Are You Cooking These Meals Or Is It a Job For Someone? (Day 65)

Today was kinda a weird day, timing/scheduling wise for Kim and I. She didn't have to go into work today so she got to sleep a little late. I woke and went downstairs to release the hounds only to find a great coffee mess. The coffee maker had, for lack of a better term, jammed. Kim has switched us to normal coffee (the kind you scoop, measure, and use a filter with) from what I've used for the last 15 years or so (pre made filter packs). I'm not used to fooling around with filters and the potential mess so she fixes the coffee at night and sets a timer. Somehow the coffee spilled out and clogged the maker and coffee & coffee grinds went everywhere. The worst part is there was no coffee available in the pot! I had to clean up the mess WITHOUT COFFEE! So I walked the Pug, released the remaining hounds, cleaned up the mess, brewed another pot, and finally had my first cup of coffee. After the great Mr. Coffee incident this morning the rest of the day went rather smoothly.

I went to the gym a little late (Kim had an appointment so she needed to get ready before me) and began with 15 minutes of HIIT cardio on the treadmill. Walk a minute, then run a minute. Next I trained shoulders. 12 total sets today. I started with shoulder presses, moved on to side lateral raises, next were upright rows, and finally shoulder shrugs. I returned to the treadmill for 30 minutes at an incline of 12.8 and speed 3.8. This evening Kim and I walked Jumping Jack Flash about two miles around the lake before dinner.

After the gym I had to hang around the house waiting on some of our new furniture to be delivered. When they arrived I put all of our cats into our bedroom and the Pug had to go into her crate as the delivery men brought our new sofa and chair into the house. We're still short a section of the sofa and an ottoman for the chair, but it looks pretty good. I've placed two ancient ugly green leather chairs in place of the missing piece of sofa for the time being. The sales person said the delivery date on the back-ordered items would be late this month/early next month. The customer service rep I talked to today said late DECEMBER. Oh well, we're so happy with our new furniture (which doesn't smell like cat/dog urine/vomit). Now if we can keep the cats & dogs from destroying the new furniture.

I had a contact on Flickr post a great message/question today concerning one of my photos (all of the photos I post on this blog are also posted to Flickr). Below is the thread:

Q:"Damn man you are getting good with this food photography. Iam always looking at lunch time and its making my mouth water. What type of setup are you using for these. And are you cooking these meals or is it a job for someone?"
A:"Thanks. You're not going to believe it, but these "meals" are part of my Nutrisystem Diet. I prepare each meal (microwave the meal, microwave my veggies and then throw them onto a plate), place the meal onto a piece of white foam core board and get ready to take the photo. I have a smallish softbox behind the food shooting back at me about +2 stops over exposed, and a second snooted light more or less behind me about +0.3 stops over for some fill. The lights are SB800's triggered via CLS (Nikon's TTL wireless system). Easy and I get the lights setup as I prepare the food. The entire process takes less than 5 minutes (usually).
I have a blog about my weight loss experience with Nutrisystem that features my food photos, if you interested it's here

Thanks again!"

So I'm doing my part to spread the word about Nutrisystem, one mouthwatering photo at a time!

Of course I had another on plan day. Breakfast was a blueberry (did anyone else notice that we now get 1 larger muffing with more calories instead of the 2 smaller lower calorie muffins?), facon, a banana, and a slice of bread. My morning snack was yogurt and a banana. Lunch today was bean and ham soup, broccoli and cauliflower with cheese sauce. My afternoon snack was a fudge brownie. Dinner was, to quote Kim, "an Epic salad" (she prepared all of the fresh veggies for our salads), and a pizza with fake soy pepperoni (hereafter referred to as fake-eroni), onions and spinach. Dessert was one of my favs, the chocolate crunch bar.

Finally, this evening we watched "The Biggest Loser." I still hate Tracy. Nothing else to say.