I’m a hair away from issuing the shutdown command on the webserver, turning off my cellphone, and turning off my workstation.
I have been able to do nothing of any value this weekend other than sit here babysitting a server that is practically going thermo-nuclear. I’m not getting paid anything extra, I still make basically nothing. I’m sick of it… if things don’t improve in a very rapid fashion, I am done.
I think I need a fish category, because the Martha category doesn’t really work for this, heh. Anyway, this is Henry, the male (shock!) Blue Ram. He’s been incredibly camera shy, meaning I have mostly lots of really blurry photos of him.
Click to enlarge, as usual, the thumbnails look a bit wonky.
Suddenly it seemed like a good number of my shirts had shrunk…
Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I’ve grown… more than I’d like. It appears that I slowly added 20 extra pounds over the few months that I have been an ex-smoker. I thought everything was fine at first, and… well, it was. I was being extra-healthy, eating more fruits and veggies than I had since my six years as a vegetarian. I sort of… lapsed and, well, poof, overnight it seems.
This extra, and very not wanted, weight is in addition to the little bit extra I gained as “relationship weight” last year. I kept telling myself that I’d deal with that in the spring and summer, as in… right now. I will, and I’ll deal with this ex-smoker weight, and hopefully by the end of summer things will be back to normal. Oddly, and I suppose thankfully, my pants all still fit, I just have a beer-esque belly, it’s really, really strange.
I’ve taken charge… and at least I’m not going through half a pound of licorice starlights a week now, lol. I’m rather satisfied in the ex-smoker sense, it’s been 3.5 months since I’ve had a cigarette; I’ve not even had a “puff” of someone else’s. I think my mother is addicted to the Commit lozenges, my brother Matt lapsed into being a smoker again… and quit again, and friend Matthew occasionally has a puff, then he starts coughing like mad. Kate is still a smoker, she did decide to quit, but only made it an hour or maybe three, lol… she’s just not ready yet. ;)
So, the plan is extra emphasis on not just eating for the sake of doing something. My problem has been all-day snacking… and on less than healthy things. Extra emphasis on eating much more healthy snacks, basically going back to where I was a year ago, I knew how to be healthy, I just lost track of that.
I think I’m going to manually dig a 500 gallon pond this summer. If that isn’t a work out, well, nothing is. Especially when you consider how there is virtually zero topsoil where the pond will go! I’ll be using the pickaxe, ahha! I’m thinking of building a sort of tea-house gazebo-esque “thing” in place of where the old gazebo-tent “thing” was. I think we’re going to buy a reel mower, and while nothing on Earth would convince me to mow the entire lawn weekly with it, it’d still be a nice bit of extra workout where previously I’d have used the weed-eater-whacker-whatever-thing. [Our backyard has some grass still, but it's all sort of little patches that I can't drive the lawn tractor into, so I usually just walk over it with the string trimmer (oh, yes, that's what those things are called!).]
There’s walking, which is quite popular in the neighborhood, perhaps I’d actually get some use out of those “urban trail runners” or whatever the ridiculous name for my “sneakers” happens to be. I don’t think I’ve worn them more than once. I bought them to make the walk to Sheetz a bit nicer on the feet. I don’t walk to Sheetz anymore, I don’t have “desperately need cigarettes” moments anymore. Although… perhaps it’d be nice to walk down in summer evenings for fancy anti-starbucks drinks. All the walking will help offset all the fat… ;)
I’ll get this taken care of, damnit!
This is my 25 gallon aquarium. All of the plants are living, the driftwood isn’t plastic. It has 65 watts of compact fluorescent lighting and carbon dioxide injection (for the plants). The aquarium is setup loosely as a South American biotope, all of the fish and plants are native to the region, more or less, heh.
This is my Angelfish Oliver, he’s a lot bigger than I planned, but the aquarium is big enough for him. Whenever he grows larger I do plan on putting him into a 75 gallon or maybe larger, I don’t want him to feel like he’s a sardine.
This is my betta Clyde, he sits on the corner of my desk. The photo is a little under exposed, but he’s really all there, and orange… a bit on the rare side. He’s swimming over to start work on his bubble nest again.
This is Max, he’s a crowntail I bought for my niece, because she always says “Where’s the Betta?” so she has her own, sort of; it sits on my mom’s desk in the guest room.
This is Henry, he’s a German Blue Ram, he and his mate Lily spawned again today so he’s busy guarding the eggs; that’s why you can’t see him very well. He and Lily will eat out of my hand, it’s a riot.
Lily is on guard duty and patrol, chasing away any other fish that might be too close to their soon-to-be babies. She was swimming pretty quickly, so the photo is a tad more blurry than the rest.
