TechyDad

Weight: 197 lbs (down 0.5 pounds)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

Yes! I did it! Yatta! (To non-Heroes fans, that’s what Hiro Nakamura shouts when he accomplishes something.) Although I didn’t exercise at all this week, I was able to lose half a pound by watching what I ate. This might not seem like much, but every little bit helps. In this case, this little bit helped me hit my first goal. And just in time for Disney World, too! I’m writing this early, so by the time you read this, I should be getting plenty of exercise walking around Disney World! I fully expect my next weigh-in to have a weight increase though due to Disney’s great food.

In a couple more days, we leave for Disney World. While there, I’m sure to meet many people – both whom I’ve already met online and whom I have never spoken with at all. There’s just one little problem: I have a lot of difficulty remembering faces and names. I swear, some days I wish people would walk around with big, descriptive name tags on them. “Of course I remember you. You’re….. uh…. [reading] John. Smith. Of Such-and-Such dot com. How could I ever forget?”

It takes me quite a few times to match faces and names and many things can mess this up. See a person in a setting that I usually don’t see them? Instant unrecognition. (Example: Seeing people from work at the supermarket.) New hairstyle? Who are you again? Not seeing a person on a regular basis? Big trouble remembering them. (Example: Some people from my company who I only see every few months.) Heck, if you lined my cousins and their wives up, I might not be able to match the six of them up properly or remember who is named what. (Of course, it doesn’t help that I see my cousins once per year, tops.)

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: Do you have trouble remembering the names of people you meet? If so, what tricks do you use to keep the faces/names straight?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #24

Alas, all good things must come to an end and so we found ourselves on our last day at Disney World. After a quick breakfast at Pop Century, we headed back to the Magic Kingdom for the last time. The boys quickly found Pluto and took their picture with him. JSL, though wanting to hold my hand, wasn’t completely terrified of the character anymore. Progress!

After this, we went on the Winnie the Pooh ride that we intended to go on the previous day. Both NHL and JSL liked seeing Pooh, Tigger and company through the various stories.

Next, B went to get us boarding passes for our flight the next day while I took the boys on Dumbo. Before she left, I realized something. I left my cell phone at the hotel room! I said we’d meet back near Dumbo. She mentioned that there was a playground right near and the boys could go on that. Then she left.

NHL and JSL loved the Dumbo ride. We were able to see the park pretty well from high up. After we landed, I took a photo of the boys by a Dumbo topiary and then in an animal cage.

Seeing a line to meet Ariel and knowing he hadn’t gotten her autograph, NHL asked to get on line. We waited while I watched for B. As we neared Ariel, I finally saw her. NHL suddenly proclaimed that he didn’t want to wait on line. No amount of coaxing could convince him and he bolted from the line. All that waiting had been for naught!

We made our way over to Pirates of the Carribean where JSL repeated his Haunted Mansion performance. He was frightened of the ride and fell asleep on my shoulder! Poor little guy. Oh, also around this time I found my cell phone. It was hidden in the bottom of my pocket the whole time! Troublesome little device.

After a quick lunch at The Pinocchio Village Haus restaurant, we headed for Splash Mountain. NHL and I went on the ride where we learned all about Brer Rabbit and his attempts to avoid Brer Fox and Brer Bear. After we went on, B child swapped with me so NHL could go on a second time. See them in the back?

Since JSL was up, we headed back to Toontown so NHL and JSL could see Mickey and Minnie’s houses. We waited in the judges tent to get a photo with Mickey, but got tired of waiting in the heat, realized how late it was and decided to leave.

We did have time for one more ride, so we all piled into the Teacups and took those for a whirl. After our quick spin, we spotted the White Rabbit with a tiny line. As we got on line, we were told that we were the last ones. Not only was that a stroke of luck, but JSL didn’t even demand to hold my hand this time. I was actually able to walk all the way out of the shot! Huzzah!

We made our way out of the Magic Kingdom from shop to shop (avoiding a parade in progress) and hopped on the Monorail to Epcot. Once there, we made our way past some topiaries (surprise surprise) to Le Cellier.

While we waited for our food, JSL proved that he can be quite the Camera Clown.

Then we ate our food. Notice my dessert. Chocolate moose! YUM!

As we wandered around Epcot, we stumbled upon a treasure. A place to get your picture taken with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald and Goofy. Not only this, but it was indoors (and thus air conditioned) and had TVs playing old Disney cartoons. Score! Waiting on this line was a breeze and soon we had the photos we so desired. NHL even ran up to hug Goofy. The boys were quite happy.

And with that, we bid Epcot adieu. We got on the bus back to Pop Century. We weren’t completely finished, however. Our dining plan still had 4 snacks on it and we couldn’t let those go to waste. So we bought 2 Mickey Ice Cream Bars for the boys to eat right there and 2 Mickey marshmallow crispy bars for them to eat when we got home.

And thus our Disney time wound down to a close.

The next day, we took a relatively uneventful (except for some frightening turbulence as we landed) flight home and let the boys tear into their Mickey marshmallow crispy bars.

After our late night out the previous day, we decided to take Thursday, May 14^th as a day off. After the boys woke up, we gave JSL some of his B-Day presents. These included a set of Sesame Street toys and a Pluto hat from one of the Disney World shops. (He called it his “Pup Pup hat.”) Then, we ate breakfast at Pop Century. Yes, we had tie dye cheesecake for breakfast. We were on vacation! JSL also received his gift from B’s parents, a Stitch backpack.

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Weight: 196 lbs (down 1.5 pounds)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6.5 hours

Total Workout Time: 41:36

Total Calories Burned: 299.5

Well, I did it. I was shooting for losing 10 pounds before I went to Disney World and as of this weigh-in, I’ve lost 11 pounds. Goal #1 achieved! Now, I just need to keep the weight off until I head for Disney.

The sleep average is a bit misleading. On Friday night, I was up a few times during the night with NHL. That, combined with a sleep deficit during the week consired to make me exhausted. B was nice enough to let me sleep in. I wound up getting 10 hours of sleep that night. Except for that night, I’ve still been unable to get a good night’s sleep. And, as you can see, I’ve also had trouble keeping up with my exercise regimine. I’d like to use the excuse of preparing for the Disney World trip, and that is partly the case, but the problem is just life. I get home, get everyone fed, get the kids in bed and suddenly there is too much to do and too little time. I plan to keep working on this and not get discouraged.

For now, I’ll take the victory of being 11 pounds down. Only 9 pounds to go and 16 more weeks. This is definitely doable.

As our Disney World trip approaches, I find myself getting nervous. It’s not the massive packing that worries me. Honestly, B takes care of most of that. She’s much more organized with that than I am. Were it up to me, we’d likely arrive and find that I forgot to pack pants for the boys. (Ok, maybe I’m not *that* bad.)

What worries me is the flight. Specifically, the take off and the landing. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a fear of falling and of plane take offs/landings. They just get me nervous. I know that fatal crashes are rare. In the post I linked to, I had done some research and found 10 accidents with fatalities in the 5 years prior to 2008 (when the post was made). However, there were about 52 million commercial flights in the US during that same time. All things considered, 0.0000002% fatality risk is pretty good odds. Still, I’m nervous.

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: Do you get nervous on airplanes? If so, how do you handle it? If not, what do you have a fear of?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #23

On Wednesday, May 13^th, we had a dinner reservation at the Coral Reef restaurant in Epcot, so we decided to spend the entire day there. First, we stopped for breakfast at Pop Century’s restaurant. The boys loved devouring Mickey Mouse waffles. Then it was on the bus to head on over.

As we approached, the kids loved seeing the “giant ball” (aka Spaceship Earth). We entered the park and made our way over to Soarin’. We quickly “Fast Passed” this to come back to it and then went to “The Seas.” Here we saw (what else) “The Seas with Nemo and Friends.” This ride sees you through a condensed version of Finding Nemo (well, a new story, not a retelling of the movie). The gimmick is that the ocean life (except for the main characters) are real. You ride through a real (giant) aquarium with real fish. Projected “inside” these tanks are Dory, Marlin and others. The only downside is that it’s so dark, no photos of mine came out at all. Oh well.

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On Tuesday, May 12th, we decided to spend the day at the Magic Kingdom. Indeed, the day was quite magical. As we walked down Main Street in the morning, we saw a painting on the ground. Except it wasn’t done with paint. Apparently, when they wash everything, they spray water so that it makes a certain design. The one that I saw was Goofy with “Have A Magical Day” written underneath. Quite impressive.

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After our trip to Disney World last year, I started blogging a day by day account of the events. Then I just stopped. I meant to pick it up again, but things happened to distract me. Has it really been 7 months? With Disney Social Media Moms coming up (and thus a new source of Disney World blogging approaching), I decided I needed to finally knuckle down and finish this series up.

While I’m at it, I’m going to change the numbering. The Roman Numerals were cool to begin with, but I can see this is going to take *way* too many blog posts. I just can’t see posting “Our Week In Disney World – Part XXIV” instead of “Our Week In Disney World – Part 24.”

All that said, let’s see where we were last time Ah yes, we had enjoyed a Mother’s Day dinner with “Mom” at the 50’s Prime Time Diner, shopped at Downtown Disney and gone to sleep. This takes us to Monday, May 11th and the Animal Kingdom.

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Weight: 197.5 lbs (down 4 pounds)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6 hours

Total Workout Time: 80:36

Total Calories Burned: 531.9

This week I didn’t exercise as much as I wanted to. Various things (mostly my Disney World Photo Book) got in the way. Still, the 80 minutes and change that I did work out must have had an effect as I lost 4 pounds. My plateau is busted! This takes me to within half of a pound of my pre-Disney goal of 10 pounds and nearly 50% of the way to my ending goal (20 pounds).

Part of losing weight/getting healthy is recognizing when something isn’t working and changing it to maximize the effect. Last week, I pledged to work out half an hour per night. During the week, however, I only found time to work out 2 nights. Now, I could either keep the “half hour every night” pledge as-is and feel guilty about all of those missed workouts (thus perhaps making me want to skip them more so I don’t need to think about them). Or, I could recognise that it’s just not working and change it. Given that I don’t think that half hour per night goal is feasible, I’m going to modify it to 30 minutes per night, 3 nights per week. This should be easier to hit.

I still remain a night owl, staying up way past when I should. I know I need to work on this, but I seem to get a second wind at 9pm that lasts until midnight. It’s hard to go to bed when all the other things I have to do and want to do beckon. Perhaps I need to prioritize more.