Weight Loss Contest

So, I am organizing a Biggest Loser contest at work. It initially was going to be me and 2 other guys but it has grown into a big deal. We currently have 15 participants with a R$200 buy in! I´m really excited about it because, well, frankly I need to loose 40 pounds.

I´ve decided I´m going to make this a mathmatical problem. I know how much I weigh, how many calories a person of my weight, activity level, height and sex burns every single day. I know how much of a calorie deficit I have to have to burn 1 pound. My plan is to burn 3 pounds each week of the contest. I´ll post my plan and progress a little later.

Kelli and I were talking the other day and I realized that food is at too high of a priority in my life. I´d say my top 4 priorities and things I find enjoyment in are family, work, church and food. That is so sad to me. Food is fuel, think of all the wonderful things out there. There´s traveling, sports, hobbies, all sorts of things that should be more important to me than food.

I have so much inspiration, Kel, Grant, other family and friends. And also, I found this picture that Kelli took of me at the beach in Trindade. Amazing, that is all I can say.

Living in Brasil

A little over a month ago I moved down to Brasil. I say Brasil and not Brazil because I´ve decided I´m here, I better spell it correctly. So I came down a month before Kelli came down. It was pretty hard not seeing her and Grant. Thank goodness for SKYPE, I don´t know what we would have done without it.

One of my favorite things to do on Saturday mornings is to go to the feiras or farmers markets. It seems funny that one of the most popular days to have a feira is on saturday, which is sabado and not one of the feira days like segunda-feira. Oh well.



Every time I got to the feira I get caldo de cana com limaõ(sugar cane juice with lime). It´s by far my favorite. On this trip I also got fresh dates and jaboticaba which is a fruit that grows on the trunk of the tree. It´s pretty cool to see but they are also pretty tasty.

Some fun things we did before leaving NY

So, while we lived in NY I feel like we did a whole lot of really fun things. So when I found out we where moving I thought of all the things that I wanted to do but we didn't have time to do.
One of the things we had wanted to do was to go to Niagra Falls.

Niagra falls is great! The US side is grimy and the people are rude. On the Canadian side it is amazing, beautiful and the people are nice. I'm really glad we saw the US side, it really made me thing about the amazing history and how this great site is just going through a rough spell. But next time we go we will definetly head straight for the other side.

Some things I will remember about the trip are
1) being tricked into parking on the american side
2) how nice the canadian border guy was
3) finding a place for kelli to feed grant
4) being yelled at by the american border guy for pulling forward and kelli being on the phone
5)ending up having to go to ROC because I sold out my own non rev trip in BUF
6) having a great time with Kelli and Grant
7) a great lunch at Lake House
Here are some pictures.

Visiting Corona Park and the Botanical Gardens

Kelli and I decided that we wanted to have a fun day out yesterday. We decided to explore Queens a little more.

Kelli not happing about waiting for the bus.

Me at Lemon Ice King of Carona. It was sooo good.

Then we walked to Carona park and saw the Unisphere and the park.

We ended up in the Botanical Gardens and took a bunch of pictures.

Beautiful Views and Funny Stores

One of my favorite things about my job is the views from our office. If you look out one side of the floor you can sea Laguardia airport and the site of the World's Fair. I'll have to post some pictures of the fair site, it's really cool. The other side of the floor is the one I am on and you can see JFK Airport. It really is an amazing view.

On the way home from work I was thinking about all the weird shops on Queens Blvd. I've decided I need to document them before they go or I go. The first one is a really old and ghetto fur shop that advertises cold storage. That's pretty weird to me. One day I want to go in there with a bunch of steaks and ask if they can store them.

nasty day turned great!

So I woke up this morning and it was so hard to get out of bed. It was so rainy and gloomy and I just felt like I was moving in slow motion. So I went to work as normal and just kinda pushed through.

Right before lunch I was sick of the music I was listening to and I started to look for something new. I got really lucky and found a Brazilian station called globoradio.com. It is so fantastic! It really is going to help me re-learn Portuguese and hopefully soon I'll be able to use those skills.

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Feeling better I decided to go home for lunch. I was eating lunch, don't even ask (Kelli is out of town), and I realized that the orchid my parents had bought me is really start to open up. I love orchids, I just think it's not a real possibility to grow them very successfully unless I had a greenhouse. So here is a picture of one of the blossoms.

I then took a look at the passion fruit vines I'm growing. I recently pulled about half the vines and hung some supports with my mom. I was really hoping to see some good growth and was not disappointed at all. All over the vine there are new leaves coming out. I really hope someday the vines will fill out the window. Here's their progress.

So it was still really rainy outside but seeing my plants made me feel a lot better. So we had a meeting at 3PM and after the meeting I looked out the window and it was gorgeous! I don't know how but all the clouds were gone and the sun was out. Amazing!



So what was a cold nasty day had turned into a beautiful day full of life and sun. I love this time of year because it seems like the weather just does what it wants to.

Why am I doing this?

Well...I have decided to start writing a blog. Whenever I hear that someone has a blog I always wonder why. What is it in their life that is so interesting or cool that they think someone else might want to read what they have written?

Well, I was over at Dan's house making ravioli and we were talking about blogs. I really liked how he talked about his personal and family blogs. They didn't seem like they were really being written for someone else. It seemed to me to be more like a journal.

I've never been very good at writing in journals. I think before I turned 19 I had probably written less then 10 entries in my life. From 19-21 I wrote probably once a week because that's what you do when you're on a mission. Ever since then I have written 0, yes that is a zero, journal entries.

So this is my new project, keeping a blog for myself. At some point I might even let it slip that I have one, probably not for a good long while though.