Michael & Liz are Bloggable

So tomorrow is the new year and once again I am making a long list of resolutions that I am going to try to accomplish in 2009. It's going to suck but it's going to make me a better person.

I have tried to get Liz to make a few and she has resisted. I secretly think that she has made it her goal to run the Flying Pig Half Marathon in Cincinnati on May 3rd, but she hasn't said that... also she's going to read this blog entry so it will no longer be a secret. That's a pretty good rule of thumb when posting to a blog, never post a secret.

So here are my New Year's Resolutions in the order of their importance to me:

1. Sell something(anything) I make out of wood. This is a very general resolution and it should be a very easy one at that. This December, like last December 2007, I have gotten very motivated with making things out of wood in the garage. I've made 2 copies of my present for my Secret Santa (one copy to be sold), I've made a few crosses, and a couple other things that I will post about after the new year. My car has been sitting in the driveway because of it and while I hate having to walk outside to get to my car, I think I am going to keep it there and make woodworking a full time hobby for myself. It can't just be a hobby though, it has to be somewhat profitable to make it worthwhile in my opinion. Wood is pretty expensive so I figure I can make things, keep myself busy, continue learning, and make some money in the meantime to make up for the loss of buying wood. I also am going to be keeping track of the amount of money that I spend on my wood working projects, to see if I can turn a profit. So far I've spent $175, and based on my calculations, I could probably make about $130 to $150 if I sold whatever I have left over (after making the Secret Santa present and the shelf for Liz). That's not too shabby. So I will keep everyone up to date on my progress... My eventual goal is to buy new tools with whatever profit I pull in (if I ever pull a profit).

2. Run 1000 miles (again). This was my resolution from 2007 and I didn't fail miserably, but I certainly didn't achieve it. I did this with John and we really motivated each other well. We got to around 600 miles in July and then by the time I ran the marathon on November 4th of that year, I was at 800. I was far too burnt out to keep going for the 1000, so I quit. This year will be different though. I am running the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati on May 3rd, and if I stick to my current training schedule until then, I will have run 484 miles by that point. I am pretty sure I will do another marathon in the Fall as well so the 1000 miles should be well within reach.

Side Note: If I were to leave our house and run a 1000 miles West, I'd make it to the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Also, along the same lines of this goal of running 1000 miles, is losing weight in order to achieve it. I haven't gained a whole lot of weight that I'm trying to lose, but one goal I have always had in the back of my mind is achieving a sub 4 hour marathon. It's right at a 9 minutes per mile pace for the 26 miles, and I've been able to do it for 20 miles before, but never the full 26. I think in order to get there, I need to be about 20 pounds lighter. So along with running, I am doing my best to shed some pounds. I'm not making it a resolution though, I guess just an addendum to the 1000 miles resolution. One way I'm motivating myself is competing against the people on the show of the Biggest Loser (it starts January 6th, watch it, it rocks). If you are wondering "How?!?!" then let me know and I'll share, but it's too lame to post on the blog (at least for now anyway).

3. Do not eat a combo meal anywhere. I've realized that combo meals are the devil. They force you to get a large portion of food when you really don't want that much and then when you get it, you feel guilty not eating it all so you pound it down anyway. This year, no combo meals. I haven't had a burger at a fast food restaurant since last February, but I have given in on chicken so I still have Wendy's and Chick-fil-a every once in a while. Also since in 2008, I didn't have any soda, I don't want to be getting combo meals and then just get back into the routine of getting Coke every time... so hopefully this will prevent me from doing that.

I'm excited because I think these 3 goals are achievable... if there is any progress to post on along the way, I will.

So as I said last year, I take New Year's Resolutions seriously. Before I declare what our resolutions for 2009 will be, I thought I would put out an end of the year update on how our resolutions for 2008 went.

Liz:
1. To go as long as possible without drinking a carbonated beverage. Liz successfully accomplished this goal and set a new record for herself. This year she has not had a soda yet. It doesn't seem like this was very difficult for her. She never really had a desire to break on this goal.

2. There are two goals in this resolution because they go hand in hand. One is to not gain any weight and the other is to go to the gym AT LEAST twice a week. She accomplished half of this goal as she did not gain any weight this year. But her goal of going to the gym at least twice a week ended around the end of January. Her new job really ruined this resolution because she wasn't leaving work until 5:30 and that's just too late to go to the gym and then come home and have a time to do anything until she has to go to bed again. I'd have to say she succeeded on her second resolution because the reason for the gym was to not gain weight, but she didn't gain any way so it didn't matter.

Michael:
1. My first goal is the same as Liz's first goal, not to drink any sodas. This was really difficult for me because I LOVE soda, but I can honestly say I succeeded on this goal. There were many times where I was going to break. I think we relied a little too heavily on lemonade and hi-c because that's the only other thing served at restaurants that isn't water or soda. I am really looking forward to a Coke at the stroke of midnight on January 1st.

2. To build at least 4 wood projects this year. I'll be honest, I completely forgot about all my other resolutions after the first one, but believe it or not I have accomplished this goal. I built the shelf for Liz for Christmas, I made a cross for my Secret Santa this year, and then I made two more things and I am not revealing what those are until I am done with them. One of them is for my Secret Santa and the other one I am going to sell (they are identical). My resolutions for next year really revolve around my wood working so you'll hear more about this.

3. Teach Daisy 4 new tricks. This one I completely failed at. The reason is we got Gryffin, I blame it on the second dog. So I guess you could say, Daisy is dumber because of Gryffin.

4. The last resolution is to finish the projects that I started or intended to start around the house. They include finishing the deck, finishing the bead board around the blue bedroom upstairs and putting up peg board in the garage for better organization. I finished 2 out of the 3 projects. I have already blogged about the bead board in the bedroom and the finished deck, but I never got around to organizing the garage. If I was to make an excuse, it would be our budgeting, we just never set any money aside to do this, and getting peg board is expensive.

I will blog in a few days about what our resolutions for 2009 will be, needless to say I am very excited about them.

Merry Christmas to everyone... We are enjoying a relaxing day. This morning I made pancakes for us and now Liz's Dad and I relaxing and watching some TV and Liz's Mom and her are going to town in the kitchen cooking dinner. Her goal this year is to make dinner from scratch. I will do my best to take pictures of everything and blog about that later.

I wanted to post a picture of one of my gifts to Liz. I made her a shelf for her cookbooks. She is in a constant battle with the kitchen for space and where to put things, so I figured a shelf for her cookbooks would free up a lot of space for her. Turns out the gift was a hit. Here are a few pictures:




Also, my other gift to Liz was a little unconventional... it's a long story but I got her extra large men's sweat pants from Old Navy. Check it out:

Boy do I not feel like bloggin, which is the reason why I haven't blogged in forever. But I realize it's crappy to say that I will blog all about our trip to Vegas and then not blog at all...

Well as you heard from Liz's brief post, internet was 10 dollars a day in Vegas and I was going to spend the 10 bucks once just to blog once but I figured, no, I went there to do my best not to spend money and I'm going to stick to it darn it. I think we ended up spending about $250 from the Saturday to the Thursday. I also say "we" like Liz had anything to do with that, but it was really my food and our drinks that we were spending money on.

Just a brief conclusion after the trip: Liz's brother Scott put it best, Vegas is awesome for the first 2 or 3 days, but then you just want to go home. It was awesome seeing the hotels and all the fancy casinos and the attractions that the hotels had to offer but after a couple days, it starts to disgust you. Just to name a few things: the porno cards that are being handed out, the constant barrage of shops and entertainment, and the ding ding ding ding sounds you hear constantly. But I won't dwell on the negatives. Like I said, it was awesome for the first few days but I think had I left Monday or Tuesday, I would have been completely satisfied.

The rest of the post is going to be my award ceremony. There are some awards to give out for the best and worst of Vegas.

Worst Hotel: There is no doubt it's Circus Circus. The place is a dump and should be bankrupt in 10 years. I went there and it was EMPTY. The ceilings are 7 to 8 feet tall in the lobby and the "amusement park" they advertise doesn't look all that inviting. And I saw no clowns.

Worst Attraction: The show at Treasure Island. We were expecting it to be interesting, funny, and entertaining. Let me set the stage for you. There are two ships at war in front of the hotel. One ship is run by women in bikinis and the other is run by men who can't seem to find their shirts. That introduction alone lost our attention but I think the line that caused Liz and I to turn to each other and say "you wanna leave to beat the crowds" was when the captain of the men's ship said "We came to take your booty". The only cool thing about the show was seeing the fireworks from our hotel room, other than that it was definitely a big waste of time.

Most Disappointing Hotel: MGM Grand. What is there other than a couple Lions and an indoor stadium for boxing? Oh right, a casino. That's not enough for me. I was expecting this place to be awesome, and it was one boxing ring and a couple lions shy of being just any other hotel/casino. To top it off, they keep the doors to the arena locked, so I didn't even get to see the inside. boooo!

Most Disappointing Attraction: The Mirage Volcanoes because it wasn't there, it was under construction. That was enough for us not to go visit The Mirage and it's a close second to worst hotel for not having their main attraction available.

Biggest Awe Factor: The inside of the Luxor. If anyone knows anything about Vegas it's that the Luxor is a pyramid, but who knew that it was hollow inside?!? You can see all the way to the top! That was a big "awe factor" when we found that out.

Biggest Gross Factor: Eating healthy was almost impossible so one day I sucked it up and had a chicken sandwich at McDonalds (which for anyone who is counting was my first trip to McDonalds since February). I'm the kind of person waiting at the counter, counting the clock until it rings 11AM so they'd serve me lunch and not the grossness that is breakfast. Well I got my "right out of the oven" chicken sandwich, and the breading was soft and wet and as I was eating it, it was squishing off the sides of the sandwich and I ended up throwing 3/4 of it away after giving it my best effort. The value meal cost me 8 dollars too. Gross. I am officially never going to McDonalds again. The experience was enough to ruin it forever. I can feel a tingle in my throat as I think about it.

Best Meal: Hands down the 10AM wings I had at the sports bar inside the Palazzo. Why 10AM, cuz football starts early on the west coast and boy do I LOVE that. This bar had stadium style seating all over the place but instead of seats, they were leather couches. Instead of tables, they were leather ottomans that doubled as foot stools. There were also 70 plasmas around the bar that were all on swivels so no matter what game you wanted to watch, if you get there early, you can turn the TV toward you, tell your waitress your TV number and your game is on lickety split. I think the Bengals knew I was rooting for them hard in a really sweet place, cuz they didn't lose that day... they did their best and tied.

Worst Meal: See McDonalds above.... but if I can't use the same thing twice, then it would be the $7 bud light I got at the first restaurant we sat down at on Saturday Night. It was a nice "Welcome to Las Vegas wake up call".

Funniest Thing To See: The lions in the MGM Grand were pretty hilarious. This doesn't improve the MGM Grand in anyway because just having lions doesn't make the hotel awesome, but the trainers were treating the lions like they were pet cats or dogs. They were throwing balls around the room and the lions were chasing them and slapping at them and pouncing on them. The trainers were throwing bones at them and the lions would catch it and basically bite the bones to shreds. It was funny to watch lions act like that.

Coolest Attraction: Hands down the rollercoaster on top of New York New York. If it wasn't so expensive I would have ridden that thing 10 times, but $30 wasn't worth a couple minutes of awesomeness to Liz and I... at least not on this trip.

Best Attraction: Is there really any attraction that can compete with the Bellagio Fountains? We could have stood there all night long to watch the fountains. And every song was different. There was only one time where I heard the same song twice, but fortunately that song is awesome ("My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion) ... that's right, I just said that. But standing there with Liz in front of the fountains, is close to one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done in my life. It's just so amazing. I wanted time to stand still.

Best Hotel: This is a tie between the hotel we stayed in and the hotel I wanted to stay in. The Palazzo and the Bellagio. We were thrilled with the Palazzo and it was a fantastic room with 3 plasma TV's, a glassed in shower, remote control curtains, and a section couch in the living room. But I think next time we go, it will be in different circumstances where we will stay where we want (Bellagio) and do what we want (ride the rollercoasters). Hopefully it's everything I think it will be.