Good gig but bad guitar

We kicked off our post vacation gigs with a really nice gig at the Molen in  Bavel, playing in the shadow of the big windmill. There was a nice appreciative crowd and Karlien sang really well on a lot of new songs and did a wonderful version of Rollercoaster after we agreed I can't do it justice. But Karlien and Ed sang very well, so did I which was surprising. But I fluffed a lot of my guitar stuff, I was very annoyed with myself... Its not that I hadn't been practicing, but I just fluffed so many songs, wrong chords and terrible solo's.. It was as if I was drunk... but sadly no..

Overall we got through it ok, but I need to make sure that I'm never that bad again... I think part of it was having my nails a bit too long, so I was missing strings on some picking, and catching them with some flatpicking, not great... but it was a cascade thing. Once the 1st couple of fluffs happened it got worse... almost every song had a mistake from me, oh well...

We sang very well and people didn't notice it as much as I did... hope we get an invite next year.

It was also nice to have some of our regular followers comment on how much weight I've lost, so that was nice and a good motivator.. The weight loss is certainly slowing down, but I keep at it, and resist the cheats. Starting to lift some light weights as well, to begin the toning process before I start to increase the protein intake a bit.. Hopefully we'll break 90 in Sept, and would be great to be below 85 before our October break.

Ahthankyew

There it is..

94.7 :D finally hitting proper 94....feels good..  Things are slowing down a lot of course, but its no longer a straight 200-300g a day it does depend a lot on how many cheats I have and also honestly...how often I go to the loo. Constipation is sadly a side effect of this type of diet, so there are sometimes a few days of accumulation if you get my meaning..so after a few days... of ahem.. nothing.. I can expect to lose a few kilo's again soon :D

(notice, its spelled lose... I am getting so sick of reading loose on-line, do people not know how to spell....which is saying something coming from a dyslexic old windbag)

Back to work this week, its been pretty straightforward we had most of our prep work done before we broke up so just finalising and checking has been simple.. We now wait to get the details on our new students, who start in Sept, and then we can kick off. As usual, I'll be doing a beginners class each week, which will hopefully catch a few of the students who squeezed through the intake but don't really have the skills. Happens every year sadly, for various reasons, but its a pain to have these lost students falling behind from day one... so the extra class sometimes helps a few of them get a lift up. or just as good for them, to realise they are in the wrong course.

And now of course at the end of this first block I get to go off for a few weeks to Thailand, taking advantage of our Autumn holiday and my sustainable hours to do the edits for the 2nd edition of the book.

Which is progressing nicely, as far as the text is concerned, but need to make more progress on the code examples which are going to be quite different.  I get to combine, work and lovely holiday/research in just a few months... perfect.

Ahthankyew

Strange but true

Very odd, but still not hitting 94 yet, keep wobbling around 95-96, no real cheating, though it does seem every small piece of chocolate or scoop of icecream puts on 1kg ....

Back to work now, so a bit more mobile using the bicycle to get to and from work, and those lovely (groan) stairs every day... just have to stick with it and get even more serious about not having anything more than my 1 low cal meal a day..  Not sure I can cut that down any more, just try to delay eating it till as late as possible.

Sold the 1st of my prized guitars last week, and already having major sellers remorse as I look at the space in the guitar unit where Ruby, my prized Les Paul stood... but.. I can also look at the savings account and take a bit of comfort that the savings have gone up.. Hoping to sell the Traps Drums this week to old bandmate Kees who tried them out last week and noted a small fault which I quickly fixed when he left. The drums are not going to be a huge income, but the space saving in the studio will be nice.

I need to also start advertising the other instruments/equipment and putting some ads out there....its painful but its the only way, the sooner the money is in the bank earning a bit of interest, the better.  It will do more good in my account than it will in the studio not being played.  Brexit has buggered up using Ebay though, its near impossible to ship anything of value to or from the UK, so I will have to list some things on local sites and try ebay.nl which isn't very popular,..But I'll try ebay and see how it goes.

I still have not finished my totalling up of the shed model treasure trove, but will try to do that in the next few days.

My Thai lessons are really falling behind, I can't keep up and thats a bit demotivating. It takes me 2 or 3 days for the content to sink  in, but with a new lesson every day, I find myself getting falling behind.. But no matter, its online so I can do it at my pace, I just wanted to have a firmer grasp of things before our trip in October.

Ahthankyew

now stay under

Back to 95.5, lets see if I can avoid any cheats and get below 94 by the weekend.

Last week of the holidays, and yup, very few of my chores got done, which is bad, but... I did fill the time with other things and have enjoyed the rest.

Most amazing was discovering I have a bit of a treasure trove in the shed... all those models I had planned to build when I retire turn out to be worth a pretty penny.. Since we now plan to retire to Thailand, its not going to be practical to ship boxes and boxes of models over. So I casually enquired online what they were worth.......wow. Anything from 4-6K, Thats amazing... I won't get that of course, since people will only want to cherry pick the good kits, (one is worth over 300euros????) but I've had a couple of resellers interested in buying all for a few grand... that will probably be the best option. Since I really need to clear them out, and can't wait years to sell off the last Airfix Gnat kit or whatever the lowest value one is... So I'll take a hit to get rid of them all, and clear out the shed so its more usable for some DIY or proper storage.

I have to finish listing all the models, their curent low and best prices, and setting a reasonable 2nd hand offer price...its taken days but its been interesting and fun research... I've got a few part built/started kits I will keep and try to finish, but not sure my 20yo paints will be quite up to it :D

Ahthankyew

damn... 1 cheat..

I cheated once.. just once,, had an extra burger and a bar of chocolate and back over 96.. grrr, there's just no cheating allowed is there.

Ok so bike ride and no eating, which will be hard as Im batch cooking a load of chicken samosa's today... maybe I'll just have one of those for dinner...

damn...

Ahthankyew

Breaking another wall and spoiled surprise.

After hitting 95.9 I assumed I'd keep dropping but clearly it was just a wobble, 96.x kept coming back despite maintainig the diet... frustrating for almost a week, but eventually and after one minor lapse, the 95.9 is back again, hopefully not to bounce again.. Going to get a bit more bicyling in today to try to keep the enegy levels up and burn the cals.

The Diet is however still going well.. no eating after 8 and trying to keep to 1 low call meal a day around 6 or 7... there's no doubt my calorie intake is low.. If I was a bit more active it would drop a bit quicker, but I sense I'd be a lot hungrier too, which I might not be able to resist....we'll see... an occasional cheat is normal...but lets keep it to once a fortnight, not every other day.

Got hit with a delayed medical bill yesterday too, Jirawan had a butt load of tests on her skin condition in Feb, but they didn't charge us, until yesterday..ouch...250euros In NL the first 375 of your medical bills you have to cover youself, after that in a given year, its all covered by the insurance.. So that will be the last big bill of  her tab till Jan. They've put her on some very strong (and expensive) biological drugs that seem to be helping her psoriasis, though she hates to do the pen injections.  So we'll probably have to lump out a chunk of change in Jan if she's still on them, as seems likely.

Also despite wanting to keep it a surprise, Jirawan discovered my workbook, for learning Thai, and now she's testing me on my numbers and pronounciation, which is actually frustrating as I'm very early in the process and still having issues with remembering core vocab and tones... I can't serve two teachers lol.. but she's pleased that Im trying... Now that she knows, I can do my class every day not just the days shes at work but Im locking myself in the room when I do it.

Ahthankyew

when was it?

I had a look back in this blog history just now to try to locate the last time I was on a mega diet.... and there's been a few of them... But one that stood out was 2012 when I was......89kg..  wow, so I've been over 90kg more or less since then.. I hovered around that weight for a while before giving in and growing to the ballon I was/am/tryingnottobe.

Todays amazing 95.9  has me continuing a rapid drop, caused by extreme fasting... of only 1 low cal meal per day... which will see me heading back to that sub 80 level again in a month or so...

12 years though... eek and I considered that heavy at the time... 

this pic was 11 years ago so you can see where I was..

Well I got the bicyle tyers pumped up and ready and am going to cycle a bit today and get back into doing that to get around short distances... a mild bit of excercise but exercise none the less.

Ahthankyew

keep going keep going

Dieting is hard, I should effing know.... but I'm motivated and determined and staying, largly off the booze... so my will power is keeping on top of the hunger pangs. It vanishes after the 2nd rum/tequila

96.5kg today, continuing my 100-400g a day loss. I have had a bit of museli this afternoon, to help prevent the previously mentioned bunged up effects, but generally I'm finding my evening wraps to be all I need to eat. The longer I can leave it before my cut off point of 8pm the less hungry I am at bed time when the will power is potentially low.

So 2 weeks from now I should start seeing 80's and then I start excercising... why not now? Well.. I am genuinly very fat and very overweight for a slim cute chap like me, ...who's laughing at the back??? And I need to drop quite a bit before I can start putting my heart and my creaky knees to a severe test... oh also I'm almost 61... so while I see the need and benefit of excercise, it does nothing to reduce my distate for it or the risk of doing too much too soon..so I'll start in earnest when I get down to the 80's. Some nice walks and moving around as much as possible are fine for now, I'll also get the bicycle tyres pumped up and have a little zip around town on that....maybe to the kebab....nope... no no no...

its going well.......

Ahthankyew