Ok, so in one day I managed to:

• Run 10k (one of my goals for this year!)
• Weight-lift at the gym for around 2 hours
• Go out to eat with the family
• Go to the dentists
• Go grocery shopping
• Make dinner
• Make another week’s worth of healthy lunches

I did learn that salsa is crazy low calorie though! I plan to use it more

The above is one of my vegetables portions. I have these microwavable packs of meatballs and chicken patties that I’m going to combine with these for half lunches. Partly a shortcut and partly for variety.

I decided to add some hard boiled eggs this time, and finally got use out of this cool thing:

We bought this cute microwavable egg cooker decades ago but this is the first time I have used it. It’s great though! Really easy, and it can hold 4 eggs at one time.

By the way, the results from last week were as follows: a 1.2 kg (2.65 lbs) drop. Less than the first week, I know, but I was aiming for that because I was loosing weight too rapidly and was staying pretty hungry.

Things I have changed/learned:

• Celery has gotten a bit old to me and I don’t like the liquid it leaves in the Tupperware (drowning the other food) so I decided to ditch it this time.
• Egg whites are just awesome but I can’t bring myself to throw away the yolk of the egg. I know eating like that adds extra fat (about 4 to 5 grams per egg?) but I’m not really concerning myself too much with fat. The calories aren’t too horrible so I can mix them in some.
• I really like cucumber in apple cider vinegar! I can’t get enough of it! Which is fantastic because one serving is all of 7.5 calories. Seriously. I’m going to increase the amount of these next time and have them with almost every meal!

And I have a really bizarre, but potentially cool idea for yet another chicken dish. I also bought some pork to play around with for potential new main portions for next week — assuming I’m still doing this nutty shit next week.

I did a whole bunch of mess today like work, continue to eat healthy, bouldering (with Maggie this time), etc., but most importantly, I really find myself missing Eastern North Carolina BBQ. I swear there is very few other things better in the world and you will forget even those things temporarily if you get some in your stomach.

Apparently the correct way is not to do it on a Train in Tokyo during rush hour so I’m going to revert back to just my book reading I think.

Just got finished with “Candide” by Voltaire which was not only extremely witty, but rather risque even by today’s standards. I’m thinking I will read “Water for Elephants” (Sara Gruen) next — from my massive stack of books I got in the states. I just picked the book up based off of reviews on Amazon but apparently, it has a movie, and apparently, the movie is also really good. But please don’t tell me because I want to read the book first!

Oh and by the way, I am studying for the second level JSDA exam — and I find it horrifying that I find it easier to study in Japanese than English (and there is better study material anyway). One of my goals is to get this, and then maybe the first level registration this year. Just something I need to do sometime, so I figure now is as good as a time as any.

Speaking of goals, this is my list as of now:

• JSDA Level 2
• Run 10k
• Lose the post-smoking weight gain (want to lose around 10 kg total)
• Launch a start-up
• Create and setup a mini home studio / office
• Two potential yet-to-be-named music projects

Not trying to be too ambitious or anything.

I also want to try to imitate eastern North Carolina BBQ in Japan somehow and make my own cola, but may it’s best not to list those in the same list containing “lose weight.”

My brother got me this for Christmas. It’s basically like a hardcore pre-workout energy drink only it makes you feel like ants are crawling all over your arms. It’s quite lovely. In all seriousness though, I do notice I can lift a hell of a lot more when I’m using it.

I’ve been using this protein powder for about two years now — it’s fantastic! It’s only like 15 bucks at Walmart, has probably one of the best protein per calories ratios I have seen, and it even has creatine in it believe it or not. It actually don’t even taste that bad.

We went to Ikegami Honmonji last weekend with some friends:

There were going to do hashigonori (literally translated to be “ladder ridding”), which I have seen quite a few times on TV but never in person.

Essentially, fireman climb up on these big ladders and hang in all sorts of crazy ways, mainly for the purpose of scaring the hell out of whoever is every watching:

I was told by one of the people there, that the ceremony originally came form municipal firemen back in the day, hoisting other fireman up like this to watch over the city for fires.

Now they just do it because it’s badass I guess.

Just showing off at this point:

A funny thing happened when I started eating my pre-prepared, healthy lunches last week: I started naturally trying to cut calories all day — probably because being I had eaten well the first half of the day, I subconsciously wanted to finish off the day that way.

I also got a lot of exercise in, but that’s something that I have simply been trying to keep up from last year:

Monday: 5.08k Run
Tuesday: 5.12k Run
Wednesday: Drums (2 Hours)
Thursday: Bouldering
Friday: Nothing

Here is the crazy part: I dropped a full 2 kg (about 4.4 lbs) in a week. A little too much to be honest — I shouldn’t be dropping that much at one time.

So anyway, since I’m surprisingly not sick of it all yet, I decided to take what I learned from last week and apply it two a second week run. First the newcomers: paprika! A somewhat less-healthy vegetable (comparability speaking) because I sauteed them in olive oil:

Raw cucumbers in apple cider vinegar (can you believe this whole bowl, 4 servings worth, is under 50 kcal?):

Last weeks celery x 4 because I didn’t get enough last time:

One extra pack of mushrooms (3 rather than 2) because they are yummy:

Voila!

Things I am doing different this time:

• Two vegetables and a main portion per half meal as opposed to just one vegetable and a main portion — meaning more food this time.
• Refrigerating 3 days worth and froze the last 2. I froze them all last time but I assume it will taste better if I avoid freezing them when possible.
• No gnocchi this time: I got these microwavable packs of mini meatballs (about 100 kcal a pack) to try instead — meaning I had somewhat less to cook. I also got these microwavable chicken patty things to try. Just trying to speed things up.

Things I have learned:

• Sauteed vegetable + boiled or raw vegetable + 100-120 kcal main portion + one yogurt is about perfect for a half meal calorie wise. I eat two of these as well! It’s really quite a lot of food.
• Making your own food is a hell of a lot more tasty and healthy — but it also takes for fucking ever. I timed myself tonight: 5.5 hours in total! Way too much effort. There has to be a quicker way.

By the way, this all cost 3,234 Yen, so under 650 Yen a lunch. For Japan that’s decently cheap — but not fantastic. The paprika’s where probably the highest to be honest.

First day of trying out my prepared lunches. Putting my two lunch “halves” together,　this is what I got:

Which is actually a lot of food. Note that I’m still missing two vegetables from this (and a yogurt, because I only had one left this morning).

The good:

• The food actually came out really good! The gnocchi was a bit soft perhaps, but the sauce was fantastic, and even the carrots came out pretty yummy.
• I took the food and ate it in my work break room which was rather nice — and much easier than trying to leave the building and brave the lunch crowds.
• It’s crazy healthy!

The not-so-good:

• Trying to split my lunch was harder than expected because I had trouble finding time mid-afternoon to eat another small meal.
• It felt like I was eating a lot more than usual (and I was from a volume perspective), and I even felt rather full, but I got hungry again rather quickly. I was very much ready to eat again at around 2:00 pm (note that I eat lunch at 11:00 am) and 7:00 pm. I’m still rather far below the ideal calorie count which might have something to do with it though.

I went to take the kids out to play at an indoor playroom and somehow ended up buying two studio monitors:

My brain is subconsciously forcing me to build a home studio one piece at a time without me knowing it apparently.

Speaking of crazy, I’ve been thinking I want to eat better, so somewhere between determining my daily caloric intake, the ideal balance between protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and looking at different eating patterns and whatnot, I came up with the ridiculous idea to attempt making a week worth of healthy lunches for myself.

First three different flavors of baked chicken:

An ass-load of sauteed mushrooms:

Boiled some carrots (and invisible celery):

And being that I was enjoying my manic episode, I ended up making a pot of gnocchi (high carbs, I know, but whatever) and played around with creating a really low calorie tomato-based sauce for it:

Then Tupperware! I had been reading that splitting up meals is one way to help with your metabolism. Being that I eat somewhat early at work (because of market hours), and I always get hungry and snack in the afternoon, I decided to try splitting my “lunch” up into two meals.

I calculated the ideal meal for me to be a little over 500 calories (since I’m trying to do some cutting), which gave me a goal of around 250 calories per “meal.” Unfortunately though, I ended up having no where close to the amount of calories I needed so I’m improvising by adding either a scoop of cottage cheese or a cup of yogurt to each of these containers — which seems like quite a decent amount of food actually.

Here are the things that I would have done in retrospect:

• More celery. I stretched it and made two servings out of one stalk but it could have even been one to be honest. And you can eat like a fucking garbage bag of the stuff and still not get to 250 calories (it’s around .18 calories per gram).
• More vegetables in general. I had enough for one per “meal” but ideally I should have two (and I could still add them to what I have now without going over 250 calories). Maybe paprika or something? Cucumbers?
• I need some other decently low calorie “main portion.” Basically all I have is different flavors of baked chicken and gnocchi, which may work for a week, but I know I would get sick of it soon.

And some random thoughts:

• It took me 3-4 hours to make all this shit which is totally not maintainable on a regular basis. I’m also dreading having to wash all the dishes.
• When you eat the right stuff, you can eat a hell of a lot of it.
• Vegetables are like magic.

Seems like this is getting to be a tradition: first it was the iPhone, then the Wii, and this Christmas, I rooted my mom’s Nook and turned it into an Android tablet.

First, I dropped the software version down from 1.4.1 to 1.4.0 by adding the neccessary files on the memory card and booting off it:

Once that was done, I turned off the wifi connection so it couldn’t update, and exposed the hidden development menu via a downloadable app off the internet:

This enabled sideloading (adding the ability to run third party apps), but this still had too many limitations. First of all, you could only get to downloaded apps via the search menu — no icons on the desktop:

Also, the bigger problem was not being able to turn on wifi again without the 1.4.1 software update breaking the ability to sideload. The solution? First, after a bit of research and playing around, I was able to make the Nook think it was on version 9.9.9, essentially disabling updates, and letting me turn wifi back on. Then, I enabled USB debugging, connected it to my PC using some special drivers I downloaded off the internet, and ran a special script to grab root access:

From there, I loaded the Android Market, and changed the UI to use Android Honeycomb.

And there we go: we have a tablet PC!

We just got back in and as always, we had way too much luggage from Christmas so we ended up shipping most of it from the airport to our house. It wasn’t horrible though: 2 large boxes, 1 medium box, and a large suitcase, probably weighing around a total of 200 lbs, and we only paid about 6000 Yen for it all (to be delivered tomorrow morning).

Anyhow, Tokyo is cold and thus also is our house (no central heating), but we are in the progress of warming everything up. And I got work tomorrow so I’m going to grab a shower and try to get some sleep. I got close to none on the plane so it shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish.

By the way, I’m still a bit amazed that I managed to read 25 books last year. I read too much I think. I already went through two books on the flight back home as well, but mainly because it was one of those shitty old planes with no TVs in the seat heads.