Something old, something new....

...in which a wedding has occurred.

Yesterday Saira got married to her Very Significant Other (who is presumably now upgraded to her Extremely Significant Other :)). 

Since this is a public site I won't share pictures because facebook privacy settings exist for a reason, but I will say that they're an absolutely lovely couple who thoroughly deserve the happiness they bring each other.  (I do think they're rushing into a bit though - 12 years is an awfully short time to be together before you get married ;)).

The wedding/wedding breakfast/reception went on all day (except for a brief interlude, where we went back to our hotel room) and we had an absolutely fantastic time. We love our kids, but sometimes we need to stop being "mum and dad" for an evening and just be Ann and Chris, who can stay up till 2 AM dancing and chatting with friends and drinking (although the drinking isn't necessary). I'm quite proud of the fact that we were 2 of the last 6 people to go to bed (the other 4 being the bride and groom themselves and another couple), although I've also been somewhat exhausted all day!

Saira and her VSO quite often come round to our house for barbecues (basically whenever all of us have a weekend free and the weather is good enough to cook outside). G and I will invariably get the guitars out and inflict sonic abuse on everybody within earshot, and it appears there's no law to stop us (or if there is nobody's found it yet). 

This is great fun (for us at least), and G is actually a very competent guitarist, so it was great to see him play the guitar on stage with some friends who are musicians (Little Red Bird and Vera van Heeringen, who is also G's guitar tutor). He's normally very shy about showing off like this so it was great to see him getting up on stage to play (he only did one song with them and did his best to hide at the back, but it's a start! :)).

I decided to not worry about Slimming World stuff for the day; I did make a mental note of what I was eating/drinking and tried not to go too far over my allotted syns for the week (I hadn't had any for the whole of the rest of the week, which isn't recommended but didn't really bother me). This seems to have worked - at weigh in tonight I had lost 1.5lbs, which means I'm now just 1 pound above my original target. Which is nice.

Food-wise I've been making the usual Slimming World stuff; paprika pork is the kids' current favourite, with chicken rogan josh coming a close second; we've had steak a couple of times too because it was half price in the supermarket.

That's kind of it for now....I may not be able to update much more than once a week for a while because of the summer holidays and looking for a new contract (getting quite urgent that I find one of those now, at least before September).

New Website? What?

...in which I demonstrate mastery of procrastination

I'm in the middle of designing my company's new website, so this seemed like a good moment to stop and write the blog because I hate web design (I can't afford to pay someone to do it for me, or I would). Procrastinating? Me? Well of course.

The other day I decided to have a clear out of our bedroom and tidy it up, because it was starting to look worryingly like a teenager's sleeping place. As part of this I got rid of all the jeans that were too big for me, which resulted in about 6 pairs going into the charity bag because there's no way I'm going back up to a 38" waist.

I'm now in 34" trousers, and I can get into 32" ones fairly comfortably; since I've lowered my target by 10 pounds I'm not buying too many new pairs yet in case I end up in 30" trousers, which would probably be the first time ever I've been that slim (this would put me right in the middle of the "healthy" range for BMI, although the main reason for lowering it is that I'm not happy still having man-boobs; some toning may be required too).

With the school summer holidays now in full swing I've found sticking to the plan easier than I expected; the kids mostly like the Slimming World friendly food I make, so them being home isn't too much of an issue. They do have the occasional chicken nugget/oven chips/takeaway, but A and I always have something different when they do.

This week has been a good week so far food wise. We've had diet coke chicken, beef & tomato stew and yesterday I had sirloin steak (it was half price in the supermarket) with wedges, tomatoes and friend onions and mushrooms (both fried in low calorie spray, of course). The kids had ready meals because A. had taken Turquoise Princess out to see How To Train Your Dragon 2 and they had food out.

Tonight I'm planning on doing Paprika Pork, probably with Slimming World chips; I'm going to take Emily to the park in a minute for a picnic, but I have cooked chicken, ham, pickled onions and fruit to take for myself (Emily can have sandwiches).

I've had very, very few syns so far (no more than about 3 at most in the whole week), although I expect that to change significantly on Sunday at Saira and G's wedding, where (in Saira's own words "the meal in the day isn't too bad but there's probably no point even trying to flexi-syn the buffet"). So I'm being extra good this week in the hope that I can still manage a maintain or a small loss next Monday.

On the exercise front, I've been keeping up the running, although anything over 4 miles makes my knee ache a bit. I've been alternating this with the exercise bike to build strength in the leg as apparently that's the most likely cause; I also need to start doing some exercise that tones my stomach and chest as otherwise I'll have super-fit legs but my upper body will be floppy.

I know, I know...

...in which many things are discussed

Sorry. Lack of blog. School holidays. 3 kids. Work at home. House stuff to do. I've also got to find a new contract so I'll be doing my company website and sorting out my C.V. - if you're reading this and you need a C# .NET contract developer for either web or windows work feel free to contact me via the comments, or look me up on LinkedIn. My company website should be up at some point this week too (like most developers I rarely have time to work on my own stuff).

This week I gained half a pound, which isn't really surprising given that I had about 8 pints of beer (over the week) and a bottle and 3/4 of wine on Saturday night, which led to a bit of a crisp-fest (the sort of crisps that pretend they're healthy, but are still crisps). I've lowered my target by 10 pounds, but I'm still close to my original target (2.5 pounds away now).

It's Saira's wedding on Sunday this week and I need to get into 32" trousers so I'd better make a bit of an effort with the alcohol control.  Since the wedding is likely to be a day of celebration involving much eating, drinking and being merry I'd better be good this week.

I've also lowered my target by 10 pounds because I would still have been in the "overweight" BMI range at my previous target and I've decided if I'm going to lose weight I'll do it properly and get rid of my man boobs completely.

During the school holidays I will probably only post once every couple of days and I won't do the big lists of food because they're getting a bit tedious - instead I'll probably just say what the main meal was on a given day and how many syns I had. I might put some daily menus up on a separate page somewhere as I guess that might be useu

In any case, I always have fruit (sometimes with a yoghurt) for breakfast and nearly always have a wholemeal roll for my healthy b (usually with bacon), I always have milk for my healthy A and I rarely have syns except for alcohol.

On Friday I had steak (fat removed) with pasta, fried onions and mushrooms. I also had a bottle of wine while A was out with her workmates (27 syns).

On Saturday, err...oh, yeah about 4 packs of "pops" (16 syns total), plus 47.25 syns' worth of wine (oops). So really I got off quite lightly with a half a pound gain. I can't remember what I had for dinner on Saturday - A went out with friends on a sort of impromptu hen night for Saira (and by all accounts had a fantastic time), so it was pretty light since I was only cooking for myself (the kids had sausage and chips from the local chippy).

On Sunday we had the usual roast Sunday dinner (this is because my mother-in-law comes down every Sunday since my father-in-law passed away a few months ago and she's quite set in her ways).

Yesterday I made diet coke chicken with the leftover chicken with jacket wedges and it was very nice. Tonight I'm making beef stew in the slow cooker, but I need to go down the shop to get extra vegetables for that at some point soonish.

Exercise-wise I've been going on the exercise bike more because of my knee - I'm trying to build the strength in it up as it appears that's what the issue is, so I've been putting the resistance up on the bike to help with that. I did go on a quick 2.5 mile run last night though, but the knee is still feeling quite tight. We tidied the bedroom yesterday so I may see if I can get the cross-trainer in there now since it's been sitting in its box waiting to be assembled for the last 2 years (yes, really). (Edit: A pointed out that actually it's been there for 4 years. Oops).

Right, time to sort out the website.