Personal

Sorry for taking a week off there folks but my personal life got a little complex last week which, coupled with my busy work schedule, lead to me having no real time to post at all other than my daily updates on my weight which take 30 seconds to complete. Either way, I should be back on track this week again and have I several new things to discuss that I can’t wait to get typed up! Stay tuned.

Yep, as of today I’ve managed to lose 7.5 lbs in the last two weeks! While I had actually lost 8.7 lbs as of Friday, the weekend and it’s myriad of food options forced another 1.2 lbs of fat into my system. You’d think walking 27 holes of golf and playing 60+ frames of bowling would have offset the caloric intake more but apparently not as much as I had hoped. Either way, I’m still very happy with this progress and only look forward to more fat loss over the new couple of weeks. My new goal is to hit 170 lbs and under 20% body fat by the middle of May. I think this is an achievable goal given my success so far with this new diet. I’ll check back in with another diet write-up in a couple weeks but you can always follow my daily weight and body fat percentages HERE, by checking out the last seven days worth of updates on the front page in the “Diet Updates” column to the right, or by subscribing to my Diet Update RSS feed.

As you may have noticed from my daily weight updates, things are going quite well this week! I’ve lost 5.1 lbs so far this week and I hope to lose another 3-4 next week (the first five is always the easiest so I’m being realistic). As for how I’m losing the weight, I’m doing several normal things such as cutting out soft drinks, eat better/eating less, more cardio (only two days this week but I’ll do more next week), etc. I’ve also added a new metabolic enhancer called “Yellow Devils”, an Ephedra-based fat burner. Basically these pills are 300 mg of caffeine coupled with 25mg of Ephedra which, according to what I’ve read, is the perfect combo for effective fat burning without making you feel too “jumpy” (unless you’re really sensitive to stimulants… which I’m not). Either way, these pills along with my moderate cardio and new eating habits have given me some great results so far. I can’t wait to see the scale this time next week!

This past Friday my wife and I attended a beer tasting at the Village Wine Cellars in Lebanon, OH. You may remember me talking about this place before since it’s sort of an unofficial hangout for the Dayton Outdoor Adventure Club members, but this time it was just some friends hanging out and drinking (mostly) good beer. That said, I’m not really a big drinker in general but I do appreciate a good beer now and again. I say this because I want you to know that I am by no means an “expert” in beer tasting so my opinions and thoughts on this are purely from the perspective of a casual beer drinker. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s the beers we had to sample that night:

As you can see from the picture, we tasted eight different beers (all stouts by the way) from countries such as Japan, Ireland, and Sri Lanka. Here’s the listing left to right in the picture above: O’Hara’s Celtic Stout, Hitachino Nest Lacto Sweet Stout, A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout, S’Peter’s Cream Stout, some Swedish beer that I can’t remember the name of and didn’t have listed in my notes, Lion Stout, Rouge Chocolate Stout, and Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. I can tell you that six of the eight beers were very tasty for stouts (I’m more of a light beer guy really) but the two that we didn’t like were nasty beyond description. The Rogue Chocolate Stout was billed as “tastes like a glass full of Hershey’s Special Dark candies melted in your microwave” and that was dead-on. Let me tell you something… chocolate and beer were not meant to be mixed! The other bad beer (the A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout) tasted like ass in a bottle to put it bluntly. I can’t even begin to describe it adequately here but I can tell you that no one in our group took more than a sip before winching and promptly discarding it. It was that bad.

After the tasting was over, everyone decided to get some of their old favorites to drink. I personally like one called Kilt Lifter by Moylan’s Brewery. Here’s a picture of me looking smarmy holding a bottle of it:

Not only is this a damn tasty beer in my opinion, it comes in a nice big bottle which is always a plus in my book! And for those of you who care, that’s the first picture on my blog of my new hair style. I’ve been growing out my hair for a few months now but I’m still a long way from the length I want. More on this another time though since we need to get back to the beer!

That’s a picture of my Michelle (my lovely wife) drinking one of her favorite beers called Arrogant Bastard Ale. Personally I think this beer tastes horrible but then again I’m a lightweight. My wife is a rather accomplished beer drinking and assures me that this is a very good beer. I’ll have to take her word for it I guess. Either way, we ended up drinking and talking for quite awhile before this sort of thing began happening:

That’s my wife, my brother-in-law, and one of my wife’s friends from the Dayton OAC who was there with us. As you can tell, a good time was had by all and we found a few new beers to try when they’re out of our favorites. After we had our share of beer, we headed over to Wild Bill’s New American Grille for some dinner to help sober us up for the drive home and to watch the end of the Reds game. All in all, it was a great way to spend a cold April night in Ohio. I can’t wait for the next beer tasting now!

P.S. - Sorry for the horrible picture quality. All I had on me to snap them was my Treo 700w. Next time I’ll be sure to bring my digital camera!