Reliving an awesome concert

** Note these are unauthorized videos from the concert last night. ** (I feel I have to post that since there was a warning on the door that photos and videos from the concert last night were not authorized. For this reason, I'll post the videos here, instead of facebook or youtube - where they'd probably be removed.)

I went to the Make a Difference Tour last night with a friend, Cindy Biggs. Josh Gray opened, Toby Mac and his band, Diverse City came on next, then Michael W. Smith and Mac Powell (from Third Day) sang from a stage in the middle of the floor. Toby Mac and Max Lucado joined them. After this Third Day performed, followed by a World Vision intermission and then Michael W. Smith finished things up with Max Lucado closing everything out with all the artists singing at the end. It. Was. Awesome. :)

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite videos I captured last night. (My apologies that they're so short, they seem so much longer when you have your arms above your head trying to hold really still.)

Jason Gray getting one of his songs set up.

Toby Mac and Diverse City singing "I'm For You"

Toby Mac singing "Gone"

(one of my favorites of his)

Michael W. Smith, Toby Mac and Mac Powell singing
"Be In The Light" (by Charlie Peacock)

 Third Day singing "Gone"

(different "Gone" from Toby Mac video above) ;)

  Michael W. Smith singing "Mighty to Save"

Michael W. Smith, Toby Mac, Mac Powell, and Jason Gray
singing "City On Our Knees" and then the
end of "God Of This City" (by Chris Tomlin)

The thing under my nose...

aka "it's not a booger," aka "the unfortunate-looking pimple thing."

No, I don't know what it is yet. Friends who have seen it think it's a hematoma or something. The doctor at the Urgent Care in Beavercreek had no idea what it is and told me I should see a dermatologist and that it should be biopsied. So I have an appointment Friday at 9:00 am. I'll update my blog after I hear what this "thing" is.

So here's photos of this thing... (my apologies for the extreme close-up shots and the goofy looking faces)

10/7 - just a small red bump under my nose

10/13 - a bit bigger, it's starts bleeding after I sneeze or wipe my nose

10/16 - Larger and regularly getting on my nerves.

10/16 - It wouldn't stop bleeding after an hour and a half, so went to Urgent Care and had it cauterized. It turned black, including the area next to it. This is when friends suggested I tell people "it's not a booger."

10/22 - black area has fallen off and now it just looks like an unfortunate pimple under my nose.

10/26 - the bump has gotten larger and the top part has scabbed over I guess. It's just disgusting and embarrassing. Really hoping the dermatologist can get rid of it once and for all!

I realize that in a couple of weeks it'll be gone and completely forgotten about. At least I hope so. Though it's embarrassing now, once it's gone I doubt anyone will ever think about it again. I just have to get through a few more days with this icky thing below my nose.

Losing It

Back in July I decided I was fed up with how much weight I've gained over the past few years and frustrated that I couldn't stop gaining weight, no matter what I did. I started running last summer and after a sprained ankle (from wearing strappy high-heeled sandals, NOT running), I only continued to run once in awhile. So I'd say I was running 2-3 times a month. I tried reducing the amount of food I ate, eating smaller portions. I also started only eating half of some of my splurge foods - donuts, cookies, etc. I don't drink sugar pop and do a lot of walking just by nature of where I work and where I park. I followed a lot of these "rules" and didn't shed a pound - in fact, gained a few pounds. Very frustrating!

Haven't we heard that if you decrease what you eat and increase your activity level that the weight would come off? That formula works, I guess, but when you're only reducing 200 calories and burning an extra 200 calories and you're taking in 3,000-4,000 calories, you're still NOT going to lose weight. I had the right idea, but not enough effort. I think a lot of us fall into this category.

3,000-4,000 calories a day? You betcha. I could list all the articles that show that if you eat out, most meals are around 1,000, if not more. Tasty - yes. Fresh foods - yes. Drenched in butter, creamy sauces, or fried - yes. And there's those calories that you weren't expecting. I'm not just talking about ice cream and cake, I'm talking about your vegetables and lean meats! Yes you're getting your nutrition but getting so much more.

So Jason and I decided to try Take Shape For Life (TSFL) which uses the Medifast food. We had to sign up with TSFL and then order our Medifast food. The food costs about $300/person/month. This might seem a lot but our food spending each month was at least $800 between groceries and eating out. It hasn't exactly saved us money, but we're definitely not spending any money on fast food or empty calories any more.

A friend from Ohio University is a TSFL Health Coach and got us going and followed-up regularly to make sure we were doing okay. With this diet you go down to 800-1,000 calories per day. At first we were a little grumpy and craving everything we couldn't eat anymore and we had some energy loss and headaches. But after a day or two the headaches were gone and the positive attitude started to kick in. Each Monday we'd get on the scale and each Monday we had lost weight. It took discipline to stay on the diet and not cheat when we were out with friends, but it got easier every week.

After a few weeks we weren't craving pizza and cheeseburgers anymore. In fact, the idea of fried food seems disgusting now and I worry about what it would do to my digestive system after not eating it for so long. I worry about not getting enough nutrition or over-eating if we filled up on empty calories. We've notice that family and friends eat healthier around us and we've heard "your food looks better than mine" a few times. We learned that there ARE healthy choices at almost every restaurant, you just have to know how to find them. (We didn't know how to before.)

I must say that we discovered the most difficult food to eat healthy when eating out is vegetables. If you get a salad, trying to get a low-fat, low-calorie dressing is near impossible. We went to a Subway in another city and they didn't have any "diet" dressings at all. We couldn't believe it. So we would try to choose broccoli, green beans or asparagus, but we'd have to ask how they're prepared and served. With butter or a creamy sauce a lot of times. A few places said they're steamed or cooked in olive oil, thankfully. It seemed easier to get grilled chicken and then eat a vegetable when we got home.

So now we've been on the TSFL program for three months. I've lost 32 pounds and Jason has lost 40 pounds. We've back to the weights we were before we met. (My wedding dress would be too big at this point.) ;)

I've had friends ask what our secret is. Of course we could tell you that our secret is the Take Shape For Life program. Though I've had friends lose 40+ pounds without signing up for TSFL, Weight Watchers or any of the others. What's the secret? I'll tell you what I think...

• Pick a plan and stick with it. Don't just think "I'll eat less" or "I'll walk more." That's not a weight loss plan. Do research and find a plan with structure and accountability that works for you.
• NO CHEATING! If you cheat, you go back to day 1 and start all over again. And if you do cheat, pick yourself up and don't give up!
• Drink lots of water! The weeks that I'd lose only a pound were the weeks where I didn't drink enough water.
• Don't give up if you haven't lost the weight you were hoping for after the first few weeks. Stick with it! (This is where I failed so many times in the past. I had a lot of success with TSFL after the first couple of weeks, so I finally found a plan I wasn't going to give up on.)

I think the hardest part of being on a diet was going to public places where you eat whenever you feel like it - an amusement park, a ball game, vacation, etc. I'd look around at all I would see is the fattening food that wasn't on our diet (nachos, pizzas, burgers, hot dogs, ice cream, etc.). I found something that works for me. I look at the person eating the above mentioned foods and I would think "I want to be thinner than the person who is eating that food." With a large percentage of the population being overweight, this worked every single time. (The phrase "consider the source" comes to mind.)

Lastly I have to thank Jason for doing this diet with me. Without him being part of this I would never have stuck with the diet. I appreciate all the cooking he's done and Medifast meal preparations. I appreciate his willingness to try new recipes and doctor the Medifast meals into something I would prefer to eat. Thank you hon, I love you. :)

How texting ruins relationships...

This past weekend Jason and I flew out to Seattle to visit my brother and sister-in-law. We stayed in a hotel and got a rental car, so we wouldn't have to be dependent on D&J (brother and sis-in-law). Saturday evening my brother picked Jason and I up from downtown to go see a sunset, one of the things I really wanted to do while there. Afterwards D was taking us back downtown to drop us off and we asked him to stop at a Wendy's so we could go to the bathroom. We offered to get him something (thinking a Coke or a frosty) and he asked us to get him a meal - and he waited in the car.

While inside the following texts were sent to me:

D: She didn't stop talking
D: Jason hasn't said 3 sentences
(I figured out he thought he was sending the texts to Jenn - maybe answering a question she asked?)
C: You dork I'm buying your dinner.
D. Oh ;)


I got back in the car and he tried to laugh it off. I was angry (I've been an emotional mess for the last week so a lot of raw emotions were right there at the surface and I just couldn't let it go.) I chewed him out for bad-mouthing me to his wife, and also for saying *I* didn't stop talking. He asked me one question (about what we did) and while trying to answer him he kept cutting me off and telling me useless trivial facts about buildings I don't really care about.

Jason was sitting in the back and if you know Jason, he's not usually one to join a conversation unless he has knowledge that no one else does. So I told him that was the pot calling the kettle black. I then reminded him that we could have used our free airline ticket and 3 free hotel nights anywhere in the country and we chose to use them to visit him. But by then I was wondering why I bothered. He said nothing. No apology, no defense, just dropped us off downtown. I thanked him for taking us to the sunset, said goodbye and slammed the door.

(I hate to say it but it messed up the rest of the evening and ruined mine and Jason's date night.)

The next day we were supposed to go shopping with them and then dinner, but I had such little sleep by then that I had no patience to real deal with anything. In fact, I just wanted to get the first flight out of Seattle and head home. So Jason and I went shopping by ourselves. Here's the texts that followed. I believe they'll tell the rest of the story. (And for the record, these are ALL the texts back and forth, I have not deleted or changed any of the exchange. D is the brother, J is the sis-in-law, and C is me. Jason was not part of this exchange.)

J: Are we going to see you before you leave, or shall we cancel the dinner reservations?
C (to J): Cancel the reservation.
D: Consider dinner canceled. Bye

D: We need the nice measuring cup and measuring spoon back before you guys leave tonight. Where do we meet you?
J: Please return my kitchen things to me. I need those back. The Tb is from the set that my parents got me.
C (to D): You can pick them up at the hotel after 9 tonight. Jason will bring it out to you. I won't bother you an Jenn any further.

J: btw, do u feel even a tiny bit bad about pitching in only $20 toward our $143 trip Fri?
(They asked us if they could take us on a road trip. We had no idea it was 2 hours from Seattle or how much it would cost, but they did. And for the record, we contributed more than $40 and didn't even include food.)
C (to J): You want me to feel bad? I wanted to go downtown Friday and do things on our list. If we would have known how expensive it was we would never have gone. Btw Jason gave David what he could.
J: You're a class act.
J: Didn't see u pinching pennies abt going to fancy restaurants. (We went to one seafood restaurant because we wanted local seafood. The other restaurant we ate at was a pub style and not "fancy.") 

C (to D): Shuttle is taking us to the airport. Your stuff is in a white bag at the front desk.
D: Thank you, Jenn got 'em from her dad, so these means a lot. While I do value your opinions and thoughts, I hoped to hear Jason's also in a 4 way conversation. 
(Still not sure what this means. Jason sat up with D both Thursday & Friday. I finally got a chance to talk to my brother Saturday and this is when he says he wants Jason's opinion in a 4 way conversation - when there were only 3 of us in the car.) 
C (to D): You married a mean controlling woman and you'll end up just like Nick. Don't expect to hear from me again.  
(J's mom's husband who is now a widower and quite a mess without his wife. Yes, this was harsh, but if I got to say one last thing to my brother - this is it. He defends his wife to the end, but his family knows he became a completely different person after he married her. And most of us don't talk to him anymore because of it.)

J: Thanks for the visit and for blocking us from yr FB. The favor has been returned. Look up Narcissistic Personality Disorder when u can and discover why u cannot sustain REAL relationships And also why counseling will never work for u. U have a good man with a lot of kindness and patience. Hope this one works out and tht u don't crush his soul too.
(I didn't block them from facebook, I kept them as friends but just prevented them from being able to post on my page. Also, FYI... previous husband remarried months after our divorce was final - to the woman he and I agreed he should have been with from the beginning. Yeah, I really "crushed his soul.")

J: BTW next time u want to talk at GREAT length abt your myriad upcoming pregnancy plans, make sure the listener hasn't JUST HAD TO HAVE A HYSTERECTOMY, you pathologically insensitive twit.
(Her hysterectomy was last year and they never tried to have children. Also, the pregnancy plans were about coming out to see them - which they begged me to do. Oh, and I also got chewed out by my brother when they weren't one of the first to know I was pregnant. And btw, I had had 2 miscarriages at that point and didn't see telling people if there wasn't much hope of getting past the 1st trimester.)

Some family members suspect that J has been trying to alienate D from his family. I'd say if that was her goal, she's done a great job. As if the physical distance wasn't enough (it was her idea to move to Seattle, she's from PA), there's now a pretty hefty emotional distance too. Sadly enough David complained about not having any friends in Seattle. They've been out there 8 years and he has no friends. This just breaks my heart. I made suggestions on how they could find meet people and hopefully make friends, however my suggestions were probably offensive to J and she informed me that it just doesn't work that way out there in Seattle.

If D loses his one last friend, J, I really don't know what he would do. He's burned too many bridges with family for him to return as the prodigal son. I have no idea what to do at this point or how to feel. I just know I need to stay away from them, physically and emotionally.