Alucolor & Roksys: We Don't Know What We Are Doing

I've posted before about not having any time and being frustrated about that, and that hasn't really gotten better lately. However, Alu and I are planning on starting the South Beach diet soon. We would have started it at the beginning of February, but the way our paychecks are distributed is somewhat prohibitive, so we should be doing the shopping and prep for the first week EXACTLY ONE WEEK FROM TODAY, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30 (wink). We're hoping eating better food will give us more energy and more drive to do more with the disparate bits of time we do have, which, hopefully, should make us happier and give us more energy and drive, etc. The first two weeks are supposed to be the biggest hurdle, as it's meant to reorient your body toward eating healthier over the long term by cutting out sugar and carbs almost entirely, thereby (supposedly) eliminating, or at least greatly reducing the cravings that make you eat too much of them. Over the following two weeks or so, s...

Hey guys, this morning I am sick! Anyway here are my goals that I may or may not have been able to achieve for both legitimate and very good reasons! Fitness Based Goals  Attach Loot to My Goals |  I've think I got this pretty good, I set up one time loot that is a bit bigger followed by more repeatable smaller loot that I can continue to get every time I hit a goal checkpoint if you will. I also attached time frames for the one time goals and additional time frames for the repeated goals. Reach Weight Goal (160 lbs) |  We've eaten to much Domino's dude, I have only back peddled but Rok and I have decided that we are going to try the South Beach diet. We have looked into it and it looks like a pretty good way to take the steps to eat better in general. This morning, I weighed 204.4 lbs. Lift Three Times per week |  We had some things happen recently that kept us from getting to the gym, some valid some lazy, but either way we got back this past Wednesday an...

Lately I have noticed our cat, Monty, only reacts to us yelling at him when he is doing something we often tell him not to. So if he is on the counter looking for food, if we make a loud noise not even directed at him he will jump off the counter and race to somewhere he can act like he was doing something he can be doing. But if he is just sitting on the ground and we yell at him directly he might not even react and if he does it might just be to look at us and give us the "Are you just going to stand there and not pet me." I am bringing this up because today whilst thinking of blog topics I could write about I started thinking I do those same things at work and to a lesser extent at home. When I am doing things at work when I shouldn't be I will minimize browsers quickly and often, especially if I think I hear or see someone who might notice. But when I can have browsers up and be doing things, I often don't react to people walking by, and if I do it is just to se...

Recently Rok and I have found ourselves stressed out, mainly about our lack of time and money. But also about our lack of energy when we do have time. These last two weeks have had plenty of stress on our bodies and minds. Helping Rok’s mom move, hearing impactful and depressing news, the existential dread that we may not get a good job, and if we do that we won’t enjoy it as much as we hope.  As a result to the stress we haven’t been eating very well, eating out often and eating far to much pizza. On top of all of this the stress has been added to by not being able to get to the gym. And the days where we could we just wanted to stay home and melt into our bed where the stress can’t get us. So it’s been a stressful couple weeks. I know this is a bit shorter blog and I didn’t blog on Monday but we have a lot to do today, once again adding to the stress. But Monday I didn’t blog because I was running away from the stress, so I am counting this blog as even a small victory against...

Every so often, when I'm in a bit more somber a mood, I start thinking about how I live my life or whether it's really my life at all. Much of my time and energy is spent doing my job, which I don't particularly like, performing obligatory life maintenance tasks, or doing things for or with others, often more as a matter of course than of choice. Of course all of this takes its toll on my energy level, both mentally and physically, and as a result, what time I can take away from it is often spent in a recovery laze. All together, it feels like I have less and less time for doing things I enjoy just because it's what I feel like doing, which used to be a very high priority of mine and which is something I often miss. On its face, it might seem like my problem boils down to a lack of time, and while that's definitely a large factor, it's a relatively recent development, while my overarching lack of progress is not. Even years ago, when I was on my own had ample...

Sometimes I like to wonder what the world would be like if cars weren't so prevalent. It's been my understanding that early in the 20th century, US transportation seemed to be leaning heavily into trolleys and the like before tire and oil companies came on the scene and said, "Hey, we're having a good time selling parts to a few people for their automobiles, but what if EVERYONE had one and had to come to us to keep them running?" and proceeded to pimp the hell out of cars until everyone in America wanted one and they became integral to the nation's infrastructure. Then it was determined that the fumes produced by cars may not be the best thing to be pumping into the air that everyone has to breathe, but by that point they were too ingrained in society and everyone was like, "Well sure, but what am I supposed to NOT have a car? Then how would I get anywhere?" And they're not wrong; public transportation is pretty garbage anywhere west of the M...

If you're a fan of Gundam, you may have seen this meme popping up occasionally. 　 　 It's no secret that a huge draw of the Gundam franchise is giant fighting robots. In fact it's arguably around primarily as a vehicle to sell toys of said robots. It's interesting, then, that while the franchise tends to glorify war with cool giant robot fights, it also usually gives its protagonists a very anti-war standpoint. Very few characters in most Gundam shows are shown to enjoy the fighting they have to do, and those who do enjoy it are usually villains who tend to die horribly. Special mention to Yazan for being the only such character I can think of that survives all the way through multiple series which otherwise rack up quite the body count. Though I don't know that ZZ counts, since he's pretty much reduced to a Team Rocket style comic relief villain, but I digress. I suppose it's easy for me to get sidetracked on this issue because I don't re...

Hey, I bet you may or may not know what time it is! It's Goal Reflection Time! Fitness Based Goals Attach Loot to My Goals | I have attached loot to my goals, but I still need to attach time frames to the goals themselves, so this I am counting as half done for right now. Reach Weight Goal (160 lbs) | I have not weighed below 200 in the last two weeks but I also haven't weighed in above 203 so there is something. My diet has been sloppy and included to much candy from Christmas and monsters to stay awake, but I am hoping meal prep will help us eat healthier foods. This morning, I weighed 201.4 lbs. Lift Three Times per week | Even though we didn't want to, we made it to the gym for lifting all of the assigned days the last two weeks. We are seeing improvement in our ability to lift and that is exciting to me. We have been stuck at bench-pressing only 30 pounds, but I am hoping we can move on to 35 or 40 next gym session. We will see! Do Cardio Four Times per Week |...

We have not played the campaign I planned out in months with any one of our groups, and I am getting a little sad about it. Rok has offered to play with just me and him but he doesn't seem the most excited about it. I think he may just want to make me feel better about it, but we still might end up playing with just us so this campaign, I put so much time into, can actually play out for someone else than just me. If you have been following this blog at all you know that I have been trying to play this campaign for over six months and having no luck, some due to me, some to to inconsistent players, but most recently due to no reason I can think of specifically. Shortly after the first session with the most current group we decided to do the campaign every other week to accommodate everyone who wanted to play. Then several weeks in a row we had valid reasons not to meet up because of general life things. And we have barely talked about it for a month maybe two now. I don't ha...

Rok and I currently live in a townhouse with two other roommates, and as far as roommates go they are fine. They do the dishes sometimes, they are generally respectful of our belongings, and they pet our cat when we aren’t home. But as I am sure every couple who has lived with roommates knows, at a point you want to be by yourselves. You want to be alone, together. Rok and I have hit that point hard this new year. We keep doing stuff in our current place and keep thinking of how much better/easier it would be if we were alone. Such as: we did meal prep this Monday. Well I did meal prep while Rok cleaned the kitchen. The sick was full, the counter dirty, and the floor a mess. All things that our also our fault but that could be better taken care of if it was just us alone. Another issues we had to deal with is that our counter space is taken up by about four people’s worth of kitchen appliances, and the kitchen already isn’t that big to begin with. That and I had to reorganize our cup...

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday it was a busy day. We streamed, which I think went pretty well other than some slight agitation on my part due to lack of food. We went to the gym. We cleaned our kitchen and actually prepped food for the week! Which I was having some doubts about but the I counted the meals we made and realized I didn't in fact need to make 8 more meals, in fact we had a meal extra made. So that is giving me hope, that and the fact that we don't need to cook anything for the rest of the week! But the busiest and best part about yesterday was going back to our machining class. We hadn't gone the last week before winter break because I had my wisdom teeth taken out and wasn't ready to operate have machinery. So we had three weeks off and while that was nice both Rok and I are excited to get back into the groove and things and start working towards getting a better job again. We spent the first about half hour trying to remember how exactly to use the l...

We get to go back to school tomorrow! I'm pretty stoked about it. We've been getting pretty bored at work lately, so it's exciting to know we'll be getting closer to something better soon. Anyway goals: It occurred to me that I didn't really explain what I meant by streak last time. Alu and I track our goals in an app called Habitica, which keeps track of how many times in a row you complete a repeated task. Now, with that explained, Fitness Based Goal Bench 100 lbs. (Bar+55) We eased back on this one a little bit this week, but overall we're still getting stronger. We'll probably hit this in the next month or so I'd say. Tuesday Night Yoga consistently (Streak 5) We sort of had to take a break from this one over Christmas, so we started over this week. Morning Yoga consistently (Streak 20) I've been doing pretty well on this lately, so I'm well on my way to a new pair of yoga shorts! Lift Three Times per week         (Streak 30) We ac...

We're planning on starting our meal prep in earnest this weekend. As such, we need a solid shopping list, which we don't have because we're not good at planning things. Looking into veggie meal prep information, I've found it mostly tends to revolve around rice, beans, frozen veggies and sometimes peanut butter. We're also considering challenging ourselves to go vegan for a little while, which would theoretically make it more difficult to branch out from that, but we haven't really come to a consensus on whether or when we're actually going to go through with it. I've been feeling the consequences of not prepping breakfast and lunch when I need to wake up early so I can hopefully put something together in the morning. Meanwhile, mornings where we already have meals ready are much less stressful, so I can imagine having all of your food for the week already laid out. I'm leaning toward some bean patties for sandwiches and bean balls for pasta, p...

Carl's Jr. just started serving Beyond meat burgers, which is super cool. Alu and I went by there today to give them a shot and they're really good burgers. I didn't even pick the onions off of mine. However, we also discovered they cook the vegetarian patties on the same grills as the regular beef patties, at least at the location by our house, which introduces a cross contamination issue. This presents a problem as we generally try to avoid such things. We haven't been to Panda Express since we learned they cook all of their food in the same containers. Upon thinking about it a bit more, we started to question whether it was worth getting that bit of cross contamination in order to support vegetarian options in fast food. Ultimately, we ended up taking the hit today, but we haven't really come up with an answer for the long term. We definitely want to buy more Beyond burger patties from the store though. We used to be able to get them from our local Target, but ...