Ignore the dude in the back...

Here’s a picture of me and Kathryn… and my friend Jason in the background, ruining the shot! LOL I was the only one NOT enjoying 2 for 1 margaritas at Senor Swanky’s! “Water, no ice please.”

What’s the verdict on my daffodil yellow eyeshadow from MAC? You LIKE???

Here I am!

Ok, it’s been seriously TOO long since my last post- I know, and I’m ready to change. That’s the first step in Blogger’s anonymous, right?

What’s NEW, Carmine?! Oh, well glad that you asked!! My last blog was before my concert at Fairview on 5/17, which went over GREAT! I’ve spent the last 3 nights crashing my computer trying to load and edit the video. Promise I’ll have clips up soon- it’s just one HUGE long 2 hr + video, and I want to break it into small clips for each individual song.
My mom and dad came down from Canada for my performance, and it was the first time mom had seen our home in NYC. We had crap-tacular weather while they were here: gusting wind, torrential rain and lightening storms. That’s not so fun when you live in NYC and have to walk everywhere. Instead of touring around, we showed off one of Dan and my favorite features of the big apple: DELIVERY SERVICE! We did venture out in the downpour so that mom could go shop at the WORLD’S largest department store: Macy’s. We don’t have Macy’s in Canada, so this was a whole new experience for my folks. They loved the original wooden escalators- Dad kept saying that all the friction would make them catch fire if they weren’t properly maintained and greased up. Oh well, we took our chances and rode on them anyway!

Dan’s family came to the concert as well- we all stayed at the same hotel Saturday night after the show, and went to church and dinner the next day together. Dan’s mom, dad, sister, brother in law, and 5 nieces and nephews came. Table for 18, no reservations? No problem at Longhorn! Gee, sometimes I really miss the suburbs!

And LAST week, my sister and her best friend Jen came from Canada for the weekend. My sis lives in Montreal, and Jen lives in Moncton. They came Thursday through Monday, and it was the BEST weather we’ve had all year! They were the greatest houseguests too- they didn’t even ask us to take them to see the statue of liberty and all that tourist stuff! They wanted to do the REAL New York, so we took them to all our favorite little dives and unknown spots. We picnicked in Central Park, went to Magnolia Bakery and Alice’s Tea Pot EVERY morning (PS- I just SMELLED the cupcakes… didn’t eat ANY! How’s THAT for willpower!!) and shopped SHOPPED shopped like crazy! I’ll post more about their trip later, and put some pictures up too.

I’m at the end of week 4 on my fitness challenge, and so far, I’ve lost 9 lbs… add that to my 19.5 lbs at weigh in, and I’m sitting pretty close to 30lbs already :) Ok, well, not really but hey it’s all about the numbers! Hopefully when I weigh in on Monday, I’ll be down another 3 to keep with my 3lb/week goal. My trainer is going mental on me, and I know it will only get worse as we get closer to the deadline. Ouch! Hey, it’s working, that’s all that I care about! I’m actually having DREAMS about food, though- that’s how insane this whole thing is. I dreamed the other night that I was eating a HUGE plate of cheese fries and chocolate cake. Thank goodness we don’t keep that junk in the house because Lord knows I’d be sleepwalking to the fridge every night!

Ok, I’ll sign off for now, and try to jump on this weekend and give you more (gimme gimme… gimme gimme MORE!...) Sorry, I had a Britney moment.

Mental games

Last Thursday, I had to go to Philadelphia after work to rehearse for my concert on Saturday, so since I didn’t want to miss a workout, I went to the gym at lunch instead of after work. Just to fill you in; my workout schedule is now Monday and Wednesday: personal trainer, Tuesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday: 50 mins cardio. I try to do abs after every cardio session too. My cardio used to be treadmill alternating jogging/fast walking for 35-40 mins, but since I’m in this weight loss competition, I’m cranking it to 50 minutes of stairmaster or stairMONSTER (my new name for the gauntlet machine, below)! The stairmaster I do at a level 5 or 6, with a variable fat-burning workout pre-set. It’s tough, I’m not gonna lie. The weirdest part is that my toes start to go numb after like 30 minutes. Does this happen to anyone else? It’s annoying!

Anyway, back to my story…
So, I go at lunchtime, and who do I run into? My trainer. “Hey, Carmine! Doing some cardio?” “Yup, I had to come at lunch because I can’t come after work.” “Oh, that’s great! Hey, I was just getting ready to do my cardio TOO! We can do our workout TOGETHER!”

Great.

So I busted my butt on the gauntlet for 50 minutes!!! And of course, he kept looking over and pressing the buttons to increase the speed and the resistance every like 5 minutes! Agghhh!!! I was drenched! Plus, I couldn’t cut my workout short or cop out at 45 minutes. It gives him such pleasure to torture me… I’m convinced of it.

BUT… the good news is, after week 1, I’m down 2.6lbs! That’s pretty much on track for my 3lb/week goal for this competition. I’d LOVE to have a 5lb week, but that only seems possible on the biggest loser show. By the way, HOW do those women lose 15lbs in ONE week on that show?!!! It’s kind of upsetting!

Now, if before any of you start feeling frustrated if you’ve been working out or dieting and DIDN’T lose 2.6lbs, please keep in mind that it’s NOT easy for me. I’ve been eating grilled chicken or salmon, steamed broccoli, spinach, asparagus, eggs, oatmeal and cottage cheese for a week. NO cheats, no treats. Plus, I’m working out and weight training and it STILL comes off pretty slowly. The key is eating ENOUGH to keep your body from going into starvation mode, and keeping your metabolism going. I have to count every calorie and make sure I’m getting between 1250 and 1500 calories a day, or else the scale doesn’t move, even with all that exercise.

Hey, I know I can’t live my whole LIFE eating this stuff, but this is an 8 week challenge, and I HAVE to win! Anyone who knows me, understands that I am fiercely competitive, and I HATE to LOSE more than I love to win. After the competition, I’m going to adjust my diet to include more of the weight watchers approach- everything in moderation, with most of your calories coming from lean protein and vegetables.

I had a training session on Monday night, and my trainer used some good motivational tactics to push me really hard. He pointed to some people who were working out and showed me who else was enrolled in the fitness challenge. He could have been lying, and just pointing at random people for all I know, but it WORKED! Now that I can visualize my competition, it’s ON! Every time I drink a glass of water, I imagine the competition drinking TWO glasses of water, so then I want to drink THREE! If imagine my competition doing 10 pushups, then I do 12! I’ve never trained for any physical event like this before, and as you can see, I’m really getting into it! It’s exhilarating, and SO much of it is mental!

I park like an idiot

Another fun website: I Park Like An IDIOT! Send in pictures of people parking like idiots, and order "I park like an Idiot" bumper stickers to TAG the moron's car with! Ha ha!

One of my biggest pet peeves... I'm going to start taking pictures on my iPhone of people that park like idiots in NYC! I'll try to post some soon!

You MUST click and see!

Mail order husbands



Yes... this is a JOKE site! Come ON, people!

Comment: who's your favorite?

Amy Winehouse compared to before drugs

Gauntlet time

Yesterday was my hard core cardio night at the gym- I learned the hard way that I can’t eat anything for at least an hour before working out. Otherwise, I feel like I can puke at any moment. I climbed on the stairmaster and did a 45 minute cardio program that was variable levels of intensity and speed. I had my iPhone on the machine, listening to music, and I discovered that my gym has wi-fi so I started surfing and playing on facebook while I was climbing stairs. Pretty cool! Anything to pass the time, right? That’s one of the hardest things about cardio- staying with it and not getting bored while you’re on a machine for an hour. There’s tv, of course, but I’m so spoiled by my TiVo, that I hate watching commercials! So now, I will play on the internet while I’m driving my body to exhaustion! :)

After the stairmaster, I switched to the GAUNTLET for 15 more minutes. Yey, ME! That's 60 full minutes of intense cardio! Usually, I've been doing 35-45 mins, but it's time to step it UP! The gauntlet is a stair machine that looks like a mini-escalator. This machine’s name is there for a reason- it’s BRUTAL! Plus, there’s always the little threat that if you don’t keep up with the speed, you’ll fall right off the bottom of it, so at least it keeps you from slacking off! I like it because it’s so high up in the air, I feel like I’m standing in some sort of a watch tower, looking down at everyone else in the gym. King of the castle, king of the castle! (Borat, anyone?)

In case you don’t have any idea what this machine is, here’s a picture of the torture device:


When I got home, Dan was out getting a drink with some friends, so I took the dogs for a walk (yes, by now I’m REALLY tired, and my legs are begging for mercy!) I made salmon and steamed vegetables for dinner, and drank a protein shake while the food was cooking. Tonight is my training session with my trainer, but he text me last night and said he pulled a muscle in his back and he’s laid up for a couple days. My first thought was, “oh no, I hope he’s ok” but my next thought was “whoo hoo! I save $100 tonight”, followed by the next thought of, “oh crap, now I’m gonna have to pull it together and try to work myself out as hard as he does.” It will be an interesting workout, methinks…

Worst. Analogies. Ever.

These are some winners of the "worst analogies ever written in a high school essay" contest run by the Washington Post:
"She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again."
"The little boat gently drifted accross the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't."
"Mcbride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a hefty bag filled with vegetable soup."
"From the attic came an unearthly howl. the whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy" comes on at 7pm instead of 7:30."
"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze."
"Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center."
"Bob was perplexed as a hacker who means to access >> T:flw.quid55328.com/aaakk/ch@ung but gets T\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake"
"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."
"He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree."
"The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."
"Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like 'Second Tall Man'."
"The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after Dr. on a Dr Pepper can."
"They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled nancy kerrigan's teeth."
"John and Mary had never met. they were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."
"The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red crayola crayon."
"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left cleveland at 6:30 pm traveling at 55mph, the other from topeka at 4:19pm at 35mph."
"The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play."
"His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free."

Geek humour

sweet victory!

Attention, folks- this is about to get crazy!
So, check it out I joined… A FITNESS COMPETITION!! What?! I know, it’s hard to imagine, because 12 weeks ago, I was struggling to figure out how to even push the buttons to make a treadmill work! But YES, I’m going all the way! The only way I would sign up, is if I knew I would WIN, so now it’s all I think about- I HAVE to win!

Here’s the rundown: my trainer was pushing me to enroll in this 8 week challenge in a bunch of different areas: pull ups, push ups, distance running, speed, endurance, weight lifting, and weight loss. Since the weight loss challenge is calculated by PERCENTAGE, not total pounds, he said he could put me on a hardcore eating and exercise plan, and I would win for sure. First prize is $500 plus 12 training sessions, which are normally $100 each so that’s a pretty good incentive. Plus, the trainers get prizes too, so of course there’s something in it for him if (I mean WHEN) I win.

Here’s our little plan that we devised: the day of my initial weigh in, I was to drink as much water as physically possible to try and get my weight UP. Plus, eat something with salt. We also decided OATMEAL would be the best way to gain weight because it’s so heavy but it won’t cause long term weight gain because it goes right through you. So, the day of my weigh in, on Friday, I ate 5 bowls of oatmeal- made with just a bit of water so I could barely even stir it. It was like CEMENT! I ate a bag of salty baked lays chips and then drank 2 GALLONS of water! I was ready to BURST, but I couldn’t go to the bathroom until I was weighed! AgghhH!! The pain in my bladder paid off, though- when I weighed in, I was up 19.5 LBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I weighed 176.5!!! That’s crazy!! I wanted to laugh when they weighed me, but I had to play it cool and keep a straight face.

When I told my trainer, he was like, “We are SOOO going to win! You’re already ahead 20 pounds and we haven’t even started yet! MWAHAHA HA!” ( that’s his evil laugh!) So, all weekend, he had me eat grilled chicken, egg whites, and ASPARAGUS, which is a dieuretic, to flush all that water out. On Monday, I was back to my fighting weight of 157. The next 8 weeks are gonna be CRAZY though- I’m preparing myself for brutal beatings at the gym. It’s all or nothing, I HAVE to win!!

Last night was my first training session for the challenge, and my trainer annihilated me. Seriously. Do you ever watch biggest loser? Yeah, that crap was NOTHING compared to this. I used to complain about my workouts being severe, but last night, I had to re-adjust my whole comparison scale of what torture really is! We started with 10 minutes at level 10 on the stairmaster to get my heartrate up, then walking lunges, holding 20lb weights in each hand. I did 20 lunges per leg, 4 times with NO rest. At this point, I was already crippled. Then the real fun began: it was a blur of bench presses, push ups, decline twisting situps, shoulder presses, rows, and squats- and in between, for my “rests”, we sprinted on the treadmill, did suicides, planks, the gauntlet, and more crunches. For most of the workout, I had to do it with my eyes closed and just pretend I wasn’t even there, it was too exhausting if I thought about what I was doing. Sometimes, I imagine I’m laying on a sandy beach, or on a fluffy feather bed- anything to trick my brain into figuring out what my body is doing!

The diet of course, is going extreme as well. We’re doing “cycle” eating: 2 days low or no carb, 1 day moderate carb (mostly protein, but add small amounts of complex carbs: sweet potato, carrots, brown rice) and then 1 day high carb (high protein with small amounts of whole grain bread, fiber cereal, etc.) Then, back to 2 days low carb, and on and on like that. This is supposed to “trick” your body into not anticipating what it’s getting next so that it continually burns the calories as fuel. Yesterday, I ate oatmeal for breakfast, a protein shake, cottage cheese, steamed chicken breast and steamed broccoli for lunch, another protein shake, and more cottage cheese and steamed vegetables for dinner. Today will be about the same thing, then tomorrow I’ll add a piece of fruit or some brown rice for carbs. Between yesterday and this morning, I was down one WHOLE pound, so that’s a good sign!

Monday and Wednesday will be training days, and then every other day I’ll be doing a minimum of 50 minutes of strong cardio, with my heartrate at 80% of max (at least 160bpm.)
VICTORY IS MINE!!!! MWAHAHA HA HAHAHA HAA!

Hell's most Wanted

Question...

Sports Fans????? Wha?

Another one to add to my "worst tattoos ever" list...

I gaze at the brilliant full moon. The same one, I think to myself, at which Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato gazed. Suddenly, I imagine they appear beside me. I tell Socrates about the national debate over one's right to die and wonder at the constancy of the human condition. I tell Plato that I live in the country that has come the closest to Utopia, and I show him a copy of the Constitution. I tell Aristotle that we have found many more than four basic elements and I show him a periodic table. I get a box of kitchen matches and strike one. They gasp with wonder. We spend the rest of the night lighting farts.

The day I almost died

The closest I’ve ever come to a panic attack was yesterday.

I got to work a half hour early, and was checking my work emails. I had sent out a huge funding the day before, and I emailed various vendors to make sure that they received their wires. The total funding was about $2.8 million dollars- I process the funding every month. One of our properties in Miami that my company owns is undergoing a huge $86 million dollar renovation. Anyway, I cut checks for invoices that are $50K or less, and anything more than that, I do direct wires into their accounts. So, I send the checks and the wires yesterday, and I emailed the amount that I was wiring to each vendor so that they could confirm receipt and apply it to the appropriate invoices. Vendor “A” I emailed that we had wired $660K and Vendor “B” I emailed to confirm $1.2M. So here’s where my panic started...

I checked my emails yesterday morning (the day AFTER the wires had all gone out) and vendor A was telling me that they had received $1.2M, not $660K as I had emailed. As you can guess… vendor B said that they had received $660K, not $1.2M. I thought I was going to PUKE! I must have mixed up the amounts and switched them around!!! My hands started trembling so bad, I couldn’t even hold my pen. I ran to my files, and started digging to check the wire request sent to the bank. This MUST have been the bank’s mistake! They must have screwed it up!! Nope. The wire I sent was identical as they were emailing me.

So now, I’m thinking, what am I supposed to DO? Ask the vendor to please send back $1.2 MILLION DOLLARS because they weren’t supposed to get it?! It was IN their account!! It could have already been spent, for all I know!! This isn’t like being short in your cash register at the 7-11 and having to pay $13.36 from your own pocket. I certainly don’t have $1.2M that I can transfer in from MY account!!

I was beyond freaking out. I was a mess.

Then, I decided to go back to my invoice spreadsheets and check the amounts that each vendor was due. OH SWEET MOTHER! WAIT!!! I DIDN’T SCREW UP THE WIRES!!!! The amounts vendor A and vendor B received were CORRECT! I had just EMAILED the wrong numbers when I asked them to confirm! I immediately started breathing again, and I emailed to tell them that my previous email had listed the wrong amount- that the funds they confirmed were actually the correct amounts we were funding them.

Wow. Can you freaking believe that mess? I was crapping my pants! (well, not literally) Crisis averted.