slept in today. Not sure why I got to bed early enough. I skipped the scale because after the way I ate yesterday I don't want to know.

Owen has be sick lately. He is very congested and is not sleeping well. I hope he gets over this soon.

Someone found a cool new old-timey picture for the next fark cliche!

I think I am catching Ceclia and Owen's cold. I am stiff and my nose is runny. I sat in the sauna for a while and that helped. Hopefully I can shake this by next week. Still debating taking a walk today.

205! Damn sushi. I am going to make a real effort to eat well this weekend. I will start right after this doughnut. ;)

I was pretty stiff this morning. Not sure why, probably because of not working out or anything yesterday. Hopefully I'll feel better today.

The alarm went off on time only it was to dead air. I got to the gym pretty late so I just showered and came in to work. I used the downstairs locker room which has an old not reliable scale. I think I'm about 202 today.

Did level 5. Might only be a short walk today it's supposed to be hot.

I did 20 on the climber at level 5. It felt pretty good today. The weather is supposed to be nice so I should be able to get a walk in. The book I'm listening to right now isn't too bad. It's "The Two Minute Rule" by Robert Crais. It's cheesy detective fiction. I have read his "Elvis Cole" novels for a while and this one is not part of that series but not too bad either. I have a James Patterson novel on deck.

Jennifer starts her new job today. It's just part time right now. It's nice also that it is in her field. The experience will be good and the resume aspect of it will be good too. Not to mention that it's at Hearland CC which is an institution she wants to work at. We are both nervous about how Cecilia and Owen will handle the change. I know that they will do just fine though.

Bean helped me with breakfast again yesterday. We made almond pancakes. They came out great. She really seems to enjoy cooking with me. The food proccessor scared her a bit at first. After I turned it on and showed here that it did not make much noise she was ok though. She wanted to make corn meal mush, but we had just had that the day before. Maybe this weekend I will show her how to make that.

Little stiff from all the driving. Just did the sauna today. Busy playing catch up today

My cousin passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. My thoughts and love goes out to all who are left behind by this.

I did not step up the level today. Mostly because I forgot. It was a good workout and the sauna felt good. I will play it by ear on the walk today. Although I don't think I will have time after my dentist appointment.

In geek news I now have subversion up and running for source control. I have created a repository to hold all of my emacs related configs and packages. This allows for me to keep things consistent across the different machines I use. The only current issue is a bug in emacs-cvs that is causing a small issue. I expect it to be fixed soon however.

Did the climber this morning. Felt pretty good. I did not do it at the higher level this time. I may try to step it up for the second half of tommorrow. I need to try and get to that level on a regular basis eventually.

I barbecued another brisket this weekend. It came out fantastic! I even made my own bbq sauce to serve with it. It only took four hours and was worth every second of it. I originally thought that it would take closer to 5 hours but 4 seemed to do the trick. Here is a tasty pic to show you all what you missed:

I have really seemed to catch some sort of bbq bug. A couple weeks ago I watched what seemed like a bbq contest marathon on Food Network. On one of them they described what makes something authentic bbq and the cooking process,as well as what the difference is between "grilling" and "barbecue" is. I thought to myself "I can do that!" so I did.

Our grill is actually pretty well set up for this type of cooking. It came with two metal baskets that you can use to cook with indirect heat. The main grate also has sides that flip up so that you can add coals to the basket as needed. I used one of them and got about 10 coals really good and hot. I soaked some hicory and apple wood chips for about 30 minutes. Once the coals had ashed over I dropped a small bunch of chips on the coals and added one or two new briquettes, put the meat on the grill, slapped the lid on and started the wait. About every half hour I would add more wood and few more briquettes. This "hot smokes" the meat and gives it a great flavor. The cooking temp for the majority of the process was between 200° and 250°. The final temp of the meat was 160°

Overall yesterday was a very good day! Yesterday mornign Bean wanted waffles for breakfast. So we went down stairs and made some cornmeal waffles. It was a spur of the moment decision to make those rather than normal waffles but was definietly worth it. Cecilia measured out all the ingredients and helped me mix everything together. When the first one was done we both took a taste as a test of our work. She declared the recipe a success and we finished cooking the batch. It was a lot of fun.

For those wondering what a cornmeal waffle tastes like think of sweet cornbread made with some maple syrup in the batter. Only a little lighter and fluffier like a waffle. I think these are my new standard waffle. Especially if I have my sous chef there to help me. Owen is just about able to help with the process as well! I can imagine some great breakfasts to come! I just need to get them started on omelets next.

Of course all this food is probably why the scale tipped to 207 for a second this morning before settling at 206.8. Definitely worth it though.

I got through about 12 minutes on the climber this morning. I am a bit tired and stiff. Especially after doing the climber at a higher level yesterday. I walked for about 15 minutes after that and sat in the sauna for a a while.

I upped the climber to level 5 today. That may, or may not, have been a good idea. It was pretty tough but I made it through. With a nice walk at lunch I should be pretty close by the weekend. Of course Cecilia and Owen will most likely help me with some cardio later as well.

I ran a little today after deciding that the climber was not for me today. I really didn't feel like doing the climber. The run wasn't that great and so I stopped. I'm not really sure where the weight went, but I'm not questioning it either.

I was pretty stiff this morning from mowing the lawn so I just sat in the sauna today. It's rained a lot this morning and is supposed to rain on and off all day. I'm not sure if I will be able to to walk at lunch. It's a shame really, my "book" is getting good right now.

Guess the BBQ is catcing up with me!

I'm not sure if I'm happy about this or not. When I stopped for coffee this morning I saw "Wacky Packages"™ stickers! I had to buy a pack. I present them to you in my grainy camera phone's goodness.

It appears that some marketeers out there realized the comedy gold that was this creation of the 80's. As I said I'm not sure if I'm happy about seeing these or if another part of my youth has died a quiet death.

It was another great weekend. On Saturday we went down to the Jim Edgar Fish & Wildlife preserve to visit with Granma and Granpa Gary who rented a cabin there. Bean and Owen had a great time. Cecilia ran A LOT. Everyone was pretty beat afterwards. We had a nice relaxing day Sunday. I hot smoked a half a rainbow trout and a brisket. They came out good. I went cheap on the brisket and bought one of the corn beef ones. I should have forked over the extra cash for one that wasn't half-way to being corned beef. The rub I did was pretty tasty though. I will try it again this weekend. The fish was excellent! I am now a BBQ master

Ok 208 isn't bad. I can live with that. I was barely able to make it the 20 minutes today though. Owen had a very rough nite and did not sleep well. He better have all the rest of his teeth this morning! I am very very tired.

I decided to skip the scale today. Probably a good idea with all the grilling and stuff this weekend. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

This was a GREAT weekend. I spent lots of time with the kids and Jennifer. The kids seemed to have a very good weekend too. I have decided that now BBQ is complete without the addition of hickory chips. Everything tastes better if you add them. We grilled delicious organic stakes from Wettsteins in Carlock. MMM MMM MMMM.

Shakespeare was great on Friday. I was very happy that both Bean and Owen behaved well for Grandma and Grandpa Gary.

I didn't do much of the work stuff that I had planned to over the weekend. Oh well. There is always time to do that stuff at work.