Trick no good

Well, I said that I'd hopefully do better about updating this page, but then I didn't. Yeah me. Let's see, what have I been up to?

As you can imagine, I snuck in a little fly fishing when I could and have been getting ready for hunting season. I've been out grouse hunting a couple of times without success, but managed to get a partridge the one time I went out for them. On Friday, I went to the shooting range with a friend, and we sighted in our rifles for big game season. We had a good time but my shoulder is still pretty tender. This coming Saturday starts duck hunting season, and I managed to trade-off that day so we're going to go out and try to get some ducks. We're hoping the weather is terrible, rain or snow or both, because it's not really duck hunting if it's not.

On the home front, things are going well. I recently have been on a woodworking kick and have built a pretty cool sliding drawer for my truck and a beautiful bird feeder. I'll try to shoot some pictures and post them later. Sy and I are getting ready for a visit from her dad who'll be here in just over a week. I think it will be a good time and am looking forward to spending some time with him.

Last, but certainly not least, I finally hit my 10% weight loss goal!!! I was so happy to get there, but now begins the real work of trying to get to my 20% weight loss goal. I should clarify the percentages here. When I say ten percent weight loss, I mean that I've lost over ten percent of my starting body weight of 270. I'm currently hovering at just above 240 now, and I'm hoping to eventually get to around 200. I'm trying to keep things in perspective by going at five pound increments, but I really am looking forward to getting below 225. Sy said that she'd take me shopping for new clothes when I reach that goal, but I worry that I'll need clothes before then. I can almost pull off my jeans now without unbottoning them and will have to buy new belts soon as I'm on the last hole of all of my current ones. Fortunately, these are good problems to have. I also feel fortunate to have so much support from my friends, and have heard from you that at least four of you have joined WW at least in part to my success, so I thank you for giving me another reason to stick with it. Love to you all.

It's been awhile....

Well my friends, work has been completely insane. I've worked over thirty hours of overtime in just the past few weeks. I'll definitely take the money, but I'll be happy when things get back to normal. I like my days off a little too much to give them up.

Speaking of days off, I had Wednesday off somehow and took advantage of it by going fly-fishing down in Ennis, MT on the Madison River. I had the greatest day of fishing I have ever had! I managed to catch over thirty fish on a little over six hours! I also caught my biggest trout ever which was a gorgeous rainbow trout over 24 inches long and probably weighed over three pounds. It was huge! It took me over ten minutes to get it into my net after I hooked it. It was amazing and I felt really proud since all of the fish I caught were on flies that I had tied. But the fishing gods required a sacrifice and to start my day I broke my fly rod on a snag. Now I don't have super-expensive equipment for a reason, but my wife had bought this rod for me and it was the first fly rod I owned, so I was really upset about it and still am. I decided to run back into Ennis, which is about an hour from Bozeman, to see if I could find a decently priced replacement rod. I managed to find a really sharp looking rod for around $50 so I bought that and got back to the river. Well, apparently the fishing gods were not satisfied and on my last cast of the day, I broke the tip off of my brand new rod! I was so upset that I couldn't decide wether to puke or cry about it, so I did neither and just hiked back to the car and called it a day. It was still one of the greatest days of fishing ever.

As far as the whole weight loss thing goes, I've been holding steady at just under 245 for a couple of weeks, but I really just need to get back with the program a little better. I'm so very close to losing ten percent of my body weight. This past week I was within a half of a pound of achieving that goal, so hopefully this will be the week. We'll see. Anykerways, I've got to get back to doing whatever it is that I do around here and I'll write again soon.