We’re moving…exciting times

For the past twelve years, I’ve lived in the community where I teach.  Not many people know this, but I student taught in the district where I teach, which is why I was hired.  In fact, I was asked to come and teach in this district a year earlier than when I started.  Before I left for my year in the Dominican Republic, I received a call asking me to come and teach here.  I was committed to honoring my contract, so I declined at that time, and ended up coming back when that same position opened again a year later.

Throughout my first year of teaching at my former school, my parents asked me to find a house to buy.  They promised to help me with a down payment, but their main concern was that I was building equity in a property instead of “throwing it away” with rent.  I ended up finding and buying a yellow rambler a few blocks away from the school where I taught.  A number of my students came over to help me paint the yellow house (now battleship gray), and this has been my home for the past twelve years.

My home for the past twelve years.

As I think about it, this home has been my home for the longest period of any home I’ve had on this earth.  My parents lived in Milwaukee, WI until I was 4; we lived in Fredonia, WI for eight years, and I lived with them in Oconomowoc, WI for six years until I went to college.  After college, I’ve been in the St. Paul area most of the time, with the exception of a year spent in the Dominican Republic.

There are a lot of memories in this house, such as group student visits (in those early years), using the equity I had built up in this house for various reasons (new furnace/AC, remodeling the kitchen, helping finance our wedding), and even my first kiss with my to-be bride.  Liz’s grandfather helped us build a custom deck, as well as to remodel our kitchen and bathroom.  It’s been a good solid house, and we weren’t actively looking for a new home.  So much so that we invested $5,000 this past May to put in new windows and a patio door in our house (by the way, they’re working wonderfully, and we’d recommend Window World of St. Paul to everyone).  Still, this is a starter home, and I would always call it “my/our crappy little house.”  Eventually, it’s going to need a new roof.  And siding.  And gas fireplace inserts.  And a remodeled basement.  In addition, we only have a two car garage with a lot of suburban “stuff” (trailer, motorcycle, lawn mowers, etc.), and our driveway faces away from the sun, which means that no matter what, there is always snow and ice on the driveway all winter long, even though the neighbors across the street have perfectly clear driveways just because of the sun.  Liz has had her own issues with the house (She’s grateful to have a house to live in, but she has her list, too).  When you start to add up what the house is going to need over the years, and you don’t implicitly love the house, it’s okay to move on.  But again, we weren’t looking.

I’ll take this moment to say that I have two best friends, and both are named David.  One I went to college with, and the other I taught with for twelve years.  David the teacher became a principal, and was hired in a community that is close to where we currently live.  Nonetheless, David and his wife wanted to move out of this community into a bigger (and better house) and David wanted to live in the community where he is the principal.  All that happened last summer, and they found a beautiful house for their family.  We stopped by to visit them this past fall, and we toured their new home.  They bought the home for an incredibly low price–if they had bought a home in the Twin Cities, it would have been double the cost.  So, partially in jest, we asked them if there were any other houses for sale near them.  They pointed out a “For Sale” sign across the street.  Then my wife and I started looking at the house and started to dream.

Our new house (if all goes to plan) that we'll buy in January.

We looked through the windows and doors, and liked what we saw, and I knew that a number of my “the next time I buy a house” statements were already answered in this house (driveway facing the sun, three car extended garage with extra height).  When we came home that night, I called the realtor, expecting to leave a message, but instead went to view the house.  It was listed at that time at $259,000.

We toured the house a few days later, and we saw a basically new, hardly lived-in house that seemed to match all of our desires for a new house, and we began the process of selling our current house and buying that house.

I won’t go into all the details, but it’s been an emotional time for us over the past months for a number of reasons.  Keeping a house clean for showings…and then cleaning the house for showings…is difficult in itself when there are three males in a residence and one female (Not that my wife had to do all the cleaning by herself, but when there were weekday showings and I was at school, she did have to do all the cleaning by herself).

This past week, we had a showing (our 15th), and our last.  There’s a couple of funny stories that go with it (which I won’t tell at this point), but we settled on selling our house for a price that causes us to bring $5,000 with us to closing, which we’ll recover when we receive a $6500 tax credit for buying a new house at tax time.  And the last hope is that we’ll qualify for a Rural FHA loan, which means that we’ll need no down payment to buy our new home in January.

There are still a couple of minor hurdles to jump, but we are in our new home for a very good price (we didn’t even need to make a second offer…the buyer offered us the price we wanted), our current house has to pass inspection, and the sellers of our new house also have a few things they need to take care of.

Throughout this process, we’ve been praying, a lot.  Our prayer has been that God would aggressively and clearly shut doors for us if we weren’t supposed to move.  But he kept opening doors (the possibility of a Rural FHA loan, low interest rates, lowering the price of the new house, keeping that house on the market, extending the tax credit plan, etc.) while not completely closing them (not finding a buyer for a long time, having to lower the price on our house, having to bring money to closing to get out of this house).  Just this past week, we received an “ultimatum” from the seller of the other house, as they needed to sell or rent (they are carrying $289,000 on that house, and not living there).  We had talked about offering our house as a rental or Contract-for-Deed property.  And then a buyer came and we worked out a deal.  So we’re very grateful to God for his timing, and we trust that all the other details will work out.  It’s an exciting time for us, as we prepare to move and to enjoy our new house for years and years to come.

Brett Favre and the Falcons, Packers, Jets, and Vikings

Falcons, Packers, Jets, and Vikings

I grew up in Wisconsin, and actually, if my wife and I can manage to sell our house, we’ll be moving back to Wisconsin.  As a result, Wisconsin teams, particularly the Brewers and the Packers, will always be special to me.  They were my “home” teams.  (There was a point when the Packers actually played regular games at Milwaukee County Stadium, something that doesn’t happen any more).

At the same time, I’ve been in Minnesota most of the time since 1990 (with the exception of nine months in the Dominican Republic, time home from college in Wisconsin, and so on), meaning that as of next September, I will have spent nearly twenty years in Minnesota, and only seventeen in Wisconsin.

Originally, I tolerated watching Minnesota teams (although I always had a love for the Minnesota Twins, as one of my t-ball teams was the “Twins” and a special childhood memory was my dad bringing me a Twins hat from a business trip to Minnesota…a hat I still have, even though it’s in poor condition).  I even had season tickets to the Vikings in 1998 and 1999 (some awfully good years for football here in Minnesota), but mainly to see the Packers play.  That toleration has grown to adoption.  I still root for the Packers.  It’s hard to support the Brewers because they aren’t the American League team I grew up with (I now understand how my Dad felt about the Brewers after growing up as a Braves fan in Milwaukee).  But I now root for the Vikings, Twins, and Gophers.

My wife’s grandfather gives me a bit of grief about being a Vikings fan, but I can’t help it.  They’ve gotten rid of many of the bozos that gave the team a bad name in recent years (and have put a leash on others), and they have some genuinely fantastic players.  But the real turning point for me is the addition of Brett Favre to the Vikings.

Don’t get me wrong…Brett Favre isn’t a superhero to me, but I enjoy how he plays the game, even at age 40 (ancient for football players, and he’s three years older than I am).  Brett has a lot of flaws…he’s made bad decisions on the football field (lots of interceptions over the years–not so much this year) and off the field (vicodin).  But he plays with heart, he always gives his best, and he sure seems to love his wife and his daughter.  I wasn’t a big fan of the annual retirement scenario (I’m praying that will be avoided at the end of this year).  And I wasn’t a fan of how the (new) Packers management treated Favre last year.  Both sides were in error, but I think the Packers were more so.  If you don’t want the player, release him and let him go elsewhere.  The Vikings might have had their 10-1 season last year had that happened.

Meanwhile, Green Bay has become one of the wild-card contenders for the playoffs, and the Vikings are virtually guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, and must continue to win to guarantee home field advantage (I don’t think anyone wants to face the ravenous fans in the Superdome in New Orleans).  Hard core Packer fans consider Brett a traitor.  Brett Favre fans are just happy to see him playing, and playing so well.  And Vikings fans have come around to realize that maybe they were just a quarterback away from a Superbowl, even if he’s 40 years old (Many Vikings fans originally swore they’d never support Favre…meanwhile the Favre jerseys and t-shirts continue to sell like crazy).

I’m one of those people who likes the Packers, likes the Vikings, and even likes the Bears.  Normally, of the three, I’d hope the Packers would win…but not this year.  I’d like to see Favre and the Vikings take it all.  It could happen.  And I remember that Favre was a third string quarterback for Atlanta before being obtained by the Packers.  And I realize that if Favre was still a Packer, he’d be on a stretcher with that porous offensive line of the Packers (and it also shows that Aaron Rodgers is a great quarterback and likely hall-of-famer as well…the Pack was right to move on, but should have just let Brett go).  And I also know that Favre’s poor performance with the Jets was due to damage in his arm (now repaired), and it shows what an iron man Favre is, continuing to play when basically unable to throw.  Wow.

I loved watching the Packers win the Superbowl while I was in the Dominican Republic in 1997.  I’d love to see the Vikings win the Superbowl in 2010.  They have a chance.  They really do.

Meanwhile, Favre continues to play a highly accurate game, benefiting from the attention paid to the Vikings’ running back, Adrian Peterson.  Teams are trying to beat the Vikings by stopping the running game, leaving themselves open for Favre to do what he does best.  You’ve got to like those odds.  If the Vikings don’t get you on the ground, they’ll be after you through the air.

Either way, the Favre experiment has worked well, and it should be a fun playoff experience.  I was looking forward to the year with Favre…now I get to look forward to the playoffs as well.

YOAD 2.0 Week 10

It’s been a “blah” week…lots of stress at school, and lots of time at school. One trip to the gym. (I’m not going to make 12 trips to the gym this month for the health care discount.)

I haven’t eaten totally well, but I haven’t gone off the deep end, either.

Resulting weight: 248. That’s down 1.5 pounds, and I’ll take it. Next week better improve–in quality of life!

YOAD 2.0 Week 9

Just a bad week. Didn’t pay much attention to what I ate, eating at ofd times, eatin out (pretty much neber good for me), and ate lots of bad things. It’s been really busy and quite stressful, I’ve been to the gym once, and there have been two games on TV that I just plopped down and watched after long days. So a gain of two pounds to 249.5.

No worries, back on track today–a good reminder to fix the problem and go back to my normal patterns.

YOAD v.2.0 Week 8

Good news. Down to 247.5 this week, even though it has been a week of few trips to the gym and three nights with ice cream–and I think 3 beers in that time, too (I don’t drink much alcohol at all).

We have been working on the house…especially last weekend when I leveled our old lilac bed and then laid sod…that was seven straight hours of perspiration.

And otherwise my eating has been okay, and I’ve been able to stop snacking after 10. My body is finally adjusting to 11.5 hour days at school (due to the musical) and I’ve even (it’s a miracle) started to get caught up with many of the things I have to do at school (all the filed music so far is in Finale and also in my new Freehand tablet). So life is good this week.

Our house hits the market on Friday. I have some things to work on by then!

YOAD v. 2.0 Week 7

It was an interesting week.  The previous weekend, we had stopped by a family’s house on the way back from Crystal Cave in Spring Valley, Wisconsin.  They had moved this past summer, so we checked out their (beautiful) house and jokingly said, “Any other houses available around here?”  They pointed (literally) across the street.  When we looked at the house, just from the outside, we realized that it seemed to be every bit of a house that we’ve talked about.  Type of house, things the house offers, location, direction (driveway facing the sun) and so on.  So we called on Sunday night and visited the house last Tuesday night.  We were right…the house was perfect for us.  We have one concern, which is that it overlooks a steep ravine, and we have a nine-year-old and a sixteen-month-old.  But there are other families that live on the ravine, and their kids are surving.  Plus the backyard was built up a little to make more of a yard.

So we fell in love with the house, and then made plans to start the process, meaning putting our house on the market.  So we worked our tails off, getting the house ready enough to show our realtor.  We basically spent the entire week and weekend cleaning…my wife upstairs, me in the basement.  And that included a lot of work in the (formerly nasty) downstairs basement, which is looking presentable now.  There is still a bit of work to do, but our house goes on the market this coming Tuesday.  It’s exciting.

Meanwihile, last week was audition week for the musical (long days), and the musical is fully underway.

And with all this other stuff, I haven’t slept very much, nor have I gone to the gym a lot.  And over the past two days (prior to this evening…so Monday and Tuesday) I’ve eaten poorly at night (Grilled KFC on Monday and Culver’s fried Cod yesterday), plus I’ve had the munchies later at night while I’m up doing other things (probably a sign I should go to bed, but there has been too much to do).

So I report a one pound gain for last week.  I had cereal right before bed (a healthy dose), so realistically if I weighed myself tomorrow, I’d be back at 251 or perhaps 250.  But I’m counting the pound gained and trying to be okay with it after a week of little sustained cardio (although a lot of energy used cleaning) and some poor choices in eating.  Statistically, a gain of one pound is nothing, as we can vary in weight 3-5 pounds throughout the day.  I can’t let weight gain continue, however.  I have to be on track…ultimately, that’s more important than anything other than my relationship with God and my family.  My health has to come number 3 on that list…I’m learning that as I get older…so I can get older (if that makes sense).  Even my job has to come in at number four.

So here’s the image of this week’s situation.  252.  77 pounds to go.

YOAD v. 2.0 Week 7

YOAD v. 2.0 Week 6

Another good week!  Down 2.5 pounds to 251 (down 22 overall in 6 weeks).  Still haven’t broken that 250 barrier…but it will come.  Whenever I’ve been in the 240s (on the way down) while dieting, it has been a mental “goal” to hit…because it really signals to me that I’m achieving my goals.  Here’s the latest chart from the iPhone program Lose It!

YOAD v 2.0 Week 6

And if you’re wondering how I’m doing versus my original journey with YOAD:

YOAD v 2.0 vs. YOAD (Week 6)

I’m actually surprised that the results are so similar.  Remember in YOAD (original), I followed a type of diet and tried to get 30 minutes of exercise a day.  In YOAD 2.0, I’m still trying to follow those dietary principles, and I do try to exercise each day, but I’m also limiting calorie intake, with a goal of a loss of 2 pounds a week (at least that’s how the calculator works on Lose It!).

YOAD v. 2.0 Week 5

Good news, down two pounds, even though I missed a couple days of exercise and also had two days I was well over my calorie limit (still nearly under 1800 for my limit for the week). I expected a lower weight loss, so I’m pretty happy right now.

My daily calorie budget is now 2027 per day. Again, that’s more incentive to exercise if I’m hungry.

YOAD version 2.0 Week 4

A good week.  Here are the results:

YOAD version 2.0 Week 4

Just a couple of thoughts this morning before the hectic nature of the day starts to take over.  First, I’m not starving myself, and many days I’m actually over my calorie limit…until I exercise.  Exercise is going well.  Right now I’m still doing all aerobic/cardiovascular exercise (elliptical, running, biking, walking), and I haven’t started the anaerobic exercise yet.  I will, in time.  I want to get a little more weight off before I jump to that next step.

Do I crave certain foods?  Of course!  I did when I was over 300 pounds, I do at 255.5.  I never met a pumpkin pie (even the bad ones) I didn’t like (and the season’s almost here).  However, part of the whole YOAD idea is to automate as many meals as possible, so I basically eat the same breakfast and lunch every day.  There are exceptions, but not often.  This was even true when I wasn’t “dieting” over the last year or so.  My variety comes at dinner.  Last night, I had a salad from Chipotle (Chicken).  The previous night I had Pizza (a good Boboli crust last night…best I’ve ever made) and fries (home made, in peanut oil).  I eat things I want to eat, and things I have been eating.  But I count every food item I eat…which is made pretty easy with Lose It!  (The iPhone App I’m using to track calories with YOAD 2.0).  Lost it allows you to copy meals from one day to another, so if you have “automated” meals, you’re quickly taken care of.

I still need to grow in the area of getting more sleep.  That’s the next major hurdle…but my time to exercise occurs after 8pm…not to mention the majority of my time to relax, watch TV, read a book, or whatever.  So it’s difficult to get into bed at 10 to get up at 6, when I’m often on the treadmill at 11:30.  I need that “personal time” each day (I know my wife does, too, but I’m not sure she’s able to get it these days watching three kids all day) as an introvert or I burn out…much faster than if I don’t sleep.

I don’t expect a big weight loss next week…I’ll be pleased with a small loss, as I’ve had some pretty good four pound weeks.  At some point soon, my body’s going to plateau for a while (even though I’m counting calories) as I’ve already lost 6% of my body weight.  We’ll see…I’ll take anything I can get!

YOAD v. 2.0 Week 3

A good week.  Good progress, making up for one pound last week.  Not a lot of noticeable difference in my body so far…I’m still quite a few pounds (and weeks) away from being able to wear my “skinny” suits again, and I may need to buy a dress shirt or two (perhaps even pants) to start the school year until I’ve lost the weight I need to lose to fit into my existing dress shirts and suits.

But no worries.  I’m 13.5 pounds down, back into the 250s (barely, but there), and making progress.  That’s what this is all about.

YOAD 2.0 Week 3 Results