Sep 11

Sep 11 Labor Day...Weekly Weight Update

Ahhhhh, Labor Day. The day that summer is officially over (screw you autumnal equinox) and kids hate because it means that it is time to go back to school. All of the neighborhood pools allow the neighborhood dogs to freely swim because it will be time to drain and clean the pool anyway. All the teachers will perfect the complaining that summer was too short and start to talk about how much they are looking forward to winter break (Hi Rizzo and Carrie).

Our family celebrated the holiday by visiting the Herndon Labor Day Festival. The celebration in downtown Herndon brings together multiple wineries to provide tastings and vendors peddling their wares. The streets are lined with food trucks to provide delicious and far from nutritious meals. In a field there is a tent with a few beers available to sample. All in all, a fun time was had by all.

Seeing as Monday was the last day before school started (for everyone as Rizzo is a teacher and Cece is going to “school” full-time) we decided to celebrate with some ice cream. There isn’t anything less healthy than Coldstone Creamery but who cares when you are getting ready for the long school year. We each had a bowl of the delicious creamy treat before heading home and getting ready for school.

We all thought that Tuesday was a normal routine kind of day until we woke up Wednesday to learn the awful truth. Cece woke up with a giant, swollen, goopy eye ball that looked like she got kicked in the face by Chuck Norris. She clearly couldn’t go to school so I stayed home with her while Rizzo went off to work.

We got ourselves into the doctor’s office around 2:30pm to learn the inevitable truth: PINK EYE! Why is it that children love nothing more than to pass around conjunctivitis like it is a joint at a Phish concert? Cece was literally at school for a total of 5 days before she was infected with the most dreaded of childhood infestations (with the possible exception of lice). I was hoping we could get at least a month under our belt before getting caught with some sort of disease but we weren’t that lucky.

Wednesday morning, pink eye shmink eye, Cece feels great and plays with shaving cream

Wednesday afternoon, pink eye wins and makes Cece a snuggle bug.

On Thursday I headed into work while Rizzo took the home duty of hanging out with the walking dead. I’ll admit that it is difficult to stay on task at work knowing that in four short weeks I’ll be taking off on a new adventure. It is sort of an odd feeling to know that you are doing a job that will no longer be yours in a month. In one way you don’t feel like you are working as hard as you have been. On the other side of the coin, you feel like you are getting more work done because no new jobs are coming your way so you can finally wrap up the things that have been sitting on your desk for weeks and months. It is liberating and scary at the same time.

On Friday, Rizzo went out to meet up with some friends so I settled in to watch a few episodes of Supergirl. I’m very excited that is has made it to Netflix. As a nerd, I watch all of the CW comic shows, including Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. I was always disappointed that I didn’t get to watch Supergirl. Supergirl aired on CBS. Wes don’t have cable (only Hulu and Netflix for this house) and CBS doesn’t provide its shows to Hulu so I never got to watch the first season. This season, Supergirl will be on the CW with the rest of the DC TV Universe shows so I’ll be able to keep up with all four of them but I have to catch up on season 1 of Supergirl to make sure I’m up-to-date.

Saturday was another good day but I must admit that I’m looking forward to fall coming. I went out for a run while Cece was napping and was hoping to get in a good long run. As could have been predicted if I would pay attention to how my body works, the heat wore me down to the point of only getting in a run of about 3.1 miles then having to walk the remaining 1.3 miles back home. I know it is hot outside but I feel like I must overheat more than others while working out. Even if I’m replacing liquids (I was running with a water bottle which I finished off three times over during the run) I sweat more than I believe the average person sweats. (Warning: be prepared to be grossed out by the next statement) I sweat so much that I can literally ring a half a gallon of sweat from my sweat-wicking t-shirt after a run. Not only that, I hang up my shirt to dry before washing and pools of sweat accumulate as it dries. Point being, I’m looking forward to cooler temperatures so I can run longer without overheating and only sweat a normal amount not an ungodly amount. I’m pretty confident that superheroes exist in this world and I’m one of them only my superpower is the ability to sweat more than the average human.

Saturday night was date night for Rizzo and I which meant it was another wonderful trip to NextStop Theatre Company. My parents graciously watched Cece for the evening. I’m pretty sure that my parents love hanging out with the kid so much that they should be thanking us instead of us thanking them so, you’re welcome. Rizzo and I picked up some sushi and then headed over to Mustang Sally Brewing Company in Chantilly to have a flight before the show (you know I’ll be writing about this soon).

Currently, NextStop Theatre is performing Catch Me If You Can, a musical based on the movie of the same name. If you haven’t seen the movie (like me, believe it or not) you have at least heard of the movie and know the general premise of a 16-year-old kid that runs away from home and defrauds his way into becoming an airline pilot, a doctor, and an attorney all the while becoming friends with the FBI agent who is chasing him down. It was an amazing show that I would highly recommend everyone go see. As a matter of fact, everyone should go to the show on October 1st because I will have a special cameo onstage. I’m not sure if cameo is the right word because no one knows who I am but I did win a walk-on part in a silent auction so I’ll be ruining the show for the rest of the cast on October 1st so come on down and watch me embarrass myself.

Come watch me fall down on this set October 1st. You can laugh at my embarrassment.

I’ve hit a bit of a rut in the weight loss. I guess a rut isn’t the right word but more of a plateau. I know they happen when you are working out and eating right but that doesn’t keep them from being frustrating. For the third week in the row I tipped the scales at 206.8. It makes it easy when writing this blog because I can just copy and past that it makes the total weight loss 60.2 lbs. I do know that it is better to have maintained than to have gained and I also know that a single night of overindulgence the night before a weigh-in (like going out and having a beer tasting with sushi and did I mention the reception after the NextStop show since it was opening night?) can affect the results. I know that I shouldn’t be upset about maintaining, and really I’m not that upset about it, I just wish I had lost even a tenth of a pound. Life goes on. There is always next week. At least I didn’t gain weight.

UPDATE: I wrote the above first thing Sunday morning before heading over to OrangeTheory for a workout. After a killer, hour-long workout I slide back on the scale and had dropped a pound during the workout bringing my weight down to 205.8. I guess I just needed a good, morning workout to bring my weight down for the week. I'm not sure what I decide to make the official weight for this week. I guess it will depend on what next week brings.

Rizzo and I were talking about our workout routines while having some beers last night and how I’m now at a weekly disadvantage the way the challenge structured. Since I’ve joined OrangeTheory (which I love) the number of miles I accumulate has dropped off dramatically because of the nature of the workouts. I went from running four times a week to running twice a week. My OrangeTheory high intensity interval training, while soul crushingly hard, don’t generate the kind of mileage that a five to six mile run generates. On top of that, the majority of Rizzo’s workouts are running especially since she has started back as school. The result is obvious when you look at this week’s mileage. Sure, I didn’t lose any pounds but I still got in two back-breakingly hard workouts at OrangeTheory and a pretty decent run on Saturday only to accumulate a pathetic, wretched, pitiful, sad total of 32.4 miles. Rizzo gathered a mind blowing 43.3 miles. That gives her the lead in September 52.6 miles to 49.9 miles. I’m pretty sure, based upon our workout regiments, that I will not see a victory again in 2016 but we are too far into the year to change the challenge. When it was created we were both running as the majority of our regular workouts so the mileage made perfect sense. We will have to reconsider the measurement for the 2017 Bring It On! Challenge (yes, there will be a 2017 Bring It On! challenge, would you be interested in joining?). For now, I’ll just have to live with the knowledge that I may not have as many miles but I can do more pushups.