On top of the running program I’ve recently started, I’m planning on joining a gym. I’ve recently tried one workout at the Gold’s Gym in McKenzie, and was quite impressed. For those in Thunder Bay, it is essentially the same as the Athletic Club, only is has a larger pool, and is slightly less crowded. I’m waiting to hear back from one their fitness experts to get exact details on pricing for membership.
The real reason for this post is to publicly set my goals for fitness. When I went to the gym, they ask you to list your fitness goals. I made mine based on my assumed current mass (see science teachers, I remembered that weight is not really a useful term). I assumed I was clocking in around 185lbs, maybe 190lbs, turns out I’ve hit 202lbs which is unfortunately an all time high. That moment I decided it was time for a personal intervention. It seems an overly relaxing summer, a non-existant running program, and too much beer have added on a surprisingly large number of pounds.
Here is my current list of goals for the next year:
1) Be able to Run 10km without dying
2) Lose 1-2 inches from my waist line.
3) Be able to Swim 5km in under two hours
4) Gain some muscle definition
5) Bring my weight down to 170-180lbs
6) Be able to fit into pants I could wear less than two years ago
7) Change my eating habits, and adopt a healthy lifestyle to support the above goals
The reason I’m stating this all in public is to try and keep myself honest. I’ll be making regular entries about my progress, as with the running program, and will have this as a record of changes.
Hopefully my friends, family and readers will be supportive, and help see me to my goals in the next year. Got make sure I look my best in my new Banana Republic clothes.
As well I’m looking at getting a Wi-Fi Enabled Scale from Withings, since we currently don’t have a scale at all. It keeps a record of your weight stored securely online, as well as having an iPhone/iPad app for viewing the data. Can also collect BMI and other relevant info, plus it automatically does all this, because it will be sending data as soon I step on it. If I want to go to the extreme, it can also be set to automatically tweet my mass to a Twitter account of my choosing, not sure about that option yet.
This rant is done for now, and I look forward to a productive and healthy year. Wish me luck.

So my hopes of staying current every single day during our trip was not successful. But for those of you still hanging around and reading we are still alive and well.
We got into Calgary on Monday, signed all of our legal paperwork, got the keys, and then stayed at a hotel. We didn’t have a bed at the condo yet, and had no intention of sleeping on the floor.
Tuesday brought us back to the condo, and our very fast three hour unpack of our shipping container. Said container, was conveniently and “illegally” parked immediately outside the front door of the condo, for ease of use. Thankfully no one cared or complained.
Today saw us continuing to unpack, and we are nearing the bottoms of our piles of boxes. We got two new shelving units set up today, which allowed us to unpack most of the office, and all of my books. We still need to get a computer desk, and should be able to do so soon.
It’s now somewhere between 11:21 pm and 1:21am for my internal clock, so I’m off to bed.

This morning we embarked on Day 2 of our 5 Day journey from Thunder Bay to Calgary. We arrived, safely, in Regina this evening after a couple of slightly more eventful hours on the road.
Today we started with the breakfast of champions, Starbucks and sugar loaded pastries. Thanks Jean.
We then hopped on the road, and promptly made a wrong turn. But never fear, we had Kathy, the voice on my iPhone TomTom app to get us going in the right direction, or so we thought. Kathy seems to have had trouble getting us back onto the ever important Trans Canada Highway, and sent us down a road in the middle of nowhere. Click here to see the route Kathy gave us, which took us down a wonderful rutted dirt road, on which we saw no other living people for 45 minutes. Make sure to try street view to get the full effect of the isolation and terrifying lostness we had. Did I mention it also had started raining heavily at that point? Either way, we lived, and I’m glad Ryan was driving instead of me.
After we got back on the proper road, it was pouring rain about halfway to Brandon Manitoba. We stopped and lunched, texted loved ones of our current life state, and continued with me behind the wheel towards Regina.
For the most part, my leg of the journey was smooth easy driving. Nice divided highways, 110km/h speed limits (The Highways are one good thing about Manitoba and Saskatchewan… or is that only good thing?). THEN the storms rolled in, along with dark skies, blinding rain, and me needing to run windshield wipers on max speed. To those that don’t know, I have a serious problem with high speed wipers, and rain, and driving while in those conditions. So after today, I’ve been told that in I am to stop driving and give control of our beautiful car over to Ryan in those conditions instead. I’m glad I couldn’t see it, but I was apparently quite white knuckled and panicked looking.
Though, as you can tell by now, we safely made it to Regina, checked into our hotel, and went visiting at Sunglass Hut locations, and got some food.
To those planning on visiting Regina, make sure you stop by Brewsters for food, best Brew Pub type restaurant I’ve ever been to. The beer was fantastic, and mostly well thought out home brews. The restaurant was very nice looking, no craploads of junk stapled to the walls. The service was extremely good, the girls there knew everything about all the food and beer, all while getting to wear well fitting outfits, instead of a the black napkin sized outfits people at Moxies are forced to wear.
This more or less wraps things up for me tonight, need to rest for our continued travels tomorrow, which bring us to our next stop Saskatoon. Don’t expect to be hearing anything exciting about that stop.
Though in geeky news I figured I’d pass on the following:
iPad users – Scott Pilgrim comics now available in their own app, $6.99 per 150 page volume, very good stuff. Almost done volume one here.
Readers – The Passage by Justin Cronin is currently top of the pile on my Kindle App, and at 1/5 of the way through I am extremely impressed.
Mom, Dad and Brother
- Deep Fried Butter, and more disgusting food in Indiana
- 180 Square foot Cabin fits 4 people and 1 dog
Just plain cool
- Hand drawn panorama of London in 1845

Hello Everyone.
If you’re reading this, take comfort in knowing that we have survived the first leg of our move to Calgary.
We left this morning at 9am from Thunder Bay and made it safely to Winterpeg Winnipeg by 5.30pm local time.
No major events during the whole trip, at least nothing of note in any unfortunate way. We were amused by the signs stating that the highway has OPP Aircraft Patrol. Does this mean that there really are flying pigs?
Also, there was the great accomplishment of our car rolling over 10,000km while passing through the metropolis of Wabigoon.
Anywho, that’s all for today’s update. Thank you everyone for all the well wishes, and you’ll hear more from us tomorrow.
E&R

Tonight I will be giving a presentation on Social Networking entitled Your Kids Online: A Parent’s Guide.

And on the third one hundred and ninety-seventh day he rose from the dead and began to write his blog again.

I have been inspired (and nagged) to come back and write on this blog. It seems I’ve found enough things to write about, and found ways to prevent rushed writing or posts of epic length. Also I’m tired of hearing people ask, “are you going to post anything soon? I’ve been checking since November.” This should keep everyone concerned happy from here out.

I will say part of why I lost track of this blog was school. Though I’m not willing to say that my program was anywhere near difficult enough to prevent from writing here, I simply had too many distractions over that period of time. The other thing that kept me thoroughly occupied was Twitter. It seems there are occasions where 140 characters just doesn’t cut it, and for those times I will be writing here.
So from this day forward, I promise to write on a more regular basis than I have at any point on this blog, which means I need to post once more this year, and I should be pretty well off.

Anywho, I’ll see you later this week with why I’m committing Facebook Suicide, and maybe a review of something.

Ciao
- E