Let's see. I'm overweight, unemployed, separated, depressed, starting to drink too much. Guess my biggest problem is I've never been happier.

Want to know what’s going on in my limited world? Read on and find out!

Garden

I tweeted last week that my cucumber is dead. And you can believe all you read on Twitter – at least from me. For some reason the cucumber plant didn’t take, and within a week it had shriveled up and died. I was worried about the pumpkin as well, as one of the shoots shriveled up just like the cucumber. But the rest of the pumpkin is going great, and I think I might buy another pumpkin plant this weekend to keep it company. (I’m not planting another cucumber. Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.)

The tomatoes are doing great already, and you can tell they’re growing every day. I’ve been busy plucking off the early buds that they’re trying to form, so that the plant gives its energy to growing and creating strong roots instead of putting out buds that won’t turn into tomatoes anyway. The peppers are stable, but not growing as fast.

My biggest problem is the scallions. I could have sworn (although I’m wrong alot) that I saw scallion stalks starting to come out last week. But then a few days later I noticed nothing. So either they were eaten, or I’m going nuts (again). Either way, it doesn’t look like the scallions took. I might try again, it shouldn’t be too hot yet for them.

TV/Projector

I haven’t used the “Doug’s a Moron” tag on a blog post in a while (at least a week), so I figured I’d share a story that will allow me to use it. This is the story of a man, a basement, and his HD dream.

When we moved into our new house (14 months ago, I might add), the previous owners had left their home theater setup behind. This included the following: A projector, attached to the ceiling at one end of the basement; a large (8-foot by 6-foot) screen on the other end; a complete surround-sound speaker system; a receiver; and a dvd player. The owners did this on purpose, saying they couldn’t use this setup in their new home. They had built a nice area under the bar (where all the components could be located) that had inputs/outputs for all the component wiring, the speakers, etc. At that time they told me that they had also pre-wired the projector for HD. They said something along the lines of, “If you ever get HD, you just have to unscrew the current component video plate and pull out the HDMI cable”. I was happy about that, but didn’t think anything of it as we didn’t have an HD TV or Blu-Ray player.

After we moved into the house we did almost 100% of our TV watching upstairs on our small (36”) TV. The main reason for this was that I was having a hard time figuring out how the new receiver worked. We only got sound out of the middle/center speaker, and it didn’t sound great at all. We also only had the 1 Tivo, and since we watched most of our TV upstairs, that’s where the Tivo was, and I find watching TV without Tivo slightly less painful than a root canal. So figuring out the downstairs setup just wasn’t a priority. Eventually I did get it figured out, and we began migrating our viewing to the basement (including getting a new Tivo for down there). During this time we noticed that if we watched TV on the HD channels, the widescreen projection looked great. We didn’t think it was as great as HD quality, but still 100 times better than the standard channels. We kept talking about getting an HD projector, but wasn’t sure if the HD projector would look drastically better than what we have now. Also, for movies we’d need to get a Blu-Ray player, which we don’t have yet, and of course get new Blu-Ray discs to watch. It didn’t seem like a huge priority.

That brings us to last Sunday night. We sat down and were watching the Lost recap show, and noticed that the projector kept flickering. It would go slightly darker, then pop back lighter. It looked to me that the lamp might be going. So I decided to dig out the manual that the previous owners left to see what it would tell me about flickering lamps. I had never looked through this before, as I never had a need – all my previous problems had been with the receiver, not the projector. So I find a schematic for the projector in the book, and I notice there’s a light that says something like “Lamp Indicator”. That’s what I’m looking for, so I go to the projector to see if it’s lit up. It’s not, but as I’m looking at the projector, and I look at the back, I notice something funny: an HDMI port. Um, what? So then I look at the booklet again. Sure enough – it’s a High Definition projector! Even worse: closer examination of the projector had the words "HIGH DEFINITION" written across the front. When the previous owners had said to me, “If you ever want to get HD”, I assumed he meant an HD projector. He obviously meant simply if you get HD! (They never had the TV hooked up to the projector, only a DVD player which apparently they only used to watch opera. They were strange.) So I “break” the news to Sage: “Um…we’ve had a HD projector all along.” I believe I’m quoting her correctly when I say her reply was: “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??????” 14 months, and I never realized it. Pretty smart, eh?

(So after relating this story to my friend Grafunk, and after he stopped laughing – which took hours – he said that in truth I HAVE been watching HD for the past year. He claims that the difference in quality between HDMI and component is minimal, so I’m even stupider than I thought I was because I didn’t even realize I had it when I did, but I also didn’t realize I was watching it when I was. I’m not 100% sure this is correct, as it doesn’t look as good as HD TV sets that I’ve seen. There might be some sort of HD setting that I need to turn on for the projector, but I haven’t gotten around to figuring that out yet. Or maybe it’s just not a good HD projector.)

Weight

I don’t want to talk about my weight, but I’m going to. I’m not thrilled with the way it’s been going lately. I’ve probably been overweight since my freshman 20 back in 1987, and while I fluctuate often, the past couple of years has seen a slow and steady increase on the scales. (Except for a 6-month period last year where somehow I lost 15 pounds in 6 months. Looking back on that, I probably had some strange disease that I never realized.) I feel that I’m not horribly unhealthy to begin with, even though I’m definitely classified as obese. I never eat fast food, I don’t drink soda or sweetened beverages, and I try to walk as much as I can. Nevertheless I decided recently to set a weight goal and do everything I can to hit it. And in order to do that, I decided to put some rules in place that I would try to follow. (And yes, I stole most of these from a recent Deadspin article. So shoot me.) Here they are.

1) Weigh myself every day. Sage tells me it’s silly to do this, as you can fluctuate from day to day easily. (In fact the scale told me I gained 5 lbs from Tuesday to Wednesday this week. I think the scale was broken.) But by weighing myself every day it keeps me honest and gives me motivation. I lost a pound? Sweet! It’s working. Keep at it! I gained a pound? Brother Trucker! That’s it, no eating out of the take-home fridge from work today! It’s also a way of keeping score daily, and that’s something I love to do.

2) Blog about my weight once a week. This is the big one. I figured, it’s not enough for me to try to convince myself to lose weight, but I need people watching over my shoulder. I tried to convince Sage to do this for me. I said, “Every day I’m off my goal, I’ll let you know.” She said, “What do I care?” So now, by putting it in the public domain and open to ridicule from all, it’ll keep me (hopefully) motivated in the back of my mind: I can’t gain weight and tell everyone about it…Sluggy won’t stop laughing at me!

3) Go easy on the portioning. This might be my biggest downfall. So often I’ll make 2 sandwiches for lunch, just out of habit. Or if Sage can’t finish her chicken breast for dinner, I automatically finish it for her. Getting this through my head might be the hardest part – you don’t have to eat it all!

4) Less carbs, more salads. I’m not big on vegetables; there just aren’t many that taste good. Because of this, my dinners very often consist of a meat, a starch (potatoes or rice), and nothing else. But I do like salad; I just find it a pain in the butt to make all the time. So from now on I’ll force myself to move away from the starchy side dishes and on to salad. With low-fat dressing. (I’m thinking this will last a week, tops. But I’ll try.)

5) Limit the French fries intake. If I ever had a kryptonite, it’s French fries. If they’re on the menu, I just can’t say no. If someone has some on a plate while at a restaurant and they’re not finishing them, I will. Even if I’m not hungry, I will eat French fries non-stop. So this needs to change and be toned down. Assuming I’ll eliminate them altogether would be foolish, but limits must be made! (What those limits are, I’m not so sure yet.)

6) Limit, or eliminate, Beer. If I didn’t have one beer all summer, I could probably hit my goal with pounds to spare. But as Will Ferrell so eloquently said in Old School, “It tastes so good when it hits your lips!” But here’s my goal: No more than 1 beer per week this summer. If I have more than 1, I need to go without the next week. So that’s a total of 16 beers until Labor Day. Watch me…I’ll nail this one easily.

7) Limit the cookies, sweets and desserts. I’m not a big dessert fan to begin with. I could easily count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve had ice cream so far in 2010; I just don’t crave it that much. But cookies on the other hand, I’ve been known to take down 6 in one night. (I mean, when you bake up a dozen, they just don’t taste as good the next day!) Also, things like donuts, scones, croissants, pies, cakes, and chocolate covered almonds need to be put in a corner for a while. (This will NOT make Sage happy. I can already see this coming to a head soon.)

So what is the goal that this Can’t Fail 7-Step Plan is shooting for? It’s to weigh 200 lbs by Labor Day. On Tuesday, May 25 I weighed in at 216 lbs, so that means losing about 1 lb per week over the summer. This sounds easy, right? Only problem: Summer is the season of ribs on the grille, beers on the porch, and ice cream sundaes in my stomach. Let’s see how far I get. And again – if I don’t make it, please feel free to mock me as much as you can. It might be the only way I’ll stick to my plan.