What I wouldn’t give for a pizza.

I’m trying to lose some weight.

That probably puts me in the same boat as thousands of other Americans – the primary difference being that I’m attempting to do so via lifestyle alterations rather than expensive surgeries or shady supplements. Of course, I have a semi-rare advantage in this area: I already did it once before so I know it can be done again.

During the seven or so months I spent living in Japan I managed to drop a significant amount of weight. This was entirely by accident and, if you can believe it, I actually recall being surprised when I caught a glance of myself in a mirror whilst touring China. The weight loss was the result of lifestyle changes that were made completely unconsciously and enforced by the culture I was living in and the circumstances in which I found myself (poor). Of course, upon my return to the States I gained most of that weight back within a year or so but eventually managed to reach equilibrium by removing soda from my diet in all its forms.

Since moving to Madison, though, old habits returned. Of course the blame really rests with my own lack of self-control but, in true American Spirit, I will instead blame the cooler at work. It is chock full of succulent free drinks – fruit juices, vitamin waters (how fucking stupid are they?) and sodas of all kinds. Their low cost and ready availability would be my demise, along with the general stress of being a working man in a new city. Getting home tired each day, the thought of actually preparing healthy foods generally lost to the ease of frozen French fries, boxed macaroni and cheese, hotdogs and Pizza Hut. Combined with the typical sedentary office life, these factors conspired to make me…well, kind of a fatass. Let’s not pull punches here.

Anyway, I decided something had to be done a few weeks ago and, thus, set out to change my lifestyle as best I can. The first two major changes: strictly enforcing a 1600 Calorie daily menu and riding my bike to and from work twice a day (in the morning, home and back for lunch, and home in the evening). The former started out very rocky. Having gotten used to eating way more than I should, I found myself almost constantly hungry. However, the thought that I’d certainly existed on a similar diet for half a year in Japan reminded me that if I could only get used to the smaller, healthier portions again things would get easier. And, I’m happy to say, they mostly have.

I’ve managed to stay pretty much on this program for an entire month so far, during which I’ve dropped around 6 pounds. In the past two weeks I’ve added a 22 mile bike around one of the local lakes to my Saturdays which should, hopefully, help me increase that rate. Having bought a fairly accurate bathroom scale was also a good idea. I was on the fence at the start. I knew I was overweight – that much was obvious just by looking – but it didn’t gel until I saw the dreaded number two in the hundreds column of that seven-segment display. I have never, at any point in my life up until now, weighed that much, and the realization of such galvanized my motivation.

The long-term goal is to get down to around 170, which should put me safely in the healthy weight range for my height. For now I’m just hoping to see 189 by the time I head to my little brother’s high school graduation party in July. That’s a pretty conservative target, I know, but I figure it’s better to aim low and surpass it so as to keep myself motivated.

The ability to convincingly lie to oneself is probably the single greatest success factor in weight loss.

Pre-update preparation.

This is just a brief update to let everyone know that I’m officially moved in and have completed my first week of work at Human Head. There’s a bit to talk about, of course: stuff regarding the new apartment, the trials of my first week in a new city, details regarding my first week and how that went, etc. I’m still not quite decompressed enough to say much, though, so I’m going to hold off on making a real post until the end of the weekend.

Sufficient to say, so far, that things are going about as well as can be expected. The apartment is satisfactory and everyone at Human Head has been friendly and helpful, thus far, so I’m pretty happy with that. I haven’t had much of a chance to explore Madison for multiple reasons, not least of which has been the ridiculous weather this week: sub-zero temperatures pretty much every day. Things are supposed to warm up after today, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to do more of that in the near future.

Further updates to come over the weekend, for those of you still interested.

I haven’t liked Blink 182 since I was in high school.

Things are pretty much packed up now, needing only to be loaded onto the U-Haul truck I’ll be picking up in an hour or so. Interestingly, there’s a combination of excitement and trepidation as my official “moving day” approaches. I’ve been convinced for more than a year that leaving Michigan is the Right Call when it comes to pursuing my projected career path and opening up new horizons. It’s equal parts pragmatism and idealism – obviously there’s hardly any game industry presence in this state, which is a big factor. But there’s also a sense that leaving what I know behind will, in some ineffable fashion, bring up new challenges and opportunities that I might not even realize exist right now.

Of course, until recently that was all theory. Now I’ve got to actually make the move and, perhaps more importantly, leave behind the comfort zone of familiarity. Close friends that I’ve known for years will stay behind, and though this sort of thing has been the case ever since I started college at MTU (and studied abroad in Japan, for that matter!) this time it feels different. With school and with Japan there was always the background knowledge that I would be returning to the Novi area for a summer, or for long holidays, or whatever, and that things would, if only for a few weeks, return to old-fashioned normalcy.

I’m not afraid or even worried, at least not in the traditional sense, but then the feelings themselves are tough to pin down. Soon I’ll be in a new city and a new state, working a new job in an industry I probably don’t know as well as I think I do and performing a task for which I’m almost certainly not as prepared as I think I am.

I guess this is growing up.

Fuzzy mathematics.

I don’t normally do a lot of furniture shopping, but the prospect of moving to an unfurnished space next week has compelled me to do some browsing. After bouncing among a few websites and physical storefronts I was struck by what seems (to me) to be a completely ridiculous industry practice: displaying vastly higher prices that I should “expect to pay” or “compare at.”

For example, one of the things I’m in the market for is a queen bed. According to this listing (chosen at random) on a local retailer’s website, this mattress that they sell for around $700 is apparently worth somewhere closer to $1400! There’s no indication of where I would expect to see this higher price and, in fact, all of my browsing leads me to believe that $700 is the average price for this product. So why the prevarication? Are some customers really credulous enough to look at that and think they’re getting a phenomenal deal?

At least in the case of this retailer, all it did was cause me to almost dismiss them as an option when my cursory glance revealed that they were (it appeared) way over priced.

I also dropped by Circuit City to make use of various Christmas gift cards. In an incredible stroke of luck I managed to pick up a pristine copy of Okami for less than $10 and, equally surprising, a copy of Puzzle Quest for only $20. Both of these are excellent titles that I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I haven’t yet partaken of, but getting such good deals on tough to find games makes me feel just a teensy bit better. There’s still some money left over on my gift cards that I’ll likely use to grab a wireless router for the new apartment – I’m leaning towards the tried-and-true Linksys WRT54GL, but if anyone has any other suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Finally, I couldn’t let this heart-wrenching trailer slide by without comment. I know, mentally, that this is hardly the first time Soul Calibur has included unlikely, non-canonical guest characters but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m witnessing the final gasps of this series.

It is done.

The table is all set for my relocation to the fine city of Madison – my application has been approved and I’ll be able to sign the lease as soon as I get down there to move in. As it stands now I’m looking to be out there by the end of next week, which most likely means the 17th or 18th.

The place itself is decent, not perfect but it’s inexpensive and will allow me to build up some pretty substantial savings by the time the lease is up in August. It’s a one bedroom place of moderate size with a decent kitchen, something that might not seem important but was actually pretty tough to come by. There are several downsides, of course: communal, coin-operated laundry facilities, baseboard heating and a location that’s pretty far from downtown. It is, however, closer to work than a downtown place would have been (more or less right in between the two locations).

Although I’m very excited to get started at HumanHead, I must admit that the pace of this is becoming a little bit stressful. In reality it’s been almost a month since I got the offer, but with the holidays falling right in the middle it feels like I’ve been running non-stop for quite some time. As it is I’m slated to start working “as soon as I can get out there,” which could be as late as the end of the month but it definitely feels like I shouldn’t drag things out that long. Next week makes the most sense because it’ll give me the long MLK day weekend to get things organized and under control, after which I can get started for real.

Sorry for the mundane nature of the past few posts, but this felt like a good way to get back into the swing of regular updating. Once I get moved in things will (hopefully) move in a direction that’s less generic descriptions and more entertaining.