Buffy on her way home for the first time

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.

Buffy's strange sleeping position

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

Buffy the Passenger

Thank you for being our best friend

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.

My Tenor Sax and EWI

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.

My EWI

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.

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

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.

The Home Office Before dodgy Panorama

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.

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.

Essentially, we studied our new home from top to bottom looking for thing’s that aren’t up to scratch and with only a few minor issues to report, were very happy with our afternoons work. Well apart from the fact that we’d spent hours standing on hard concrete floors and were exceptionally tired as a result.

We also took the opportunity to measure some of the rooms so we could start thinking about where things would go and planning what we needed to buy to fit the spaces we wanted.  We nearly didn’t, we were so tired.

Once we got home (the rented home that is) I logged onto IKEA’s web site to download their room planner tool and plastered across the screen was the news that they were having a 21% off sale in all UK stores to celebrate 21 years trading in the UK, starting at 6am the next morning, running till midnight that evening. We did some calculations and worked out that if we went (what with the current exchange rate and the sale) items priced at £100 sterling would end up costing us about €100. You can’t argue with that value! A call was made to my youngest sister (long time IKEA fan) to see if she wanted to come, Alas too short notice for her.

We decided to get up early, Saturday morning and hit the road. Planning to use IKEA’s delivery service to ship what we bought to Grannymar and we’d get it from there once we had the keys to the new house.

Literally 3 minutes before we were going to leave my sister texted me, to let me know she was on her way, complete with people carrier. After a bit of a wait for her, off we set. The sister had removed all but 3 seats from the people carrier as well so we had almost as much space as a ‘Hiace’ in the back.

After trekking round IKEA for most of the day and meeting up with Grannymar in the process we finally headed to the tills, paid and left, heading for the cars. Packing commenced and for a while it was looking like not even the world Tetris Champion could move these ‘bricks’ around to get them to fit. In reality we couldn’t get everything to fit in the people carrier. Thankfully, Grannymar was on hand to take the excess items that wouldn’t fit, otherwise it would have been the returns desk.

So we got most of our purchases back to Dublin with us, Grannymar is storing the sofa-bed for what we plan to use as a spare room/home office. Thankfully it will fit in either my own or Elly’s car so it shouldn’t be to difficult to get it back to Dublin. Which is probably just as well because as I type it’s the only bed we own.

For the amount that we spent, we got an awful lot, enough bookcases to cover a wall, Dining table and chairs, a sofa bed, an armchair & footstool, Light fittings for almost every room in the house, a dressing table, a crockery set, a very cool magnetic spice rack thingy and a load of other little bits and pieces. Jaysus that sounds like I’m on the Generation game

As for the shopping experience, I’ll be generous and say that shopping in IKEA is unpleasant (if it wasn’t for the price I would never shop there again) I may post again about that, I think this one is long enough for now.

1. Snagged our future home
2. Discovered an amazing sale in IKEA Belfast
3. Been to IKEA Belfast
4. Bought 2 loads of furniture
5. And last, but by no means least, possibly even most importantly, been to my nephew/godson’s confirmation.

All in all it could be described as a busy, expensive and exceptionally tiring  weekend.

Well I’ve already caught up on all my blog and news reading, my Google reader has no unread feeds left for the first time since I switched from Newsgator. although it seems to not want to allow me to add more feeds which is odd cause I know I don’t have as many as the likes of Robert Scoble but I can’t add anymore now

From my reading frenzy this morning, I see Grandad has Blognapped Granny’s Blog to wish her a happy birthday, the oul romantic! Well at least he didn’t head off tourist hunting for the day

Gizmodo seems to be getting less about the gadgets and more about the gags, these days, so much so that I hardly seem to read it anymore, could it be that the volume of posts is costing them quality? Surely not.

And Finally, over on the Blather Zeitgeist, Damien has posted a brilliant short film from Blur Studios, very funny and well worth the bandwidth and time it takes to view it.

So am I going to mow the lawn and fix the Media Centre PC today or just laze around the house all day and do nothing, It’s my day off after all.

You are my wife and best friend and these are my vows:

I vow to take care of you and comfort you.

I vow to stand up to you when I think you are wrong.

I vow to support you on the bad days and celebrate with you on the good.

I vow to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, and cry with you.

I vow to love you with all my heart and to always hold you in highest regard.

These vows I give to you today, and for all the days of our life.

So far on the schedule we have, Stonehenge, Dunkirk, Nurburg, Amsterdam, Wiesbaden, Innsbruck, Monza, Maranello, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Aix-en-provence, Troyes, Maastricht, Spa Francorchamps, Gouda, back to Amsterdam and then home. We intend to drive this! I think it’s about 6650km before we drive around any of the places we’re visiting. Are we mad? Ask me in October

Some of the more astute readers will have recognised that a few of these places would have significance to Formula 1 fans like myself and Elly. Yes, we are taking in not 1 but 2 Grand Prix. What’s more there the last 2 european races of the 2007 season, add to that the fact that Monza and Spa are 2 amazing circuits which have always had amazing races and your starting to get a picture of why were calling this a holiday of a lifetime!

We were at the european GP in Nurburg last year, so why are we returning? Well, were actually heading for the old Nordschleife circuit. We have managed to get a ticket for the Ring Taxi. Which if your not familiar is basically 1 Lap of the old circuit in a BMW M5 with 1 of 3 possible ex- BMW test-drivers at the wheel, a guaranteed sub 10 minute lap. Who knows I may be inspired to take my own car round and see if I can manange a sub 10 minute lap on the fiercest race circuit ever.

We’re also planning to spend a few days in Maranello, the home of Ferrari but also the birthplace of the performance car, where the legend that is Italian Sports cars was born. Were hoping to do a tour of the various manufacturer’s one of the days this covers Ferrari, Lambourghini,
Pagani and more.

For now, I think that’s enough details but don’t worry, I will be talking more about this as we get more details tied down.