Fresh Start

So my hearing has come and gone and it was easy as pie. Actually pie sounds pretty good right now. I'm back home having just finished a celebratory rib eye smothered in mushrooms. I'm on my second glass of wine and frankly I'm feeling about as good as I've felt in years. Happy New Year everybody.

Nervous

So tomorrow is my Bankruptcy hearing with the trustee. Everything I've heard or read tells me that I have nothing to worry about still I'm a bit on edge. I hope I'm going to be able to sleep tonight. Less than 12 hours and the biggest monkey of my whole life gets his walking papers. 2009 is shaping up to be what I was thinking about when I named my old blog "Braver, newer world". Maybe it's time to refresh this one again for the new year. I remain determined to make my forty-first year a time of renewal for me. Tomorrow is a big step in that direction. Wish me luck.

Ah, New Year's week. I wasn't sure how I felt about the mid-week aspect of this year's new year's but I've made my piece with it A couple of days to review, a couple of days to celebrate, and a couple of days to try out the new habits.

My diet took some knocks Christmas week but that was to be expected. This morning on the scale I was a pound more than where I was last Monday morning. That's not enough to lose any sleep over. The thing was when I reviewed what I was eating none of it was really all that bad. A slice of cake and a scoop of ice cream maybe but mostly just an increase in the volume of meat and cheese. I'm still going to show a net loss for the holiday's and I'm happy with that. I continue to make the vast majority of my meals so I'm automatically eating better and saving some cash. Good habits to walk into 2009 with.

I've only missed writing in my journal once in the past month and a half so that's another habit in place for the new year. I'm tracking my expenses religiously so between that and my hearing on Wednesday I'm feeling as positive about finances as any point in my life.

The two things I need to get back into are this blog and my photography. I have taken only a couple of pictures in December and published nothing on flickr in over a month. That is something I'll try to work on this week. I want some natural feeling habits in place by this time next week.

Not Really Hiding Out

I haven't been very expressive on the web lately. I haven't taken any pictures since my birthday and I haven't even looked at those pictures all month. I'm back in process mode, trying to build up some good habits for the new year. I've been expermenting with different to-do lists and jornalling tools. The most imporant thing for each piece of software is how well the iPhone version works. I'm trying to lug my computer around as little as possible. The strain on my neck is making that weakness in my right arm worse.

Not that I want to be complaining about how I feel. For the most part I feel great. I've been sticking to my diet very well. I hit a plateau for about two weeks but broke past when I followed some advise to mix up my diet a little more. So on Friday instead of having lean hot Italian turkey sasuage for dinner like usual I picked up a nice big $13 Rib eye from Cala (marked down to $5). Sure enough the next morning I had dropped two pounds. I considered picking up a jar of lard to really turbo-charge my weight loss buy figured that might be pushing my luck.

I've been writing in my journal every day when I wake up and I even started a dream journal this morning. I've been playing around with different financal tracking software just trying to get the habits built by the time 2009 starts. Right now I'm leading towards Mint.com. It seems to play the best with my bank account. I continue to track everything I eat and keep a running calorie total. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm around and I'm doing well. Better than well even.

Two Days in a Little Apartment

Well that's pretty much my weekend. I was a total homebody these last two days. Yesterday I did venture out to Trader Joe's for groceries but today the farthest I got from my apartment was the mailroom. That is just fine with me. I spent no money (which is good cause I'm pretty broke until payday). I tackled a couple of projects I've been putting off forever including organizing my desk area, reworking my Remember the Milk account and filing the overflowing inbox and the year's worth of papers it contained. I'm in task not creative mode right now. I'm looking forward to working on my photography in this more organized environment. In the meantime I'm taking solace in the fact that I'm writing every day and blogging on a much more regular basis. I'm glad I started working on my health and finances before my birthday. I'm only 9 days in but so far my 40's are a real treat.

Food

So I wouldn't say that food and diet have been consuming my every thought, but I do believe this is the most attention I've given to what I've put in my body in my whole life. I have only really lost weight in one other period of my. That was when I was doing the Atkin's no carb thing. Even then I wasn't paying all that much attention. Basically I read the first two chapters of his book and then just stopped eating sugar and carbs. It didn't really matter what else I was eating as long as it wasn't sugar or carbs. I lost 30 pounds on a coffee, bacon and cheese diet. I have a funny feeling that wasn't exactly what I was supposed to do. Of course eventually even bacon and cheese got boring (it did take a while though), I had some sugar, my appetite came roaring back and that was that.

This time I'm paying more attention to all-around nutrition. The main thing I'm doing though is keeping a record of I eat and counting the calories. That has been the silver bullet for me. It makes me consider what I'm eating and actually answer the question do I really want that? It's been okay that the answer was yes to dinner at Cheesecake Factory on my birthday, or twice this week with a snickers bar at work from a holiday care kit from an executive. I write it down and I incorporate it into my totals.

The funny thing is that the last thing I've felt these last three weeks is deprived. In fact sometimes it's a struggle to eat enough. Since I made these changes I haven't skipped a meal. That's a new thing for me too. I've kept myself well fed all the time with foods that make me feel great. I know this is probably old hat to some of you but it's new ground for me. The only thing I've noticed is that while I eat out a lot less often, I'm going to the market all the time. In fact right now I'm on my way back from TraderJoe's.

One of those Days

Yesterday was one of those days that things get done that make all the rest of your days easier. The last document I needed for my bankruptcy had been proving very elusive for the last three weeks. In order to stave off a couple of lawsuits I had gone ahead and filed anyway. I was counting on getting something from payroll that was now way overdue. The court needed this thing by Friday and I was starthing to get frantic. By Monday night I was a real basket case. So first thing yesterday morning I began banging on payroll. Sure enough by noon I had a hard copy in my hands and at my lawyer's office by 3. A huge weight was lifted. Another weight goes away on New Year's Eve when my hearing is.

So by the end of the year I should be 6 weeks into my new diet, out of debt and starting toward a positive balance sheet for the first time in my adult life. Hey, maybe my 40's aren't going to be so bad. I might be able to get used to feeling good.

Birthday Report

Not wanting to blow the two weeks I've got invested in my new diet and wanting to get out of the city and see something a little more on the natural side I tapped Karen for birthday duties yesterday. It was a very good and mellow birthday. I took the train down to Redwood City and we ended up driving down south of Carmel. It was a little hazy but still a beautiful fall day. We had lunch at the Carmel Whole Foods Salad Bar. While that doesn't make for a very exciting blog post I can report that it was exactly what I needed at the moment. We drove down to the big bridge and took some pictures. Then we went back to Carmel and took a walk along the seaside. I have never seen such big waves. These walls of water kept crashing in. No one was in the water. Surfers were just standing there with us watching the waves come crashing in. In the afternoon we stopped by the Carmel Mission. Somehow I had never visited this Mission. The gardens and chapel were beautiful, ancient and a little sad. I haven't had a chance to go through the pictures yet but I'm excited about seeing them on my computer. Look for some new stuff on Flickr in the coming days.

We headed back north as the sun set and got to Palo Alto an hour before the last Bogart double feature started. We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory but kept it under control by sharing the Thai Lettuce Wraps and Chicken Pot Stickers. Then it was back to what used to be my favorate haunt before moving to the city, the Stanford Theater, for a double feature of To Have and to Have Not and The Maltese Falcon. I was a little stunned to realize that Karen had never seen either movie. We both did a good job staying awake through the last one when the long day seemed to catch up with us. A trip to the snack bar at intermission helped. Karen drove me home and I hit the sack right about the time my birthday was coming to an end.

Throughout the day my phone kept shaking with best wishes via voicemail, text, facebook and other modern communications. I was happy to recieve every one and they contributed to a general feeling of well being that was with me the whole day.