Category: Not Golf

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Weekly Post 9/30/2019

Highlights:

  • Bears Win again!
  • Famliy Wedding in New York City
  • Big Ass Steak

Lowlights:

  • Drank way to much
  • Barley a healthy meal all week

Goals for next week: Get my diet back on track ASAP!

What a fun 4 day trip to NYC. The weather was just gorgeous for an early fall wedding in the heart of Manhattan. The wedding started promptly at 7:30 pm on Saturday, which gave us almost 3 full days to enjoy the sights and sounds of both the workweek and a sun-filled 73-degree day to have brunch and lunch in the park before it was time to get settled and all gussied up for the wedding at the library. I won’t bore you with all the details of the event except for 2 facts.

1) I was handed a glass of champagne as I walked into the ceremony and my glass was refilled a few times before the entrances started #score
2) Caviar was served – this was my first experience with caviar. It was served on top of a thin slice of butter which was then spread on a thin slice of a hard roll.

I thoroughly enjoyed the caviar and did not expect to like it as much as I did. I will be looking to try this again when I’m back in Chicago and not in the heat of the moment and taste it again with a fresh pallet. I will need to do some research and homework to make sure my second try won’t be tainted with sub-par Caviar (I’m sure that’s a thing, right?)

We had a few warm-up dinners before the reception on Saturday night and the wife and I ordered the 46oz 45-day dry-aged Bone-in Ribeye steak. This thing was massive and took a long time time to eat. It was cooked very well at Medium. With having to cut and chew so much meat the meat cooled off just a bit too much for my liking. The steak was accompanied by fingerling potatoes and cooked radishes, I could have done with something else other than the radishes. It was cool because all the vegetables from dinner were grown in the garden just outside of the restaurant which was a pretty cool garden to table freshness. I also treated my self to a couple of Old Fashioneds that were pretty decent.

Old Fashioned Cocktails with Average Ice
Old Fashioned Cocktails with Average Ice Cubes

It was a banger of a weekend and there was not a moment that wasn’t spent withs friends or family with tons of drinks and delicious food. Coming home from this trip I could feel the difference the 4-day gluttony fest had on my body. I fell so heavy and have lost some energy. I am looking forward to getting back to my morning smoothies and lunch salads and feeling lighter on my feet.

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Weekly Post 9/23/2019

Highlights:

  • Bears Won
  • Short Work Week

Lowlights:

  • Still Worked 6 Days

Goals for next week: To continue have smoothies for breakfast

Bears won so this week instantly became a great week in my book coupled that with a holiday week here wasn’t much to complain about. Even though I did work 6 days this week it was not the usually hectic and frantic workplace that I usually experience in 6 days.

Bears played well against a winless Washington Redskins team. It’s early in the season but every win is major since our loss to the Green Bay Packers and how strong the rest on the NFC North division is playing at the moment. Add that we have an intense second half of the season scheduled as well we cannot afford any more step backs.

Been getting into a nice groove with my Breakfast smoothies. I no longer crave anything else in the morning until I am hungry for lunch. I also have been working in some salads for lunch from the salad bar. So far I’ve been having a smoothie 5 time4s a week and a salad for lunch 3 times in that same week. This has been a major improvement in my weight management strategy. Plus all that extra vegetables have to be doing some good as well. I have been enjoying the progress seen on the scale and have given that extra motivation to stick to my routine to faster reach my goal of getting under 220 lbs.

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Weekly Post 9/16/2019

Highlights:

  • 2 Workouts
  • Meditated
  • New Camera Lens
  • Finished another book

Lowlights:

  • Pretty sore for my workouts
  • Still, haven’t hit the golf course

Goals for next week:

  • Stick with the morning smoothies
  • 3 Workouts
  • 2 Meditation sessions

It was a pretty productive week. especially in the health department. For some reason, I have found it very hard to find time for a 15-minute meditation session. I was able to get one session this week and I’m pretty proud of that. I’ve read that most of the benefits come from being disciplined and staying consistent to earn all that meditation can bring. I need to make a better concise effort to work this into my weekly schedule. The harder part for me was finding a place that is pretty quiet and is isolated from all the foot traffic at work or even go outside and stay a good distance from the roads. It might be a little scary sitting in a park all alone with my eyes closed. It might be a little easy for something to happen to me, so I will try and stay inside, for the time being, I also snuck in 2 work out this week as well, I will be focusing more on my diet rather than burning calories to see if I can achieve my goals faster.

I was able to finally was able to pull the trigger on a real deal lens for my Sony A7II camera. I had been using the kit lens and achieving some good results with it. After taking some online courses and learning the mechanics of the lens and how wildly advanced my camera is compared to my amateur skills. I started to do some of the course homework shoots. shooting in manual mode at night or taking a fast aperture sorts picture. I found that I was pushing the kit lens to its limit and missing out on some nice shoots sue to the lens that came stock with my camera. This was a large investment for me but, it will help take better pictures and this lens with stay in my arsenal of camera gear even if I upgrade my camera body.

Finished up another audio book making it 8 books in total this year. Extreme Ownership was very intriguing to me and was jam-packed with a lot of actionable ideas that I have already begun to bring into my work and personal life. Each chapter was broken down into 3 parts. First was a battlefield story from Iraq. Middle being what the leadership principle is how it helped win the battle and the last being the application to the work environment. I plan on reading the rest of Jacko Wilik’s books due to how fast and to the pint he got. Always a fan of efficiency, Next on the list is the book that was adapted to the movie Field of Dreams.

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Weekly Post 9/2/2019

Highlights:

  • 3 Day weekend
  • Took a bunch of time off work
  • Made a Smoothie

Lowlights:

  • Already feels like Fall

The work hours really started to add up so decided to take a soft vacation from work last week and also take even more advantage of the long weekend. I still went in for some hours to keep some of my reports current but all in all, I only worked for 10 hours in total. Man I needed that break though, but I will be playing for it next week as I will have to catch up on all that worked missed #progressdoesn’tstop

With all that free time I made a fruit and veggie smoothie. Usual breakfast is either Mcdonalds or 2 fried eggs and twp pieces of bacon. I figured I could be eating more veggies and ingesting more micronutrients can only be helpful for my overall health.

Smoothie Ingredients:

  • kale
  • Chard
  • Spinach
  • Carrots
  • Apple
  • Blueberries
  • Homemade Kombucha
  • Strawberries
  • Avacado
  • Chia Seeds

This recipe does taste a bit earthy but that can be fixed with the ratios of fruit to the ie mix. I’m going to try and keep refining this recipe t make it a little thinner and try and achieve a fruitier taste to make this my weekday morning breakfast.

We also had a couple of cold days this week. I realized that I am no ready for summer to be over yet. I still wann get out and play some more golf. But Fall weather means football season is just around the corner and hell yeah I am ready for that.

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Weekly Post 8/26/2019

High Lights:

  • Finshed my Excel Course
  • New Stand up desk
  • Quick 9 Holes

Low Lights:

  • Rained Out Golf league 

It was a whirlwind golf week with my Tuesday Golf league getting rained out. There are very few weeks left which makes this a big loss. last-minute invite on Sunday to play 9 holes did help soothe that burn for a missed round. We even ended up playing those 9 holes at Jackson Park. I played the first 4 holes really well. My swing was on plane and I was able to keep the ball off the tee and hit the fairway or just off the edge which I believe helped me keep my swing intact by not hitting a difficult lie. That is what usually throws me off a good clear mindset and lets the doubt and mistrust in my own swing for me. Typical mental midget stuff for me I guess, this is why I need to really get back to drilling the swing at home. If I can keep this swing all the way to back 9 were talking about personal record-breaking scores 🙂

In other news a huge upgrade to the home office this week. I purchased one of that mechanical stand-up desks. https://www.autonomous.ai/ So far so good, It was a little bit to set up. It took the better part of the afternoon. It took even longer to wire up all the cables to keep them as hidden as possible. To be fair I am a little OCD when it comes to hiding and tucking wires so that’s where most of the time was spent. The desk does look good and works well so I pretty dure this was a good purchase.

To cap this week off I was able to finish off my Udemy Microsoft Excel course. It took a while the as the course is just over 17 hours long and does come with a bit of homework but I was able to keep up with the course while the instructor was explaining the projects. I wish I had taken this course way earlier in my working career. I always knew that there was a lot more power to Excel than what I was using. but most of my work project only required my novice level of skills. This course did teach me a lot of basic level information that will increase the speed at which I can build worksheets. that alone was worth the price of the course but, the real added value of this course. It has opened my eyes to what the next levels are to this program and where I can direct my attention to further advance my skills and become an Excel Jedi Master.

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Weekly Post 8/19/2019

Highlights

  • Actually went for a run
  • Visit with an Old Friend

Lowlights

  • Still working like a crazy man

The weather was pretty nice this week and suddenly had the urge to go for a run. only went for a little under 2 miles. It was nice to get outside and do something active. I performed a lot better than I expected so I should keep try and keep up jogging especially now that the temperature isn’t in the high 90s anymore. We’ll see if I can stick with it. My heart Montier also just kinda gave out in the middle of my run so that was a big bummer as I like to look back and evaluate my effort and to see if I’ve made any progress on the fitness side of things.
Had a great time on catching up with a long-time friend on a Sunday BBQ. keeping up with high school friends that move away after college can be tough some times but we always try and sneak in some hang out time with golf trips or other excursions but mostly it always comes down to sneaking in a few hours during the holidays in between family parties. It always feels a bit rushed but, not this visit. We had almost 4 hours to catch up and watch some golf on the couch for what felt like the whole afternoon. We already started to plan our next golf trip. time to break out the golf trip spreadsheet and get planning.
Just feels like I’m putting in a billion hours of work every week and its starting to wear on me. Especially getting up early to go for work cuts into the time I would like to be with my family. Before the kid, my mindest would be to just work as many hours as possible but now that mental math of how much it’s it worth to spend time with family or make another hour pay is a real struggle sometimes

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Weekly Post 8/5/2019

High Lights:

  • Golf League

Low Lights:

  • Car Trouble
  • Sun Burn

For the first time in a long time, my skin got so burnt that it has actually started to peel off. Now it’s not what you think as I did liberally put on sunscreen, but there was a section on my back just below my shoulder blades that my hands couldn’t reach. I did ask for help applying the lotion. Yet, I was a bigtime idiot and told my helper that I had already covered that area. well after something like 9 hours in the sun playing in the sand and waves of Lake Michigan the strip of exposed skin fried like a piece of chicken at KFC.

But at least my sunburn will heal back. In other news, my car has started to make an awful noise from 0 mph all the way to 25 mph. I think it has something to do with a belt or pulley when both the electric motor and gas engine are working in tandem to get up to speed. After having some friends take a look at the car and see if they could help diagnose the issue. They all agreed it was something with the belt system or a shaky pulley. I tried to book some shop time with the dealer since the car is still under the 60,000-mile drive train warranty. But, alas the earliest they could get me in was August 21st. This was a problem because I was several hundred miles over 59,000 was getting dangerously close to having my warranty expired. I wasn’t to too worried though since I was pretty sure it was something small but you can’t be too careful when it comes to these manufacturers warranty because they will not touch your car if it’s even a 1/10th of a mile over that magic number. For now, I’ll try and keep my car in the garage and conserve as many miles as I can to make it all the way to the 21st.

Was nice to get back out on the course and play a league round with the group. even though it was 4 club challenge day I still was able to carry over some of the stuff I learned on the golf clinic I had just gone to.

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Weekly Post 6/18/2019

High Lights:

  • Baby is Home!

Low Lights:

  • None this week

Super elated to say that the baby was released from the ICN and is home now.  Now the real game starts.  up until now the nurses and doctors were always there to care for the child.  There is no backup squad anymore it’s up to us now. There have already been some long nights and lots of diaper and lots of crying but We will all get better at this new situation.  Everything is so new and once we can get into a routine I’m sure life be a little less chaotic and gain a little more order(fingers crossed).

I will have to head back to work soon and I am not looking forward to leaving the baby at home with Mom.  The baby is a lot of work and I wouldn’t like to be there and help as much as I can.  10-12 diapers a day and consistent feeding really do take a toll especially if you mix in that lack of sleep. that a tough go for a one person team.

The lack of sleep has increased my Mocha intake. I haven’t been counting but I’m at least up to 1.25 a day average.  I’ve even been asking for an extra shot of espresso in there as well #yikes  Will need to keep an eye out for that caffeine intake but right now I just got me up and alert for both Mom and the Baby plus they taste so good…

Time to get back to the Eat-Sleep-Shit-Mocha routine.  #loveit

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Weekly Post 6/10/2019

High Lights:

  • A new addition to the Family

Low Lights:

  • Very little sleep

Pretty monumental week for me and my Family. On  June 3rd, 2019 my wife gave birth to our first child.  Happy to report that both the baby and my wife are happy and healthy.  The baby is spending some time in the NICU and ICN but all tests and results are trending the right way and are looking to bring the little guy home soon.

Sleep has been nonexistent.  But wow is it wild to hold YOUR brand new baby.  So light, fragile, and mushy lol very hard to explain the barrage of waves of emotions I have experienced in the past week.  A switch has been turned on inside me and “Dad Mode” has been engaged.

I’m going to try and keep the baby off the blog and stay away from including him into the social media for as long as I can.  When I Started this blog it was about my journey to enjoy the game of golf and my life around it and how they intermixed.  I still plan to stay to the framework but I expect my free time to practice and play golf as much as I did before but for right now I’m ok with that.

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Weekly Post 5/28/2019 Memorial Weekend

Highlights:

  • 4 Workouts in one week
  • Big weekend for grilling

Low Lights:

  • No golf 🙁

The workout streak is still on fire and I was even able to squeeze a 4 round in. This weeks format was exercise Monday, Tuesday rest Wednesday and work out again Thursday, Friday.

MDW is for sure in my top holidays of the year. I have a lot of good quality memories around this powerful Monday and long weekend. Traditionally my family has grilled on Sundays. Though I didn’t get to spend this Sunday with my family I was able to spend it with some close friends and their 3-month-old baby. To celebrate We picked put some Prime Ribeyes from Marianos. Quick side note Marianos has some great meat if you have one near and are into grilling they are a must to check out.

My body definitely feels the 4 workouts I completed this week, but I was able to do it and my body did not fall apart lol. Hopefully, I will be able to keep this up and build some stamina and get my cardio back up the level of my younger years. I can say that all this Olympic lifting has helped my CNS fatigue I encounter playing 18 holes of golf. If I can stay sharper deeper into the round maybe I will avoid those dreaded blow out holes that usually happen around the 11th or 14th hole.