The basement has been that project that I've just never got around too. The plan has always been for that to become a secondary entertainment room. A place where I can go and watch wrestling, anime, etc. and not subject Kelly to something she might not be as interested in. And, sometimes you need to head off and do your own thing when you're married.
So there has been a few phases to this. I was doing a nautical theme for awhile but I hadn't really added a ton to it past some pictures. Then today I had a sudden inspiration and the basement has started to take off.
My dad bought my a tin Batman sign and I decided to hang it up in the basement this afternoon. I put it up and it suddenly brought the room to life for me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the room. Kelly and I went to Half Price books and I added a Captain America and Incredible Hulk sign to the mix. No Iron Man, which I'm disappointed in. We checked some other places but I didn't find the Iron Man one I wanted. I did come across one for Spider-Man and one for the Silver Surfer. I plan to add those eventually but they can wait.
The tin signs are really cool. They are retro and feature the character as they appeared in the late 60s/early 70s. The signs even look a little beat up and aged to add to the effect. They're pretty cool to look out and I'll be able to eventually have Cap, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk to represent the Avengers. I'll add other heroes as I can find them but that was my inspiration at the moment.
I moved the furniture around a bit to prepare for when I have a tv down there. We're getting an old one tomorrow and hopefully it will be a good start. I'm looking forward to getting back into watching Smoky Mountain Wrestling when we get a tv and dvd player set up down there.
I'll post pictures when I get more completed on my room.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Friday, May 25, 2012
Q&A Time
If you had the chance to redo high school, knowing what you know now, how would you redo it?
This was a question that my friend Dan answered on his Xanga page a couple of weeks ago and it's kind of been churning around in my brain off and on since. I figured, why not make a blog post out of it.
To me, that's a hard question to answer truthfully. I don't really dwell on my high school years very much these days as I'm too busy just living. But my memories tend to be mostly fond. I was fairly popular as high school progressed and I got decent grades. I don't feel like those years were extremely wasted in hindsight. I mean, we all honestly waste our youth, it's just part of the ignorance of being young. You'll always shoulda woulda coulda yourself about your younger years.
I guess if I had to go back and pull out regrets. I regret getting burned out on drawing in Art class. I feel I had some skills that could have been shaped into something and I really let that slip away. I get the itch from time to time and I just don't have the same proficiency with a pencil like I did when I was a teenager. I wish I could go back and convince myself to continue.
Past that, the bad things that happened all made me who I am today. Girls not liking me or giving me a chance made my wife that much more special to me. I didn't do anything super stupid that I had to live with forever. And I cemented friendships with people like Justin, Adam, Natalie, Dan, Dave, Graydon, Abby and Woody that still preserve today.
This was a question that my friend Dan answered on his Xanga page a couple of weeks ago and it's kind of been churning around in my brain off and on since. I figured, why not make a blog post out of it.
To me, that's a hard question to answer truthfully. I don't really dwell on my high school years very much these days as I'm too busy just living. But my memories tend to be mostly fond. I was fairly popular as high school progressed and I got decent grades. I don't feel like those years were extremely wasted in hindsight. I mean, we all honestly waste our youth, it's just part of the ignorance of being young. You'll always shoulda woulda coulda yourself about your younger years.
I guess if I had to go back and pull out regrets. I regret getting burned out on drawing in Art class. I feel I had some skills that could have been shaped into something and I really let that slip away. I get the itch from time to time and I just don't have the same proficiency with a pencil like I did when I was a teenager. I wish I could go back and convince myself to continue.
Past that, the bad things that happened all made me who I am today. Girls not liking me or giving me a chance made my wife that much more special to me. I didn't do anything super stupid that I had to live with forever. And I cemented friendships with people like Justin, Adam, Natalie, Dan, Dave, Graydon, Abby and Woody that still preserve today.
New site look...
I updated the look of the site and
Mighty Marvel Reading Project
Adventures in Columbus Dining
I wanted to get away from generic looking sites like everything else on Blogger. I think all three look a lot slicker and hope it helps the growth of my blogs. I haven't mentioned Columbus Dining before. That's a blog where Kelly and I review local Columbus, OH restaurants. So check them out and follow if you would like.
Mighty Marvel Reading Project
Adventures in Columbus Dining
I wanted to get away from generic looking sites like everything else on Blogger. I think all three look a lot slicker and hope it helps the growth of my blogs. I haven't mentioned Columbus Dining before. That's a blog where Kelly and I review local Columbus, OH restaurants. So check them out and follow if you would like.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
The Nike Fuel Band and Me...
As a reward for losing 20+ lbs. thus far this year, I splurged a bit and bought a Nike Fuel Band as a reward for all of my hardwork. The Fuel Band is a relatively new gadget. What it is is a fancy pedometer. It counts your steps and your calories but the important thing is... it converts all of this into Nike Fuel Points.
You set your goal daily for how many Fuel Points you want to earn. 2000 for a fairly regular day and 3000 for a day where you'll be exercising. You can go nutty and have higher goals but I doubt I'll be doing that. The idea behind this is to hit your goal as many days as possible. So it's an hour before bed and you're 500 points short, you better do some exercise and get those last few points you need.
I got this Thursday night and couldn't hit my goal of 3000 because I just didn't have the time. Friday, I went to work and pretty easily hit 3000 and beyond. For the weekend, I decided to drop my goal to 2000 because I would be less active. Family came in on Saturday and I was pretty inactive so 4 pm rolled in and I only had 650 pts. So I got up and walked for about 35 minutes and bumped that total up to about 1600 points. I met my goal for the day. Today, we did our normal thing and I was sitting at 1550 at close to 7 pm. I walked for about 20 minutes and got to my 2000 point goal.
It connects via USB to your PC and uploads your stats to a website so you can see an hour by hour breakdown of your activity and how far you've walked, etc. It will even compare your activity by day over a longer period of time.
I'm pleased with it so far. It got me to workout a total of 55 minutes that I wouldn't have on a different weekend. It's giving my a tangible goal to hit on a daily basis and I think that's good for me. I'll be bumping it back up to 3000 for the work week. We'll see how it goes as time progresses.
I might post a video review of this later on. I haven't decided one way or the other though.
You set your goal daily for how many Fuel Points you want to earn. 2000 for a fairly regular day and 3000 for a day where you'll be exercising. You can go nutty and have higher goals but I doubt I'll be doing that. The idea behind this is to hit your goal as many days as possible. So it's an hour before bed and you're 500 points short, you better do some exercise and get those last few points you need.
I got this Thursday night and couldn't hit my goal of 3000 because I just didn't have the time. Friday, I went to work and pretty easily hit 3000 and beyond. For the weekend, I decided to drop my goal to 2000 because I would be less active. Family came in on Saturday and I was pretty inactive so 4 pm rolled in and I only had 650 pts. So I got up and walked for about 35 minutes and bumped that total up to about 1600 points. I met my goal for the day. Today, we did our normal thing and I was sitting at 1550 at close to 7 pm. I walked for about 20 minutes and got to my 2000 point goal.
It connects via USB to your PC and uploads your stats to a website so you can see an hour by hour breakdown of your activity and how far you've walked, etc. It will even compare your activity by day over a longer period of time.
I'm pleased with it so far. It got me to workout a total of 55 minutes that I wouldn't have on a different weekend. It's giving my a tangible goal to hit on a daily basis and I think that's good for me. I'll be bumping it back up to 3000 for the work week. We'll see how it goes as time progresses.
I might post a video review of this later on. I haven't decided one way or the other though.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
5/15 is on the way...
Which means Diablo III awesomeness is only essentially a day away. I downloaded the client last week so all I have to do is hit install when the game goes live on Tuesday and the long awaited Diablo III will be mine. Cue evil laugh there.
In the meantime, Kelly and I bought Kingdoms of Amalur. I've enjoyed it a lot in the 5 hours I'ved played so far. It's kind of what I wanted Fable III to be when it came out. It controls like Fable and has the greatest complexities of Dragon Age tacked on. So far the world seems well developed and there are a lot of side quests to pick up. The class system is a lot different. You have skill trees in might, sorcery and finesse. You add points to these as you level, you can mix and match however you want. Based on how many points you invest in those skills will effect which classes you can be as the game progresses. I'm a little worried about sub-optimal builds but other people have said they haven't had issues. So we'll see how it goes.
In the meantime, Kelly and I bought Kingdoms of Amalur. I've enjoyed it a lot in the 5 hours I'ved played so far. It's kind of what I wanted Fable III to be when it came out. It controls like Fable and has the greatest complexities of Dragon Age tacked on. So far the world seems well developed and there are a lot of side quests to pick up. The class system is a lot different. You have skill trees in might, sorcery and finesse. You add points to these as you level, you can mix and match however you want. Based on how many points you invest in those skills will effect which classes you can be as the game progresses. I'm a little worried about sub-optimal builds but other people have said they haven't had issues. So we'll see how it goes.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
I want my MTV...
Okay, not really.
I was thinking about the old Columbus Public Access channel a couple of days ago for whatever reason. I wasn't sure why it went off the air and Googled it. The city council cut the funding for whatever reason in the mid 2000s. This made me a little sad. There was nothing like being at someone's house at 11 on a Saturday night and catching the late night hijinks of the various guys.
For those of you from places without public access, this is how it works. You want to put the time and effort in, you can have your own show. This means that during the day it's a lot of religious programming and after about 11 it turns into the wild west of television. And by wild west I mean, anything short of penetration is fair game on a public access channel.
I got my start watching public access because they had wrestling on. I was in my mid teens and devoured anything wrestling related that came on television at the time. I watched lucha libre on the Spanish channel on Saturdays after WCW Saturday Night was over. And this was perfect, the IWA aired on Tuesday afternoons. Now granted, the IWA was probably the most rinky-dink promotion to ever exist. I mean, they worked from a venue where the ceiling was so low that the guys couldn't climb to the top rope. But it was wrestling so I watched it.
Eventually through the grapevine I heard about the late night programming. I think it was my friend Dan had become a fan of some of the later night guys. Fan might not be the right word. It was more trainwreck television than anything else.
I looked stuff up on Youtube and the various guys haven't aged well. Some of the stuff was oddly self important and shocking for the sake of shocking. I still have my fond memories but I think it's one of those you can't go home again moments.
I was thinking about the old Columbus Public Access channel a couple of days ago for whatever reason. I wasn't sure why it went off the air and Googled it. The city council cut the funding for whatever reason in the mid 2000s. This made me a little sad. There was nothing like being at someone's house at 11 on a Saturday night and catching the late night hijinks of the various guys.
For those of you from places without public access, this is how it works. You want to put the time and effort in, you can have your own show. This means that during the day it's a lot of religious programming and after about 11 it turns into the wild west of television. And by wild west I mean, anything short of penetration is fair game on a public access channel.
I got my start watching public access because they had wrestling on. I was in my mid teens and devoured anything wrestling related that came on television at the time. I watched lucha libre on the Spanish channel on Saturdays after WCW Saturday Night was over. And this was perfect, the IWA aired on Tuesday afternoons. Now granted, the IWA was probably the most rinky-dink promotion to ever exist. I mean, they worked from a venue where the ceiling was so low that the guys couldn't climb to the top rope. But it was wrestling so I watched it.
Eventually through the grapevine I heard about the late night programming. I think it was my friend Dan had become a fan of some of the later night guys. Fan might not be the right word. It was more trainwreck television than anything else.
I looked stuff up on Youtube and the various guys haven't aged well. Some of the stuff was oddly self important and shocking for the sake of shocking. I still have my fond memories but I think it's one of those you can't go home again moments.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Milestone
Today I weighed in at 268.4 today which means I've lost 20.4 lbs. since starting my exercise routine in January. As always, I could probably be doing better but I'm happy with where I'm at currently. 20 lbs. feels like a big deal. Kelly says that I should get some reward but I really have no idea what. I never really approached things that way. I guess I'll think about it over the weekend.
Kelly and I were talking about it earlier this week. My original goal was to get down to 200-210 lbs. but after seeing myself post 20 lbs., I think I might have some difficulties with that goal. I think I might have to settle more for something like 215-220. My body has changed greatly and I've slimmed down a ton so far. This is probably the smallest I've been since I was 20 and coming out of working at Camp for the first time. I weighed less at the peak of my warehouse days but my muscle mass was different due to the lifting and I looked bigger than I do now.
Kelly and I also are looking into buying Kingdoms of Amalur this weekend. It seems like a game we'd both enjoy so we're going in halfsies on it. If you haven't heard of the game, it was created by Curt Schilling's new game studio.
Kelly and I were talking about it earlier this week. My original goal was to get down to 200-210 lbs. but after seeing myself post 20 lbs., I think I might have some difficulties with that goal. I think I might have to settle more for something like 215-220. My body has changed greatly and I've slimmed down a ton so far. This is probably the smallest I've been since I was 20 and coming out of working at Camp for the first time. I weighed less at the peak of my warehouse days but my muscle mass was different due to the lifting and I looked bigger than I do now.
Kelly and I also are looking into buying Kingdoms of Amalur this weekend. It seems like a game we'd both enjoy so we're going in halfsies on it. If you haven't heard of the game, it was created by Curt Schilling's new game studio.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)