Yay!

Christmas came a bit early and I am now the proud owner of a Snuggie!!!!

I won it tonight at a White Trash Christmas Party. I have been obsessed with the snuggie since I saw them on tv a little over a year ago. I will now be enjoying my royal blue snuggie in all its glory.

Cockbag is just slightly excited.

Gut Busting

I have started to make a small effort in the battle of the buldge. Saturday provided some awesome weather and I took a nice 5 mile walk to one of my favorite parks in the city. Then last night I decided to use my gym membership at school for the first time all semester. While both activities are minor steps, it is a step in the right direction from the mostly sedentary lifestyle I have been leading all semester.

One important motivation to using the gym at school is the eye candy, albeit 18-22 year old eye generally. Yes, I am a dirty old man now.

Hopefully I don't fall too far off the wagon this Friday as I have the first of gawd knows how many holiday parties.

My big Cyber Monday Purchase

So I wanted to do something to cheer up my Grandma since she is in the hospital. She's 86 and one of the greatest people I have ever known. She also, at age 85, put on a baseball cap backwards and with instructions from my little cousin made the "West Side" gang sign and allowed him to snap a picture of the hilarious moment! Tonight I was thinking back to my childhood when I visited her, oftentimes my mom would drop me off on her way to work. I'll get back to my big purchase in a second...

A typical day at Grandma's consisted of the following....
Arrive at 8am and me throw a temper tantrum that my mom was leaving me and telling her she didn't love me (ok that last part isn't true).
Breakfast with my Grandma and Grandpa consisting of blueberry muffins (Betty Crocker or Duncan Heinz box mix) and orange juice.
Then watch Press Your Luck---No Whammies, No Whammies
Followed by a walk down to the neighborhood pond to feed the ducks
The HIGHLIGHT of the day would be THE ONE AND ONLY BOB BARKER on THE PRICE IS RIGHT. I remember Bob with black hair who came on at 11am.
Lunch would consist of tuna fish sandwiches cut diaganally of course. (I remember my mom making me the same thing soon after and I requested that she cut it diaganally and asking her if that was more difficult to due then cutting it normally).
After lunch I would play with toys and try to take a nap.
Soon after that The People's Court with Judge Wapner came on.
Not too long after that my mom would come by to pick me up.

So back to my big purchase....I thought about our times watching the fantastic Price is Right and wondered if they had a "Best of" on dvd. I thought, hey I could bring my laptop to her hospital room, pop in the dvd, and reminisce. Well I checked out the store selections at Blockbuster online but no such luck. Well Amazon.com came through once again. The 4 DVD box set is an amazing steal new for $5.99 plus $3 shipping.

I can't wait!

FATTY!

That is how I am feeling these days. The past few months of stress due to school and more importantly work have not been kind to Cockbag's scale. I also have to blame a total lack of exercise and my massive sweet tooth for such poundage gain. But this small weight gain is not at all healthy. My doctor even commented on the gain at my last visit and upped my blood pressure medicine.

My weight has always flucuated but lately it has been harder to lose. In May 2008, I was approximately 175 pounds.  Soon after becoming single and rediscovering the joys of beer I quickly gained 5-10 pounds over the summer of 2008. For the past year I maintained that weight (180-185) range but wanted to get back to 175 because I feel healthiest there. I am 6'1 btw so 175 is average-not fat but not skinny. Well since, this summer I have managed to pack on another 5-10 pounds depending on what scale I use. I am hovering around the 190-195 range. Even my home scale that I think weighs a person 5 pounds less has me pegged at 190 on a bad day.

I need to be more disciplined and schedule workout time into my schedule. I have no real excuse as I have access to two gyms-one of them being incredible with nice eye candy to motivate me. It's not that I want or desire a muscly body, I don't. I just want to be at a decent healthy weight and look good in my medium shirts. I just bought two that were a little tight so this gives me even more motivation to lose weight.

Hopefully I can get back on the wagon after the Thanksgiving Feast.

T-minus 2 days 23 hours and 49ish minutes

So at 4:30 on Friday I officially begin my Thanksgiving break. And how will I be celebrating you ask?

Well Cockbag will be writing two research papers. Blah! But the silver lining to all this writing is not being at work all next week. It has truly become the bane of my existance. I am sure I could somehow put a positive spin on it but day by day I dislike being here more and more.

So I look forward to studying, napping, cleaning, sleeping in, eating to much at Thanksgiving, and maybe just maybe even going out. I am hoping the weather may be decent too so I can finally do some exterior painting that I have been putting off the past few years.

OK now the countdown is down to 2 days 23 hours and 45ish minutes!

FAT KID!!!!

Cockbag is in a food induced coma after one too many sloppy joes at lunch.

Change

I am ready for it. More than anything, I need a change in jobs/careers. I have been in the same job for the past five years and need a new challenge. Before this summer when the shiznit hit the fan at work I was casually looking but wasn't going to jump at just anything. Day by day, I think Wal-Mart door greeter or fry guy at McDonald's is sounding better and better. It is truly a drag coming in. It's not that working conditions are horrible by any stretch of the imagination-well listening to 5-8 middle age women bicker and gossip is my personal definition of hell. It's just that over the past few months I have been forced into a position I have never wanted. The portions of my job that I did enjoy, previously, are also slowly being taken away too. I feel like I am slowly being forced out aka politely being asked to leave without actually saying it.

If the economy wasn't shitsville this would not be such a huge issue, but jobs are so hard to come by. I do have multiple choices in the field I work in but every job posting has a flood of applicants. I have my fingers crossed about one opportunity but definitely not holding my breath either.

While job change is one thing I am looking forward to, geographical change is something else I am pondering more and more. I have basically lived in the St. Louis region my entire life. While it is a decent place overall to live, I need some new scenery. I kick around the idea from time to time of just selling everything and moving to New York City. Being the cautious one, I of course would have a job lined up. I am not sure why that city has been calling my name, as I have only visited it for one day when I was a teenager. I think it is a matter of proving myself. As Frank Sinatra said if you can make it there you can make it anywhere-god now I sound like a massive cheeseball. I think I could to.  I can navigate myself around large foreign cities that I don't speak the language of, so NYC has to be a bit easier.  I also love large cities too and the sense of everything being at your fingertips.

Moving of course probably won't occur until at the earliest mid-2011. My goal is to finish coursework at the end of next year. In the Spring of 2011, I want to finish my oral and written comps. If that goes according to plan, it will be much easier to make a move just about anywhere. Lets hope by then, the job market will turn around and I won't be such a neurotic mess.