Pool party
We all had a wicked time today at DDWT Junior's pool party in celebration of his 5th birthday, which is on Tuesday.
Some 14 or so of his classmates turned up and they - and their parents - had a whale (pun intended) of a time at Pontardawe swimming pool, splashing, diving and swimming about the massed array of kids floatables!
The little fella was so excited bless him and at the end of the hour you could see that all of the kids were quite literally out on their feet having had so much fun. It was certainly £60 well spent to hire the pool for the hour.
It was the perfect way to celebrate his birthday with all of his friends, leaving the traditional family party to his actual birthday on Tuesday.
Somewhat reluctantly I decided to weigh myself this morning - fearing the worst - having munched my way through a KFC and a box of maltesers yesterday *blush*
Thankfully it was good news though as I was still 15st 12lbs. Although this was after having a re-weigh as I wasn't starkers the first time around! Who'd have thought that a pair of PJ's would weigh 2lb eh?
Out with the old, in with the new
Happy New year to you! So here we are on the very first day of 2009 with lots of people probably nursing hangovers, others laden with new year resolutions and some like me just looking forward to what should hopefully be a healthy and happy year ahead.
The Mrs and I welcomed in the new year browsing and shopping online (sad but true!) in-between watching the BBC's iPlayer coverage of the new year being welcomed in by fireworks around the London Eye.
In keeping with the theme of the day I decided to invest some time rummaging through my wardrobes in an attempt to sort out what now fits me and what doesn't - not to mention what can be considered fashionable or not as the case may be! I'm an official hoarder you see 
Now don't get me wrong the fact that I'm now hovering just below the 16 stone mark is very pleasing, but the sheer number of clothes I'm having to get rid of is scary! Take my work trousers for example, I'm passing 13 of them onto charity, leaving me with only 4 left. Now that tells me a lot....I've got too many work trousers and God only knows how many other clothes will be finding themselves a new home.
Oh well my loss is someone elses gain and for me that's a positive start to the new year.
Katherine Jenkins' Drugs Revelation
Poor old Katherine Jenkins. How difficult it must have been for this talented multi-millionaire songstress to come clean and reveal to the tabloids that she'd done various drugs in her pre-stardom days. Grown men and women have leapt to her defence and expressed admiration for her having the strength to come clean.
Oh come off it. I mean really, how hard could it have been for her. She's well liked (as the public/media reaction illustrates) and financially secure (having recently been awarded a £6 million pound recording contract).
Can you imagine the outcry if a lesser known/squeaky clean personality had come out about their past misdemeanours. Need I say more?
Of course there is the issue of Christmas being just 51 days away and a certain 'Sacred Arias' album having been released just a couple of weeks ago - so it couldn't be one massive marketing and media push by her agent could it?
Nah, our Katherine is too nice for that. Surely.
Weight progress
It's now been two whole weeks since set our weight loss targets and today was our first progress weigh-in.
Thankfully it was good news with both Mrs DDWT and I shedding 3lbs each - taking our weight to 12st 9lb and 17st 3lb respectively. It was a welcome surprise and lifted our spirits quite considerably on what was proving (mentally) to be a tough weekend.
After I'd spend the morning doing a bit of landscaping work in the garden - removing some lawn and replacing with chippings (in readiness for some large flower) pots - it was time for a family get together at ours.
I think it was just the tonic the whole family needed in light of the events of the past couple of days. DDWT Junior and I kept everyone amused with our water antics - which was great fun and Baby DDWT was all smiles especially for my Dad, which lifted his spirits no end.
So all in all it's been a nice end to what's been a thought provoking couple of days. I think that we're going to need as many of these 'days' as possible over the coming months.
Target weight
Now that Baby DDWT has turned a month old - yes it's been that long already - we've decided to turn our attention back to getting into our old dietary and training routine again. And what better way to do that than set a target weight we both want to reach.
Let's face it, when you want to achieve anything you have to set yourself challenging but realistic goals - which is what we have done. So by December 1st 2008, Mrs DDWT wants to be 10st 7lbs and I want to be 16st.
We figured that Christmas would be a great time to achieve our goals and at the same time set another challenge of keeping to those weights - despite the festive season!
As things stood this morning, Mrs DDWT was 12st 12lbs - she'll play mary hell when she knows I've put that on here - and I was 17st 6lbs. Don't fret my love, after all you only gave birth to our beautiful daughter a month ago. DDWT Junior also decided to get in on the weighing act and tipped the scales at 3st 3.5lbs.
So now we've gone public with our aims and objectives there's no hiding from the shame if we don't get to our target weight and it also serves as some extra motivation!
18 stone
Yes it's true my weight has now rocketed back up to 18 stone. It hurts to think how I've drifted back into my old habits i.e eating junk or lots of food in general and not exercising.
It really does make me feel sooooo down in the dumps, not because I weigh that much, but because I've left myself get to that point - having only last year shed a lot of weight to get to 16st 3lbs (which made me feel more than great at the time).
Feeling sorry for myself isn't going to help though, getting off my lazy backside and being stronger willed (in terms of food) are the only things that are going to get me out of this rut I seem to be currently stuck in.
On a brighter (well magnolia in fact) note, I've finally finished painting our downstairs hallway. Now there's only the downstairs loo, and upstairs landing to do!! Still it looks good and when I've tidied up the coving/skirting boards, it'll really look the mutts nuts I'm sure.
Wallpapering
For the first time in my life I actually did a spot of wallpapering today. Well when I say wallpapering what I mean is I put up DDWT Junior's dinosaur border up in his new bedroom - using the good old fashioned wallpaper paste.
I now understand and fully realise why I've never wallpapered before and why I never intend to do so again! What a fiddly, messy palava it is. Novice or not I reckon it'll always be the same, little wonder then that I've always been an emulsion man
The other major downside of course is getting the old darn wallpaper off. You should have seen me struggle, even with a steam stripper. Still it's been an experience and one which I won't be repeating ever again I suspect!
As today was officially the last day of my enforced absence from training - due to my knee ligament injury - it seemed a sensible time to weigh myself, ths laying down a benchmark for future progress. It wasn't a pleasant experience - 17st 5lbs. You can tell I've not done ANY cardiovascular training since December 19th.
Despite my frustration at only being able to do some upper body weight training, the rest has certainly appeared to help my knee ligaments, with the original pain and discomfort having now disappeared.
So it's onwards and upwards starting tomorrow with a commute into work on my trusty old mountain bike. Fingers crossed for a safe return to fitness with no reaction in my knee.
It's all over
We've had another busy day really even without leaving our humble abode, although the general mood has been of the bah humbug variety - due to me having to return to work tomorrow.
I can't believe how quickly the past 2 weeks have gone by, but having said that it does feel like a lot longer, so that can only be good news and means that I've switched off from work and chilled out completely
So how have I spent my last day of the holidays? Well, I've put up our new bathroom cabinet, got a load of stuff ready for a trip to the civic amenity site, sorted out the paperwork in the office (@ home) and played Lego/Hotwheels/Leapfrog Clickstart - oh and cooked a lamb dinner which was lush (from what the Mrs tells me).
I also decided to weigh myself just to see what impact the festive season and the injury enforced absence from training had on my body. The result was 17st 3lbs, which isn't as bad as I'd feared but means I have work to do, i.e. lots of walking and a keener eye on my diet!
Talking of health 'ish matters, my severe bout of man flu (LOL) seems to be getting better by the day - aided admirably by some vicks (no not the rub on variety) but the liquid type.
I decided to give it a try a few months back when I had the most irritating dry cough. I found that the honey soothed my throat and obviously the cough syrup did the rest. So here's a tip for any guys with man flu, get yourself some vicks and some extra strong menthol lyptus - that'll get rid of the flu, as for the rest of it, well try a good lads mag, Sky sports and some over-egged "I feel terrible" ramblings to the better half. It usually works
2lbs down
After the exertions of yesterday, today was an alltogether much more sedate affair with DDWT Junior's Thomas the Tank engine train track (all 8ft of it) proving to be the centre of attention for most of the day.
We did spend some time outside but that was only to wash the cars, get our weekly shop done at Tesco's and visit Borders for a browse around the vast assortment of books. One thing I will say about Borders is that they aren't cheap, well not compared to online retailers anyway - but at least you can get a better look at what you're going to buy beforehand by window shopping in-store
My return to training last week has obviously had a positive effect on my weight, as I managed to lose 2lbs and am now standing at 16st 11lbs. I remain hopefull of shedding a few more pounds pre-Christmas, but injuries such as the one I sustained to my knee yesterday isn't going to help. Thankfully it's a lot better today (it's amazing what a bag of frozen peas can do) and I've managed to locate the problem as well - a strain to the knee ligament on the outside of my right knee. Therefore an enforced break from training is now on the cards *sigh*
Computer addiction?
If there is such a thing as computer addiction then I think I've got it ....no seriously I really do think so. Why else would someone who works 5 days a week in a 'computing' day job and runs a 'computing' company in the evenings/weekends, stay up until gone 2am - yes you've guessed it on a computer?
You'd have thought that catching some zzz's would have been far more important and beneficial wouldn't you. Well I keep asking myself the same question - why. Unfortunately, I don't know why I do it, I just do - but it isn't doing me any good.
As a result of my lack of 'shut-eye' I woke up like the proverbial bear with a sore head and my mood was as dark and dingy as the gloomy cloud cover outside. Not a good start to the day and the ideal ingredients for an argument - which we thankfully managed to avoid
For the first time in ages, I actually did what I used to do every Sunday - no not go to church - go to the bathroom to weigh. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was 16st 12lbs, which given the recent lack of training and my apparent poor diet was far better than I'd anticipated!
Being a glutton for computing punishment, I returned once again to my myriad of laptops, PCs and wireless kit in the office in another attempt to get a darn Cisco Aironet 350 series wireless PCI card to work with my Ubuntu laden Dell Latitude.
It shouldn't be difficult but getting the whole thing to play ball with my Netgear DG834N router with WPA (TKIP & AES) encryption is proving nigh on impossible. Despite trying several different drivers, ndiswrapper and even a lighter Xubuntu installation, I failed miserably once again. I've now finally decided to give in for the sake of my sanity.
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