Life on Snow Hill

As some of you know, Becky and I have been in Gatlinburg since Sunday.  We haven’t really done a whole lot – her mom was with us for Sunday and Monday.  We went to the Dixie Stampede on Sunday night, then on Monday we walked around downtown Gatlinburg for a few hours.  In the snow.

Yes, snow.  I’ve been glad to see it honestly, although I’m over it now.  It started snowing a little bit on Sunday night, but snowed fairly hard all day on Monday and part of Tuesday morning.  In all, we probably had about 5 inches – at least that’s what I eye-balled on the handrail outside the front window of our room.

I’m usually one to say that I’m good with one or two good snows in the Winter, then I’m ready for Spring.  Well, I’ve had my good snow – I’m ready for Spring.  I’m ready to do a garden and mow the yard.  I’m ready to cut down some more trees for next Winter’s firewood.  I’m ready to be outside without freezing.

The snow is still beautiful though.  Here’s a pic to prove it – stay tuned, I’ll try to add more pics to this gallery later on rather than keeping it at just the one.

Today Becky and I are in Gatlinburg, snowed in with some of the most beautiful snow I’ve seen in a long time. We’ve stayed in our room in the resort and just taken it easy today and kept warm. All that was on TV of course was the presidential inauguration.

It was amazing the disrespect the media gave to President Bush and the praise they gave to our new communist president. Is that what I’m doing now in reverse? Maybe, but I am not a journalist and have appropriatly labeled this post as an opinion.

Obama talks well and promises several good things. I’m just leary of how he plans to accomplish those things. Will he actually uphold and protect the Constitution as he has sworn to do? Or will he continue to tear it down as he has already proven himself to do? Time will tell. Will I continue to have the freedom to write and say whatever I want, or will that be taken away from me as has been done in other countries? Time will tell.

There are other things I’d like to write here, but they would be nothing but controversial, and I’m on vacation and am not in the mood. Maybe when I get back I’ll say what I really think.

Ok, I’m getting really bad at this.  Somebody needs to scream at me because I’m slacking up on my walking and my blogging.

I did go for a walk yesterday – right about a mile’s worth.  It was cold – below freezing – but I was still able to work up a little bit of a sweat.

One thing I’m proud of, though, is that on Saturday I weighed myself again.  I was a little nervous about it because I honestly didn’t expect any results in that short of a time.  However, I lost 2 pounds over the last week.  Yay for me.

I was a little excited about it, though.  It gave me a little encouragement to keep at it.

One thing I’m really going to have to work on is getting up early enough to go for a walk in the mornings before work.  I’ve succeeded twice so far since I’ve begain WAIT.

Thankfully, yesterday was Friday and I had time in the afternoon to go on my (mostly) daily walk.  I took the entire 2.2 mile round-trip to the highway and back.  This time, however, I had to stop twice for a 5 to 10 second break on my way back up the hill.  Maybe I should work myself up to a jog on the flatter part of the road before I try to tackle that again..I’ll have to think on that one.

I’m still amazed at how good I feel after I’ve done some exercise.  After all that hard work getting back up the hill, once I cooled down I felt great for the rest of the day.  I’m beginning to notice the difference very well on the days that I’m not able to get a walk in.

One last thing – I’m going to start donig everything I can to blog on the days that I’m actually talking about.  I’m constantly blogging about ‘yesterday this is how things went’ rather than ‘today’.

Yes, you are correct – I skipped day 5.  For two reasons.  One was that I overslept, that is my fault.  The other is that it was a very cold & rainy morning.  I won’t exactly blame God, but He had a lot to do with it I’m sure.  Yesterday I did come home and play tennis on the Wii, and got a decent workout out of that.

Today I’m working from home, so on my lunch break I took my walk.  It’s been getting cooler all day long, so it was in the upper 30’s when I set out.  I went my 1.5 miles today – I didn’t have enough time on my lunch break to do the full 2.2.

I’d been dragging all morning, but when I got out and got my exercise, I began feeling much more alert and just generally better.

I believe I’ve decided to do my 2.2 mile walks on Friday afternoons and/or Saturday’s.  That is when I have the most time available, and more control over what part of the day I can actually take the time to do it.

Today is the first day I’ve gone for a walk before work.  I was up late last night, and I knew getting out of bed this morning would be a challenge.  Even if I go to bed early it’s still a challenge, so that really isn’t that much of an excuse.

Anyway, I rolled out of bed about 6 this morning.  I took care of a few things, then headed out for my walk.  I did even less today – 1 mile.  I was pushed for time though.  I even jogged a (very) short stretch to try to hurry things along a bit.  I’m pretty sure that sustained exercise is more beneficial, but some exercise is better than none, so I don’t feel so bad.

Something else I forgot to mention for yesterday’s post was that I weighed myself for the first time in months.  I hate the scales.  Even when I take a trip to the doctor, I don’t look at the scales when they weigh me.  It’s not that I’m self-conscious about my weight per-se – I don’t kid myself about being skinny..I’m just not.  But I’m not obese either.  I just wasn’t interested in how much I actually weighed.

But I finally decided it was best that I know, if for nothing more than to keep myself accountable.  So now, I’m going to post it here as well, to hold myself even more accountable.  By the way, this is part of a very broad meaning/interpretation of the word Impact in my WAIT acronym.  If I hold myself accountable, I’ll be more inclined to better myself.  Anyway, I’m digressing.  You ready?  I’m 218 according to my bathroom scales.  On February 1, I’m going to weigh myself again and see if I’m making any progress.

Again I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday about my day’s progress, but I should get caught up today.

Yesterday I went about 1.5 miles again.  I probably won’t do the full 2.2 miles again for a while, until my body gets a little more used to the idea of actually working a little bit every day.

One thing I have noticed (maybe it’s all it my head, but I’ll take that) is that I seem to have a little more energy since I’ve started walking daily.  My first day took 40 minutes to do the 2.2 miles.  Days 2 and 3 have taken me about 20 minutes to do 1.5.  (It took me that much longer to do the 2.2 because on the way back is that steep hill.)  A decent amount of exercise is needed for many reasons, and keeping yourself energetic and alert is one of them.  I’ve already noticed a change in that area, and I’m definitely enjoying it.

I didn’t get a chance yesterday to blog, but I did walk.  I went about 1.5 miles.  I was still feeling a little sore from the first day’s walk, so I didn’t push quite as hard.

Becky and I went to prayer at church last night, and there she was talking to a girl who has a pedometer on her phone.  I thought to myself, “My iPhone should have something like that available!”  So when I got home, I looked one up and found a free one.  I’ll see how well that one does..if it works well, I might get a paid one that can tell how far I actually walk rather than just the number of steps walked.  The free one I found does, however, tell me whether the walking was moderate or vigirous.  We’ll see how well it works today.

Today I began my Weight And Impact Training.  I just made that up – cool, huh?  Ok, maybe not, but it is what I will use to refer to my attempt at weight loss over the next few weeks.

The Weight part of the acronym is obvious.  I picked Impact for the ‘I’ because I, well, I needed a word.  But impact fits because I want to pay attention to how different things will impact my weight.  I wonder if anyone has ever put a program together using this acronym?  Hmm..I might could sell that!

Ok, I doubt it.  Anyway, my first day went well.  I slept in this morning because I was working from home today.  So, I didn’t go for a walk right away.  Once I finished my work, though, I got up right then and took off.  From my house to the highway is exactly 1.1 miles according to my GPS (Thanks, Becky for that Christmas gift. ).  If that is accurate, I walked exactly 2.2 miles today.  Now, while 2.2 miles isn’t all that far, this road has several hills on it that serve well to get my heart pumping faster than it’s really used to.

I can still feel the tightness in all of my leg muscles.  Wow – what does that say about me being out of shape?  It was fine though – I worked up a good sweat in about 37 degrees during that time.