De-clutter continues and weight drops

With the loss of my beloved guitars, there's no need now for a big old guitar vault in the attic, so I've dismantled it over the course of a day or 2, and its all in a neat pile waiting for a collegue from work who wants to take it and reassemble it at home... that will be an interesting jigsaw puzzle :D

I'm also midway through decorating the attic, putting wallpaper up at last to cover the plasterboard walls that were installed 14/15 years ago... I know, long time but I never minded the plasterboard walls... Different if its a useful room though. 

All part of the tidy and declutter process that is happening this summer, to make the house more attractive to family buyers. Our estage agent would rather target developers/project minded couples but I also think that its wise to make sure all the minor decorating/cleaning/updating jobs that need doing get done so that  we can target small families in no rush to change the functioning if dated kitchen and bathroom we have now.

This has a bonus on the diet though, since I am very active up and down stair and steps and getting paint/wallpaper sorted, I am losing chunks of weight each day with the 800kcal or so wrap diet.

from the start of 108kg I'm down now to 101.8, touching distance of under 100 which I should hit by the end of the week.

But the attic is a key sales point of these houses, that 3rd floor bedroom/studio/store whatever, needs to wow the viewers, so the tidy up is priority, not least because we've got family coming to  visit next week and there will be at least one of the grandkids sleeping there for a week, so clean, tidy and decorated is urgent.

Next up is the back yard, the decking has to go as its long past its useful days and its now rotting and unsafe... going to rip that all up for the skip and lay down some nice simple grass with border flowers...

Appearences, valid or not.....sell houses, once the tidy up is done I'll get my estate agent to  come back for another valuation. His current one is in my mind about 25K too low, I will try to convince him 15K more is possible. Then... we put the house on the market....scary.

Ahthankyew

An Awesome start

Though its not exactly unexpected, when you go on strict intake diets, your body needs a few days to get ride of the crap you'be been eating for 6 months. But I am actually working quite hard, up and down stairs, doing a lot of moving stuff around and by default something I believe is called excercise?

But I've been dropping nearly 1kg a day for 4 or 5 days, for sure most of that is down the toilet, but some of it is indeed sweat and work.  I've gone from a rough 108kg with  clothes and a bit bunged up due to loperomide, to an encouraging 104.1kg

So nearly 4kg in 4/5 days, a good start, but it is just a cleansing period.

I'm doing the wrap diet, 1 simple taco wrap, with a protein of some kind, often fish, or 1 sausage, and lettuce/cabbage/onion/carrot/bit of sauce.  Trying to eat it as close to my 8pm deadline as I can so I don't get too hungry before bed.
Its what I did before, and lost over 18kg so I know this works, the only issue I had was the lack of focus and distraction due to hunger during the day, even though I got used it it over time it wasn't easy so this time I am adding,  a small fruit and musili breakfast to keep me going through the day... no booze.. no snacks, nothing after 8

I'll drop or at least reduce the portion of brekkie in a few weeks once I'm on the burning fat path, not the cleansing and getting used to being hungry path.

It worked last time, quite well and should work quite well this time too. 

Of course once my body has cleared itself out and it balances the intake vs the output, I don't expect such massive drops each day, but I'll be happy with 2 or 300 grams a day.

The 80 day challenge is off and running.

Ahthankyew

It just won't stay off

The weight of course, its becoming a recurring topic and probably pretty boring.. But yeah.. its back and brought some friends...

Its been a stressful few months, though not in a chasing my own tail kinda way, just lots of things to do/get done and thats resulted in lots and lots of comfort eating... not helped by my lovely wife who hates to see me hungry... its an asian thing I think.. no matter how much I tell her I need to eat less, she insists on cooking a meal for 2 just for me....

Well we retire in 153 days now, so I've given myself 153 day challenge... it won't happen, but at least if I type it here I can look back at it in 6 months and be a bit annoyed with myself.

I am 108kg... back over the 100 and then some.. I need to be 70 by the time I get there... or Im going to be suffering from chaffing in parts that shouldn't be chaffing when we get over there...hot weather and pasty fat scotsman do not mix well.

38Kg in just under 22weeks... lets see.... No fancy diets, just starvation and more movement...the wrap diet worked really well last year, so 1 wrap for a main meal and no eating after 8.... lets see how it goes..

Just need to work out how to keep Jirawan from making any more crispy pork.

Ahthankyew

tickets ok but...

We have new tickets for Jirawan they have a different refernce number which was confusing, and we can't check in via the eDreams website, but we can check in via SIA... so...flight wise we're finally sorted.

Hotel wise, I'm a little less sure, on eDreams site our booking is showing as pending cancellation, which I am am hoping does not include the hotel....but thats not showing as cancelled, only booked as the day of our departure rather than the day of our arrival. But... meh... that should be fixable

We fnally have a result though... what a palava

Ahthankyew

No more Credit Card

Almost 2 years ago, my credit card company took the decision to cancel my spread payment facility, in other words the ability to use my credit card as a credit card... Buy big items and pay them off....

It wasn't just me, it was everyone, there was a government policy to reduce credit and the banks were instructed to remove spread payments. For me this was a problem as it had come at a point where I had just hit the card very heavily with payments for trips to Thailand and hotels and the balance was pretty high, close to the 10K limit I had;. a limit I had as a result of being an excellent customer always paying off even high balances as quickly as possible.

But cancel it they did, my limit went from 10K to 500 no K , overnight and they kindly requested payment by the end of the month!!! They later reduced it further to 200, useless.

I was, needess to say, very upset by this and wrote, emailed, phoned them in the nicest diplomatic language, what the fuck did they think they were doing?

Anyway I made it clear there was no way I was going to manage to pay it in a month, or even 3 months as they suggested so I made a couple of big payments and simply told them I'd pay it off monthly but I'd never ever use their service agan.

And that's what I've been doing, sticking in some bonus money when it came, and paying extra each month.

But now, I have been selling a lot of stuff so there's a bit of spare cash to clear it off, I made the last 702.95 payment today.. The credit card is gone.

And I will NEVER use their services again.. not least becuase I am leaving NL but also it was a shocking betrayal of customer/provider trust.. They made the point several times that I was a very good reliable customer, always clearing the card despite yearly bumps... but sorry give us the money now...

Thats just not good business...I appreciate it was a government mandate, but a gradual reduction over a few years, would have been just as effective and less painful to my budget.. 

anyway, done... bye ICS, never again

Ahthankyew

Guitarectomy, no anesthetic

Sold two mid ticket guitars yesterday on marktplats, was very pleased with that, but when the chap came to  collect, he asked what else I had......

4 Gibsons, 1 PRS, 1 Ovation, 1 Danelectro and some pedals gone.

My prized Lucille and Libby my Blueshawk have gone.... god it hurts, I mean I got a good price for them, he got a good discount too, but ouch... I'm in mourning big time, I LOVED those guitars, really loved them.. and now they are gone.

Someone chopping onions in here?

on the plus side the retirement fund makes a big jump and we're over the visa threashold,  and there's still quite a few mid range guitars to sell, so there's more to come, not sure my heartstrings can take it though. But just focus on what that fund will let us do.

Ahthankyew

Almost over

Both the airline drama and the academic year.

We're in that final week of checking everthing has been graded and returned and no students are left out. It goes from being manic busy to... a kind of, don't look around, its too quiet..

But for sure thats the academic year pretty much done. I played my last 2 graduation gigs with Starrcase, and mighty gigs they were too. I love being partly responsible for a hundred or more people bouncing about, or as they called it. Dancing.

There's going to be at least 1 more Starrcase gig though ,we have at least 1 more farewell party for Marcel, which I will try to combine with mine, meaning that Starrcase will lose 3 members, Jelmer 2 isn't retiring but he is stepping back from the band, which will leave them looking for a new Bassist, Drummer and of course whatever it was I did.

I will be sad on that last gig, I really will, it kinda hit me just typing this how much I've enjoyed being part of this band for ohh I dunno.. 12years?? can't quite recall, its been a family to me and helped me so much in hard times.. That last gig will probably be a gusher.

No new tickets yet, a couple of update messages from eDreams confirming a cancellation.. which is a word I didn't use when discussing ticket changes but I'm not going to stress yet, it wouldn't surprise me if they messed up the name change, but it does seem that may just be the way SIA have arranged things with them, cancel and rebook. We've got time for the tickets to arrive.

I've got a lot of copyedited content from the publisher to look over so that book can be totally finalised, not currently too happy with the way this is being handled, due to some technical faults that are preventing me from actually approving/rejecting changes but we'll get it sorted.

And thats kinda it, a few more days next week to wrap things up at work, probably some drinks and then 5 weeks of staying in bed till 10... oh I am getting old, it used to be just staying in bed till whatever but I seldome sleep past 9 these days... old age suks

166 days to retirement... its getting closer.

Ahthankyew