Falon’s World

So…I have been MIA for…months now. A lot has happened but with school…I haven’t had time to write. This will be a quick catch-up…sadly truncated but the best I can do at this time.

PHOTOS

We shot some more engagement photos and also a wedding at the end of the summer. I have decided that weddings are not very enjoyable for me but I ended up taking some stuff that, after Eric’s skillful manipulation in photo shop, turned out spectacularly! He’s started playing with us having our own photography business “On The Run” but I like to just be the back up and not have anyone depend on my shots. These are two of my favorite photos (that I actually took):

KYA

Kya is a “normal” dog now, 100% with me and 95% with Adam and Eric. She’s always happy when I come home and loves to cuddle. She’s learned to wrestle with me, which is hilarious – she has pent up energy that she doesn’t know what to do with that results in her doing this weird head-body shake thing. She still adores Midas and her and Mason have just gotten to the point where they will play together, carefully. She barked and tried to block me when we had friends over awhile back – something totally new, but perhaps she’s feeling some loyalty.

MASON

This is not the only blog that has been neglected, Leapin’ Labs is sadly behind as well. I will have to catch up on that later. Mason is doing spectacularly with SAR. Really progressing well and will hopefully be taking his first test in the next month or so. We have quite a few pictures, but they’re of course not posted yet. He’s got the hang of the game and we’re just starting to add things to make it more difficult.

MIDAS

We had our very first agility trial. We NQ’d our first run, Jumpers with Weaves. Midas was puking his guts out the whole day and I was about to yank him from our second run but decided to go with my gut and run him – we got FIRST PLACE!!!! There are videos, the first one is here and the second one here. He got worse as the night went on and we had to pull from the second day. Eric was at a football game so the only photo we have is this crappy one I took with my phone:

SCHOOL

Ah school. The bane of my existence. It has taken up so much of my time. After the first couple of weeks, I started to get there around 7 am and not leave until 7 pm. Usually just going home to do more homework or more studying. It was a miserable existence and I’m so glad it’s done. It got to the point where I was unhappy all the time because I didn’t have time for anything remotely enjoyable. I lived from homework assignment to homework assignment. I never comprehended just how difficult this semester would be. The last 9 days we had 13 tests, three projects and that’s not including the homework assignments. Now I’ve started my clinical rotations – I’m at Blodgett for Micro and absolutely love it. I can only hope the rest of them go as well.

DIET AND EXERCISE

This summer I went on a massive diet and lost 30 lbs. Then I joined Snap Fitness and gained around 5 lbs back. Hopefully muscle. There are no After photos of me since working out, maybe later. These are the photos from my weight loss though:

I think this photo shows the most change, although most people comment on the change in my face…

FRIENDS

Through the misery of school, I spent an enormous amount of time with Josh and Rebecca and we’ve all become quite close. They’re some of the best friends that I’ve ever had. Here are some photos Eric took of us:

There are many, many more, including some really good ones of Adam and I:

The rest of the “good” photos are HERE. Then there are a bunch of funny ones HERE. Enjoy

THE DEATH OF OLD GOLDIE

We decided to drive Old Goldie to Marquette for the football game, leaving at 2 am. We were just north of Gaylord when Travis (who was driving at the time because Eric was falling asleep) hit a deer….totaling the van. I had to call Mom and Dad at 5 am to come and get us and we had to wait for 4 hours at the local Big Boy. The entire experience was miserable for me, compounded by some rude and heartless comments made by Mike and having to leave the van up there for $30/night…there’s no happy ending to this story. We are now down to one vehicle.

THE FUTURE

Hopefully I will be able to keep this updated better in the future…but we will see.

Oh, and now I have red hair:

Eric’s bike got stolen from the front of work a little bit ago and the insurance check (NOT covering the price of a new one, after the deductible) finally came. So, we went to the bike shop last night and Eric got a brand new mountain bike, pictures to come later I’m sure. I got a new gel seat, because mine was still bent out of shape from The Accident.

This happened to be perfect timing. We’ve started an exercise regime, the Couch to 5K method and I feel wonderful in the mornings! I love to get outside in the fresh air, not many people around. Eric, Kya and I go 3x a week and it’s lovely. Today we also added in riding our bikes to work. Which was hard for me. There were kind of a lot of tiny hills and my legs were tired after our workout. Plus, we were late . Oh well, I will only get better and faster .

Ok, so today marks the day of Week #5 for my attempt at losing 20-25 pounds. The exercising thing hasn’t been going too well, as in, I haven’t. But, Eric wants to rig something in the basement so that we can ride our bikes all winter…hopefully that will be something he actually gets around to doing (and if anyone has any suggestions on how to do it, they would be welcome). Anyway, Eric searched near and far and finally found some tortillas that I can actually eat, so my diet has branched out to include wraps – so far only tuna wraps, but the change is great! How much weight could I have possibly lost in 5 weeks? Almost 12 lbs!!! Yay me!

Ok, so I’ve been on the diet another week and these are the results:

I’ve quit eating lunch because the last salad I had I had a major gag reflex…ok, my body is tired of salad.

Eric went mass grocery shopping before work so I could eat something for lunch, and then we were both late.

I had an “off” day in which I ate whatever I wanted and drank whatever I wanted: I had two cups of coffee with creamer and pasta for lunch…but then I also had no dinner and no carbs for breakfast. So, overall? Not so bad.

Weigh-in was yesterday and I lost…ZERO pounds…yes people, zero…as in none. I was thrilled.

Today I pitched a fit (silent treatment) until Eric finally stopped for coffee, flavored gas station coffee that is. I love it. This is my reward for eating food I don’t like for over two weeks. The good news? I am now back to eating food I like and it’s still no carbs (stir fry).

The verdict? I will try this for a little longer in case this week was a fluke. But, as of right now I am maintaining at one pound heavier than I was before I started rowing. Which I can do perfectly fine eating any junk I want soooooo we’ll see.

So, that diet I started. It is working…I think. Well, I’ve lost 6 whole pounds anyway. But, I stopped running/working out, drinking loads of water and I’ve been pretty stressed out this week too, so I am thinking that any one of those, or a combination might’ve had the effect on my weight loss. But, I don’t know. So, I will be sticking to it for at least one more week and then deciding from there. Overall, I don’t think I could live like this forever. The “diet” that makes the most sense to me and that I think I will eventually go to when I reach my “target” weight is one in which you eat many small meals throughout the day. I will also keep an eye on my carbs still to make sure that not every meal is centered around them (like they were before), but I like to be able to eat what I want when I want (which is how I gained weight in the first place), I just need to learn moderation. Anyway, bye bye six pounds!!

Mom began the Atkins Diet…not for long. Then she switched to this other diet, of which I don’t know the name, but she has convinced me to try it out. It is a reduced carb diet (because there is not way in HELL I’m ever going to be able to drop all my carbs for any length of time…like not even for a whole day, uh uh, no way) where I can have one meal at which I eat carbs. My other two meals can’t have more than six carbs each. Oh, and the last meal has to be eaten within an hour time limit and has to be the same meal every day. So, I have chosen dinner as my meal and started today. I had scrambled eggs with cheese, green pepper and mushroom for breakfast and a HUGE salad with mushroom, cheese and Italian dressing for lunch (thanks to Eric, who made both – muah!). Mom is faxing over some more information/advice later (I think). She is quite adamant that if I stay on it for just one week I will be hooked. I am going to stay on it for one week and see what happens. She thinks I will positively lose five whole pounds in this one week. Which means I will be back to the weight I was at before I started rowing. We’ll see at the end of the seven days. Apparently I eat way too many carbs. Yesterday I had a bagel for breakfast, pasta for lunch and a sub for dinner…yeah that’s a lot of carbs…

My name is Falon and I am a carb-aholic.