So, a good weekend. Not a lot happened, or at least not a lot *felt* like happened, even though I suppose a reasonable amount did. Played some God of War 2 Saturday morning, went swimming with Sean, to lunch with S&H, to a Barack Obama speech/rally with H&M, to Great China with same, then hung out ’till late, watched part of Casino Royale on the laptop, sleep. Woke up this morning, did some random stuff I can’t remember, cleaned up a bit, took Mobius on a long walk, detoured on the walk to find the mom of an old high school friend, and find out what that friend’s been up to, even though I haven’t talked to her in about a decade or so. Then, Olive, the next-door neighbor dog came over to play with Mobius, then off to a BBQ @ A&B’s place (delicious), hung out ’till just before now, and now writing up a blog entry.

As to the obvious question, “How’s the new job?” It’s good. Well, it’s work, and frankly, I like “no work” better than “work,” but as work goes, it’s okay. Got its own set of challenges, which I’m taking as an opportunity to try to be productive and helpful, while not crossing into the line of overbearing. So, walking that sort of line can be a bit stressful, and more than anything, I find that at the end of the day I’m more tired than I might have expected. I think that’s natural, though – I wasn’t really working hard for the last year or so, and I’m sort of full-on at this job, trying to get acquainted, oriented, and have an impact where I should.

Trying also get get “back on the horse” re: the diet, but failing sort of miserably. Lots of food-related “events” that I don’t want to pass up. Sociability at work is often tied to lunch, and dinner for the last two days have been things I didn’t want to miss. But I’ve definitely been eating more than I *should* over the last two weeks, and my weight’s popped up a pound and a half. So, it’s just a matter of re-making the conscious effort to change that a priority.

I think finding a good reward for hitting 200 would be the way to go, but since I’m no longer competing for anything (WHERE’S THE WII!??!?!), it’s harder to get motivated. So, finding something that’s a good external motivator for me will be important. I’ve found that as much as I’d love to be internally motivated for this sort of thing, it’s not successful for me. Having some external motivation – ideally competition – makes a huge difference.

I’m thinking that it’ll either be the Canon 10-22mm EF-S lens, or the 17-85mm EF-S (probably the latter, just because it’s likely to be more generally useful to me). After that, when it gets to the point of maintenance, then it’ll be like, longer-term rewards – like, if I stay on average under 200 for the whole of ’08, then that’ll be a reward, but not anything on a month-by-month basis. It’s just that dieting – the *change* where you’re hungry a good portion of the time and have to make an active effort to refuse available food – is hard. It takes willpower, and motivation helps that willpower a LOT.

I’m also going to start doing some non-swimming training. I’m hoping to do a short workout of pushups/pullups/squats and the like either in the morning or the evening. Not weights, or that sort of thing, but just some resistance-using-what’s-available sorts of things. I was never able to do a pullup in middle school. Not one. But at some point in high school, I went from 0 to 13. Now I’m back to 0 again, and despite my f’ed up wrist making pullups somewhat harder than they might otherwise be, I’d like to have some sort of upper-body strength.

The other thing is that there’s a gym right near my new workplace, and if I can find time to get there (and if they have a pool) I might be able to forego the membership at the local Y, and use that one during my lunch hour. We’ll see how it works. Balancing a desire to spend some time with my coworkers and get to know them and my personal health and well-being will get easier after the first few weeks. So, hopefully… no – not hopefully – I’ll have to just make the commitment now.

<200lbs by August 1.