Peterborough Here I come!

I grew up in Peterborough. I'll be honest, when I lived there, I hated it. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. But now that I'm older, it's weird how much I really like the place. It's one of those places that I probably wouldn't hate living in again at some point in time. It's a nice little town. Probably not a bad place to raise a family. I was up there on Wednesday and driving around, it's amazing how much the place has changed, yet how much of it is still the same. All the crazy memories come flooding back - playing hockey at the tennis courts on Barnardo Ave, Thursday night movies at the zoo, , trying to steal the population sign, passing out and sleeping the night in King Edward Park (I've never been more proud!), late nights on the river in a boat, and of course my years spent working at the Beer Store on Lansdowne. Everywhere I went in town, I was "the beer guy". Even 10 years after I left, I was in a bar and some dude called me "the beer guy".

So on Saturday night, it will be fun to head "home" and do a show at Johnny Eh's on Water Street. On the show with me are two of my very good friends, Brian Hope and Andrew Evans. I'm hosting, so I'm not sure whether I'll do my regular stuff, or whether I'll tell a bunch of stories about growing up there. I guess we'll have to see how I feel when I get there. But it will be a fun show. And after, maybe we'll head on down the street to Riley's to see if I can't pull a Sebastain Bach and get tossed out of the place for being totally shitfaced and mocking the piano player and spitting wine on the manager. Or maybe I can head on down to the Red Dog and see what local celebs are passed out at the bar. Or maybe I'll just watch a bit of CHEX TV and reminisce about the olden days when they couldn't get the weather forecast right. Wednesday was such a long time ago.

Good times. See you Saturday Peterborough!

I’m fading away to nothing`

That's right kiddies, I've been on a health kick since the start of the year and I'm now down close to 20 pounds. I knew I was fat, but you don't realize how fat you are until you're not as fat as you were. Shirts seem to fit better. My gut doesn't hang over my belt the same way it did before. Although, I'm a little pissed, I bought a really nice belt from the big man's store last year, and in the next few months, if thing keep going the way they're going, I'm going to have to get a new belt. That's just bullshit!

I had lost a ton of weight before by doing Atkins. Atkins is not a bad way to do it, but it's tough to keep it off. When I did Atkins I lost 60 pounds in 9 months. Sure, cutting carbs is a great way to shed pounds, but once you break an ankle and are on crutches eating nothing but pizza and drinking beer for 12 weeks, it's amazing how quickly that weight comes back. I think I put on about 30 pounds in 12 weeks, and then slowly put about a total of 75 back on over the next couple of years. So this time around, I thought I'd try something different and radical. It's called portion control. Have you ever heard of it? Under this crazy scheme, I'm eating the total calories I would need if I weighed my ideal weight. Based on that, I apparently need about 2400 calories per day. So I'm right now trying to only eat between 2,000 and 2,250 per day, and amazingly, the weight's been coming off. Not nearly as quickly as it did before mind you, but at least by doing it this way, once the weight is off, I should theoretically be used to eating the right number of calories per day so I should be able to keep it off. We'll see.

I do need to be careful not to lose too much though. I bought a tux for my wedding in August and I'm dangerously close to not being able to wear it. I'm all for getting healthy, but I'm also cheap. I need to find the right balance.