THE C-MAN CHRONICLES

Sup Yos!

Alright, so it's been a few days since I have updated this site. As my title suggests, I have several bits of news; some good, some bad and some ugly.

The most notable is the good. I changed the site design. I wasn't too pleased with the last site design and wanted something that felt less like a blog and more like a personal site. I found this design template and thought it was pretty good. So far I like it although I want to figure out how to change some of the font colours on the side. The twitter updates are black which makes it hard to read against the dark brown background colour but for now, it'll have to do. I decided to also put up a contact page, an about me page that is pretty much a summary of why I have this blog, and added several of my favourite links to the side such as addictinggames.com, superherohype.com and batman-on-film.com. I'm a geek, and if you are reading this, you are most likely a geek too ;)

The bad news is that I was recently promoted. I am now what they call an Escalated Supervisor for Customer Service. I am pretty much the last possible person you can speak too if you have a complaint or want to register a compliment for one of the employees at the pizza call centre I work for. Why is this bad? Well, the reality is that I wanted it for the pay raise and it looks good on a resume. So it's not crazy bad but the other reality is that I have to talk with pretty much the most pissed off people which means if I don't give people what they want (and I don't always give in unfortunately) I get threatened that people will go to the press, the newspapers, other businesses, or even my own bosses to explain what a terrible job I'm doing. I am new at the job still, so I haven't completely been able to brush off the threats but I figure a few weeks should do the trick and I'll be comfortable with it in no time.

Now for the ugly news. With the promotion came celebration. In fact, so much celebration that I didn't get a chance to really work out. At all. From Thursday until today, I have done nothing in terms of exercising and what's worse is that I actually ate mostly junk food including pop, cookies, pizza, and I'm sure there's more. It started out as a Friday and Saturday type of celebration but Friday and Saturday got extended with a visit to my parents for dinner on Sunday. Then Monday came and I can tell you that yesterday was pretty much the worst day for being disappointed so far in 2010. I was suppose to spend the day with my friend Kim, Tony and Tiffany in Toronto and go to the Muse concert at night. What ended up happening, to be short, is that Tiffany bailed because her aunt had an appointment and she had to work. Tony decided to find someone else to go, and managed to convince his best friend's sister to go. Kim and I didn't know her, and he ended up getting better tickets so he bailed on Kim and I, giving us the two tickets he originally had. Then Kim decided to invite just one of her friends which made it awkward because the four tickets we had were split so that two seats were in one section, and the other two were in another section. I didn't want this new friend of Kim's to sit by himself, and I sure as hell wasn't driving to Toronto so I could sit by myself; so I decided not to go. Jordana took me out to get over my disappointment but it just lead to more. Not her fault, but we went to Kelsey's to eat and I gave in and had pop and pizza. Then we went to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland which was actually really anti-climatic. I love Tim Burton films but I just found that the last three movies he's done don't really have enough substance for a person like me to enjoy and really walk away blown away. I can honestly say that I don't even know one part that really made me laugh.

So what was suppose to be a Friday and Saturday celebration ended up being a four day vegfest. I gained all the weight I lost back. Now, I don't know if it's necessarily fat, it could be muscle as my arms are looking more toned and tighter, but it's very discouraging. I'm not going to cry about spilled milk though, and I just looked at this as motivation to keep on exercising and not let the small things get in the way. In one week, I went from 198.5 lbs to 193.8 lbs. I'm now 199.1 lbs. I can lose the weight again. So today, I'm back on the wagon and by next Tuesday, I'll be back to 194 lbs! And this time, I'm going to go full throttle with the P90x and treadmill!

On a side note, at least my face hasn't gained the weight back. It's actually looking slimmer. ;) Talk to you soon and hope you like the new design!

Simon
Current Weigh In: 199.1 lbs

Sup Yos!

Today I woke up feeling really good. I did the P90x yesterday but I didn't do cardio. I felt kinda bad about not doing the cardio, but again, it was one of those days that it seemed to take a back seat. I made sure that when I had got home, I still did the P90x. I didn't do too bad this time around but still no where near what I'd like to be able to accomplish. The one thing I will note is that somehow, I'm learning to do these exercise with proper form. It's always easy to see what people are doing on the television or laptop but to actually do what they are doing is another story. So I focused a lot of trying to make sure my form was correct, even if it meant I could only do 3 reps. Luckily this morning, I woke up feeling good and tight. I usually look down at my stomach and think 'man, I'm still fat' but today, I had a more positive reaction. I for once felt that I was losing weight and getting a lot more toned. I weighed myself and came in at 194.3 lbs. So a bit of a gain but keep in mind that this could be the fluctuation in the morning that's normal, as well as it could be muscle that I've gained as muscle weighs more than fat. So all in all, I'm happy.

I've also decided to keep these blogs very short. I think what I will do is write one big write up at the end of each week and keep the daily ones small. At this point, everything is pretty routine. So I don't want to keep the saying the same things over and boring you, whoever you are. So expect a big write up on Monday and until then, take it easy.

Simon
Current Weigh In: 194.3 lbs

Sup Yos!

So the past two days have been very sloppy for me. I have been doing some needed cleaning around the house, and working on music. The side project is getting together next Tuesday and we plan to just have a fun jam session with cover tunes to get a feel for the musical chemistry and see what we want to do, in terms of music style, direction, image and all of that fun stuff. So my weight loss has taken a back seat unintentionally. I did weigh myself today and I've still manage to lose weight. I am around 193.9 lbs to 194 lbs. So I'm still motivated and I think that there's nothing wrong from taking a break everyone one or two days. I think I still managed to do half an hour of cardio every day so that might have worked in my favour.

Because the last few days were very boring, uninteresting, and not really worth chatting about, I can say that this is going to be a small blog write up. I did manage to talk to Irvin who says that the album is coming along great and that he has already finished three songs vocally. His voice is a bit strained so it's important that he takes some rest to make sure the other songs have as much energy as the first three. Trust me, in the end, you'll be glad he did!

Like always, when I know more, I will tell you more. As for me, time to get back on that weight loss/exercising wagon once again. I'm doing good so I still am going for gold and hope to lose another 3-4 pounds by Monday! Take it easy until then!

Simon
Current Weigh In: 194 lbs

Sup Yos!

So today marks the end of the first week, and the beginning of a new week. Last week, I tried my best to just stick to drinking water and I achieved that. I can't remember a single time I drank anything other than water, but more importantly, I can't remember being tempted to drink anything else. That's really impressive for me because I am a pop addict. As for the working out, I did my best. I had one day where I didn't work out at all which is not bad and most experts suggest to take one day off a week. The problem is that I only really did the treadmill for half an hour a day and only managed to do the P90x twice. I didn't even do it last night due to being exhausted from a hectic day at work. The eating part too was a bit here or there. I did manage to eat as healthy as I could for most of it, but I did manage to slip in 3 cookies along the week, pancakes and a sausage egg mcmuffin. I know it won't kill me considering the rest of the time, it was chicken salads, multivitamins, protein drinks, etc. What got to me was that every time I did eat something that wasn't considered healthy, I would go up .3 to .5 pounds. So it was discouraging.

Regardless how the week went though, I would say it was fairly successful. I started off the week weighing in at 198.5 lbs and after a week, the result is...194.2 lbs. That's right, I still managed to go down 4.3 lbs. I anticipate that this large drop over the week will not be as consistent as we go through the months but it has encouraged me to keep going as the thought of losing 4 pounds a week would mean that by my birthday, I would have lost a total of close to 40 pounds. From weighing 198.5 lbs, I would end up being 158.5 lbs which is more than what I hoped to achieve.

Now, with the P90x being more involved, I know that this most likely won't happen. In fact, I think by the end of March, I will have gained more weight. The reason being that muscle mass weighs more than fat mass. So with the P90x helping me gain muscle, it's eventually going to add weight to me. That's okay though as I'd much rather be overweight and have more muscle than fat on me than my current state now. I don't necessarily think I'll go back to 190 lbs. But I think the weight loss will slow down to maybe only 2 pounds to 1 pound a week. As my last trainer told me though, "don't worry about how much you weigh. Worry about how you look. If you look better than you ever have, and can run a triathlon while carrying a monster truck tire, who cares if you are 500 lbs?" A little extreme in the end, but the point was made ;)

As for Raggedy and the side project, nothing new but I hope to start writing some demo tunes and learn some stuff for the side project tomorrow on my day off. As for Raggedy, unfortunately I've heard nothing new. I think Irvin is doing is vocals right now so that can take a while and it's very stressful on his voice, especially if he's doing this 8 hours a day. He's very talents and I can't wait to hear what he ends up doing for this album, because based on the demo tracks that I've heard, he's not only going to prove he's a great performer, but that he's also an amazing singer and front man for this band.

Take it easy for now though. I'm going to go exercise. Week 2 begins. Let's see if I can go down to 190 this time around!

Simon
Current Weigh In: 194.2 lbs

Sup Yos!

Yesterday I wrote a statement that I felt discouraged because of the lack of visible progress I was making in terms of my weight. Well, I spoke too soon. I weighed myself after I had got up from sleeping and I weighed in at 196.3 pounds. I lost around 2.2 lbs. Today, I went up a bit to 196.7 pounds but the fact that I'm still down to 196 is great. It motivates me enough to continue and although I'm sure you won't see a 2 pound difference on me, it'll all add up in the end with great results (hopefully).

I'm pretty confident that my increase is just a fluctuation that normally occurs when weighing yourself in the morning. Experts say that weight can fluctuate anywhere between 1 to 3 pounds more or less of your actual weight. So considering I was 196.3 lbs yesterday and 196.7 lbs today, I'm going to say that it's most likely just a normal weight fluctuation. Although, I will admit that I did eat two chocolate chip cookies from subway, a hash brown and a sausage egg mcmuffin from McDonalds after my shift at 5am last night. So part of me wants to believe that it could be that.

I did work out yesterday, but made it a light exercise day. I only did the treadmill, and I only walked for half an hour. I don't know what it was but I just had no energy and I didn't want to risk injuring myself by pushing my legs any further than they intended to go. I did try to do different pacing in terms of the walks. I don't know if it would help or not, but it made the walk more interesting (don't get me wrong, it wasn't THAT interesting lol).

Today I am going to plan to do the treadmill and P90x again. I don't know what I'm going to do with the P90x. I was thinking of trying to use my own routine for the first couple of weeks, so I might try just working on my back, chest and abs again tonight. I want to get to the point where my body won't be sore the next few days after from working out. At the very least, if they are sore, I want to be able to function normally at least with as little resistance from the sore muscles as possible. I'll see what happens after tomorrow in terms of my upper body soreness. If all goes as planned, next week, I'll start doing the lower body.

Nothing new from Raggedy still. The guys are still working their ass off to get the best recording out of each of us. I've been done for a while, so I think I'll probably start to hear something soon. Once I do, I'll let you know.

As for my sis and I, she's really excited about the project. I wasn't sure how excited, but while I was at work last night, she kept on texting me with ideas with how to push the side project forward, project names, and all of that. I can't wait. It's going to be good. I can't wait to introduce her as well. You are really going to like this.

That's all for now. Time to exercise. Take care and thanks for staying with me!

Simon
Current Weigh In: 196.7 lbs

Sup Yos!

As the title suggests, I am back on the wagon. Yesterday, I managed to not only do a 30 minute walk/run in the morning, eat healthy, drink all the water I needed, and did the P90x workout, I also talked to my sis! It was a pretty successful day and although I haven't weighed myself yet (I'm waiting til I go to sleep and wake up later today) I'm confident that I'll be burning a lot of calories while I sleep today.

There's really nothing new in terms of my work out routine on the treadmill. The P90x is a different story altogether. I can tell you that I did the Arms and Shoulders workout today and while I kept up with it, I definitely felt the burn by the end of it. I also had to do the Ab Ripper X. I did a lot better than I managed the first time around but I am not confident with it just yet. There is one move in particular where you need to lay on your back, lift your legs as straight as you can and try to lift your butt off the ground really quickly, and back down. It sounds easy but it's tough. I can't seem to do this properly just yet so that's my goal by the end of next week. I want to say I can do 5 in a row without failing.

As for the talk with my sis, things went well. We are getting together two Tuesdays from now to have a fun jam and talk things over. I think the music direction is going to be experimental acoustic based but we're not sure. The good thing is that she's a multimedia major too. So we seem to have the same interests and skills which can make this whole side project work out to our advantage. Again, nothing is in stone but I'd personally like to have an album out by early 2011. I'd say, be prepared for more solid news on the album closer to June. No worries though, I'll keep informing you with all that I know regardless.

I haven't heard much from Raggedy other than we may have distribution to the States and Europe AND we may be getting a manager. It's big news for us but we want to take each next step carefully so that this next album can be the best possible album we can dish out to the fans. There may possibly be a video in the works for one of the songs. I don't know which one but I'll let you know about that too.

Well it's time for bed. Take it easy guys. Talk to you soon.

Simon
Current Weigh In: 198.5 lbs

Sup Yos!

Alright, so I was pretty successful yesterday in that I managed to wake up in the morning and exercise on the treadmill for half an hour. I also ate pretty healthy with just chicken salads throughout the day with a multivitamin. I also drank 5 bottles of water. So I did pretty good but I didn't do the P90x. It's tough. Not so much doing the P90x but finding the time to do it. The problem is, with the Olympics in Vancouver, Pizza Pizza is so busy. They will call me in to do 10-14 hour shifts. So I feel I go to bed, wake up, exercise on the treadmill, then get called in to work. By the time I get home, I know I only have a few hours to sleep before they'll call me back in to work. On top of that, last night and today it is snowing, so it's more like exercise, shovel, work, shovel, sleep, shovel, exercise, shovel. I live above a hair salon and the landlord and I have agreed that I shovel the parking lot in the front. It's not crazy big, but it's more shoveling than your average home.

So, in one way, I'm replacing the P90x for shoveling. I don't want this though so I think if I don't lose weight by Monday, I'm going to stop the treadmill every second day and do the P90x in the mornings instead. I thought by now I should have lost a pound or so but I haven't. Actually, I'm at 198.5 lbs so I am a bit discouraged by this. I know it's insane for me to think that I'll lose weight just within 5 days, even though I technically cheated on the third day with pizza, pancakes and no exercise (I should be happy I didn't gain weight) but it's tough when you feel you've put a lot of effort into yourself and the results aren't showing even the slightest bit. Luckily, I know that losing weight is harder than gaining it, so hopefully I will have good results by the end of next week. I'll let you know.

Simon
Today's Weigh In: 198.5