45. Let me tell you about the significance of this number. This number is 50% of 90. And that means, I’m half way through this crazy diet.

I didn’t run tonight. Dinner came late again – and it’s hard to convince myself to do it if I can’t do it until 10. So, I’m going to again say tomorrow, and, instead of pushing anything back, I’m just gonna be down a run this week. I’m slipping on the running right now, I admit it.

Anyway, diet-wise, all I have to do is do what I’ve already done one more time… from this point on I’m closer to the finish than the starting line!

44! So tonight is supposed to be a run, but it’s 10 PM and it hasn’t happened, and it’s not going to. I’m gonna bump it to tomorrow. Really, a couple reasons. One was that I was distracted by my computer randomly deciding to have issues. I think it’s either the motherboard or the power supply. I ordered a power supply tester off of Amazon to try to rule out that as an issue. If it’s the motherboard, I’ll probably do a processor upgrade as well, and maybe RAM, depending. No need for new drives, and really my video card should be ok as well. I feel like I’d rather not have to replace all those things, and so I guess the better thing would be for the power supply to be bad… then all I need to do is replace that. Would be pretty lame though… it was probably the most I’ve ever spent on a power supply, and would be the fastest one has ever failed on me (I built this computer ~3 1/2 years ago).

Anyway, the other reason was that I didn’t eat till later than usual and there really wasn’t enough time for digestion before a run. That’s a risk you run by doing the late night runs… you need at least 90-120 minutes of buffer between eating and running, and you have to make sure not to eat too much.

So, it’s important that I make a run happen tomorrow. And then we’re going to have to bump the next couple runs back a day, or else there will have to be some kind of adjustment.

It would seem that 44 is a very unlucky number in Chinese numerology (it’s a good thing I’m not Chinese). Apparently four sounds like “death” in Cantonese, and so 44 means “dying and dead”. In fact, the number 13 is evidently also considered to be unlucky in Chinese numerology, because if you add 1 and 3, you get 4.

In my opinion, 44 is an alright number. But there’s one that I like better, and that’s 45. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.

43. Alright, so yesterday was pretty bad in terms of the blogging. I literally forgot about it until I was going to sleep, so I just banged out a few words and posted it. Sorry.

Anyway, if I were you I’d be wondering if I had thrown in the towel on the whole running thing since I delayed it a day and then didn’t really post anything about it on the day I had moved the run to. So, I will assure you, I did do my run last night. It was a crappy run, but I did it. It was still really hot, and pretty humid, but… I dunno. I feel like the diet is a big contributing factor to my not doing super well with the running. I don’t think the two things are super compatible. Back when I was slow carbing and running, I still had carbs, mainly from beans, and I think that’s really what’s missing for me having the energy to do these runs.

In any case, it can’t be helped now. I’ve committed to 90 days on the diet, and I’ve committed to running, with two different 5ks coming up. One in October, one in November. On the plus side, by then it should be a bit cooler out, so at least the heat factor will no longer be there. I’m just going to do the best I can and hope that by the October 5k I am able to actually run 5k without stopping again.

Tomorrow will be my next run. It will, again, be 80 degrees, and probably humid. It will most likely suck. But, even yesterday when it last sucked, I was glad I did it afterward, so, that will have to motivate me through it again.

At least I’m working from home tomorrow.

This long weekend was pretty awesome. I mostly just read, played some games, and watched TV. I was staying at my parents house to take care of the dog while they were on a trip up to NY to get a puppy. It was nice.

Random 43 fact: It’s Sheldon’s hacky sack record in that one episode of The Big Bang Theory.

42. It’s the answer. If only we knew the question.

I don’t want to cloud up your head with anything else tonight… just ponder on that for awhile.

41! So again, a rather non-eventful day of just sticking to the diet. Normally I’d have run today but I decided for this week to push it to tomorrow (and push the monday run to tuesday. Thursday will stay put).

What could our random fact for today be…. hmmm. 41 is… the country code for Switzerland! So before you call your Swiss friend, be sure to dial in that 41!

Another nice round number… 40! That means I’m 4/9 of the way there. Not bad. I won’t lie, it feels like I’ve been doing this a long time. That said, the results have been pretty good. I think maybe better than when I was doing the slow carb thing. Unfortunately, I had a higher starting point than the last time I did a diet, so, it’s gonna be awhile yet. I’m psyched to see where I can get to in the next 50 days though.

Not a lot happened today. Mostly I just ate on diet and… hung out at home since I got to have a WFH day thanks to Labor day weekend.

So let’s just get to the random fact about 40, shall we? Let’s go to my most hated board game. That’s right, there are 40 spaces on a Monopoly board.

39. There was pizza at work today. Lots of pizza. Delicious pizza. Free pizza. I wanted to eat it. So. Badly. Instead, I ate my boring lunch that I brought with me. For the moment, I want the results of sticking to this diet more than I want the delicious taste of pizza filling my mouth, so… my willpower won out.

I got back in from my run maybe 30 minutes ago. I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t great. Better than last time though. I can really only see it being 3 things… 1, it’s hot and humid… last time it was hot and humid I was still struggling like this. 2, it’s the fact that I added in a 3rd run each week. 3, this diet isn’t really conducive to running. The last one seems the least likely, simply because I did have a couple days where it felt like I was almost there with the running. In any case, I’m gonna keep on keeping on with it.

I did get to try out my fancy new watch and headphones. The watch is pretty great really. I’m sure the more expensive ones are nicer in a lot of ways, but, I like a lot of the things I didn’t get it for… like seeing my texts pop up on it. The heart rate thing is kinda neat as well, if largely useless… I mean, outside of when I’m running maybe. But, I got it for the GPS so I could leave my stupid phone at home when I run. It seems to be at least as accurate as the phone is, they pretty much agree on 3 miles for my running route.

The headphones (which, for those of you who didn’t see me mention them before, have a built-in mp3 player, to compensate for the fact that this watch has no music playback capabilities) also work really well. I’ll have to cycle in and out music from time to time… it only has 4 GB capacity… but really that’s plenty for my current runs. The strangest feature on it is it’s “ambient sound” feature, which seems to utilize microphones on the device to put outside sounds into my ears since the headphones muffle them. It’s kinda weird. I thought it might be useful for the run to hear cars and such, but really I feel like it didn’t help that much. I dunno, I’ll probably keep trying it for awhile and see if it grows on me. If not, I can always turn that feature off.

Anyway, 39. That’s the number of delegates that signed the US Constitution.

See you for 40.

Here we are at day 38. It wasn’t too bad. Except for the weather… it’s still disgusting out.

My weigh-in this morning was the lowest yet, which always makes me happy. Food today was all fine as has always been the case since I started. I gave blood today as my employer was hosting a blood drive. And I got my Amazfit Bip in the mail. I had also yesterday received Sony headphones with a built-in mp3 player. I am using the combination of them to replace the use of my iphone 7 plus during runs. So, they’re kinda new toys and I’m excited to try them out. The Bip, if you don’t know, is a smartwatch – probably the cheapest one you can get with a decent GPS… and it also has a heart rate monitor. It doesn’t include the ability to play music, hence the Sony product, but without getting into the Apple Watch price territory, there doesn’t seem to be a smartwatch that has BOTH a GPS and music playing capabilities… you always have to choose one or the other. Anyway, the Amazfit Bip is only like $80 – Not bad at all.

Oh right, 38 fact… uhhh….  it is the degree of N latitude that demarcates North Korea and South Korea.

See you for 39!

37. Did you know that 37 degrees Celsius is the equivalent to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit? That is your body temperature. Or you know, maybe not yours, but it’s typically considered a normal one. Maybe you’re abnormal.

I cracked my iPad screen today. Like, within an hour of waking up. That sucked. Otherwise today was pretty good. Still deciding what I will to about the iPad, to include just continuing to use it as it is… I’m not sure of the quality of a $22 solution on Amazon… to get Apple to fix it is way too expensive. I’m kind of sort of thinking of selling it on ebay and getting a pixelbook.  We’ll see.

Diet is going fine. The weather sucks. I don’t look forward to running on Thursday. Hopefully it goes better than yesterday.

Anyway, that’ll do for today. I’ll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

36. Another work from home day, which is always nice. I walked over and got a bowl of raw vegetables with some beef added onto it at a nearby store for lunch. I think they called it a Buddha bowl. But it was literally a bowl of vegetables. On top of some spinach. But not enough spinach to count as a salad, I don’t think.

I think I might have failed at giving you a random fact for 35. Oh well.

For 36, I have a real doozy for you. Did you know that 36 is the value of 6 squared? It’s true, just google it. Don’t act like you already knew. You’re not getting anything better today.

My run tonight was awful. It was hot, and it was humid. There were more problems from there. Suffice to say I think it was probably even worse than my very first one. Thursday will be better. I mean, it can’t be worse, unless I break my leg or something. Somewhere, someone out there now thinks there’s a chance I will break my leg on Thursday. And I mean, they’re right… but it’s no greater than the chance was before I said that.

Time to nix 36.