part in developing strong relationships with children. My girls are fragile yet resilient creatures. They don't respond well to any form of impatience. In fact, it seems they don't respond at all to impatience.

Dealing with their impatience has been something new. G gets very impatient with herself, especially while doing homework. A gets impatient with circumstances she thinks are unfair or out of her control. E is still fairly patient, but being 5 helps. All things we need to work through, but being an impatient father about those things could very well do more harm than good.

One specific thing I learned about myself was my tendency to be impatient with things I didn't understand. I didn't understand a lot about the ex. Why she thought and did the things she did. I learned to understand more about her, too late though, and only with the help of counselors. One of those things I still don't quite understand, as with G, was an impatience with herself. I still can't explain it, but at least I know now that countering that impatience with my own is bad. Helping G to work through the problem and encouraging her is the best way to deal with it.

Looking forward, patience is still something we need to work on together, as a family, but we are working on it.

Boys and their toys

*sigh* Remember that iPad I bought? No, it's not broken...but it has a rival in the house now. Yup, I had to get another PC. The iPad isn't a stand-alone product, even with the improvements toward that they made in the iOS 5 update.

I did a bunch of research online, looking at new computers. While I have some parts that I could have used to try and build my own machine, I chickened out. Newegg and Tigerdirect have these upgrade kits that include all the parts I would need, but you have to assemble (the easy part) and install all the software, including the OS, yourself (the hard part.) Yeah, there are a lot of resources out there, but they all assume you know something about something. Of which I know nothing.

So after all the research, I wanted to get an Acer. Seemed like they had the speed/size that I wanted, without as much cost. Newegg had a refurbished unit for $309.99. After Googling a little more, I found my Walmart had the same machine, brand new, for $389.99. And since I'm an impatient bastard, to Walmart I went. I'm not a PC gamer, so the 4GB of RAM and the 1TB of HDD space should satisfy me for a while. A terabyte. 1000 gigabytes. Sheesh.

The girlies are already having fun with the webcam. They love watching themselves on the TV.

Gotta do something about the video & sound though. There are a couple of PCI slots available. Time to shop for a HDMI and surround sound card.

Windows 7 looks nice and clean. Still acts like Windows though. Haven't found anything groundbreakingly awesome yet. Except maybe the speed. It is very very quick. If it's anything like my past new machines, it'll slow down sooner or later, but this thing has more RAM than my last desktop had hard drive space. (There was a laptop in the mix that had a decent amount of space, but I just paid a guy $42 to tell me it was dead.)

Now that I have a new machine, I vow, with an oath written in blood, to keep my photos organized. Like this one, for example:

It's always neat to come home after a snowfall and see what the wildlife have been up to. It's difficult to see, but there are at least 3 different sets of tracks in there.

Since I can fiddle with Grooveshark again, please enjoy one of my current favorite songs:

Prayer post

We're going to try something a little different here. It's fairly personal, so I'm going to shut the comments off, but still post it on the blog. Since this is a personal journal style blog, I'm going to use it at such for this type of post, even knowing some will read it.

Anyway, it's about prayer. My prayer life has been terrible lately. I still pray, but not regularly. It's mostly a bad habit and I thought if I wrote it, it'll help put it on my mind more often and help build a better habit.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector; Luke 18: 9-14

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Dear God,

Thank you for all the blessings you've given me. Thank you for having enough confidence in me to be able to be a father to my kids and to lead the guys at work. You certainly know I couldn't do it without you.

I ask that you be with my girls. Keep them healthy, both in body and mind. Please protect their innocence, especially as they head into their teenage years. Help them to love life and to love you. Help me to be the presence they need in order to know you.

Thank you for the group of guys who invited me to meet with them on Friday mornings. Please be with R, W's daughter, today. Her life if tough now and you know the reason, but please let it be resolved soon.

Please be with the managers of my company. Especially the owners. Help them to make good decisions. Decisions that put your will first, but also smart decisions as far as keeping them and the company viable. I've questioned whether or not I should still be here. I'm going to leave that to you and if you need me somewhere else, please let it be obvious. If not, please help me to be content.

Please be with L. Help her to be content and to look to you and Godly friends for help. Put people in her life that she can be open and trusting with, and willing to listen to.

Finally, please give me wisdom and patience. Wisdom in making decisions and patience with circumstances I cannot control.

Amen.



So there you have it. I feel kind of strange putting this out there, but I gotta do something. This helps me to organize my thoughts and get it done too. Future posts like this will not have the commentary.

If only it worked with just a pair of glasses.

This whole online dating thing has me a little freaked out. Not skeered or anything, but I find myself thinking about things I hadn't thought much about before. That and a post by ChopperPapa about his first commandment for parent bloggers.

The main thing is an online identity. While it wasn't necessarily due to a concentrated effort, my real life (RL) identity has been fairly well separated from my online identity (OL.) Since Google+ came around, that's changed a little, but not enough to concern me.

It's not that I have anything to hide from anyone, but I've always been a very private person. Maybe there's more concern for what people think than I'd like to admit. Or maybe explaining things is more work than it's worth. Or maybe I enjoy the anonymity. Who knows...

Facebook is probably the only online connection to my RL. Not that I ever actually post updates, but still. Google+ is the next closest connection. It's set up to keep things as separate as you want too. You could post any update but then pick and choose the people you share it with. Currently, I have no family in any of my G+ 'Circles'.

What I'm mostly thinking about is how I might integrate any new online acquaintances into my OL. Do I do the FB thing and suffer the potential consequences of FB drama? Would they get offended if I didn't want them as a FB friend? Do I mention that I'm a blogger? Cause if I did, I'd probably have to let them read it. And if they read it, would my attitude about the blog change?

It's all certainly not worrying about, but it's stuff I'm thinking about and that's why it's here.

Here's my real profile pic.

I am physically incapable of forcing a smile.

I think my camera gives these 'self-shots' a fish-eye look. Does anyone else see that? Maybe it's just the shape of my head.

Or maybe this is the next "What is it?" picture. Good luck with that!



ps - Just read a profile, "I'm not picky on looks..." Do we have a winner?! Ha!

pps - Why do 90% of the single women have a dog? I like dogs and all, but sheesh...