I originally intended this to be a Wordless Wednesday, but I figured I should give an introductory paragraph or two.  We’ve taken the boys to Disney World twice over the past couple of years.  On the first trip, we bought them an autograph book and pen.  Then, every character we met, we got their autographs.  Here are photos of my boys with the characters they met and got autographs from in the order that they met them.  (Not pictured are characters like Lightning McQueen, Mater, Sully or Mike Wazowski who don’t sign autographs.)  Their book currently has room for 12 more autographs.  Whose shall we get this time?

How many characters can you name?

This marks the last time I will weigh-in before we go to Disney World.  (At least, the last “official” weigh-in before Disney.  I might weigh myself just before we leave out of sheer curiosity.)  While at Disney, I’m putting the weight loss plan aside.  This doesn’t mean I’m going to pig out just for the sake of pigging out, but neither am I going to count points.  Let’s face it.  This is Disney World we’re talking about.  The food there is incredible and I’m not going to ruin our good time by trying to figure out which dishes are the lowest in points.  Besides, going to Disney World means a lot of walking.  (Last year, I only wound up gaining half a pound during my trip.)

All that said, I weighed in at 188 yesterday morning.  This puts me a mere three pounds from my goal.  Were Disney not a factor, I could probably reach my goal in the next two or three weeks.  I’d say I’m doing pretty well.  Now, I’m off to prepare to celebrate in Disney World!

I’ve written about my fear of flying before.  When the airplane I’m riding in takes off or lands, I get very nervous.  Just writing and thinking about it is causing my hands to shake a bit.

I try to fill my mind with statistics which prove that air travel is safe.  I tell myself that the number of accidents involving fatalities in the past 5 years is only a handful compared to the tons of flights that take off and land uneventfully day after day after day.  Still, the Hollywood image runs through my mind of a plane coming in for a landing when something goes horribly wrong.  (Perhaps Hollywood Airlines should get some better planes because a plane in a film or TV show almost invariable encounters problems along the trip.)  The fear remains with me no matter how unreasonable I tell myself it is.

Still, I’m going to have to endure this if I want to go to Disney World.  I could do this with no problem, but this year there’s an additional fear: Airport Security.  I’m all for security on airplanes, but I’ll admit I’m afraid of the enhanced security procedures that I’ve heard are in place.  From Rapiscan scanners (seriously, could they have come up with a worse name for it?!!) that effectively display a nude image of you while exposing you to radiation to TSA personnel who must pat you down in areas that only my doctor and wife ever touch.

And it isn’t mainly me I’m afraid about.  Were it just me, I’d steel myself for it and get through it.  It’s my kids I’m worried about.  Will they ask JSL to step into the scanner by himself?  Will they want to pat down NHL such that our Stranger Danger lessons get triggered?  The boys are excited about the Disney World trip and I’d hate for an airport security nightmare to mar the experience.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you travelled with kids recently via airplane?  How was your airport security experience?  If not, do you have any fears about your kids handling airport security?

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 McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #78

According to my goals for 2011, my To Do List Whiteboard should have been hung up and I should have published the first of my How It Works blog series.  Yeah… Neither of those has happened.  Lest you think I’ve been lounging around on the couch watching television, I have been hard at work.

First of all, I’ve had a couple of freelance projects that kept me busy.  (One of which was the redesign/rebranding of SimplyCathi’s website to PlanesTrainsAndTaxiCabs.com.  Freelance work brings in extra money and so gets a bump in priority over blog postings.

Secondly, we’ve been continuing our cleaning of the upstairs playroom.  During my last FWIS update, I mentioned some improvements that needed to be done.  Well, here’s some updates on those:

• My big desk – We considered disposing of it and buying a new one, but researching desks led us to conclude that we just can’t spend the money on one right now.  Now with other household repairs that need to be done (gutters repaired, ice melting coils installed on the roof, etc).  So my big desk will need to stay.  I did notice something important, though.  Due to the placement of the radiator, the desk was pulled back from the wall.  This made my big desk take up even more room space than it needed to.  We moved it to another (radiator-free) wall and it is taking up less space now.  It’s still a hog, but we can work with it for the time being.
• Old computer equipment – This has been pushed onto and under the Big Desk for the moment.  The equipment is old, but still workable so I feel bad about just tossing it in the garbage.  Besides, you can’t simply throw this stuff away.  You need to properly recycle old computer equipment.  I’ve been looking into various methods of getting rid of it, like selling it (at a very low price) to local people or giving it away to a charity that might be able to use it.
• Boxes of old papers to shred – We’ve gone through much of this and realized that a lot of the papers didn’t need to be shredded.  They could simply be ripped and tossed away.  So we went through the boxes and separated out shred items and toss items.  This process isn’t completely done, but it has greatly reduced the amount of papers we need to shred.  (This, by the way, was my Project for August.)
• Old toys – We cleaned out the play room’s closet and moved most of the old toys there.  It isn’t a permanent solution, but it gets them out of the way so the boys can play in the room.

While the playroom isn’t completely done, I’d say it is about 90% done.  And considering that this was a big item that I didn’t think we would complete until November, I think we’ve made excellent progress.

With our Disney trip coming up, however, I don’t think my March project (complete Math Board Game With NHL) is going to be done on time either.  That’s ok, though.  The due dates were always meant to be flexible guidelines instead of written in stone commandments.

This weigh-in, the scale read 190.  This means that I’ve lost 15 pounds in just 8 short weeks.  Just five pounds more and I’ll be at my goal.  I’m 75% of the way there.

When you’re trying to lose weight, one thing people often do is cut back drastically on how much they eat.  This, in general, can be good.  The average “American portion” is usually double a normal portion size (at least).  Take a plate and a pot of cooked pasta.  Fill up the plate how you would expect to be served in an Italian restaurant.  Now fill up a second, identical plate with a real serving of pasta.  The restaurant serving will likely be four times the amount of pasta as the real serving.

So how do you fill up while still slashing the calories?  It’s simply really.  Add a lot of fruits and vegetables.  Making a sandwich?  Skip the mayo and add tomatoes, cucumbers, bean sprouts and any other veggie you can think of to add in flavor.  Need a side dish for dinner?  Slice up some zucchini, place the rounds on a baking sheet, coat with a little cooking spray and add salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Next cook at 425 for 8 minutes, flip and cook for another 8 minutes.  Want a mid-morning snack?  Don’t reach for a chocolate bar, reach for a banana.  Or slice up some strawberries and enjoy with a little light whipped cream.

The more fruits and veggies you add to your diet, the fuller you will feel and the healthier you will be.  Just don’t drown your fruits/veggies with calorie and fat laden toppings like cheese sauce or heavy salad dressings.

I’m sitting here trying to come up with a topic for my Aloha Friday post, but I’m drawing a blank.  So I’ll make that my topic!  It can be tricky to come up with post topics day after day.  Oftentimes, I’ll find myself not knowing what I’m going to post about right until the very end.  Other times, I’ll have so many post ideas that I don’t have enough days to post them all.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever had bloggy writer’s block?  If so, what did you do to get the creative juices flowing

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 McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #77

In my mind, I’m running down a path.  I think I’m making good time, covering a lot of ground.  Then I look up and see that the path is moving backwards.  No matter how fast I pump my legs to run forward, I’m actually slipping backwards.  It seems like no matter how much I do nowadays, there’s always more that needs to be done.  This applies to much in my life, but especially applies to my Twitter followers.

I never saw the point in auto-following people who followed you on Twitter.  Some might consider it rude, but I prefer to look at people’s tweets and evaluate if I’d like their tweets on my Twitter stream.  If I would, I follow the person.  If the person is just posting astrology readings or giveaway links, I’ll likely pass.  I don’t mean to offend (just like I wouldn’t be offended if I followed someone and they didn’t follow me back), it’s just how I manage my Twitter stream.

My process up until recently was to get the new e-mail from Twitter notifying me of a new follower.  I’d look at their tweets, decide if I should follow them back and mark that e-mail as read.  Rinse and repeat for each new follower.  At some point, though, I fell behind and now I fear I’ll never catch up.

As of this writing, I have 184 new follower e-mails to process.  Yes, some of those people will be spammers, I’m sure, but many more would be legitimate people.  Legitimate people whose tweets I would like to follow.  And yet, those e-mails sit there unread.  Every time I decide to go through them, the enormity of the task overwhelms me and I decide to do it later.  Maybe I’ll just code some sort of “New Follower Processor” page to help me with the task.

In the meantime, please don’t be offended if you followed me and I didn’t follow you back.  I’m probably just delayed by this backwards moving path.

On Thursday, I was cleaning off my car when I slipped on some ice.  My legs went down under my car while the rest of me fell into the snowbank.  I was unhurt (or so I thought at the time) but had trouble getting up due to the slick surface under my feet.  I finally got out from under my car, dusted off my pants, and headed into work.  Unfortunately, my “unhurt” status changed over the course of the day as my neck/back began to hurt.  I realized that I must have wrenched it on the way down.

On Friday, we got at least nine additional inches of snow.  The following morning, I took some photos of the beautiful landscape.

Then, we went to B’s parents’ house.  Their driveway had been plowed and they had a mountain of snow in their backyard.  The boys and I had fun playing in the snow for a couple of hours.

While this was fun, we’ve also had our gutters fall down from the weight of the ice on them and our seasonal snowfall totals are over 77 inches.  (Normal snowfall for the entire season is under 49 inches.)  The sea of white makes for driving difficulties (narrowed roads, trouble getting out of our driveway, blocked views when going around turns) and blinding reflections.  I’m ready for these piles to melt (even though I know we’ll have a flooding/muddy mess for awhile) and for the warmth to begin.  It’s March now.  Is it Spring yet?