Day 21 & 22: It Just Keeps On Coming !

 

Here we go ! It's a new year. Time to get back on track with diet and exercise. The goal is 100 pounds by 12-31-25. Can I do it ? Well, I won't know unless I try. My original Day 21 blog can be found here and day 22 can be found here. I was back to work and still barfing out bullshit content about being ok and not afraid of the future. I look back at that now and I can see how fake it was. I wonder if anyone else saw through it ? Even now I keep saying I'll be ok and I think I'm just trying to convince myself that it's true !

I didn't write yesterday but there's no reason behind it. Some days I'm just not inspired or I wait until too late in the day and I'm too tired. We had some snow Thursday night so I went outside around 10 am to shovel outside the garage and side door. A minute or two after I started Doug showed up to plow. Talk about perfect timing ! After he was done I spent some time widening the driveway at the top, to make it easier to get the car out. Next time I come home with the car I'm going to try pulling straight in. I typically pull in and turn slightly to the left to get the car in the garage straight. The problem with that is I then have to turn to the right to get the car out ! If I pull in straight, I should be able to back out straight. While I was out I also shoveled off the front steps. I think I came inside to warm up and then later went out with the compressor to add air to my tires. With that done, I also cleaned the headlights, mirrors and the backup camera lens. The headlights were cleaner than I expected, probably because I haven't been out on wet, salty roads ! I also moved some things to ensure there would be nothing in the way of pulling the car in straight. We'll see how that goes next time I'm out ! My car "just" fits in my narrow garage door, so I have to be careful that pulling in straight won't scrape the sides !

The shoveling and car stuff is really all I accomplished yesterday, but I'm satisfied with that ! I spent the rest of the day watching YouTube and playing online slots. One of the games that had sucked away all my coins suddenly decided I should win, so I played until late last night. At one point I had nearly 150B coins, but I lost them all. I don't regret it .. I had a lot of fun and it didn't cost me a dime !

What did I eat yesterday ? Breakfast was 180 calorie waffles with sugar free syrup. I got a yogurt out but didn't eat it. Lunch was the usual 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. I didn't have a morning or afternoon snack. Dinner was a 240 calorie enchilada with salsa & low fat sour cream. I also had some carrots. Evening snack was 2 more waffles with peanut butter. I think I also had 2 danish after the shoveling. I also had some pretzels.

We had no snow yesterday other than some flurries around 8 pm. However, we have yet another storm alert from 10 pm tonight to 6 am Monday. We could see 9-18 more inches of snow and wind will lead to blowing and drifting. I'm glad I went to the store Thursday, though weather was fine and I could have gone yesterday or today. The weather app doesn't show any real snow before 11 am tomorrow, so we'll see what happens ! Overnight temps are going to be in the low 20's for the next couple of days, so I won't have to worry about the pipes freezing. Daytime temps in the 30's and high 20's will feel like spring ! The house has been plenty warm enough and the electric heater supplements in the living room. My next National Grid bill is going to be huge, but there's nothing I can do about that.

I checked my bank account today and payment for my first 2 weeks of unemployment has posted. That's a nice little $882 boost ! I'll get $441 a week for the next 24 weeks. I opted to have tax withheld, otherwise I'd be getting $504. it comes at a good time as January brings house taxes and car insurance. Once I saw that was in my account I spent some time determining what I needed to transfer to cover bills for the first week of the month and scheduled a transfer for that. I'm going to have a huge credit card bill this month as the payoff for Michelle's phone and mine will be on it. That's about $900 but I'll make my $584 portion back in a year with the savings on my cell phone bill. Next month will not be quite so shocking to my bank account .. lol ! I was also able to download the tax docs from the credit union, so I was able to finish and submit my tax returns. I'm getting a total refund of $9,438 ! This will go a long way towards paying my expenses in 2025. Next year's income will consist of unemployment and any prorated bonus I might get from ATT. Who knows, maybe as a "low income" person I'll get some of the credits I haven't been entitled to for years !

I spent the morning watching YouTube and playing online slots. I have 4 games installed and 3 of the 4 are by the same company. They give you plenty of coins and they don't flood you with ads. My 4th game, which I had stopped playing, flooded me with ads when I started it back up but has since calmed down. It's called ClubBillion and that's what I played all morning. I had around 80 billion coins and played them all ! Then I used some saved resources to replenish my coins and then started winning again. Now I have 100B coins ! With 4 games I can rotate through them and play all I want without spending a dime. I will NEVER, EVER spend real money to buy fake coins. People get sucked into that the same way you get sucked in at the real casinos. The only negative for ClubBillion is they are fake games. The other 3 apps I play are online versions of real games you can play at casino's, such as Huff n Puff or Dancing Drums.

Since I'm getting a healthy tax refund I'm thinking about buying a new laptop. The one I have isn't that old, but the processer is very slow. I can get a new one for well under $1k, so I'm going to continue thinking about it. Do I really need it ? No. However, I can't spend the rest of my life as a miser. We'll see !

What did I eat today ? Breakfast was 180 calorie waffles again. I never got a yogurt out and I didn't have a morning or afternoon snack. Lunch was a 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. I had pretzels and I had the last 2 danish pastries. I also had some hot chocolate. Dinner was 220 calorie rotini with meatballs. Evening snack was a 140 calorie pumpkin spice cake, which was a new offering. It was actually quite good ! I microwaved for 30 seconds and added whipped cream. 

The goal for tomorrow is to wash up the remaining dishes, which is mostly plastic stuff. The dishwasher is running now to clean all the non-plastic stuff. I might make tapioca pudding tomorrow, since I bought a gallon of milk and a bottle of vanilla just for that purpose ! It's nearly 6 pm so it's too late in the day to even think about making it today.

I've been trying to avoid being sucked in to all the political nastiness surrounding President Trump. The haters will criticize everything he does, no matter what, and it can really get you down if you inhale all the crap that is being flung. What I love about him is he just forges on no matter what people think or say. I think that irritates his critics the most ! One thing he has said is he'd like to eliminate tax on social security. I would LOVE that ! New York doesn't tax it but the Feds do and I think that is wrong. So many seniors are struggling and they shouldn't have to be taxed on the benefits their taxes paid for ! 

As the days of winter stretch on I'm becoming more and more accepting of the fact that my life as a working person is over. Honestly, I love just doing my own thing every day. I do notice that I lose track of the days a little so I try to check my phone every day to keep track of what day of the week it is. When you're retired every day is the weekend ! Today is Saturday and I'm going to give myself tomorrow to get some things done around the house, but I want to start back to my old routine. That means a shower before bed and brushing my teeth. It also means putting on my exercise gear after breakfast. It also means actually getting on the treadmill ! I will give myself the week the get my shit together but next Saturday is February 1st and I'm going to start going HARD that day ! 28 days = 28 workouts minimum ! I also need to weigh myself and take a "before" photo on 2-1. I've dithered around in January and blamed it on the weather but the weather will likely be just as bad in February. Why not make the best of it and bust ass on the treadmill !?!?!?!

I was thinking tonight about food choices and one area I'm falling down in is veggies. I have a freezer full of frozen broccoli & green beans, but there are 2 problems there. #1 I don't particularly care for the broccoli and #2 I don't really care for frozen green beans. Truth is, I love canned green beans ! As for broccoli, I think I might like fresh broccoli that I could steam myself. I've also been avoiding eating salad and I think part of the problem there is I'm adding too much stuff to it. I add 2 kinds of olives, pickled onions, feta cheese and roasted red peppers. It's just too much. I made salad too complicated and too time consuming. Also, these extra items add calories ! I'm going to stop buying the kalamata olives and roasted red peppers. I really like the pickled onions and green olives so I will keep those. I also like the feta cheese and I have 2 tubs of it to get through. I'm also going to stop buying celery & radishes. I'm going to go with just lettuce and the add ins and see if that helps. Another thing I'm going to do is try the blended soup that Lauren made. She just roasted a bunch of veggies (including a whole head of garlic) and then ground them up in the food processor. I could use the Ninja ! The soup was really good and it's something I could make a big batch and freeze individual portions. I found a recipe online that I can use as a guide. The only way I'm going to get off the junk food is by finding healthier and delicious options !