Articles by Tina

Holiday time

Personal
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The time has come.  Students have gone on their term break, and so have I!  Bring on the gym!!!!!  I sat down the other day at work and I made myself a little gym plan for the next week and I think I may have overdone it because by last counts I’m spending nearly 3 hours a day at the gym.  Let’s be honest – I don’t like the gym that freakin much.  Might have to revise it and cut back just a tad….

On other news started a new diet blog, all about my terrible terrible eating habits (which are getting better thankyouverymuch), but mostly as a bit of a record to myself what I’m eating and how my weight (which is really really bad – go take a look) is going blah blah.

So if I don’t post much over the next couple of weeks, it’s because I’m probably at the gym not sitting in front of my computer.  If I stop posting all together its because I’m in hospital having pulled something or strained something else or just put myself into a gym induced coma.  Time will tell.  (And if anything happens, Miss Mum will post here for me – I say as she sits here reading this over my shoulder – hope that’s okay 🙂 )

Interrupted sleep

Personal
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Last week I got a text from Mr Dickhead letting me know that he had joined the 21st century and had finally gotten an email address.  Okay fair enough, keeping in touch with him via email is going to be a lot cheaper than texting him (though texting between us is a rarity now), so I bit, and asked for his email address.

There ensued a lot of faffing about, with him giving me the wrong email address and me finding out when I get a gazillion error messages letting me know that the email hadn’t gone through (thanks chariot and yahoo, but 1 message letting me know would have been enough).  So I finally texted him yesterday to ask him what his actual email address is.  (Though why I want it I really don’t know – I keep trying to stop contact with him but it just never happens *sigh*).

So here comes my post title into play.  At the ungodly hour of 4:30am this morning I get a text from him with his email address.  Now Mr Dickhead isn’t stupid (well okay in some respects he is, but in time differences he’s not) and he know’s better, so all I can think is that he timed that text perfectly.  So I text him back – 1 line – You woke me up!  His response to me – You woke me with yours this morning.  Now we’re even.

Mr Dickhead had sat there waiting all day to text me back until he could wake me up.  Now if that is not childish I don’t know what is.  So that people is why I am so tired today.  And why I really don’t want to go to the gym tonight (even though I am going).  Then I’m going to contemplate waking Mr Dickhead up again and making sure my phone is off so he can’t respond…..

When everything gets smaller

Gym stuff, News, Personal
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I suppose one of the things that you should expect when you start dieting and going to the gym is that some things may get bigger (see my previous Muscle Mania post) but some things get smaller.  Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am talking breasts!

Now it is a little disconcerting to find that my bras are starting to not look just right anymore and that I have to buy new ones.  ‘Lo and behold what happens when I go to get a new one?  I have to go down a size, oh but not just sizewize, but I get to go down a full cup size too.

This does not exactly enthrall me because damnit I didn’t really have that much to start with, to start losing what I do have now is just not fair.  Come on, something has to give, I’m doing the right stuff and I’m getting punished for it.  (Okay maybe a slight exaggeration there, but still.)

So that was my disconcerting thought for the day.  I’m about to leave work and go and see Miss Perky so she can be evil to me, and make me lose more of my boobs, that I don’t already have……

 P.S. On a plus – I got weighed last night for my first official week of Slimplicity.  I lost 1.3kgn so I’m kinda chuffed (mind you it probably all came off my freakin’ chest!!!!!)

Muscle mania

Gym stuff, Personal
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I have muscles! Stop the presses – Tina has muscles.
Okay so big deal you’re all thinking right? Well for me this is a big deal – HUGE deal – MEGA HUGE deal. In all my 30 years I have never ever ever had muscle defnition. It was always hidden under layers of fat. Oh yes, don’t worry, I’m not so far advanced that the layers of fat are gone, but hey, I can actually move my arms and see the muscle beneath moving.

I was talking to Mega M yesterday at work, and we were talking about muscles and I offhandedly said that I have a little muscle now, so she got me to flex my arms and okay even I was a little surprised at just how much I actually had. I should probably point out that it’s not bulging or anything, but THEY’RE THERE!!!!

So having seen that has just given me so much more motivation to keep going to the gym, because at last I can see some form of results. I’m the sort of person who can have someone very obviously losing weight stand in front of me and I can’t tell. It’s not that I don’t want to tell, I’m just never able to. And on myself that goes double. Miss Moody keeps telling me that she can see differences, but I just couldn’t. But now I can and it’s great!

My mum was talking to me last night and she said (and my mum isn’t the biggest complimenter in the world – bless her) that she can notice that I’ve been going to the gym. As she put this (and this goes into my forever favourite quotes) “Your bum used to go this way and that when you walked, and now it doesn’t quite do that as much”… Gotta love a mum who tells it like it is. So that’s it for me today, off to the gym (for the second time today UGH) to see Miss Perky and see what evil she has in store for me.

A little pain never hurt anyone

Gym stuff, News, Personal
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I actually think that the above statement is false!  Because I’m in pain and I’m hurting.  Have been to the gym religiously this week – went twice yesterday and have been following my lovely (ugh) healthy (read: no chocolate) eating plan.  Driving me nuts.  I keep thinking I’m hungry even though I know I’m not hungry, because in reality I’m eating more than I normally would.  It’s just all good stuff.

But back onto my pain.  I have Miss Perky as my Slimplicity coach as well as my Personal Training.  And she has given me some very vigorous workouts to do and I have been doing them along with the Personal Training sessions and can I just say that my arms are just about dying and feel like they are going to fall off any second now.

On the plus side – I have muscles!  Okay they are only little at the moment, but hey it’s the first time in like forever that I can remember having any muscle definition.  It’s nice.  It also helps to explain some of my weight gain.  (The rest I can put down to the chocolate I was eating with Miss Mum….)

I did my first Slimplicity session the other day with all my weighing in and measurements being done.  Working on getting another section of the blog up now where I will post it all, as well as my HORRIBLE fat photos.  (I’ve been told it’s actually good to take before and after photos – I somehow don’t think I ever want to remember my fat photos, but I’ll do it anyway).  So stay tuned.

Son Daughter of Satan

Gym stuff, Personal
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Miss Perky is pure evil.  That’s the only thing I can think of.  I have been trying to make up for the fact that I went and had coffee a couple of weeks ago instead of going to the gym.  So I’ve been really good and doing lots of work.  I even went and joined the Slimplicity program, to make sure that I’m going to get the real benefits out of going to the gym, and to start eating properly.

However.  Miss Perky is just being torturous now.  Last week she had me balancing a 4kg ball on knees bent in the air.  Never mind the fact that the ball kept slipping down to my ankles so that when I was to do a stomach crunch, and come up and grab the ball I couldn’t reach it.  I still had to do it. (Mind you it was very funny to watch and I think I may have gotten more of a workout laughing, and I think Miss Perky got a workout laughing too).  So yesterday I had my Personal Training session with Miss P again, and this time she had me holding a swiss ball between my legs and throwing it into my outstretched arms while lying on the floor.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have no co-ordination.

Picture it.  I’m lying on the floor, arms stretched out over my head.  My legs are in the air with a huge swissball between them.  I am now to throw (and yes I mean throw, who’d have thought you could throw with your legs and feet???) this ball to my now raising arms, catch it, move it back over my head, and then throw it back to my feet and catch it.  It was like playing a game of ball toss – all by myself.  Hell I could have sold tickets to this at a comedy festival it was that funny to watch.  (I know because I was watching in the mirror).

Yes, she is pure evil.  There was no sympathy this morning, when I had to get up at 5:45am to make sure I was there on time for a 6:15am (who thinks of these times??) RPM class.  And if you hovered over that link long enough to read the RPM description, then yes, it was total destruction.  My legs are still wobbly and this is hours and hours later.  My thighs are so sore, it hurts to sit down on the toilet seat.  And if I sound like I’m whingeing, YES I AM!!!!!  Why does trying to be healthy and lose weight have to be this hard and painful I ask you?  Putting weight on and being unfit was never painful, it’s only fair that the other way around should be just as unpainful.  And on that note I’m off to find myself some Deep Heat cream and cry myself into some calm.

Slimplicity

Gym stuff, News, Personal
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Well I have been slack again.  I have been going to the gym.  No more copping out and having coffee instead, no I have been dilligently going along.

BUT  I haven’t really been eating very well.  I keep meaning to, but then I think of something yummy to eat and well I eat it.  So to combat this I have joined a program at the gym called the “Vitality Challenge”.  What this involves is participating in personal training (which I’m already doing) and then joining the Slimplicity program.  This goes for a total of 12 weeks, by which time I would hopefully have combatted my bad habits and set up some good eating habits to help me through the rest of my weight loss for oh lets say the rest of my freaking natural life…….

So on the spur of the moment I decided that I would join the Vitality Challenge for the next 12 weeks and follow the set eating plan, and continue on with my personal training (and hey, for joining I get an extra 4 free personal training sessions yayayay – more time with Miss Perky and her evil ways….). 

I’m looking forward to it, I think it can only be good for me, getting me onto the right track.  I tend to follow plans well.  I get lost when I am left to my own devices.  I find it hard trying to find the right foods to eat and to make it interesting, so when I don’t follow any plans I tend to end up eating salad, salad and then a little bit more salad.  And at the end of the week, I get bored and eat crap.  So I’m crossing my fingers, and hoping that this will be good.

And to make sure that I do the right thing, when I have my first weigh in and measurement takings on Monday night (my official start day) I’m going to post the evil evil results, so that you too can be ashamed of me like I will be of myself.  Then you can all help kick my arse into gear 🙂

On a personal note - I got a new phone!!!! Yes yes I am very excited.  The lovely Nokia N70, which is lovingly taking my photos of ‘lil munchkin and everything else, it’s playing my favourite music, it’s allowing me to finally send and receive MMS again (never get a Telstra IMode phone and then leave the Telstra network, cos it stuffs up your ability to send and receive MMS), it does everything and it’s my new baby.  I’m getting goosebumps thinking of it.

My Corel Painter Picture

News, Personal
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I should stress from the start, that I am not an artist! I love webdesign, put me in front of code and I’m a happy girl. I also love art, but I’m not really that talented. My younger sister is the artist of the family (proud to say she just had her first public exhibition of her artwork!!!), but I’ve always loved playing around in Photoshop, just usually not with fantastic results.

So I started doing a Corel Painter course that we were offering at work, really just to find out a bit more about Painter, and because it was using the Wacom tablets which I absolutely adore adore (If anyone loves me enough to buy one – cos I’m poor and can’t afford one – then I’d love you forever and ever). So I started doing the course and I have pretty much struggled with it all because as I said I am not very artistically talented.

On the final night of the course we were given our last piece to do. Take a photograph and using it as a reference only, re-create it using whichever medium we wished (I chose to use the Oil brushes and Blenders). This is a very labour intensive project and I’m not even halfway through, but for once something that I am creating in Painter is working out and I’m quite proud of it so I am posting it up here for everyone to see. Hopefully knowing it’s up here half finished will get me working harder to finish it off. Any comments good or bad on how I can improve or finish or just to encourage would be greatly appreciated.

Original Image This is the original image that was used.
Original image size is 1469px wide by 2000px high.
Save 1 After doing a quick sketch to get the basic outline of the face I started picking colours out of the main picture and blotching it in.
I know I know it looks pretty messy and disgusting right now.
Save 2 With all the basic colours in place, I started blending them all together to get the basic look happening. It was about this time that I realised I used the wrong brown colour on her face. I’m still too nervous to change it to more of a fleshy pink.
Save 3 Still blending and now adding in a bit of shadow below her chin. Have started defining the eye a little.
Save 4 I realise that this doesn’t look much different from the previous picture, but when you look at the two up close you can see that the eye has more detail now. And that is pretty much the only differences between the two, now I’m really just starting to define that eye.
Save 5 And again with the eye. I am now obsessed by eyes. It’s amazing what a bit of eyeliner does. I haven’t put her eyelashes in yet, as I said, this is definately a work in progress. 

Once I have finished her eye, I am going to start tackling her nose. It’s a little dark for my liking at the moment. Then her lips, then her hair…… God I’m never going to finish this am I?

I’m a slackass

General, Gym stuff
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I admit it.  I am a slackass.  Everyone repeat after me – Tina you are a slackass.  I can say it over and over and over.  It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make me less of a slackass, just re-inforces the fact that I AM A SLACKASS.

Why? are you asking?  Because I skipped out on the gym yesterday.  I finished work at lunch yesterday (normal time for me this term) and was going to go to the doctor.  However, couldn’t do that, so went to see Miss Mum at her brothers shed where she was working.  So went there and played with lil munchkin for a while and then we went shopping.  So after leaving there, I was meeting Miss Moody for a coffee before we were supposed to go to the gym for a Body Combat class.

Sitting at Billy Baxters drinking coffee and talking about stuff we haven’t talked about in ages, stuff we both needed to get off our chests (okay there was a little ranting from me regarding Mr Dickhead) and we kind of just lost track of the time.  Time came quickly back to us though when the poor waitress was cleaning tables and putting up chairs all around us before we got the hint to leave.  Course by then it was too late to make it to Body Combat so we decided to just move down a coffee place to Michel’s.  Again with the drinking lots of coffee and ignoring the fact that the waitresses wanted to go home.

You’d think that we would just take the hint and go?  No course not.  It was really good to catch up with her again, though I think the friendship isn’t like it used to be.  Not sure that it ever will be again, we have both changed a lot over the last 18 months.  So got busted by Miss Perky though, who saw us – me in my work clothes, Miss Moody in her gym gear, asked why we hadn’t gone to the gym.  I was stumped.  I was in trouble.  Oh yeah I’m in trouble.  Miss Perky’s final words to me were, “I hope you’re looking forward to a punishing workout on Wednesday”.  (So said with an evil grin – I’m afraid).

So that everyone is why I am a slackass.  I have hardly been to the gym or done any proper eating or regular exercise since I got sick a couple weeks ago, and my chance last night to actually do a good job on getting myself back on track was passed up for coffee….

Oh on other news – I’m also a big doofus.  My phone is screwed.  Apparently you are not supposed to drop a phone into a bowl of dogs water and leave it there for about 5 mins.  They don’t like it – does weird things to their batteris, and to the sound – go figure……

How do you make conversation with an Ice Queen?

Gym stuff, Personal
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You don’t. That is the simple answer. You just don’t bother trying, because after a couple of hours of persistently trying, you will only want to tear your hair out and that gets you no-where (except to the hairdressers for an expensive fix up job on the missing bits of hair!).

I went to see Mr Supportive and Miss Mum for lunch on Saturday. They were having a bbq, and Mr Macho and Mrs IceQueen were there. I like Mr Macho (didn’t when I first met him, cos he put me on edge, but now he’s okay, now that I understand him a bit more), but Mrs IceQueen is someone I just can’t get along with. I was joking with Miss Mum earlier on in the day that I couldn’t wait to see Mrs IceQueen hold ‘lil munchkin, it was just a funny thought to me, because she really isn’t a babies type person. Well I was right about that. Apparently she refused to hold him, at least until he is older and can support his head. To be honest, now is the time you want to hold them (hurts them less if you drop them – JUST JOKING PEOPLE!).

So I was sitting outside, trying (in vain I might add) to make conversation with her. I’m not a person who is ever really stuck for words. I can talk till the cows come home, with pretty much anyone, but not with her. And what was with all the looks down her nose she kept giving me? Ah I could rant all day about her, but I won’t.

Let’s talk about her husband instead….. Or maybe not. I don’t sleep with other womens’ husbands, but he is one that I would like to. (And if you repeat that one Miss Mum, I will hold munchkin to ransom…….) So maybe I will leave that discussion for a while too.

On gym news, I’m going back again today. Been sick the last couple of weeks and the gym has suffered because of that. There was just no motivation (or energy) to go. I went last week to see Miss Perky, and she was very gentle with me, but after only half an hour, I went home. Felt like I was cheating myself, but just couldn’t stay. Now I’ve lost the motivation that I had, and I’m finding it really hard to get back there and get back into the swing of going to the gym. So this is the week that I really apply myself and make sure I go every day. Must get back on track and start losing weight again. Wish me luck.

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