Rob's Feed of Life, Music and Geek

Rob is a musician and a geek. Visit the MySpace page below to hear what he sounds like.

Days 8 & 9: Rob Works From Home & A Regular Normal Day

So - my big fat blog. I went AWOL this past week - life got in the way, mostly in the good sense. I've got a fair amount of retrospective blogging to do - starting with these two days which I can write up in a shortish post.

On day 8 I worked from home - it was a bloody revelation. 

Working from home is a very different experience to a day in the office:
  1. I spend far less of my time walking while wishing that I wasn't. Admittedly, for my massive fatness the walking's probably a good thing - but Scotland's freezing, so walking is consistently a regrettable chore. Man, I wish I could teleport - that would certainly sweeten the office experience.
  2. I don't feel like crap at the end of the day. I think it might be a result of sitting in an office all day. Not that the office I work at is especially uncomfortable, just that my home PC setup is the laziest possible - I have my monitor mounted on a swingarm that hangs over my bed. Lazy + geek = fat!
  3. I'm able to work way past close of business. At the office, I often work a while past 5, but once I've left the office my flow's thoroughly broken and there's slim-to-none chance of me getting any work done once I'm home. If I'm already at home when I'm working, I can just keep working through dinner etc, which is hella-productive. Flow is good.
Day 9 was blah - an everyday normal day if you will.

And I've discovered that I quite like HTML lists.

Day 7: No More Pasta; Space Odyssey Is Crap

Seriously though, those two in the title are pretty much all I have for today:

  1. Apparently the low-GI diet means you can still eat healthier types of carbs. But that sounds like a compromise, which ain't going to cut it for this plan: no compromise is how it has to be. So pasta's out, and it's on the list: no more til these 1024 days are done.

  2. Me and Jim watched 2001: A Space Odyssey - and I've reached the conclusion that it's an overrated, pretentious bunch of arse. Don't get me wrong, the soulless drone from HAL made me laugh - particularly his rendition of Daisy ("a bicycle built for two" etc) - but that doesn't excuse the complete lack of actual plot for 95% of the film. The first 20 and the last 40 minutes were almost entirely redundant. I think Jim summed it up well with: "I've seen bad episodes of Star Trek better than this".

By the way, I'm working from home tomorrow because the people I work for are decent. The office is cool but it gets pretty difficult to get stuff done sometimes with random interruptions - gonna be good to focus on one thing at a time and just get it done! And to be able to work while wearing shorts and listening to Aphex Twin at an ungodly volume obviously.

Laters, wot.

Day 6: A Monday Monday

Woke up pretty late and ended up getting a taxi to work so that I could get there in time. One of those days.

Managed to go a whole day without caffeine. If it comes down to it, I'd rather take Pro Plus than drink Irn-Bru/Coke/Coffee/Tea, but thankfully today I managed without any.

Had roast pork for dinner - in the low-carb style of consumption. One way or another, I think low-carbing may be a necessary step to fixing this body!

Me and my two bros hired kilts earlier btw (for next weekend) - hopefully I'm gonna get a black one which will be a nice counterpoint to the garishly bright-coloured ones that I've picked in the past. My nephew Corin got measured up for a kilt too - he's gonna look hilarious!

Days 4 & 5: A Stag Party Saturday & a Heavy Sunday

I considered splitting this into two posts but I decided that it makes more sense to keep them together. Long story short: Alan's stag party on Saturday was great, but after I left at 2am on Sunday morning one of my friends (Jamie, the bride-to-be's brother) was involved in a serious accident. So Sunday was pretty crazy, waiting on updates from the hospital.
To start from the beginning - my friends Alan and Sam are getting married next weekend. I've known Alan since I was about 13, and he's been ones of my best mates ever since. I knew Sam in high school too, but I only really got to know her properly since she got together with Alan a few years ago. Both of them are basically family to me, and it's nice to be part of their wedding - they've asked me to play a song for them at the service at Neidpath Castle.
On Saturday 15 of us sailed down the river in 2 rubber dinghies & 2 canoes - definitely an Alan Hunter-style stag party! We had to stop a few times for repairs (one of the boats only survived due to a pile of duct tape) - but I reckon it was the best trip down the river I've ever been on. I've gone the river with Alan a few times before, but never with so many mates at once.
We got out by the quarry near Glentress forest and had a barbecue featuring massive piles of steaks and burgers. Eventually the BBQ evolved into a rave - a mate of Alan's brother was having his birthday party there the same night. The techno was pretty hideous (and most of my mates agreed) so went up the hill and chilled out in the ruins of an old castle. It's right of the top of the hill, and you can see right from one end of the valley to the other. Was an amazing night, and not one I'll forget anytime soon.
Sadly, the next day I woke up to hear that Jamie had an accident at the quarry a couple hours after we left. I still don't know exactly what happened - but somehow he ended up falling on some rocks. Apparently he landed headfirst - but his left arm protected his head and took a lot of the impact. From the latest update I've had - thankfully his head is OK, but his lower back is broken in two places, his neck's broken in a couple of places and his arm's been broken really badly. He's been taken up to a hospital in Glasgow for them to work on his neck. I've never had a friend hurt like this before, it's horrible - I can't imagine what it's like for Jamie but I'm sure that him and his family must be going through hell right now.
All I can hope is that Jamie is OK - and I really hope he knows that we're all thinking of him.

Day 3: Food & Banter on Arthur's Seat

To celebrate Jim's birthday (which was on Thursday) we went up to Arthur's Seat with Will (my brother), Rowan (Will's missus) and Corin (my nephew). We got takeout food to take up there - me & Jim got kebabs (low carb tastiness) and the others brought a pile of chocolate-based munch (which I didn't treat myself to). Too many brackets for one paragraph?

Anyway, it was awesome up there - the views are unbelievable - you can see over the whole city right to the sea. All the others went out-of-sight up to the top of a hill at one point, while I kicked back and played guitar. A friendly couple of blokes walked by and I said hello - only realising afterwards what a ridiculous sight it must have been for them: a fat bloke sitting in the middle of nowhere playing guitar, surrounded by 2 empty kebab boxes, chocolate milkshake, cookies and some kid's toy. They must've thought I was one seriously weird dude.

Day 2: Water is for drinking?

I've started drinking water again. It definitely lacks flavour, but today I was reminded that I can taste other food more clearly that way. There's a sandwich shop across the road from my work and they make an unbelievably bitching roll with Chicken Caeser, sun blush tomatoes, mozzarella and guacamole. I had one for lunch today - bread will probably end up being on my banned list, but it's definitely better than Irn-Bru and sugarlicous tastiness of my downfall!

Part of this mission to get my shit together goes beyond my fat ass - such as the need to get my ridiculous sleep pattern (or lack thereof) sorted. With that in mind, it's nearly 2am and I'm actually properly shattered for once. So - I'm gonna click Publish then drift into the flipside!

Day 1: Rob Declares War

I'm fat - proper fat. I'll weigh myself in the morning to get an exact figure but I reckon I must be about 22 stone now. Maybe a bit under, maybe a bit over - either way it ain't pretty!

So, long overdue - I'm declaring war on my morbesity! I've set myself a target of being under 14 stone in 1024 days. Truth be told - I want to weigh more like 12 or 13 stone, and I'd like to reach a decent weight much sooner, but I'm trying to be realistic about it. Even if I could get the weight off in half the time I've set, from past experience I know that I'll need to keep it off for ages before I could even consider moving back to any kind of regular diet (not to imply that the crap I currently consume could be considered regular).

When I was at Uni I did Atkins for a while, and went from 17 stone down to 13.5 stone. I kept it off for about 6 months or so, but eventually put it all back all back on, with a couple extra stone on top. After another shot at half-arsed Atkins I went from 19 stone to about 14 stone.  Over a fairly long period, I put it all back on and reached the olympic level of portly-ness that I'm now at.

Long story short - I'm crap at moderation, but surprisingly good at following uncompromisingly hardline rules, so my plan will be based on that approach. Having said that, I can't in good conscience throw out food that I already own - so I'll be phasing out the danger junk in the next week or two (not buying any more though).

Food abandoned #1: Irn Bru. I love a good bottle of ginger, and quite frankly I'll miss it - but no other food or drink has contributed as much damage to my body as this one - so it's a no-brainer. I had my last bottle at work earlier, and I won't drink another drop of it for at least another 1024 days.

I've not figured out any other rules etc yet, except that I should blog here every day with my progress. It might not always be a long post, but I reckon it's necessary to make sure that I keep going and pushing this plan forward.

P.S. I haven't sorted a decent template etc for this page yet, but I've learnt that the important thing is the content. Both this site's name and the whole plan has been significantly influenced by 43folders.com - which had a great quote about starting early, then building upon the base as an iterative process. Consider this first post here, published before even uploading a profile picture of myself, a direct result of that quote.