Posts by hans100

Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, except one. The Descent. It's pretty recent and majorly creepy--in fact the claustrophobia scenes were scarier (for me) than the scenes with the actual antagonist of the movie.

And I have to agree with When a Stranger Calls with Carol Kane. The first scene is the scariest 15-20 minutes ever put to film. I saw the sequel (When a Stranger Calls Back) a few months ago, and they did a similar thing with the first scene, and it got me again. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Although the last 45 minutes is awful--the scariest thing about the ending is the bad 1993 hair they all had.

I love pumpkin cheesecake, and has anyone tried the new Ben and Jerry's Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream? Probably not the best thing to be posting on a calorie count forum, but it's really good too. It's even got a graham cracker swirl.

Great. I'm in the home stretch too. I'm at 188 now, and I'm shooting for 180 by Christmas. I'm down 101.5 lbs, and I've been losing weight for three and a half years now, but I've been stuck in the neighborhood of 190 for months now (mostly due to my own lack of diligence). I am so ready to be officially done losing weight and to move into maintenance.

Let's get to it. I'm going for a run. Good luck everyone.

It's not revenge per se, but I made a bet with my older brother a few months ago. I had recently taken up running after needing to spice up my exercise routine, because I was sick to death of the elliptical, and I kind of secretly decided to begin training for a marathon. Anywho, my brother challenged me to a bet (he's always been the fit one, the atheltic one) to see who could be the first to run a thousand miles in 2009. We both got those Nike/ipod things that keep track of your miles. It got really heated, and I have no problem admitting that I was driven mostly by spite. It got to the point that we were both running like seven miles a day, seven days a week. I was exhausted, and it made me hate running, but I was sure as h*** not going to let him win again--mostly because he really didn't even think it was going to be a competition. We made it about four months, and about 400 miles each (WELL, to be exact, 380 for him 395 for me!) when he called me up and said he wanted to call off the bet. Oh, it felt great. Probably not as great as if we'd made it all the way to the 1000 miles, but it was still pretty sweet.

Now that the bet is over, I've actually fallen off the wagon a bit. I tried to keep it up, and I did run a 15k soon after, but my running regime has gone to pot as of late. The marathon is still in my mind--I think I'm going to sign up for DC in March!, but I'll need something to snap back into it now that the spite is gone. I miss the spite.

If you like history, you have to check out Les Invalides. It's really in central Paris, right next to the Pont Alexandre III and the Grand Palais, and it's where Napoleon is buried. It was one of my favorite things to do, because it's so over the top. And go stand at Place de la Concorde, because that's where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were beheaded. I don't think that's were the guillotine was normally, but that's where it was for them. If you're going out to Versailles, you should check out Marie Antoinette's "Hameau." When she married Louis XVI, she was only sixteen, and to please his new wife, he built her a mock, rural village hamlet so that she could play milkmaid in her spare time. And there's the Conciergerie. That was the original palace of the French kings, and there's a replica of the cell Marie Antoinette was held in while awaiting her sentence. I don't know at what level for you history ceases to be interesting and becomes just nerdy, but the Conciergerie is also home to the first clock in Paris. It's on one of the towers on the outside--an interesting tidbit to wow your family.

As for food, you really can't go wrong, so eat everything, and bring an extra suitcase so that you can bring home as much baguette as humanly possible. I haven't had anything even close since I came back...and there's an emptiness in my heart because of it.

"For God's sake, I am competent!"

You took the words right out of my mouth! And I hate having to BS experience in things that are common sense anyway. No I don't have any specific experience doing phone reception, but is it that hard that I need 3 to 5 years of prior experience to pick it up? I have to fluff up my internship to prove that I have experience in Microsoft Office, because you can't just say that you've been using it since you were 8.

And , oh really, you mean you're looking for someone with excellent communication skills and who can work effectively as a member of a team and within deadlines. Duh, so is every other employer on the planet.

I weigh myself once every few months. I don't have a scale at school, so I only weigh in when I go home for a break, and, I don't know, but the system works really well for me. I bought a little cheap-o, five-dollar scale a few months ago, and at first I did well, only weighing myself once a week or so, but soon it was two or three times, then every day, and then even multiple times in the same day. Not to be too graphic, but I didn't like the pressure of freaking out about the physical weight of everything I ate, and even counting bm's. So now, my scale is sitting on the top shelf at the back of my closet, and I'm back to once every few months. This way, the one number I get at home is it, and I'm done--plus, it's nice to see 10 or 15 lbs every time you get on the scale, even if it takes you three months to get there.

Talking about road running, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only soft people."

-Bill Bowerman

I guess I like a little antagonism in my inspiration...

I am an uber-fan of Flannery O'Connor, so I'd have to say her collection of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find. So amazing.

Oh, and The Jungle.

Huge congrats. It feels great to let it go.

I just did a closet cleaning not too long ago, but I did keep one outfit. It was what I wore on my birthday at my highest weight of 289.5 lbs (I wore it because I thought it made me look really thin!). I don't ever plan to go back there, but it's nice to try on every once in a while. I get so bogged down in the minutia of a pound or two up or down, that I sometimes forget the big picture until I go back to where I started, you know? So I put it one and walk around in it for a little while doing the infomercial pull-the-waistband-out-really-far move in front of the mirror.

Yeah, that Lee Greenwood song was the first to come to mind. That's huge in my hometown...they play it at every ball game, 4th of July, etc, and everyone stares off into the distance wistfully thinking about putting a boot in someone's ass...

Um...no contest, fudge bar.

Cheetos or Cheese puffs?

Hmm...one of the pitfalls you may be experiencing is not eating enough. How many calories are you eating a day? Are you taking into account the calories you burn doing cardio and weight training? Especially if you feel like you're doing everything right, this might be the case.

Also, Weight Watchers always used to say, if your weight loss begins to slow down, you may have gotten away from measuring your food. If you are eyeballing portions, you may be overestimating portion size. I'm terrible at eyeballing portion size on things like butter, jelly, etc, anything you spread. Maybe try measuring your food for a week or so, and see if that doesn't change your results.

Cheese puffs. Not the most refined fare, but oh I could go to town on a bag of cheese puffs. Chips and dip too. That's my biggest weakness.

Not terrible, but bread. I could just eat bread for hours and hours. Big baguettes with just butter, or jelly, or brie, or NUTELLA. I could, without a doubt, sit down on the couch with a good movie, a baguette, and a little tub of nutella and be in heaven. Even when I'm being good, I just rip off a little bit of a baguette, but then I go back and get a little more, and a little more.

Apart from eating it in moderation, which others have rightly suggested, there are other tricks to kill cravings. I think the best is brushing your teeth. The cool, minty toothpaste gets rid of cravings for other foods--you know how bad that first thing you eat tastes aftr brushing your teeth. Eating less and better oral hygiene...two birds, one stone. I've also heard pickles do the trick, but I can't stand pickles, so I can't say if that works or not.