#10 - New hospital, and mall..

Ok, I know, the date says 1-10 and I'm posting on 1-11.. I will be posting another picture later on tonight for 1-11 but this picture was one that I took yesterday and never got around to posting..

The water feature you see in the foreground of the picture is part of a new shopping center that is under development. Legends Crossing is being built by Trammel Crow, the largest development company in America. The new shopping center will bring new restaurants, retail stores and hotels as well as office space. To tell you the truth, in my opinion Waco is growing way to big for it's britches and with all of the vacant buildings around town (I plan to go out one day and take pictures of them all) it doesn't make sense (IMO) to bring in more development. Right across the highway from this shopping center is a shopping center that was built a couple of years ago called Central Texas Marketplace. There are still tons of vacant spaces available in that marketplace and there is a vacant building from a restaurant that tried and didn't succeed (Smokey Bones).

The hospital is going to be Hillcrest Health System's new 471,000 sq. foot community hospital and Women & Children's facilities. This hospital will have nearly 400 beds and the company that I work for is actually set up to do a proposal for the VOIP phone systems for this facility. This could be a huge job and while I am very excited, I'm a little scared that taking on a project of that size could be extremely challenging. You can see a live video of the hospital here

-Jack

#9 - 20 questions, it knows what you're thinking!

I didn't leave the office almost at all today so I didn't have much to take pictures of.. This is called 20 Q and it's a hand held game that asks you questions to try to find out what you're thinking. You first think of something (animal, vegetable, mineral, other, or unknown) and by the 20th question it will try and guess what it is.. The first thing that most people do is think of something dirty.. It won't guess things that are dirty but if it suspects that you are thinking something dirty it will tell you.. It's a good way to kill time and it's really pretty fun..

-Jack

#8 - WHY DO YOU TEMPT ME?!?!?!...

I love food... Simple as that... Certain things, like this cherry turnover, are constant reminders as to how much I love food.. Sasha got these on her break at work last week and brought the ones the leftovers home.. They have been staring me in the eyes all week and I can't tell you how many times I've thought "It's ok, I haven't had much to eat today", but I always stay strong and deny myself the pleasure of indulging in the cherry filled goodness.. Today I decided that I've had enough.. There's no reason to keep these around to tempt me and I don't plan on breaking my promise to myself to "Stick with it" so I threw them in the trash.. I don't like to waste food, especially something that tastes as good as a cherry turnover, but it was a must in this situation and they most likely weren't that good anyways (wal-mart bakery food *blah*)..

Working out has been awesome so far.. Even the getting up at 4:30 am isn't such a bad thing.. The hardest part about the whole thing is that I am starting back studying for MCSE and I have a plan to do 2 hours a night in order to try and get a test out of the way before Februrary.. That makes my schedule very tight and with very little down-time..

4:30a-6:00a Workout
6:00a-6:30a Down-time (check email.. etc)
6:30a-7:00a Drive Sasha to work
7:00a-8:00a Get ready/go to work
5:00p-6:00p Eat dinner/wash dishes
6:00p-8:00p Study and try to get to bed before 9..

I guess I could cut a couple of more hours out of my sleep time, but around 3:00p I usually get very drained if I haven't had enough sleep.. Not complaining, busy days = quick days and I'll be an MCSE in no time..

-Jack

#7 - Tucker...

I'm a day behind in my postings but I have actually been taking pictures.. I'll catch up today..

This is our cat, Tucker.. It almost looks like he posed for this picture.. lol.. He needs to go on a weight loss plan as well, I believe he weighs about 12 lbs.. We've tried feeding him less, but he still maintains his weight (kinda like me haha)..

-Jack

#6 - I'm gonna get ripped...

Ok, not really, I just want to lose some weight... Sasha and I have been talking about joining a gym all we finally did it... It was actually pretty cool because Sasha's soon-to-be sister in-law had been thinking about it as well and when we called Sasha's brother to ask if he wanted to tour the gym with us, he said that they had planned on doing the same thing today... So, we all met up there and actually got a really good discount since it was a group of 4 of us signing up. The gym is called Gym-x (gymx.com) and there are only 3 of them (Waco, Temple & Killeen) but the facilities are really very nice and the one in Waco is in the old Best Buy building so there's plenty of space.... The really nice thing about it, is that they have a room that's dark, quiet and a really nice place to relax while working out... I'll admit, I'm very self-conscious when it comes to working out in front of people so the dark room is right up my alley... The other nice thing about Gym-x is that every machine has a TV screen mounted to it so you can zone out watching a TV show and your workout just passes by like nothing..

I currently weigh in at around 310lbs.... I'm not really embarrassed to share that, I know I'm a big guy and I know I need to lose some of that weight.. My goal is to get down to about 200-220 lbs which is right about where I should be for my height (6'4")... I will most likely post my progress as the time goes by... Our plan is to go every morning at 4:30 am and work out until between 5:30 and 6:00.. The reason that I'm posting yesterday's picture, today, is that I wanted to get in bed last night so that I would be able to get up at 4:30 am... We got up as planned, went and worked out until 5:30 and then came back home and Sasha got ready for work.. So far, so good, it feels really good to work out and I think sticking to it will be no problem..

-Jack

#5 - Clean that garage!!

This was the scene when we decided that today would be a good day to clean the garage.. As you can see it's been in need of a good cleaning for a while.. It's almost embarrassing to show the "before" shot. We bought this house a little over a year ago and still have yet to unpack everything since the move. A lot of the stuff was here in the garage, but we still have a few closets to go through as well... This took us about 3 hours, but it was time well spent and it was a nice day to do it.. It's been cold all week, but today it was 76 degrees... Anyways, below you'll see the "after" shot..

#4 - Bah.. Better pics next week (I promise)

I had a very busy day today and wound up working late so I got this picture on our way home from getting something to eat. Nothing special, I thought that the never-ending stop lights would make a cool pic, but the camera didn't want to cooperate and focus for me.. Once it did I didn't have enough time to compose the shot or even take more than one pic.. I may buy a good quality point and shoot in the future, having my 300d available at all times doesn't seem to be feasible. There's tons of great things I'd like to take photos of, the problem is that I am also at work when I drive by most of the things I'd like to take pictures of and most of the time I'm going from one place to another and don't have time to stop.. Next week I'll be sure and make time..

-Jack