30, 30, 30

I want to talk about weight loss again.  Now that football season is underway, this morning I dug out one of my team shirts and it didn’t fit.  Fuck.  Dug out another one, same result.  This happened six times.  OK, so it’s not the shirts, it’s me.  There’s no secret that I’ve put on some pounds.  I feel heavier, I look heavier and it’s really starting to affect my mindset.

After the first of the year I started going to the gym three times a week, starting slow, but I felt pretty good about what I was getting accomplished.  Then, as what happens to most people, I missed a day and before you know it, my routine was done.

I was getting discouraged too because I wasn’t seeing any change, I wasn’t feeling any change.  That didn’t help my motivation.  I had too many things I was trying to do so I was focusing on nothing.  Frustration was setting in bad.

I remember, years ago, my dad telling me how he would exercise using calisthenics and how he gained some good muscle mass by using nothing other than a door frame.  Remembering that, and thinking about setting smaller goals, I decided that I would develop my own plan.  Hopefully I’ll be able to start small and using measurable metrics, keep myself motivated and grow from there.

So this is my plan and I call it 3-30s.  Every morning when I get up I am going to do 30 pushups.  Three days a week I’m going to go to the gym over lunch and do 30 minutes on the treadmill and I’m going to do this for 30 days.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but the problem that I’ve had in the past is I try to do just too damn much and I get discouraged.  So I’m going to start small and get back into it.  Anything above and beyond that base is just going to be icing on the cake.

I am going to have my lovely wife help me with getting measurements, starting weight and take photos for me.  I will post them here a couple times a week for a couple reasons, so you, if you so choose, can follow along with me.  But, also to help myself stay on track.

Hopefully by starting small and setting small goals, I will stay on track and keep myself motivated.  I will be starting this plan the first of October and will publish the result on November first.  Now, I’m not delusional, when I share my month long results I’m not expecting them to be life changing.  I don’t expect to loose a ton of weight and I don’t expect a super endurance boost.  What I do hope to accomplish is a new routine.  And then slowly adding to that routine, so over the month of October I will be looking to add one thing to this base that I can start in November.

Hopefully by starting slowly I will be able to see something change in the months to come.  Stay tuned and wish me luck!

Mini Photo Shoot

Over the weekend, Jess and I had a few minutes before we headed out for the day.  I said, ‘hey, I want to get a few photos up here (in Hadley’s room), the light is great right now.  Don’t move!’ And I ran downstairs, put my camera together and ran back upstairs.  I took some photos and ended up with a few really good ones.  See below:

I’ve been digging my new Sony a6300 out a lot more and I must say, I totally love shooting with it.  Years ago I was looking for a nice hybrid body that would shoot both digital cinema footage and killer stills.  I have long been a Nikon guy and picked up a D3100, hoping that was going to be the silver bullet.  Nope.  I was just a little ahead of the technology curve for where my budget was at.  And now, with the a6300, I think we’re there.  I am VERY happy with the footage I’m shooting (I just set it up with saved profiles for 24p and 120p and I’m very excited to shoot a project where I can mix frame rates) and I’m more than happy with the quality of the stills.  What I’m not really in love with is my trusty old manual Nikon 50mm f1.4.  We have captured so many things together and after shooting Hadley, realized that having a fast autofocus lens is going to be a must.  I’m pretty good at following her, but am just no match for one of the fastest autofocus cameras on the market.  Sony makes an absolutely gorgeous 50mm f1.8 that I would like to pick up.  The speed difference from 1.4 to 1.8 isn’t going to be THAT much for what I’m going to be using it for, plus, it’s not like I’m going to get rid of my 1.4 so I’ll still have that when I need it.

I’m looking forward to producing content.  I think this is the beginning of my creative spark coming back to life.

Cheerios

Over the weekend my lovely bride had to head to the office for a little while.  So, Hadley and I hung out and I grabbed the camera for a little bit and was able to snag a couple shots of her.

Sony a6300; ISO 100; Nikon 50mm@f1.4, SS 1/125

Sunday Funday

My mom, brother and his wife and their daughter came over to the house on Sunday for a little grill out lunch since the weather has just been gorgeous.  After they took off, Jess and Hadley and were just chillin’.  Hadley was having a hard time taking a nap and she always falls asleep in the car, as most infants do.  So, living where we do, we are only roughly a half hour from LeMars, which is were Wells Blue Bunny is.  So, we packed up the baby and the dog and headed north!  Jess and I could get ice cream and hopefully Hadley would fall asleep.  Mission accomplished!  We did a little driving around and then headed home.  After a little over two hour nap.  We decided to take a little trip to the park down the street from our house.  And this happened:

Best Commuter Vehicle???

Let me first begin with at present, this is NOT the best commuter vehicle for me.  I have a 60 mile one-way commute, so this is not an option.  HOWEVER, if the day comes and I have a short commute, this is definitely what I’m picking up!  And if you have a short commute, or live in a big city, take a peek at this, the Boosted Board.

This is not a product endorsement.  I do not have one of these (though I would love one) and have never been on one.

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a board.  I used to skateboard as a way to get around (why this is perfect) and never really got into ‘skating’.  I have had a few long boards and those are clearly my favorite.  My current long board I haven’t been on in quite some time.  Now that the weather is going to start getting nicer and I’m going to be spending more time outside, it might just be time to break that baby out again!

I’m pretty excited about the Boosted Board as a product for a lot of people.  You can travel up to 14 miles on one charge with the extended range battery and 7 miles with the standard battery.  The cool thing too is that it will power up hills up to a 25% grade!  That’s awesome!!!

With multiple ride options, it won’t take long for you to get the hang of this thing.  Again, I don’t have on and have never been on one, but from what I’ve read and seen on YouTube, it seems fairly easy.  And, it’s a sick form of transportation!

Do any of you have one?  Love it?  Hate it?  What are your experiences?

Oh, Boosted Boards, if you see this and want to send me one to test out, I would love that.  Thanks.

The Darkness of Home

So I’ve been wanting to do a photo series for a while now and I knew that I wanted there to be a theme to it.  But, I wasn’t quite sure what that theme was going to be.  Until now.

More often than not, people will always describe their hometown with the good points, the bright shiny things that would make people want to come to their town.  I tend to lean slightly more roughed up, more fucked up macabre than I probably should.  So, as the title of this series introduction has already let the cat out of the bag, I am going to be sharing a series of my town, Sioux City, in the dark.  I want to shoot some areas that are those bright, shiny places that draw people to our fair town, but put a little different, a little darker slant on them.  You’ll see what I mean as we go along and I hope you enjoy feeling them as much as I will creating them.

Challenge 2017

Turns out I began writing a post a while back, saved it and then never came back to it.  So, I’m coming back to it!  It’s as follows:

As 2016 comes to a close, I took the last couple of weeks and reflected on what happened this year, how it changed me for better or worse and then adopt the challenge platform for next year, rather than a bunch of resolutions.

A big one, and most decidedly my most proud moment, was meeting my first child, Hadley Grace, in June.  The love and joy that I feel every time I look in her eyes simply cannot be put into words.  Or, if it can, I simply do not possess the elevated language need to adequately convey those emotions.  Another thing great this year was celebrating my first wedding anniversary.  I have enjoy collecting memories with my wife, Jessica, thus far and am really looking forward to the ones we make as a trio moving forward.

Something else that really affected me significantly more than I had anticipated was celebrating my daughter’s first Christmas.  It was an amazing feeling sharing those moments with my family and my wife’s family (all my family).  However, not to get too down, what affected me was celebrating this Christmas without my dad.  My dad has been gone for four years now and I’ve done plenty of accepting and living and moving forward, but what really caused pause was that he would have loved sharing in these experiences too much, the love that he would have felt and poured over Hadley, and my niece Claire, would have been so great that, combined with ours, no other love would be able to fit in that room.  So, I am just going to continue to be the best dad I can be, because I learned from the best.

Moving on to 2017, I have rediscovered my love of photography.  I first dipped my toe into motion pictures years ago with a strong base in film photography.  After a career in film and video for so many years now, the last part of 2016 reignited my desire to create fine art photography.

So I have decided that I am going to challenge myself in 2017 to do four things, change my habits to live a more healthy lifestyle; especially with our new daughter and the time she needs, continue to build and grow our marriage; assemble a book of photography; and finish this book that I have been writing for the last three years.

I am going to be looking at my life and really figuring out how I can change and change the things around me that are creating chaos and negativity in my life, which are hindering the successful completion of my challenge.

Super WiFi Anyone?

On the 27th, the IEEE published the standard for new wifi.  Today we have 802.11n.  Eventually, we will have the just published 802.22.  With this, the transmitter and receiver can be up to 100km, or 62 miles, from each other and still work at 22Mb per channel.  So exactly what does that mean?  Well, if you work less than 60 miles from your home, which most of us do, you’ll be able to access and use your home internet connection to surf the web, transfer files, print documents, watch videos from your home server, etc.  You get the idea.  This could give way to some pretty interesting new gadgets.  I’ll keep and eye on this and update as it evolves, but what would you use 62 mile range wifi for?

The Nelson Rain Train

In an attempt to keep my grass as lush and vibrant as I possibly can, the past few weeks have sent me on a search for a lawn sprinkler.  I had no idea that there were so many different types of them.  However, when I stumbled upon the Nelson Rain Train, my search had ended.  This thing is sweet!  You hook it up, set a speed either low or high, and turn the hose on.  It then will travel along the path that you’ve set out for it by laying the hose in the yard, it just uses the hose like a track!  I just turned on the water and went in the house, it did it’s thing while I was able to eat dinner, watch some TV, read part of a magazine and most importantly, not be outside and attend to it every 30 minutes.  Awesome.

I know that you’re not supposed to water the lawn in the evenings, but I was just so damned excited to get this thing out there, especially with the dry, hot spell that we’re in the midst of.  I’m going to lay it out again this weekend and let it run in the morning like you’re supposed to from now on.

If you’re looking for a sweet sprinkler that you can let do all the work for you and accurately water your yard, I think I just found it for you!  The Nelson Rain Train is a great sprinkler.  Buy recommendation:  BUY!!!

Birthday Celebrations!

Over the 4th, Jess and I traveled up to the Northwest corner of Iowa to see my folks.  They have a house just outside of Vermillion, SD, which is about 40 minutes or so North of Sioux City where they live.  Not only did we celebrate the birth of our nation, but Jess’ birthday was on the 5th.  So we celebrated TWO birthdays.  She and I took a couple of extra days off and returned back to work just yesterday.  Things were pretty busy around the office yesterday so I haven’t had time to grab any of my photos from the weekend, but I’ll be getting to that today and getting them up.  So stay tuned for those.