About a month ago, I had surgery on my foot.  When I was a child my feet were usually too big for my shoes, which caused my big toe to bend inward.  Where the joint bent, a bone deposit grew and kept growing. Last winter, I went skiing and since the boots don’t give like shoes do, my foot was basically crushed in the boot.  After a night of skiing, blisters formed and popped leaving a sock caked in blood.  Two weeks later, I tried to go ice skating and it hurt so bad I took the boots off after about 5 minutes.

After talking to the doctor, he said that he could fix it and if I didn’t get it fixed, it would likely get worse.  Fixing it involved cutting the bone growth out, breaking the toe, removing all the ligaments and cartilage from the knuckle, drilling a pin from the outside into the bone, and putting a screw in there to help fuse the bones and keep it all together.

The first week after the surgery was hell.  I slept most of the time with the help of some pain pills, and it was mostly a blur except I remember it being really uncomfortable to sleep with a surgical boot, which acts like a caste.  After the first week, I started taking the boot off to sleep and actually got a good night’s sleep.  Since then it has progressively healed.  I have two more weeks to go with this boot and my right foot will be healed.  After that, I need to have the left foot done, which will start the whole thing over again.

What an ordeal… but it’ll make it possible for me to do the things that I like to do, namely hiking & skiing.  Anything that requires the use of any type of boot will now be a lot easier to deal with.  Hopefully, this will help make it easier to meet some of my other health goals.

I’ve been using my Lucasi pool cue for about a month or so now and love it.  The shaft is slightly smaller in diameter from the typical house cue, which helps me put more English on the ball. It has a really smooth wood feel. I don’t like shafts with a luster finish such as a typical Cuetec cue because it tends to skid along my bridge hand, and I’m constantly buffing it with a piece of leather.  Not so, with the Lucasi maple shaft. 

The tip is pretty soft which grips the ball for even more control. Soft tips probably don’t last as long as a hard tip, but I feel that it really helps my game, so it’s worth it.

It hits the ball really solid, and this might be all in my head, but I feel that my game has improved since getting the stick.

I finally made it to the pool yesterday morning.  It was a nice feeling to get off my butt and start doing something about my weight.  I only swam about 150 yards because I wanted to take it easy and see how my shoulder would hold up.  I injured it a few years ago and don’t want to injure it again.    Yesterday, we went fishing and I probably walked 4 miles taking kids from the lake to the bathroom, so that’s got to help a little in the exercise department.

So as of July 27, 2007, my weight is 275 pounds, and my goal is to get to 200 pounds. 

On the food front, I’m working on limiting how much soda I drink.   This is a big factor to my weight because I average about 120-150 ounces of soda a day.  I don’t trust ‘diets’ because I believe that 99% of them are frauds.  Instead, I’m just trying to eat healthier and cut out or reduce stuff that’s obviously bad for me.   Gatorade is my new best friend because it has about 1/3 the calories of Coke and no bubbles, but it has enough sugar in it to help trick my brain into thinking it’s having enough soda.  Of course, I’m starting to drink water more often, but I can’t stand the taste of it unless it’s ice cold.  I think that I’ve trained my brain to expect Coke or Pepsi instead of water.  It’s going to take some rewiring to get that one straightened out.

I’m totally addicted to caffeine, so my plan is to keep drinking caffeinated beverages along with Gatorade to keep the headaches and other withdrawal symptoms to a minimum while slowly weaning myself off of them completely.  It’ll be a great day when I’m able to go a full day without a Coke and not suffer from a headache or drowsiness because of it.

Like most of us, I’ve gained weight over the years and would really like to get in shape and drop down to a ‘normal’ weight for my body type.  I’m about 6 foot 1, so an ideal weight is around 200 pounds.
 
At 280 pounds, I have a long ways to go.  My blood pressure is also creeping up there, and my cholesterol has always been really high.

It’s been a nice feeling to put all of my goals on paper and then on this website.  It’s allowed me to take a look at them from a high level. I’ve realized that I’m going to need to get in better shape so that I don’t die from a heart attack before I have a chance to finish all of these.

I figure it’s going to take 2-3 years to get down to 200.  At 1 pound a week, it’s going to take at least 1.5 years and judging from the past, weight never drops consistently.

I’m absolutely horrible with dieting.  I love food too much.  So, the only chance I have to accomplish this goal is through a lot of exercise.

The first step is done.  I bought a membership at the local pool & gym for my birthday, and I love to swim.  The second step is going to be a lot harder.  That’s the part where I actually go to the pool.  My plan is to go before work, but it’s been a week and I’ve yet to go once.

Tomorrow is Saturday and will be a perfect day to start training because another of my goals is to swim a mile or 72 lengths of the pool.  Tomorrow, I’ll be happy if I make it across once.