Tatoru Executioner

Update for Thursday 1st Quest: Smashed it 2nd Quest: Did 4.5 miles of interval running, 1/2 mile run-1/2 reduced speed light jog-1/2 brisk walk, repeated til finish. Also had bowling last night. 3rd Quest: MRS breakfast, Burrito bowl from Chipotle for lunch (steak w/ guacamole), 2nd half of lunch for dinner Life Quest: No studying done last night

Thinking of building my own outdoor obstacle course/ workout center. Got plenty of land so why not. Will bring this to my wifey's attention to get her take. I feel the "sure, but only if you....." response coming. I don't mind them, usually it's something good she's asking for anyways. In this case, I think the reply I get will be "Sure, but only if you also build the kids a new playground." Which I wouldn't mind doing, plus with those answers it also means she's allowing me to do what I ask lol.

Academy is my first choice. My plans are similar. I told myself if I could commit to positive changes for remainder of 2015 then come 2016 I will treat myself to purchasing NF Academy. Really interested in NF Yoga as well but Academy first for me. NF Yoga I'll treat myself to as a reward for future challenge.

Exactly, they are very peaceful animals, and playful. Not that I'm playing with them lol. But they're fun to watch from a distance. They're very curious, like little children.

I love living out in the woods. We get deer in our yard every night, as well as foxes, rabbits and many more. Bears don't much bother me as long as I can see them. When I'm traipsing around through thick brush and encounter one at night, yeah no thanks. When we first moved here and a bear would come roaming up towards the front porch I could open the front door and holler at him and he'd take off. That didn't last too long. Next solution was clanging wooden spoon with anything metal. That worked for a while but eventually stopped. So for a while now it's been firecrackers. They've worked for a long time now but I only use them when I really need to. I'm not trying to scare them for fun or anything. Just when absolutely necessary because it is too close to being a threat to myself or my family.

Same here.....for many many many years, Mt Dew was the nectar of the gods as far as I was concerned. Mt Dew all times of the day, pretty much all day. That's why I thought this one would be so hard but thankfully it's been a breeze.

Quick Wednesday Update (seriously, promise this time) 1st Quest! Water consumption is a go! Seriously still surprised at this. 2nd Quest! Crossfit day went great! I finished and am establishing limits/times to work towards improving upon which is fun. 3rd Quest! Meal replacement shake breakfast, banana and cherry tomatoes lunch, goulash for dinner (limited the pasta I ate) Life Quest! Half hour study time completed.....barely....eyes were soo soo heavy. *yawn* So there you go, quick update as promised. Hope everyone is having a good week.

Edit: Not so....Quick update for Tuesday: 1st Quest: Water consumption is continuing to be a smashing success. Still can't believe this, I just knew this was going to be my hardest quest. 2nd Quest: Went to bed with a minor toothache Monday night. Woke up to an abscessed tooth that had the whole left side of my face swollen to the point my eye was swollen shut. I've only had like 1 abscess ever so at first I didn't even know what it was. Just freaked me out. After wifey told me what it was and I took some Ibuprofen I still went out and got a 2 mile run in. Now I'm on antibiotics until abscess recedes then it's off to the dentist. 3rd Quest: Meal replacement shake for breakfast followed by soup for lunch and dinner. No way was I chewing anything solid when I could barely open my mouth. Life Quest: I did some 1 eyed studying last night for about 45 minutes. Here's a story about the rest of my night..... After studying I went to take a nice hot shower. I went into the bathroom undressed and started to turn the water on. Welllll, after turning the hot water knob not even a 1/4 turn it shot out at me and water was going everywhere!!!! So here I am straddling the bathtub naked trying to get the knob to go back in but it was stripped out. So I start to call out for the wifey but it takes 10 minutes before she hears me. She comes in annoyed thinking perhaps maybe I'm just trying to get her in there for "play time". After I tell her what's going on she spends a few minutes laughing at me before I finally get her to come and hold the knob in place so water doesn't keep shooting everywhere. So finally I get my shorts back on and tennis shoes and begin my journey into the woods to cut off the water. We have a well and while the sinks all have separate cut off valves the showers/bathtubs do not. Soooo, the well is like an acre back behind the house in what has become woods. Our property is 6 acres and the actual woods do start at the back end of it. However, the people who owned it prior never cared for the back half and so it's all overgrown unkempt trees and 6-7 foot tall weed bushes with spiders, snakes, and wildlife creeping about. So here I am at 1130 at night navigating my way through the jungle that is the back yard trying to find the water pump with a dimly lit flashlight. I finally find it and while I'm clearing away brush to get to the cutoff valve I hear something making a lot of noise nearby. I freeze for a moment and just listen and I keep hearing the noisy movements of something large nearby. At this point I grab hold of the cutoff valve and attempt to turn it the 1/4 turn it needs to shut off the water supply. Well, the valve itself is a plastic T shaped handle and one side of it snaps off, oh crap! As I'm panicking about the valve and the large wildlife whatever nearby I again attempt to make the 1/4 turn it needs. This time I successfully get it to turn and water is off and I briskly walk back to the house through the jungle and get back inside safely. At this point, my soon to be 3 year old wakes up from a nightmare so now wifey is trying to soothe her back to sleep. Our master bathroom has a double sink counter top and one of them has been shut off for a couple months due to steady leaking. So I replace the bathtub knob with one I removed from the sink. That done, it is time to traverse back through the jungle to the water pump. I get my dim flashlight and grab some firecrackers from the utility closet and head back out. About 1/2 way to the pump I hear the loud noises again of something large nearby so again I freeze and slowly maneuver the flashlight about looking for the perpetrator. At first I see nothing but as I am about to move again I hear the noise again and jerk the light in the general direction. Now I see what I suspected, a large black bear about 10-15 yards away from me staring me down. It recognizes that I have spotted it also and begins hissing at me. Yes, hissing, that's what these things do. I slowly retrieve my fire crackers from my pocket and my lighter and without taking my eyes off him manage to get them lit and toss them in his direction. The firecrackers pop off and thankfully mr bear decides to flee. Now that my heart is nearly bursting from my chest and bear is gone I quickly get to the water pump and get the water back on. That done, I sprinted back to the house like my life depended on it, incurring a few scrapes and scratches from low hanging limbs but safely made it back inside the house. Phew, now that whole ordeal was done I finally got to take my shower. Super hot shower done and come out to see wifey trying to get Chloe (nearly 3 yr old) to settle and lie down with her. Well, Chloe was having none of it, insisting on my presence. So, wifey returns to bed and I pick up Chloe and hold her and sway with her getting her to relax. I attempt to lay her down in her bed but she immediately snaps up screaming again so I quickly pick her up and begin soothing her. Three hours later I finally get her to sleep and I let myself drift off on the couch next to her. Man am I thankful that I keep firecrackers around for just such a purpose. The imitation gunshots nearly always work to get the bears to flee and this time was no different. That said, they're generally not very dangerous and even in close passing will leave you alone. I often encounter them on my morning runs in the early light. They have never bothered me or chased me in any fashion except once. That one time was when as I was running I came upon a momma bear with 2 cubs. Let's just say momma bear decided I got too close to her babies and went into full protective mode. I was able to remove myself from the situation unharmed but now I know anytime I see cubs to immediately run the opposite direction.

And more red pandas! We shall discover this world you speak of.

Red pandas, red pandas everywhere!

This is the 2nd attempt as I had just finished typing up the update and then my 6 yr old decided to accidentally hit the backspace key which made my browser go back therefor losing everything...grrrrr Officially Update Time 1st Quest: Water consumption has been an amazing success. Soda is an afterthought for the most part which is amazing! I've tried to quit soda many times with no success. This time however, I have done so with ease. I'm not positive but I think that all the extra activity (plus being sick) has increased my need and want for water, therefor phasing out soda. 2nd Quest: Saturday I did a solid 45 minutes of stretching. This idea came from my crossfit coach who is also an old friend. He told me that with my huge upswing in activity I needed a day of pure stretching. I hated every minute of it but I have to admit afterwards my muscles felt a lot better. So I'll use Saturday as a pure stretch day from now on to help alleviate muscle soreness and build flexibility. Sunday after church I took the family to the park. While the kids played on the playground the wifey and I walked laps around the play area. Kids had a blast and we all got good exercise in! Today I had my crossfit workout and we did wall ball, burpees 21, 15, 9 (reps) ; for time. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish but I finally did (even if it took me 23:17). 3rd Quest: I come to you riddled with guilt. This weekend was a smashing fail in the healthy food area. Thanks in large part to being out and about but still, better choices could've been made. Saturday was the birthday party where food choices were pizza, cake and ice cream. I ate 3 slices of pizza but to my credit refused the cake and ice cream. I did have a meal replacement shake for breakfast but ate 2 slices leftover pizza for dinner. Sunday I had a meal replacement shake for breakfast, so good start again. However, after family time at the park, I met up with my father at Tilted Kilt to spend time together, eat, drink and watch football. Soooooo...... I ate an onion stack, shepherds pie and split an order of pub pretzels. All that to go along with 6 pints of beer and sweet tea as I let the slight buzz fade before leaving and yep, another not very healthy day of dieting. Today I started off with a meal replacement shake again for breakfast. I skipped lunch all together and for dinner I ate grilled chicken with italian seasoning with steamed broccoli and fiesta corn. Life Quest: As promised I pulled extra duty study time Friday night. I got 1 1/2 hours of studying in, which is great because then I didn't get any further studying done all weekend. Most likely not going to get any in tonight either as I'm exhausted and honestly don't think I could focus on it at present. Overall I think I'm doing pretty good. I've certainly had more slip ups than I wanted, especially in the food department. I can see though, that I have successfully implemented the changes that I wanted to make. I may not make the right decision every time, but I am certainly trending in the right direction. In the past I've let small failures bring me down heavily. This always eventually led to me giving up all together. This time though, I'm making a strong effort to accept my mistakes and impress upon myself to make a better choice next time. Gotta keep it up to take it to the next level, like this guy....

Week 2, other than the sickness >.> Treated me well. I'll post a full update once I'm home tonight. At work now and the weekend was super busy. But that is a good thing

Yes, the sickness has passed! Well, winter certainly isn't here. 80/50 high/lows certainly isn't winter lol. I also get on my kicks where I often say this line at work as well.. Just because, well it's awesome! Thanks for stopping by and checking up InPursuitOf. You get a red panda! Winter themed!

We'll see...... This is my sister-in-law we're talking about. She struggled to get clean off drugs, mostly any/all drugs she could get her hands on, for years. Finally she was able to do so and has now been clean for 3 years. Many of her other eccentric behaviors still exist. Love is one of them. She wants to settle down get married start a family but at the same time can't quite commit. She was engaged to another man 2 months ago. The guy she's engaged to now is a past bf who also has battled getting clean. He just got out of prison 9 months ago, fell right back into using but now has been clean 3 months. He's a great guy as long as he's not using. She has always had feelings for him and now sees herself as not only his wife to be but his support in his battle to stay clean. My only issue is if it goes the wrong way they could both end up falling back into old habits. Trying to keep a strong faith in this working for the best. She's a great woman, very kind hearted and very open about who she is. That's why I'm sharing this at all. Normally I wouldn't but she doesn't mind. She tells everyone her story all the time and has repeatedly encouraged me to do the same to help others. She's trying to make the best of all her prior mistakes. Anyways, keeping the faith strong here and praying for a great outcome.