jane q. public

About 972 people (and by “972″ I actually mean “5″) at work today commented on how much weight I’ve lost.  I’m surprised at how happy that has made me.

22 pounds is nothing to sneeze at!

So the whole jeans thing this afternoon – no good.  Well, no good at the moment.  At my current pace with the weight loss, I think I should be able to get in to them in about four to six weeks.

I looked at them and I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW TINY I WAS.  I wish I had appreciated it more at the time.

I am broke.  I have exactly enough money to pay my bills (thanks to the awesome power of a budget – it works – who knew?), and that’s it.

I have also lost 20+ pounds in the last couple of months and all of my pants are falling off and look ridiculous.  Clearly, I need some pants, but I meant what I said about the money; I can’t even afford Goodwill right now.

Furthermore, even if I had a little cash, I really wouldn’t want to blow it on clothes just yet, as I have 20 more pounds to go.  So in a month, I’d just be in the same boat again.

But it hit me – I can go on a shopping spree.  I was skinny about four years ago.  I bought A LOT of clothes.  I was living with my mom at the time, so I could blow my paycheck on whatever I wanted, and I did.  I even amassed a collection of jeans which, I believe, totaled 13 pairs.

I’m a bit of a packrat, so after I gained a ton of weight (thanks, beer!), I kept telling myself that I would one day be thin again and needed to keep my skinny clothes.  I spent a lot of time wondering if that would ever happen, but it seems that I made the right choice.

Since our economy is in the toilet, you always hear the anchorpeople talking about “going shopping in your closet” – I’m headed over to mom’s house this afternoon to go shopping in her attic (or as I like to call it, “my own personal storage facility”).  All of those old clothes are in boxes there, probably labeled “skinny clothes.”

I’m actually pretty excited since there are probably a lot of clothes that I completely forgot.  I doubt that I’ll be able to get into most of the jeans quite yet, but at the rate I’ve been going, I should be -20 pounds in about a month, so I want them ready.

Anyway, that’s my method of coping with this recession for this afternoon.  Happy Sunday!

I was marginally interested in the robbery that took place and resulted in some gunfire yesterday on White Bridge Road since my office (as well as my dad and grandfather’s offices) are in that area.

When I got home today and saw the photo of the robbery suspect (who went home and shot himself), I was a little startled.  I knew that guy’s face and silly hair, and it only took me a few seconds to realize that he was actually someone that added me as a friend on Myspace about 800 years ago.

I went back and tried to find his profile on Myspace, but couldn’t, but I can say with absolute certainty that this was the same dude.

I don’t know the guy personally, but he actually sent me info on – of all things – a diet that had worked for him which led to me losing 30 pounds back in 2003 or 2004.

I don’t know, it was just bizarre.  Plus, he apparently lived in my neighborhood.  What a weird and tiny world we live in!

Courtesy of the Buddy Runner* app on my fabulous G1: 

3.54 miles around the Richland Creek Greenway (and some of Sylvan Park)

I did about 2.5 miles on Saturday as well. Slowly but surely I’m losing weight.

*I was walking.  Jane Q. Public doesn’t do running.

In addition to the fact that I’m in one of my periods of “not interested in the internet,” I’m also busy with some stuff these days…

Because I am insane, I’m working on three major things right now – dieting (I’ve got to get rid of about 35 more pounds), quitting smoking (by means of phasing out), and cutting out caffeine (also phasing out).

The dieting is going pretty well.  When I get momentum with something like that, it’s not so hard.  Exercising is the difficult part because I HATE IT.  So being active is happening in baby steps.

Brief walks at the Richland Creek Greenway with the dogs, time on the Wii Fit (I bought it last summer – it’s about time I start using the damn thing), a little yoga, etc.  Next month, Dr. Frankenfurter and I will be joining Sportsplex – the time we spend working out versus the time we spend drooling over Preds practices is still an open question.

I haven’t had success quitting smoking in the 11 or so years that I’ve been doing it (obviously), and cold turkey just doesn’t work for me.  I’m taking it very slowly and replacing strategic cigarettes of the day with nicotine gum.

I bought a giant package of the Nicorette White Ice Mint Gum at Costco (it is NOT fun to spend $60 on a pack of gum!), and you wouldn’t believe it, but it tastes like … drum roll, please … GUM!  I guess if this doesn’t work I’ll try Chantix, but that’s not covered by my insurance, so I’m trying this method first.

I’ve made progress with the whole caffeine thing.  It started out as me just wanting to cut out soft drinks, but with money being tight, I figured I should probably cut out the daily trip to Starbucks also.  Although I only drink diet sodas (I LOVE LOVE LOVE Cherry Coke Zero), that shit isn’t good for me, either, and the price just keeps going up.  I’m still having a couple of sodas most days, but I’ve quit keeping it at home (I could come home from work and drink 5 or 6 of them).

I have had no success cutting out the daily venti iced coffee (unsweetened), but at $2.84 a day, it’s going to have to go.  Eventually, I’ll just cut down, but I’m not sure that I’m ready yet.  Apparently I consume enough caffeine that, if I go without (or when I first cut out the massive soft drink consumption), I get headaches.  Ahhhh, addiction.

Hopefully in a few months I will be thin and not smell like coffee and cigarettes.

Wow, this suddenly turned into a boring self-improvement journal.  I can’t see anybody caring about any of this stuff – if someone else wrote this, I wouldn’t have even read this far – but I just felt chatty.

On an unrelated note: since I’m not a tween, I don’t really understand/know about all of this Twilight stuff, but that boy’s hair really bugs me.  However, I can’t really talk – I was bummed this week that I didn’t get to go see NKOTB.  I guess we all had our boy bands or Hannah Montana type of stuff at one time or another.