Here's the link.


http://www.nbc.com/The_Biggest_Loser/community/weight_loss_gallery/gallery_0053.shtml#main

Note: When more entries are loaded to the gallery, this link will no longer point to my entry.

Here are the photos.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84520&id=634269601


Both mother and son are doing well. He was delivered via c-section because he was in an awkward position and had the umbilical cord wrapped around his body. Ruth should be in the hospital until Thursday or Friday this week.

Here is a link to some pictures I took at the event.


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83727&id=634269601

I would have taken more because we were really close to the stage, but the battery in my camera died. It was great. The weather was wonderful, and there were good speakers. Our lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle, spoke. He also came around and shook our hands after he finished. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece also spoke. I don't go to very many of these because the weather's either rainy or cold, but it was just perfect this year. I wish it could be like that more often for this event.

Here's a link to my profile...

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=634269601

Check it out!

We decided to go to Dragon*Con again this year, Ruth, Ted, Dylan, and I. We decided to leave an hour earlier this year so that our wait in the registration line wouldn't be as long. Just like last year, we drove to the Doraville Marta station and then took Marta to Peachtree Center. We probably got to the Hyatt Regency after 7:30, maybe 7:35 or 7:40. The doors opened at 8:00. Our trip through the line went a lot more smoothly this year. We probably waited about 45 minutes to an hour less this year. After we got our badges and left the registration area, we thought we would check out the parade since we missed it waiting in line last year. Before heading that way, I decided to phone my e-mail friend of 10 years at least, Steffani, to start planning how we could meet up. Steffani and I first started e-mailing back and forth when we were discussing a favorite childhood series of ours, Voltron, on the Sci-Fi Channel message board. Cartoon Network was just bringing it back, and our cable provider here didn't offer us Cartoon Network at the time. I was pretty bummed about that. :-P I told Steffani that we were planning on going to the parade, but she and her friends were heading out to get autographs. We went out to the street to get ready to view the parade, but a few minutes before it started, we decided to go to the autograph area so we could try to see some of the stars before the crowds got too thick. We went there, and Ted and I got to meet up with a star that we were really wanting to meet, Robert Llewellyn, a star of the series Red Dwarf. We both got his autograph, and Dylan took a picture of Ted and Robert together. We ran into Virgil, a wrestler, again. He was at last year's con. We also saw Sean Astin and Robert Englund. We were waiting in Robert's line when my e-mail friend caught up with us. It was cool getting to see her in person and chat with her and with the friends she came with. While I was chatting with them, Ruth, Dylan, and Ted went up to see Robert. Ruth called Kiah up on my cell phone, and Robert talked to him on the phone. Robert said that he had Dylan with him and was going to eat him! :-D After that, Ted brought me over to see Robert because I was wearing a shirt with a symbol from V. He thought that was cool and handed me a free black-and-white photo from the series. We spoke with a few more people in the autograph room (a few people from Star Trek, Adam West, the guy who did the voice of Chucky in the Child's Play movies, and a few others) before heading out to lunch. My e-mail friend also saw Adam West and decided to pay $50 for his autograph! We went to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch and then checked out the dealers' rooms when we got back. Those are always crowded and difficult to navigate. I ended up finding the Star Wars Holiday Special on DVD. I've heard that this special is really awful, but being a Star Wars fan, I've always wanted to see it for myself. I also found a couple of other DVDs I wasn't expecting to find, the Logan's Run TV Series and Moon Dreamers. Moon Dreamers was a short cartoon series that aired as part of My Little Pony and Friends in the 80's. We went back to the autographs room before leaving and saw a few more people there. We spoke with George Takei and went back to see Robert Llewellyn. He was probably getting tired of seeing us, as we had dropped by his table and spoken to him a few times. :-) By early afternoon, we were all getting exhausted, and Ruth was ready to go home. She was getting tired and was really starting to hate the crowds, especially in the dealers' rooms. She's just not into science fiction and fantasy like I am, so she really didn't show an interest in anything in the dealers' rooms. She just stood back while Ted and I browsed. That was hard to do with all the people walking around, so she and Dylan would just step outside and wait for us to finish looking. My e-mail friend and I had separated by this time, so I phoned her to tell her we were leaving and that it was nice meeting her and her friends. We then headed back home after an exhausting but fun day at Dragon*Con. I thought it was a good trip, although the autographs area didn't hold the fun for us this year that it did last year. Many of the stars wouldn't allow pictures, so I pretty much didn't get to use my camera at all. I just had the few pictures that I uploaded to my album. Even Dylan couldn't really take pictures this time around. Also, many of the stars that were there we saw last year, and the stars with the biggest draws just had so many people waiting in line to see them. We actually did luck out and get to speak to Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies. Ted noticed that no one was waiting in line to see him, so we went over and spoke to him for a few minutes. He was at last year's con, but we couldn't even see him because of the huge number of people waiting in line to see him. This year, the stars from Firefly and Heroes had the most people waiting to see them. It was a good trip overall, and I'm hoping we can go Friday to Monday next year so we can check out some of the panels and other events, which we haven't been able to do yet.

I went with my sister (Ruth), nephew (Dylan), and a good friend from church (Ted) to Gatlinburg last week. We had a great time. Gatlinburg had a lot of interesting little souvenir shops and things to see and do like the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Ripley's Mirror Maze, the Guinness World Records Museum, and the Space Needle. We even got to do some of those old time photos which I've wanted to do for a long time. The four of us posed in a picture as the "Wild Bunch", wanted for a $25,000 reward. :-) We also had one done of Dylan solo, and he did a really good job in that one also. We went to Pigeon Forge on Tuesday. We had a good time there as well, but we ended up doing a lot more walking that day, and I believe that day was the hottest one during our trip. It may not have been, but it certainly felt like it. We played miniature golf while we were there and did some souvenir shopping. We ate at the Old Mill restaurant, which is really good. We also ate at some good restaurants in Gatlinburg like Bubba Gump's, the Pancake Pantry, Hard Rock Cafe, and a really good Italian place whose name escapes me. We did a lot of walking in Gatlinburg as well, but the stores were closer together, so we could go into stores more easily to escape from the heat. One nice thing about the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area was the trolley system. We just rode the trolleys while we were there so we could avoid driving. We had to wait for a while, but it was nice not to have to worry about driving the car and finding a place to park it. There was a trolley stop right in front of our hotel, so it worked out really well. There were Gatlinburg trolleys that went into Pigeon Forge too. We stayed at the Garden Plaza hotel, and our experience was good. We saw a lot of bad reviews for it, so we were a little worried about it. The hotel is split across three separate buildings, so maybe we avoided staying in the "bad" one. Our hotel had an indoor pool and hot tub. The hot tub wasn't hot enough the first time we tried it, but it was wonderful the other times we used it. The pool was always too cold. I didn't spend a lot of time in the pool, but Dylan loved it. Ted got in it some too. Ted and I also got up early to work out in the workout room. I used an elliptical machine the first morning that gave me sore calves for the rest of the vacation. I used a stationary bike and treadmill the other two days. I loved using the treadmill, and I've even considering getting one for the house. I actually jogged on it for most of the 30 minutes I was on it. That's something I never thought I'd be able to do. One thing I'd suggest you never do is arrive or leave Gatlinburg at nighttime. There's nothing worse than driving on a mountain road that's not lit or has no reflectors at night. That was really scary. Road signs were scarce as well. There were times where we wondered if we were really on the right road. We were SO happy and relieved when we finally arrived in Gatlinburg. One thing I was worried about on vacation was gaining a lot of weight. The Saturday before we left, I had my weight recorded at 126.4. Yesterday, I recorded my weight at 124.6. I was able to maintain my weight and even lose a little bit. :-) We did a lot of walking on top of our morning workouts, and I tried to watch what I ate at mealtimes. I tried to get fruit and veggies wherever and whenever I could. I always ate fruit at breakfast with whatever hot items or cereal I chose. It's possible to go on vacation and have a good time without worrying about gaining weight. :-) Our vacation to Gatlinburg was fun, and I hope to go there again sometime in the future.

UPDATE: I ended up buying a Sole F80 treadmill on 8/23 at Dick's Sporting Goods!

Ted and I went to the Rite Aid Health & Beauty Expo at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta today. It was neat to meet the celebrities and collect free samples and coupons from tons of tables and booths. There were also places to get free health screenings, but the lines were so long for those that it just didn't seem worth the wait.
We got our pictures made with Billy Blanks (developer of Tae-Bo) and Allison Sweeney (plays Sami on Days of Our Lives and hosts Biggest Loser), and they autographed their pictures for us. Ted also got Dominique Wilkins' autograph. We had to wait a long time to see Allison, but we were able to sit in line and talk with other people, which made the time go by quickly. We spoke with a fellow UGA grad, and we talked quite a bit about downtown Athens and how much the campus has changed.
It was amazing that the event was free (with canned food donations to the local food bank) and that the celebrities didn't charge for photographs or pictures. The trip was well worth it, and if another expo were held in the future, I would love to go again.

4/28/2007: 155.0 pounds
4/26/2008: 130.4 pounds

It's amazing that I've lost almost 25 pounds in one year! Some of you may think that's not a lot for that amount of time, but when I began exercising daily over a year ago, I had no idea how much I'd lose or if I'd lose much at all. I'm able to wear my pants and jeans that I haven't been able to wear for at least eight or nine years. Unfortunately, some of them are too worn to wear to work or church, so they're pretty much reserved for weekend wear when I'm just going to be at home or when I'm just hanging out with friends. I also have more confidence to wear more form-fitting clothes. Clothes shopping still isn't easy because it's hard to find clothes that fit just right. My old jeans and pants that fit me best run from size 10 to size 12, but last weekend at The Gap, I bought some size 8 pants and jeans. I started taking waist measurements on 5/12/2007, and since then, I've lost around 4 inches.

Weight loss isn't easy, but it helps a lot if you can find a good time of day to exercise (morning for me) and find something that you enjoy doing that you can stick with. It also helps to eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and cut back on things like desserts and foods high in fat and calories.

I hope I can keep up my daily routine of exercising and eating healthier. Not only is it great to lose weight, but I feel a lot better too. If you'd like to lose weight and think I can help answer any questions, please feel free to send me a message. Have a great rest of the weekend!

I’m sure all of you either experienced the bad weather here today or at least heard about it. In all, our area had three separate tornado warnings, and we had three instances of some pretty rough and stormy weather this afternoon. We had some hail and hard rain, but fortunately we weren’t hit as hard as other areas were. My parents were hit harder than I was. They live on the other side of town from me. My mom said that there was so much hail that it looked like snow falling from the sky. It was an interesting afternoon of watching the news, being relieved when one warning passed, and becoming dismayed as once again another tornado warning was announced for our area. One wonderful result of all the stormy weather was a beautiful rainbow which could be seen really well from my neighborhood. I uploaded pictures to my photo area on MySpace. I also submitted one to WSB TV, which was published on their site. It’s picture 38 in the Your Hail, Severe Weather Photos Slideshow IV.

Mitt Romney was a presidential candidate that I dismissed early on because he seemed to be just another RINO (Republican in Name Only) among the top-tier candidates. Besides, I didn't need to worry about looking into him further because there were already other good, conservative candidates in the race, Duncan Hunter being my favorite. I had always hoped that Duncan would catch on and once the voting started, he'd show that all the polls were wrong. However, with Mike Huckabee winning Iowa and John McCain winning New Hampshire, two candidates that I don't want to see get the nomination, I decided to give Mitt Romney another look since it seemed unlikely that Duncan would ever catch on enough to give both of these men a run for their money. My main concerns with Romney were his stances on the social issues. It was hard for me to tell if he was genuinely conservative on social issues. I found an excellent site called Evangelicals for Mitt that provides good information on Mitt Romney from conservative Christian supporters. If you're considering Mitt Romney but have questions about his record, I would check this site as a part of your research on the candidate. I would read these first.

http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/massresistance/therealtruth.pdf
http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/front_page/a_comment_from_a_romney_oppone.php
http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/front_page/more_from_steve_baldwin.php

Of course, there are other excellent posts on the site, so please feel free to read those as well. Also, Mitt Romney has received endorsements from Paul Weyrich, National Review Online, Bob Jones III, Tom Tancredo, and others, which in my mind gives him more credibility.

You may be wondering why I, as an evangelical, do not favor Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee is a solid conservative on social issues, but on most other issues, he's at least moderate if not liberal. You can get a glimpse of his record on taxes and spending at the Club for Growth site. Here's a good article on the Cato Institute site. He's also soft on immigration. He receives a fair rating from Numbers USA, which is better than John McCain and Rudy Guiliani, but there are better candidates in the field with Excellent ratings (Romney, Thompson, and Hunter). I also think Huckabee uses his faith in ways that are not attractive. Here is one such example.

To conclude, Duncan Hunter remains my first choice for the Republican nomination. I truly hope in the primaries to come, he does well and makes a good showing. I hope he wins. However, I'm prepared to change my vote if it will prevent John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani from getting the nomination. I'd be happy to place a vote for Mitt Romney in this case, as he's a candidate with across-the-board conservative credentials that has a real chance of winning. If Romney does get the nomination, I hope he will tap either Thompson, Hunter, or Tancredo to be his VP, with my preference going toward Hunter or Tancredo. I hope all three of these men could have a place in a Romney administration.