Nicotine is a bitch, and I owned it

Today marks my 2-year anniversary of beating nicotine addiction.

Alan Carr's "Easyway to Stop Smoking" was the best $20 that I've ever spent on a book. It's better than the patch, better than the gum, better than the pills, and better than cold turkey. Smoking isn't just a physical addiction, it's also a psychological one. If you don't beat both, you'll always crave it.

My wife read the book a year later and will be a year quit in March.

I get nothing in return for plugging the book, other than a good feeling knowing that it might help someone else. If you'd like to read some old blog posts about it, check these out.

In celebration of my amazing achievment, who wants to be the first to sponsor me for the 2011 Canadian Cancer Society Relay for Life? :)

http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/paterson

 

7/52 - Week 3

Thank god for the DailyShoot, or I might not have anything to post. :)

My cat. My trusty model. She looked so comfortable. I only managed too shoot three or four shots before she woke up.

A book that everyone must have. I liked it so much that I bought the newer edition, even though most of the content was the same as the last edition I bought and read. I had a bitch of a time trying to get my glasses to stay in a triangular shape for the shot. They kept wanting to close or open.

I love our stairs. Coincidentally, I think it was around this time last year that we began our five or six month long renovation project of the stairs, main floor, kitchen floor and ½ bathroom. Dig through my blog and I'm sure you'll see some before pics. This shot was originally landscape but I cropped it to portrait to cut out something that was hanging on the hand rail to the right. And then I wasn't sure if I should convert the entire thing to B&W. It looks good in B&W, but I wanted to keep the colour... because, I think we did a great job of staining them. Like I said, I love our stairs. :)

My scale, that I am somewhat obsessed with using in the last couple of months. I thought it would be cool to take a shot of my weight as I stood on it, but soon realized that having my camera in hand would throw that way (weigh?) off. ;) I suppose I could have gotten the tripod out...

My Xbox 360 controllers. I shot them because... well, I couldn't find anything else to shoot. Besides, they were a part of our Sunday activities -- my wife and I played a few games of Yahtzee. :)

This was more of an accidental shot. I was messing around with the autofocus on my camera, aiming it on my feet, and fired off a shot just as the picture on the TV changed to an advertisement. It kinda looks like my feet have a halo.

Last, but not least -- and also a DailyShoot shot -- homemade chocolate cookies. It was a new recipe that my wife decided to try and they are goooood. :)

That's it for this week. I'm still not completely up to speed on this seven photos per week idea. I keep finding myself running around looking for things to shoot. Being winter with windchill warnings certainly doesn't help either.

Hopefully I can get my shit together soon. Dammit.

Holding steady – Week 10 progress

Friday's weigh-in had me at 248.4 lbs. My progress this past week has slowed down. My calorie intake wasn't beyond the limits, but my workouts were few and far between as my time was a somewhat limited most days.

Anyway, it continues, that's all that matters. :)

7/52 - Week 2

Still not up to speed on shooting often enough, but did manage to get seven for this week. :) A couple of them are from my DailyShoot contributions as well.

This was one of the DailyShoot shots. It's my rarely played acoustic guitar that I got a long time ago... like pre-1982. I never did learn to play more than a few notes, unless you count "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore". :) Everyone once in a while I get in the mood to try and learn more, get it all tuned up and stick with it for a few weeks, then it ends up sitting in the corner of my den. For this shot, I sat it on my lap and placed the camera on the strings, looking down the neck. It looks like I strummed it for the shot, but I didn't.

Another DailyShoot shot; the label on my camera bag. It pretty much holds everything I have for my camera. It's an awesome bag.

I shot this at work one lunch time, for the DailyShoot. It's a Hot Wheels dragster pen that my wife put in my Christmas stocking. It took me a dozen shots until I got one that looked pretty good.

I had a difficult time finding something for this particular DailyShoot. Find two complementary objects. How hard could that be? I think this turned out pretty good. I thought about making it B&W, but decided to leave it as is in the end.

I shot this on Saturday while I was snowing outside. Our bird feeder hangs just outside our window so our cat can enjoy watching them. The colour wasn't too great, since I had shot it through the window, so I decided to make it B&W. I guess I should refill it, eh? :)

My favourite model, our cat Samantha. This is where she spends most of her time, either sleeping or watching out the window. If I move the automan anwhere else, she won't sleep in her bed on it. It must be in front of this window.

I shot this one this evening, for today's DailyShoot assignment. It took me about half an hour to find something blue that I could make a decent shot out of. I spotted the bottle of Dawn dish liquid at the back of the sink. At first I thought I would try to shoot it as I poured it onto a plate. That didn't work out too well. I then made a bunch of bubbles in it and fired off a half dozen before switching to my 100mm lens for a couple like this one. You can see my reflection and other things in the kitchen. I had to make a few small adjustments to the RAW file, with the tone and saturation to bring out the blue a little better.

Milestones - Week 9 Progress

A day early, but I'm feeling a little bored.

I passed a personal milestone on Friday; I weighed in below 250 lbs for the first time in 6 or 7 years, at 249.8 lbs. At that time, when I last made an attempt to lose weight, I got down to 240 lbs before I hit a road block.

240 lbs is my next milestone. I don't remember the last time I weighed less than 240. I suspect it was some time back in the mid-80s, right afer I left the military.

I am less than 10 lbs away from that milestone.

7/52 - Week 1

Not off to a very good start for my Project 7/52. Due to my slackitivity, my seven photos are from two different shoots. It's allowed, of course, but I was hoping for a better mix. We'll see what the next week brings.

Anyway, here we go for this week.

This is me holding my new nephew, Jaxson Edward Wilson; my sister's second child. He was born on January 5th of this year.

Here we have my son holding his new cousin. My son is very unlike me when I was his age. He loves babies and little kids. I guess he gets that from his Mom. :)

My daughter holding her new cousin. She too loves babies. I just hope they remain other people's babies for a long time! :)

My wife, holding her nephew. She commented that he looks so round. Not chubby or fat, just very... roundish. :) He was born via C-section, so his head didn't have a chance to become temporarily deformed like some newborns. His ears are really tiny too. He's a cutie.

I received a few Hot Wheels cars over the Christmas holidays and decided to take photos of them to post in a couple of the Hot Wheels Flickr groups. This, unfortunately, isn't one of them. :) I've had this one for some time. I like it because it's different.

This also isn't one of them, but it's a Mustang and that makes it one of my favourites. I started mostly collecting Mustangs years ago. It has expanded a little to to include cool looking muscle cars or any other car that happens to catch my eye. I don't go crazy buying everything in sight.

This one is one that I got for Christmas, in my stocking. A 2010 Camaro.

And that's that for week 1, with about ten minutes to go. Yeh, technically I'm probably a day late since week 1 ended yesterday, but it's far easier for me to update this and post them all on a Sunday... so there. :) The week begins on Monday and ends on Sunday for this.

Stready as I go - Week 8 progress

I was down to 252½ lbs this past week, but in the last two days I put a couple back on. It's not like I went crazy and over my calorie limit, so I'm not entirely sure what happened. I guess stuff like that will happen anyway. I'm not going to be too concerned about it, for now. :)

My workouts are still once every two days. I find I have way more energy this way. Perhaps that parts of why I put a couple of pounds back on...

I'm still doing the cardio boxing as my main workout, with a 3lb weight in each hand. I'm noticing that they're getting easier than when I first started using weights, which is pretty cool.

I took my measurements a at some point this week and also managed to find the measurements I took in mid-December. Neck, waist, chest and hips were all down anywhere from a ½ inch to 1½ inches. More progress. :)