Weigh-In for 2/7

So I decided that I'm going to start weighing myself ever Saturday after my jog and blog about it. I still struggling with my eating habits and I hope by publicly announcing my weight every Saturday that this will somehow make me more conscience of what I am eating. But with that said I also need to take into account my workouts with Nerdstrong. I will be gaining muscle which of course weighs more then fat so I may lose very little weight or even gain because of this. I can't let the weight gain discourage me as long as I see the different in my appearance.

The last time I weighed myself I was 197.5 (1/24/15) and this morning I came in at 194.5. I'm continuing my downward momentum. I'm currently down 24.5 pounds since October 2014. Let's hope the trend continue with my next weigh in on Saturday. Wish me luck!!

LARPs The Series - A New Webseries

I found new webseries that I really enjoyed.. it's called LARPs The Series, I saw the "pilot" episode 0 a few weeks back and though it had potential but then I got sidetracked and it fell off my radar. Until today when I saw a tweet about a new episode and check it out again.. they are already on episode 3 so I had the pleasure of watching episode 0 again along with episodes 1, 2 and 3.

Wait a minute I'm getting ahead of myself.. maybe some of you don't know what LARPing is.. well here's a quick description of what it is and what the series is about. In a LARP, or live action-roleplaying game, players assume the identity of their chosen character and physically perform their actions (as opposed to simply describing them as in D&D). LARPs: The Series follows a group of friends and their journey through both their imaginary and real lives.

This series is being released on Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube. And new episodes come out every Friday.

There's only been a few episodes but here are my thoughts on those episodes. Let's start with the techie stuff.. the way it's shot is fantastic, I don't know what camera they are using but man does it look good. The costume look great and the weapons are fantastic. I'm enjoying the characters for the most part and the story has been good so far. I mean each episode is only 5 minutes long so we've seen just over 15 minutes of this series. That would be my one and only complaint, that the episodes are to short I want to see more.

This series gives me the same vibe that The Guild did when I first watched it. Only time will tell if this series will hold a place in my heart like The Guild, but for now I'm just enjoying the ride.

You can check out the series by going to their website HERE or head over to You Tube and watch episodes, which I would strongly suggest you do.. just follow the LINK.

NerdStrong Workout - Squats, Dumbbells & Ring Pulls

Today was my first "official" workout session at Nerd Strong Gym. After my one on one session a few days ago I was a bit apprehensive for this session. I knew my limits and didn't want a repeat of last time. But with that said I also wanted a good workout and not push myself to my limit. It was fine balance but overall I think it worked.

I actually knew one person in the session with me today, Joey, who I haven't seen in quite a while but it was nice to see a familiar face. Today's workout started with warm up, which was nice since I didn't get a chance to do that beforehand. Our first activity was squats, we were teamed up with another person. I was teamed up with another noob, this was his first session as well.

We had to do 5 squats at 50% weight, 4 at 60%, 3 at 70%, 3 at 80% and 3 at 90% or something similar like that. Since both of us did not know our maximum weight on squats since we've never done them we started with some weight and continued to add more as we felt needed. We started with a 44lb bar, then added 25lbs to each side, before adding an additional 25lbs to each side and finally adding a bit more with 5lbs to each side... Our total weight was 154lbs. So next time I do these I know that I will start with 50% of that weight and move up as indicated. \

After squats the next activity was dumbbell raises and rings pulls. We had to do 5 rounds of dumbbell raises x5 and then 10 to 12 ring pulls.

And our final activity were doing 50 dumbbell raises (with a lighter dumbbell then previously used).

I'm happy to say that I finished third out of the group, which made me very happy. I was extremely tired but I didn't over do it this time. It was a good tired. I wasn't sore yet but I know tomorrow and the next day I was gonna be hurting.

I initially had booked a workout for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this coming week but after today's workout I know I'm going to need at least a day to recovery in-between so I cancelled my workouts for Monday and Wednesday. Maybe down the road I'll be up for workout like this everyday but for know I'm happy with three to four times a week.

If you guys are in the Los Angeles area you really should check out Nerd Strong Gym. Yes it's a bit pricey but it's so worth it... you get the one on one service with small groups (normally less then 15) that you can't normally get at a regular gym.. also everyone is so geek and so much nerd talk happen, it's pretty awesome.

My next session is schedule for Sunday... can't wait!!!

Poltergeist Remake & Storing my Cosplay

I normally don't mind remakes. I know some people who go ballistic and start questioning Hollywood's ability to produce anything original. But when I heard they were remaking Poltergeist I wasn't so happy. I am a HUGE fan of Poltergeist, I loved it when it first came out and devoured any an all information (behind the scenes) I could find. I enjoyed both of the sequels though I will admit they aren't as good as the original but still enjoyable. Poltergeist is my all time favorite Horror/Scary movie.. it's a classic!! But with all that said they released two new trailers for the upcoming Poltergeist remake and I have to so.. it looks pretty epic and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

Here is the international trailer which I think is much better and spookier. It feels more like the original movie. 

So I've been cosplaying for something like five years now and I normally carry everything I need in various plastic bags. Of course things inevitably get lost or fall out and go missing, so I figured it was about time for me to spend some money on a good make-up/prosthetics/wig case that I could store everything in one place. Well I got the case today and I have to say that I LOVE IT!!! I thought I would have a ton of extra space but it's almost a bit to small for all my stuff. It's a definite improvement over my plastic bags system.

20 Years, Call The Midwife & Charlie

I just realized that 2015 marks my 20th anniversary working in the entertainment industry. It all started with my internship with Fox Labs (a development section of Fox), which lead to my first job as a production assistant on the revived game show The Dating Game and the rest is history. I went from production assistant to assistant production coordinator, to production coordinator, to assistant script supervisor, back to production assistant then jumped into post with junior assistant editor, then assistant editor, then editor, and finally to post production supervisor. I've had lots of great times, many stressful times and a few bad times but overall I'm really happy with my career choice. I don't know if I'll make it another 20 years in the entertainment industry but who know what the future holds for me.

I watched the latest Call the Midwife, S4 Ep3 The community is outraged and opinions divided at Nonnatus House when an expectant father is charged with gross indecency after being caught committing homosexual acts (at the time illegal in the United Kingdom). Phyllis investigates when she realizes that an impoverished Irish immigrant woman has lied about where she lives. Dr. Turner and Shelagh attempt to trace the source of an outbreak of dysentery.

This was one of my favorite episodes of Call the Midwife and that's staying something since I think all the episodes are pretty amazing. This one reminded me of the Imitation Game as the main character in that movie is also gay in the UK at the time of it being illegal. Unlike the movie this episode delved into it a bit more. We see how the community around this man turns into hateful small minded people. It not only effects the man but his poor pregnant wife.

This was a hard to watch episode. Not only is this poor man "trapped" in a straight marriage (because that's what you did back then) but he's not able to be who he was born to me. When he tires to hook up with another man he gets caught and goes before a judge. Luckily or not so lucky he does not go to jail but instead is put on probation with the requirements to start a hormone treatment to "fix" his homosexuality. The treatment is Estrogen, which has many side effects for men including growing breast tissue. This man is so distraught that it leads to an attempted suicide. Luckily his father-in-law finds him in time to save him and when he sees of new daughter he realizes that he has to do what is right for her and takes the treatment.. it's heartbreaking.

Oh one last thing I wanted to share with you guys.. I found a "Charlie" Pop figure. Charlie is a character from Supernatural played by the wonderful Felicia Day. She's been in five episodes now and I hope we get to see her in future episodes if not get a spinoff of her very own. Anyways back to the figure... I've been wanting to get this Pop for a while and I just happen upon one that was a decent price so I snapped it up. Hopefully I'll be able to get Felicia to autograph it for me one day.

Pushing Your Body To It's Limit

During the evening I headed to my one on one session at NerdStrong. NerdStrong is a geek/nerd themed gym. You can check out more info HERE. I was meeting up with creator and owner of NerdStrong Andrew. I got there a bit before 5:30 and Andrew was finishing up with another client so I hung out for a few minutes and checked the place out.

Once he was done with his client he turned his attention to me and we started our session. We talked for about 20 minutes and he explained how the gym works and his philosophy on working out. I have to say I was extremely impressed with his approach at getting fit. I explained past workout habits, my medical issues, and what I was hoping to get out of this experience.

He then explained the 10 minute fit test that I was about to do, they do this test to get a starting point on your physical fitness. The test consisted of a 250 meter row (on a machine), then 5 push ups, 10 ring pulls (like pulls up) and then 15 squats. You did this 3 times and then you had to run around the parking lot and I think it he said it was something like 200 and something meters. You had to try and get this all done within 10 minutes.

Well I started off and was doing pretty good, rowing was done, push ups, ring pulls and squats, first and second time were fine and then starting on the ring pulls for the third time I started feeling it, but I pushed through the pain and finish my ring pulls and then the final set of squats. As I started my run I went out full force and my legs felt like mush. I managed to run full force 2/3's around the parking lot and then I jogged the final 1/3 and the clock stopped.

Andrew asked what I thought my time was and I said 8 minutes.. hoping it was at least under 10 and he said you did it in 7 minutes. Which is really impressive for the first time.

I was glad I did well but I could tell that I had pushed my body to the limit and then pass it. I immediately sat down and drank some water, moments later I was lying on the floor gasping for air and sweating profusely. I laid there for about five minutes until I felt the urge to throw up so I excused myself to the bathroom and stumbled my way over and somehow got into the room, closed and locked the door. I made my way over to the toilet but it was so difficult to say upright that I just fell to the floor, the nice cold floor and laid there for about ten minutes before the urge to throw up came back and just as I made my way to the toilet it happened. I sat there hoping it would happen again but nothing more came out. I laid back down for another 20 or so minutes. The throw up sensation was gone but now my stomach was in cramps and it felt like I had to go to he bathroom. I don't know how I did it but I managed to pull down, my now soaked sweats and underwear, and get myself in a sitting position on the toilet but nothing happened and I couldn't keep myself upright for to long.

At this moment panic set in. I have never experience this before. I was still sweating profusely leaving wet spots on the floor and my breathing wasn't getting any calmer. If I had had my phone with me I probably would have called 911 and I was moments from calling for help as people started to arrived for the next workout session. But as I laid there on the floor for 45 minutes my breathing started to calm and soon become regular and I wasn't sweating as much. I sat up a bit dizzy but soon that would pass and I was finally able to stand up and exit the bathroom.

Andrew gave me the thumbs up as he was in the middle of class and I returned it with a smile and a nod. I was embarrassed as to what just happen so I really didn't make any eye contact with anyone and just made my way quickly out of the gym. All I wanted to do was get home and go to bed, which is exactly what I did. Soon as I got home I peeled off my soaked clothes and didn't even bother taking a shower I just crashed on my bed and slept for 10 hours.

Though the night ended badly, the experience at Nerd Strong was FANTASTIC!!!!  I really like Andrew, I think he really knows his stuff and I'm looking forward to my first session with other members.

Taxes & The Atom

Today I did my taxes. I normally take my taxes to my accountant Mike who has done them for the past 14 years. But 2014 wasn't a great work year for me as I only worked 5 weeks out of the entire year and didn't make that much. So I asked him if it was better for me to do my taxes myself and save me the cost of him doing them. Being awesome as he is he said if I CAN do my own taxes he'd suggest that I do them myself to save the money.

So I went to the H&R Block website but somehow a Turbotax page popped up and I didn't noticed so I started filling in the information. According to Turbo tax filing Federal taxes are free and there is a fee of $9.99 for state taxes. I'm well into filing (maybe an hour has passed) and I answer one of the many questions and a window pops up informing me that I can't file taxes using this "free" version that I have to purchase the deluxe version for $34.99. I was a bit annoyed but not totally surprised so I purchased the upgrade and continued filing my taxes. Federal was done and moved on to State. That went fairly quick and then I got to the end and it said that I would have to pay $121.97 to file my taxes. I was shocked as this isn't to far off of what I pay my tax guy to do my taxes. I noticed that they somehow slipped in "Audit protection" for $49.99 so I had to back track a few pages until I found the way they slipped that in and fixed it.

So now my Federal was $39.99 but my State wasn't $9.99 as it claimed at the beginning, it was now $36.99 for a total of $71.98. Now that's a far cry from being Free but it's less then half of what I normally pay my tax guy and the fact that I'm getting a refund I just said screw it and completed the transaction and filed my taxes.  Come to find out that the $9.99 for State taxes was the starting price (which they had in very tiny writing that I didn't see), so obviously California is one of the more expensive states. Needless to say it took me about two hours to file but I'm happy it's done and that I'm getting a refund from State and Federal... so yay me!!!!

The producers of Arrow released a full body picture of Brandon Routh's The Atom costume from an upcoming episode of Arrow. I'm a huge Brandon Routh fan, loved him since Superman Returns and was so excited when they added him to the cast of Arrow in season three. I didn't know he was going to be The Atom at first thinking that they just brought him in for a love triangle with Oliver, Felicity and Ray (Brandon's character) but the past few weeks the characters have been talking about this new exoskeleton suit and it looks as though we will get to see it in a few weeks.. can't wait!!!!

Superbowl Commercials, Heroes Reborn & RBS

I missed the Superbowl yesterday.. well I didn't miss it as so much as I didn't watch it. So I missed all the fun Superbowl commercials. So today with the help of my buddy Scott who has a fun entertainment blog called Experience it All I was able to watch a bunch of the commercials. Some were sweet, some were fun and some were sad. There was a lot of controversy over the Nationwide commercial. People were saying that it was in bad taste and were calling it the "Dead" kid commercial. I honestly don't understand peoples reactions to this commercial. I found it informative and it really got you to think about home safety. Now I will admit that I don't know how home safety fits in with insurance and financial services which the companies deals with but if they want to spend millions of dollars and preach about home safety then more power to them... the good thing is it got people talking.

I loved the Always #Likeagirl commercial. It was interesting to see how society has accepted these negative stereotype comments into our everyday vocabulary. It reminds me of the same derogatory statement "That's so Gay". People don't realize that these comments can hurt and change the way a person actually sees themselves.

The most bizarre commercial for me was the Skittles one. Where everyone in town how the huge muscular arm-wrestling arm including the baby and the dog.. very funny but bizarre. 

There were alots of TV and Movie trailers but the one that hit me the most and was probably the shortest one and that was the teaser trailer for the upcoming reboot of the series Heroes called Heroes Reborn. There wasn't a lot to it but when the music started playing it just brought me back to when I first watched the pilot episode of Heroes at San Diego Comic Con and was just blown away by it. This trailer got me excited again for Heroes so much so that I now want to do a rewatch. 

I actually only watched the first two seasons and started to taper off and only saw an episode or two of the third season and not a single episode of the fourth. Now that all four seasons are on Netflix I think I'll do a complete re-watch from the beginning... anyone want to join me?

During the evening I watched the return episode of the Red Band Society. I so love these series and I'm bummed that they stopped production after episode 13 and it's almost certain that it will be cancelled after they air all the episodes. I was happy to see the series return even if it is for only 3 episodes. I'm going love each and everyone of them. This weeks had lots of emotions, ups and downs and always leaves me with a warm feeling in my heart. I'll miss this series when it's gone.

MASH Podcast Anniversary & Call the Midwife Re-watch

Today Geekyfanboy Productions released a new episode of the MASH 4077 Podcast. Today's podcast covers Ep. 96, covering S4 Ep 24 "Deluge" Download from itunes tinyurl.com/MASH4077itunes , listen on Stitcher Radio ow.ly/iZJIz or listen, get direct download from our main website MASH4077Podcast.com

It's also the 4th year anniversary of the MASH 4077 Podcast. I want to thank my co-hosts Al and Meds as this podcast wouldn't be the success it is without you guys. And of course I want to thank all of our wonderful listeners for their continued support.

It was a lazy Sunday today.. I should have been "spring cleaning" but instead I did nothing but crash on the couch and re-watch Call the Midwife. I managed to watch all of season one and the first five episodes of season two. Such an amazing series and I'm so happy that it's back with season four.