Day 28: This Is It !

 

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 28 blog can be found here. Despite all my hopes, I haven't put in the effort to have any success with weight loss and exercise .. yet. I gave myself until February 1 and that is tomorrow. Can I get back on track tomorrow ? We'll see.

I was awake early today and had to get up because nature was calling. There was no point in trying to go back to bed as that never works. I figured if I got tired I could take a nap. I haven't been up before 7:30 am in a while ! In a surprise, my little white/gray mama cat was waiting to eat. She meowed so pitifully. I would take her in but she is so feral I can't even pet her.

I spent the morning watching YouTube and playing the online slots. Coins are up and down but I manage to find enough to play all day long ! About 11:50 I headed out to drop off the check for my property taxes. It's a nice day so I walked. I've been craving chinese food so I decided to stop and get that. I ordered my food and paid for it then walked over to the town hall to drop off my tax payment. I was back home by 12:10, so that was a quick 20 minute task ! I got a big container of hot & sour soup, a big container of wonton soup and a container of chicken in garlic sauce with white rice and an eggroll. This was the best $26 I've ever spent. The food was SO good ! I had some of the hot & sour, all of the chicken in garlic sauce and 2 wontons from the wonton soup. I probably have enough soup left for 3 meals ! I also saved the eggroll, 3 packages of friend wontons and 3 fortune cookies. When I went out it felt like little ice pellets were falling from the sky (graupel snow?) but just as I got back home big fat snowflakes started falling. It was enough to put a pretty white cover on the dirty snow and then it changed to a lighter snow. We're not supposed to get any significant accumulation. It's 34 degrees right now at 2 pm but our overnight low is expected to be 10. Tomorrow night now says a low of 3 degrees. Brrr .. my heat will struggle with that. Can my cold water make it ? I definitely won't be using that faucet Sunday morning to find out !

It's so nice to go in the kitchen now and not see a sink and counter full of dirty dishes. I have a few things in there now from my lunch, but I'm going to wash those up soon. No more leaving dishes in the sink overnight ! I moved all the cat food preparation to the laundry room. I'm utilizing the top of the washer at the moment but I plan to purchase a storage cart to use for the long term. One thing I forgot to document in yesterday's blog was I finally figured out how to remove the aerator from the laundry room sink ! You just unscrew it ! I cleaned out the filter and the faucet works amazing now ! I tried doing the same thing on the upstairs bathroom faucet but it didn't work. I suspect that one comes off using one of those faucet keys.

Tomorrow is the big day. I absolutely have to get myself back on the treadmill. I need a weight and a before picture as well. Kind of stupid that I stuffed myself with chinese today but in all honesty I didn't do this as a "last hurrah". I just really wanted chinese and I was going to be right around the corner from the place. There are worse things you can eat ! 

So breakfast today was a 180 calorie cinnamon roll. I didn't have a yogurt or a morning snack. Lunch was the aforementioned chinese food. 

In great news, my federal tax refund ($5425) is pending in my bank account and will be available on Tuesday 2-4 ! I'm sure the state refund will be right behind it. I'm continuing to feel better about remaining unemployed/retired but I definitely need to establish a routine. Sitting on the couch all day every day is not it ! Once the weather is better I fully intend to get out of the house and find some places to walk. I can use the local state parks for free during the week, so I plan to start with Fairhaven and Selkirk Shores as they are both near me ! I can sit on the beach and people watch and I can walk the grounds. Swimming season (and therefore beach weather) doesn't start until Memorial Day weekend, so it'll be a while for that ! Once the snow is gone I'll have to find some other places to walk. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life rotting on the couch. In fact, I'm getting up right now to go and wash up the lunch dishes !

It's 7:41 pm now and I just finished dinner. I had the last of the hot & sour soup, a package of fried wontons, the pork eggroll and a fortune cookie. I looked online and this soup is super easy to make at home. I might give it a try one day ! The chicken with garlic sauce is easy too, so maybe I'll try my hand with some chinese cooking, once I get a significant amount of weight off ! I'm proud to say I did wash the lunch dishes and just now I washed the dinner dishes. You know, dumb observation: things are not overwhelming when you don't procrastinate !!! I am going to try really, really hard to keep up with this ! Having the cat food station in the laundry room is working well too. I like not having that mess on the kitchen counter.

I spent most of the afternoon playing online slots and watching YouTube. I also gave some thought to a project I need to do, namely cleaning the upstairs bathroom thoroughly and redoing the silicone around the tub. I bought a product to do that quite some time ago and never did it. First step will be a thorough scrubbing of the shower. The walls have hard water buildup, so I'm going to need a product that can break that down without damaging the finish. I can pick up some CLR next time I go to Walmart. I also need rubbing alcohol to prep the surface before I install the edging around the tub. I'm also going to replace the plastic liner. They get buildup and I buy cheap ones, so it's not worth even trying to wash it. I usually buy 2 so that I always have a new one ready to go. I also need to soak the shower head in some vinegar as many of the openings are clogged with mineral deposits. That's the easy task !

I mentioned my online slots are up and down. I really like the Quick Hits app but I'm left chasing coins, so I may end up getting rid of this one. A lot of the slots I like are also on some of the others apps that are so stingy with coins and don't have ridiculous minimum bets. This app has a minimum bet of 240k and you have few ways to get coins. I will give it a few more days, but I suspect I'll be dumping this one. Another one with high minimum bets is 88 Fortunes. The minimum is 75M on some games, while some is 135M. However, this app has more opportunities to earn coins. Even so, I've reached the point of chasing coins. We'll see how long this one lasts ! ClubBillion is the app I've played the longest, though I hadn't played it for quite some time. This one allows you to friend people who play and you can send and receive 75M coin gifts every day. I have almost 1000 "friends" but I think a lot of them are no longer active, so I weeded them out just now. The game tells you how long ago someone played, so I went ahead and removed anyone who hasn't played in 1 month or more. Some people haven't played for 17 months ! I went from 965 "friends" to 473. If you have 1000 friends and they all sent you coins you could get 75B a day ! That is more than enough to play with ! So now I have to spend some time adding active players ! This app has plenty of ways to earn coins, so I will likely stay with it. It's the only one that has all fake games. None of the real life games you would see in a casino, but I have my favorites !