The Blog of G

Well it can be and what a life that would be nothing to do all day except eat, sleep, pee and poop! One can only dream.

One year ago today a little Puppy came into the world, a few weeks later and she came to live with us, where she has felt (I hope) happy and loved ever since. In return she has showered both of us and everyone she meets with affection, sought to distract us from the daily stresses of the world and made us laugh again and again.

So as today is her birthday I thought I’d share a few moments from the last year, with the world.

Happy First Birthday Buffy

Thank you for being our best friend

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, wait no that’s not right, it was about 20 years ago in pre-Celtic tiger Dublin. Hmm thinking about it maybe I was right to start with. Anyway I digress, back to the story I want to tell you all.

I was young, and with all the things that come from being a teenager who has just finished school and having a dream in my mind that I just knew was mine for the taking I set about a career as a musician, composer, arranger, songwriter and really just all round rock god The next few years were to hold stories of success and failure, of immense joy and deep heartfelt anguish. All the usual stuff a teenager goes through and genuinely believes is unique to them.

I loved to play, write and arrange music, I enjoyed it immensely and I believed I was really great at it, just the world hadn’t coped on to my genius, eventually I would cop on.

When I did, I ended up in a job I didn’t really want for a while and slowly I drifted away from all my music interests. First I stopped writing and arranging and eventually I stopped playing. I’m really not sure why, I guess I just got caught up in life and decided I had less and less time for it which I’m now discovering was really stupid.

I’m saying this now as I’ve recently started playing again, bizarrely as a result of studying for exams. At some point about two weeks before my exams were due to start, when I was studying, I started to get distracted by thoughts of playing as I got tired from studying. After a day or two of this I gave in dug out my horn and had a blow for about half an hour and then returned to study refreshed like I’d just started.

Even after that first day I suspected that there was something more up with my playing than just a lack of practice and I’ve discovered that my beautiful twenty year old horn is in need of a major overhaul. In the mean time It’s still playable, just not with any other instruments as the tuning is a little wild in places.

It still allows me to practice my scales, arpeggios, long tones and all the other boring stuff that all instrumentalist must practice to play the tunes that everyone loves. Unfortunately this is only a small part of playing and the most fun part, playing tunes as part of an ensemble, be it a real or virtual, is not possible with my baby, until I can afford the overhaul.

Hopefully it won’t take too long for me to save the funds to get the work done. Thankfully, I have a solution that will keep the itch scratched in the meantime. A few years back, while considerably flusher than I am now, I invested in an EWI, that’s an Electronic Wind Instrument.

At the time I bought it I practised and played it a fair amount but thanks to a less than simple manual and some difficulty setting it up and familiarising myself with it that didn’t really last long. However in the meantime a number of people have come along and published a number of simple how-to’s on you tube, so I now have it set up to my liking and am getting my playing back in shape reasonably rapidly. Who knows what may come of this.

In the meantime, if you’re an EWI player why not leave a comment below about what style and music you like to play and if you are struggling with an EWI take a look at Saxman999′s channel over on youtube or leave a comment below and maybe I’ll be able to help.

Happy Birthday Angus, 56 years Young (Hee-hee did you see what I did there ) Few musicians can claim to have made the impact on the world that you have. Maybe that’s why so many, from so many different genre’s have covered this one song.

So as a birthday tribute here we have some of my favourite cover versions.

Seriously a hard rock song covered in that many different styles, how can it not be a classic?

But just in case your a purist, you can find the original 1979 AC/DC version here. Just make sure to play it loud.

Here’s to many, many more Angus

It’s been a bit quiet around here recently and that isn’t likely to change hugely, as I’ve been focusing most of my blogging time on Not Junk Food recently and that’s not likely to change in the short term.

Add to that my rather crowded to-do list for this week, apart from the obvious “get a job”, I’ve some long overdue DIY around the house as well as a major upgrade to the home network and finally sorting “The Home office” out as it was never so much moved into as bootstrapped from storage space to workable and not really beyond that for the better part of the last 2 years.

Of course the upgrading of the home network, will have to be completed before I can finish “The Home Office” but I’m really looking forward to having the space where I do most of my writing and techie stuff tidied and sorted into a more hospitable place to be.

But before I can do that I have to finish hanging the curtains properly in the house. Now, before you get the idea that we’re some sort of weird exhibitionist living in full view of the world since we moved in, back in June 2008 this is not the case. The curtains have been up and in place all that time, just the only way to open them properly has been to take them down again, or pin them out of the way with Clothes pegs.

Thankfully I have Grannymar here to assist with the process of attaching the curtain rope/string/whatever ye call it today so hopefully it won’t take to long.

Today is the day that I, at one point in my life, thought I would never see. This morning I got up and hopped onto the scales (it’s become a little bit of a Saturday morning ritual) to find that I’m overweight and I am over the fucking moon happy.

There may be people reading this that have never met me and think that I’m being ridiculous or sarcastic in my excitement and joy at this moment, but what you don’t know is that only 4 years ago I was super obese (it’s a clinical term, not me trying to make my obesity sound cool), something I’ve only ever talked (in detail) to 3 people about and one of those was my doctor and aside from him, I have never let anyone know how bad it really was. Well here goes nothing.

When I first spoke to my doctor about my weight, he weighed me, I knew it was going to be bad and it was. Was this the heaviest I had ever been, I honestly don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I have been heavier because the largest trouser size I’ve ever worn was 2 inches bigger at the waist than the ones I wore that day.

As we chatted about the different ways to lose weight he was tapping away at his computer and then he stopped, looked me straight in the eye and said the most terrifying words I’ve ever heard “George, I’ve been calculating your BMI, while we’ve been talking and yours is 38.5, you are super obese“.

He proceeded to explain to me what BMI is and what the effects of this could be and the discussion got a lot more intense (I want to thank Dr. Tomaz, for taking the time to explain this in a way that was not judgemental, preachy or condescending, I believe you are the one who got me onto this road, which is saving my life). We discussed every method there is to losing weight, the natural ones (diet and exercise), the medical ones and even the surgical options.

You can find a BMI calculator here, you just need to know your height and weight.

I left his office that day, with a prescription for Reductil (banned for sale in europe this week) and a stronger resolve than I’ve ever had to lose weight. I joined a Gym within 24 hours and over the following month dropped 20lbs. For 3 months I took my medication, went to the gym at least 3 times a week and recorded every calorie that I ate. I dropped a total of 45lbs in those three months.

Then I stopped. I couldn’t handle the stress that the rapid weight loss was causing and I was starting to show signs of depression as a result. After some discussion with my doctor, the decision was made to stop taking reductil, but continue with the diet.

He wanted me to continue the exercise but without reductil my weight loss stopped, reversed and I became frustrated, stopped exercising and I regained about 20lbs weight. From what I’ve read about reductil being banned, weight gain when you stop taking it is one of the reasons it’s been banned, but the main one seems to be that it causes heart attacks and strokes, so please don’t take this as an endorsement in any way and don’t try to source it from some dodgy ‘internet pharmacy’.

Since then, I’ve been watching what I eat but I returned to my sedentary lifestyle. I’ve focused on my diet and while I haven’t cut out any of the foods I love, I have learned to cook most of those dishes myself and with cooking from fresh ingredients when possible I have continued a much healthier path to weight loss. I am sharing these recipes on my new (with a little help from Elly) website NotJunkFood.net at the moment and will continue to do so.

I’ve managed to lose weight slowly but consistently for an extended period of time without adding a large amount of exercise to my lifestyle. It’s been fresh ingredients, portion size, frequency of meals, daily breakfast and drinking cold water that have got me this far.

There is only so much weight loss that can be achieved though diet alone and I fear I’m approaching that point, so I need to exercise more and I hate exercise, I’m not fit. This is going to be difficult for me, to say the least, but it has to happen, it’s going to happen, I am already making this happen.

Beginning today I will walk a mile everyday and keep an eye on things to see how it goes, adding to this meagre amount of exercise as I need to/am able to. My next target is to get myself under 200lbs (round numbers are good goals ), then 183lbs (BMI of 24.9 for me and within the ‘normal’ BMI, just) and my ultimate goal is 170lb. I’m looking forward to that day, it will mean the end of my weight loss and the start of weight maintenance.

The afternoon before my mother died, I promised her I would lose the weight, not for her but for me. I will not let anything stand in the way of me keeping that promise and I will achieve all of these goals before the end of this year. The time has come, this is my personal call to arms, this is my mission, this is my right and this will be done.

Now I want, no, I need to hear from people reading this, Do you need to lose weight? What are your weight loss goals? What have you been doing about them? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? The comment form is below so have your say.