New Obsession

This is my new thing I want. A Victorinox Explorer Plus Swiss Army knife. I carried a Swiss Army knife on my belt for years and years when I was in a more technical field, but haven't for about 6 years now. Darn workplace rules!

But now that I have my new Timbuk2 messenger bag there is the perfect size pocket for one of these. And my birthday is coming up in a few days, too.

Update:

My beautiful, loving wife has ordered me one of these from Amazon and it should be here in a few days.

Down on the Seattle Street

Or car sales lot, anyways.

BMW M1

Down on the Olympia Street

1931 Ford Model A Woody

Time Lapse Balloons

Here is a lovely time-lapse video of more than 100 hot air balloons ascending for the 2006 Reno Balloon Race.

I am an Obsessive

Like a lot of people I occasionally fall under the spell of a consumer product and have to obsess over it. Most of the time I don't end up getting it, but researching and finding the best price at least give me something to do with my boring life.

I recently went through this with the new iPhone 3GS. I didn't get it, which I am glad of because now I am over it.

My new thing is a desire for a man bag, murse, call it what you will. I usually carry everything in my coat pockets, such as work badge, phone, change, mail, book, etc. But now that it is summer I am jacketless. Also hobbling around with a cane due to my back issues complicates matters, as I only have one hand free much of the time.

It is also coming on to my birthday, so that gives me the perfect excuse, right?

I have narrowed it down to a couple of choices from Timbuk2.

The first is the Hacker daypack:





See? It will make me a Japanese hipster, too.

The next is the Timbuk2 Covert Reflective Messenger Bag - Medium:


The best price I have found on the Hacker is $69.99, normally it runs $100-120. The messenger is $89, and normally runs about $150.

The Hacker is probably more practical. It has a laptop pocket (although I don't have one right now), has lot of pockets, has a back pad and can be used as a shoulder bag or backpack. It is a vertical format type of bag, which I like also. My only concern is that it might bump my cane hand, which my current bag does sometimes. Of course, hopefully I won't be using that too much longer.

The Messenger is less so. But it looks hella cool. I looked at a similar model at Alpine Experience on Saturday. It was also a medium messenger, but was the ballistic nylon, not the Covert reflective, which means it is reflective when lights-like headlights-hit it, but is not shiny other times. The yellow panel has special reflective thread woven into it. The colors were reversed on that one, gold on the outsides, black in the middle. It is just a bit too flashy.

Another negative for the Messenger is that it has no top briefcase-type handle. But it does wrap around the back better, which would keep it out of the way of the cane.

Of course it is unlikely I will get either, but I had a lot of fun checking out the different models and options, making a chart of best prices, etc.

Yes, I am a nerd.


And a follow up:

I got the messenger, extra small, in three shades of blue I found it at my local Marshall's for $14.99. The regular price is $65, so what a deal, huh?

So far I am loving it, it holds all my stuff for everyday without being too big, I can get a book and my camera in there no problem.

I have to Link to This

Via Boing Boing

http://imgur.com/zZ5Jn.gif

Bringing It up to Date

So that's where things stand now. 279 pounds and jeans that don't fit.

I can't work out except for a bit of stretching and floating in the pool, as it is too painful.

I also haven't been keeping my food journal for a while. Probably the single most important key to my success was the food journal. Since about the second week of our starting the program in January 2008 I have been using a simple Mead 6 x 9 wire-bound notebook to keep track of my eating and exercise.

The good news is I have started again.

I have figured to start at 2000 calories per day, with 40% of that (200 grams) being protein. If I can get that then the other macros fall into place.

...And now 2009

So what happened this time?

Well, in January I stopped working out with my family and started on my own. Since I had lost so much weight I turned my focus to building muscle mass and strength as way to get rid of the rest of my fat. Also, I hadn't been working out since the beginning of November 2008, and felt I needed to go at my own pace.

Why? I had my gall bladder out November 13th and was in the hospital for 5 days. I had a gall stone stuck in the common bile duct and it was making my liver and pancreas swell up. The surgery put four cuts in my abdominal wall, so I couldn't do anything involving using those muscles for about 8 weeks.

I started a program based on the book The New Rules of Lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. I put on about 12 pounds of muscle in just a few months, and was very pleased with what I saw in the mirror as my body fat dropped.

At the same time I intensified my Yoga practice, adding a more advanced class; I began a home Yin Yoga practice as well.

But I also began to have sciatica. At first it was mainly muscular, and I was able to get some relief by stretching the piriformis muscle in the Yoga asana known as Pigeon (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana).

And then I wasn't. I began to get a fiery pain down the outside of my left leg, culminating in numbness of the outside of the foot. The pain was incredible, like being hooked up to an electric wire (I imagine, never having been actually hooked up to an electric wire).

As an aside, you know you are in trouble when the doctor looks at the MRI and exclaims "Wow, that thing is huge!" It looked like a thumb sticking out between my vertebrae.

The long and the short of it is that I have a herniated vertebral disk (S1-L5). I will be having a microdiskectomy surgery August 5 to remove the part of the disk that is mashing on the nerve, causing all the pain. So two surgeries in 10 months.

Work Article

The pictures that are in my last post were also used in an article about me that appeared on my agency intranet site.

Here is the article:

2009 is going to be a great year for Charles Harper. He begins the year fit, healthy, and confident that he has learned the secret to controlling his weight.
Since last January, Charles has dropped 128 pounds. At 230 he looks and feels great, but he’s still working on losing a few more pounds. In addition to eating right—lots of brown rice and fresh veggies—he has a regular exercise routine. He works out at the gym three times a week and attends a yoga class two or three times a week.
Charles has dropped up to 80 pounds a couple of times before, but this time losing weight and getting fit was a family adventure that began when his wife, Ann, applied for a Family Wellness Program at the Valley Athletic Club in Tumwater. The club offered families a free membership for a 12-week period if they agreed to work with a trainer three times every week and participate in a nutrition class.
The Harper family—Charles and Ann, their sixteen-year-old daughter and fourteen-year-old son—was the only family to last longer than 12 weeks; after 50 weeks, they are still in the program. Ann has lost 40 pounds, both teenagers have also lost weight, and life at home is a lot more fun.
So what motivated them? “It was sort of the team aspect of it, and there was a healthy competition to it, too,” Charles said. “Now we’re all on the same page. We do so much more as a family now. We work out as a family—everybody gets a lot more exercise and the general level of happiness in the house is much higher.”
Charles and Ann also go to yoga class together. Charles admitted that he wasn’t sure that yoga was for him. “In this country about 80 percent of yoga practitioners are women, so I was not eager at first,” he said. “In India all the teachers are men---it’s basically the opposite.”
Now Charles is so sold on the benefits of yoga that he’s thinking of becoming a certified instructor. “It improves your flexibility and balance and reduces stress. I’ve been encouraging my mom and dad to do it. When you’re done you feel very tall, limber, and floaty…it’s just a great thing.”
Charles also learned to love tofu. “We eat things like brown rice, low-fat turkey, quinoa, chicken, and tofu,” he said. “I’ve always liked cooking—I used to make breads. I’ve done a lot of exploring—vegetarian and Asian food. We’ve really expanded the range of things we eat. I now cook Thai and Vietnamese food at home, which is what you have to do to control what’s in your food.”
Last summer the Harper family planted a vegetable garden for the first time in years. “We ate salads right out of the garden—swiss chard, kale, arugula, spinach, lettuce. It takes an extremely small space to grow salad greens. We also grew yellow and green squash. Next year I’m going to plant Italian style zucchini,” Charles said.
The Harpers have also changed their dining out habits. “We haven’t been to fast food in 2008—not a single time,” Charles said. “We used to eat out all the time. Now we eat our maybe once a month and we’ve only had pizza three times this year.”
Charles is proud of losing weight and getting fit, but he is even more pleased with the fact that he and Ann are setting a good example for their children and teaching them good health habits. “We’re helping them establish good patterns for their future—their next 60 to 70 years,” Charles said.
Charles credits Ann with getting the family started on the road to good health and Paul Griffith and Jennifer Croley with helping them stay on track. Paul is the trainer who worked with the family and Jennifer is their nutrition instructor. “Paul is a wonderful guy and Jennifer taught us a lot,” Charles said. “Everyone at the Valley is so friendly. It’s such an awesome place. I’ve been to a lot of gyms over the years, and it’s the best.”

It pretty much tells the whole story.

Back to the Story

So in January 2008 my family and myself began going to the Valley Athletic Club in Tumwater, WA and working with a personal trainer, Paul Griffith, 3 times a week.

At the time we started I was 358 pounds.

Then I started to lose weight.

I started going to the gym at least 5 or 6 times per week. Besides working out with Paul, I did as much as 6 to 8 hours of extra cardio per week.

I started a Yoga practice, slowly at first and then as many as four classes a week.

You might say I got a bit obsessed. At one point I was at the gym every day for 33 straight days. Several times I had streaks of 20+ days.

By Christmas of 2008 I had lost 120 pounds. And looked like this:



Not too bad, if I do say so myself. I was pretty happy with how I looked here.

Interlude

I have wanted to build a boat for a long time.

Here are some I think are pretty awesome, from Chesapeake Light Craft http://clcboats.com/

Chester Yawl

Passagemaker Dinghy

Chesapeake 18 Kayak being built

How it all began

I have dealt with weight issues my whole life. That means I have mostly been fat, up to roughly 375 pounds at points.

I have lost 80 pounds several times, but always gained back 100.

In 2003 I got to around 250 pounds. I was doing a lot of hiking and solo backpacking. And then I had a deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism and almost died.

It kind of put the kibosh on things and I got depressed, etc and got up to what you see on the left.

First Post

So, here goes.

I don't know if most bloggers have a moment that makes them take the step.

But I do.

I have thought about doing a blog for a long time, but just never did it. I was inhibited by the idea that I am too boring, too inconsequential, too whatever.

I have a story to tell, but I also thought I had missed the opportunity to tell it. Life has given me another chance at fame on the interwebs.

So what made me take the step?

This morning I went to put on my size 38 waist jeans, and they couldn't be buttoned. By a lot.