Ok Redo

I haven't posted pretty much all summer. Sorry. Lots of work.

Anyhow, the weight loss challenge begins tomorrow. No really.. it does. Must.....get off.....butt.

A new gymn went up literally right down the street from my house and I was one of the first 200 members to sign up which means no fees and its only 30 a month. Woohoo. Tomorrow I expect to be very sore.

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On a funnier note, I heard this morning on the radio that a guy got his finger BITTEN OFF at a townhall meeting about healthcare in Ventura CA. That is about an hour from my house. The guy who bit his finger off was pro healthcare "reform" and the victim was a 60some odd year old anti reform. That is some funny stuff. Don't anger a California liberal. They get cannibalistic.

Week 0.5

I call it week 0.5 because unfortunately I still have not gotten a membership at the gym. It is 90 bucks to start as there is a 60 dollar sign up fee plus one month membership which is 30 dollars. So for now, I am only doing the diet side of things. I already cheated on that a bit as it was July 4th weekend and we had 2 great BBQs. Oh well, I guess holidays are an exception. Back to eating less than I would like!

Xb's Weight Loss Challenge

Sometime this week (whenever I find my checkbook), I am going to the YMCA to sign up for a monthly membership. I used to work out when I was 18 and was in pretty great shape. Marriage and my sit down all day work has reversed any benefits from that era. I went from 200 to about 230 in a year and looking at myself in the mirror makes me sick.

Sooo it is time to fix that. Eating healthy is a good thing too but working out is the best way to lose pounds. I am shooting for 180 by the end of this year. I will be posting pictures of my progress....like the celeb fit club show, except I'm not mentally deranged. Gary Busey anyone?

The Entitlement Generation

Last night I had a long and stimulating conversation with a 40 year old man who had a thing or 2 to say about my generation and the generation after me. It was quite hilarious to hear him go on and on about us because truth be told, I agree with him completely. He got me thinking and in those rare moments in which I think, I blog.

One thing I completely agree with him on is this. Our generation seems to be stuck on stupid. We are obsessed with the idea that we are entitled to everything we receive. That we somehow deserve a certain level of comfort and amenities in our daily life. I completely disagree with this assumption.

I believe that we are entitled to the opportunity to live comfortably and beyond a basic lifestyle. Our founding fathers believed in the pursuit of happiness, not the promise of it. Something not earned is something not appreciated. It is this "entitlement" syndrome that is destroying our society. Take the financial crisis of the last few years and even more extended, the rising welfare and disability cost problems of the past 10-20 years.

As children, we (ages 25 and under mainly) were taught in school that we had rights and that we deserved every wonderful thing the world has to offer including money, success, and happiness. Our schools have adopted a policy of making our children feel good about themselves. While I agree that children should be given encouragement and compliments, they should not be pushed into a false understanding of the world and their place in it. Kid's these days leave high school expecting life to be handed to them and feeling like they actually mean something to the world. The cold hard truth is that they don't.

The world is an ugly place and if you want to succeed in it, you need to work at it. You need to work your fingers to the bone sometimes. Some of the happiest people in the world barely make what we would call a living but are happy because what they have, they have earned and they own. Millions and millions of my generation have been taught that they deserve to live beyond their means and so, as products of our upbringing we did exactly that. When large loans and credit cards were dangled in front of our faces by greedy credit companies we ate them up. After all we deserve it right?

Now the world is seeing a big financial recession. Finally the greed of credit companies and every day people trying to live beyond their means has caught up with us. It will take a year or 2 for the market to re adjust but it will survive. Americans and the rest of the world should use this as a lesson. We need to earn what we have. When you borrow and live beyond your means, it always catches up to you eventually.

Global Warming....Gimme a Break

Refer to this story Here. Now I know you little lib monkey will automatically discount it because it is Fox News. You have been trained well by your Liberal masters to shun all reason and just shout slogans at the top of your lungs until your opponents shake their head in shame...at you. I have noticed however a trend in science lately.

Is it just me or has science become incredibly fundamentalist? I thought science was about putting many theories on the floor and reasoning them out through scientific process of discovery and research. It seems that nowadays, if you don't agree with the general consensus on things, you are shot down as a left field mad scientist. I though science was about questioning the status quo.

For example, if you even mention "Intelligent Design" in a scientific circle, chances are you have 24 hours before the entire scientific community throws you out. Did you know that less than half of Americans actually believe in Evolution? Those of you who can stand Ben Stein's monotone voice of reason should check out his documentary called "expelled". I got it for Christmas but you can rent it from netflix or buy it most places. Check it out Here.

This is just my opinion here but don't you think the government jumped onto this whole global warming thing a bit fast? I mean soon as Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" came out, every liberal in the nation signed up. Forget that it was filled with tons of false facts and half truths. It simply became the new environmental bible. I tend to notice that the biggest piles of crap usually are the first things generally accepted by the public. Talk to any middle class family that watches the news every night. They will swear up and down that we are in global warming and polar bears are dying blah blah blah. Truth is, they know nothing about it but that doesn't stop them from babbling on what they see on TV and pretend to be an expert about it.

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject of global warming either but I AM confident enough to say that something is horribly wrong with the scientific community. Ideas should be cultivated and encouraged for challenging the known "facts", not shot down.

Rain Finally

Here on the Central Coast of California, the weather is....paradise. About 68-75 degrees all year round with over 300 days of sunshine and a light breeze, it is no wonder why it is so expensive to live here. On the other hand, when droughts hit, they hit hard. For the past 2 years we have gotten about 3 inches of rainfall over the entire rainy season. Some of you get that in a day from a good thunder storm.

Thankfully, it looks like this year will be a bit better. We have already hit almost 4 inches and still have a good month to go with 3 storm systems lined up at least. Sometimes I miss Washington. So much green. Oh well. We have 1 waterfall in the entire county so for your viewing pleasure, here it is.

Welcome President Obama

I may not have voted for him but I'm happy to see that Americans all over voted based on who they believed more capable of leading our nation and didn't vote based on race. Our new president comes in at an incredibly tough time of economic hardship, wars, and political instability. I hope and pray that he will keep his vision for America and not let the politics get in the way. Hey we have had a few good Democrats after all.....FDR anyone?

The World is Going to End in 2012!! OH NOES!

Is it just me or is there much more "Armageddon mania" going around since new years than normal? Every time I turn on the History Channel or National Geographic, there is some crazy show on the end of the world and how Nostradamus has predicted that our demise is but 3 years away? Gimme a break.

First of all, I am much in the same ballpark as Steven Hawking who believes that the Earth is very close to its end...at least mankind is. A good article on his feelings toward our soon to be demise can be found here . While I'm not the first to hop on the climate change bandwagon, I fully agree that mankind has its finger way to close to the trigger button of a nuclear disaster.

So does that mean that we are moments away from certain destruction? Yep. Then again....how is that anything new? We and all life on Earth are always at risk. Remember that meteor that hit the Yucatan Peninsula hundreds of millions of years ago? The fact is that there is no way we can prevent all the possible disasters that are bound to strike humanity in the future. Yes we can prepare for certain disasters like Solar flares and rogue meteors and we should but again, nothing is certain.

Now about this Nostradamus crap. The key to being a great prophet is being as vague as possible so as to be able to cover your tracks no matter what happens. WAIT! I'm getting a message...I am having a vision. Yes I see now. This year the Earth will shake. Buildings will fall and many will die. The sky will blacken with fires and there will be great suffering. Hey I must be psychic. Of course maybe I'm not and maybe I just predicted a natural disaster that happens all the time. My point is that prophecy and prediction is a dangerous line to walk. The Bible says that no man knows the day or the hour. I'd say I agree with the Bible on that one. Nobody knows when, how, or if the world will end for sure. Instead of worrying about it, let's try to improve the world we live in and improve ourselves. We need to stop being afraid of the future and get to work on improving it.

Oh and sorry about the delay between this and my last blog. It has been Christmas break and as a teacher I get 3 weeks off. Funny thing is that I find more time to blog when I don't have spare time haha.