X-Men Days of Future Past re-watch + Other observations

Last weekend I had a second viewing of X-Men: Days of Future Past.  I first saw it in theatres, and enjoyed it.  Apparently not everyone did?

Anyway, my only problem with the film was the opening exposition from Patrick Stewart / Professor X.  It felt very clunky and put in solely for the movie watching audience - doesn't it seem funny that none of the other mutants were already aware of Mystique's actions to fast forward the Sentinel program?  Other than that, it was a fast-paced film that works really well.  For pacing, it felt a lot faster than First Class - which I think is actually the better film of the two, so far.

Other observations

X-Files: No, not the new season.  Space ran a marathon of classic X-Files episodes the weekend leading up to the new season; I didn't watch the entire marathon, but chose a few to record based solely on the episode descriptions.  I picked some good ones so far!
- Squeeze I spent the bulk of this episode assuming it was actually the second episode featuring Victor Tooms, and was confused why neither Mulder nor Scully realized who they were dealing with.  Good episode, but the characters were a little wooden
- Ice I really liked this episode.  It was both creepy and suspenseful, and had a good sense of mystery around it.
- The Erlenmeyer Flask Really well done episode, and you can tell the writing team, director, and actors are all on their game at this point.  I had seen the pilot episode months before for the first time and appreciated the nice little bookend of the season 1 pilot and finale with the Cigarette Smoking Man in the Pentagon warehouse.
- Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose The most recent episode, I just watched this one last night.  This episode was most representative of the bulk of the X-Files episodes I have seen - more monster of the week, scale tipping a little bit to the comedic side.  I really liked this one as well.

Weight loss

I've been trying an 8/16 fast - eat for 8 hours, fast for 16.  It's been going alright; there are times I feel very hungry, but I've been able to work through it.  Usually with water.  I'm into my second week of it now and I'd say I'm not feeling as hungry as I was when I first started it.  When I do eat, I feel full.  So far, it seems to be helping!

Life Reboot #1: Get Healthy

This is going to be part of a series of three posts about what I'm doing as of February 1st to get back on track with various things.  I wrote about it last week if you'd like to read more.  

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_16_lift-off.jpg

I've done some thinking and brainstorming about my life reboot, initially thinking I'd focus on 7 things I want to fix or adjust.  I broke it all down to three major categories:

Get Healthy
Get Organized
Get Creative

I'm used to a pretty rigid reporting structure and having things fall under neat packages, so this structure is going to work well for me.  I have different priorities outlined for each of the categories, and a 6 month goal for everything.  I'll be checking in every two months on my progress.  

This week I'm just outlining what my goals are and what I plan on doing to achieve them.  Today, Get Healthy.  Wednesday will be about Get Organized, and Friday for Get Creative.  

Get Healthy

This is my number one priority.  This is a pretty broad goal to achieve, so I've decided that the measure of success here is dropping some weight.  My goal is to drop 20 pounds in 6 months, and to do that, I need to work on a few things.

Drink less beer.  

I think this is the number one thing on the list holding me back from losing weight.  I curl three times a week, and I end up having at least 1-2 beers each game.  I need to limit this to one night.

Better sleep.  

I haven't bothered to look into all the research, but I've heard that getting proper sleep is important to keeping healthy.  There are two things I want to do with this: 1) Stop hitting the snooze button; and 2) Go to sleep at a more consistent time.  

Be mindful of coffee consumption.  

I wouldn't say that this is a problem, or is contributing to my lack of progress, but a recent discussion with a friend reminded me that restaurant portion sizes for coffee are, to put it mildly, out of whack.  The solution here is that I'm not going to drink a cup size larger than what my Keurig machine can brew (which is about 10 ounces; by contrast, a McDonald's large coffee is ~19 ounces).  

Notably missing from this list is the usual "exercise more" option.  I purposefully left it out, because I feel like I already get enough exercise.  The issues I'm having are more in the diet and lifestyle areas, rather than exercising.  I'm too quick to be lazy and grab a fast food dinner rather than taking the time to prepare something at home on the weekend.  It's easy to grab 6 new beers to try from the LCBO.  

For exercising, I frequently choose walks at lunch time instead of reading.  I've conditioned myself to a point where I want to go out walking, even in winter.  I curl three nights a week.  I play lead, which means a ton of sweeping (especially on night we only play with three - I do a LOT of sweeping).  Generally I try to stay active, so that's not the problem I'm having.  

Get Organized is coming up Wednesday.  

The Reset Button

Original photo by flickr user Lucky Larry, 2010

One thing a lot of people do around the start of a new year is set resolutions.  Occasionally, I will opt to pick something arbitrarily that I want to change (such as last year's goal of texting less and calling more; this did not stick).  Other years - like this one - I don't really stress about it so much.  However, I'm at a point right now where I feel very disorganized.  I recently moved, and there are papers and boxes everywhere that I haven't found places for yet.

Add to this that I've been closely following Wil Wheaton's Life Reboot posts, which began sometime in...November I want to say.  Wil set some realistic goals (SMART goals, you might say), and is keeping tabs on his progress.  I think this is the key element missing from most run-of-the-mill resolutions: follow-up.

February 1st, I'm going to push that reset button, and give myself a little Life Reboot.  I'm going against my own "rules" by not starting right away, but I want to take some time and figure out what I want to work on.  I have some basic ideas, but I want to hit the ground running - and I'd like to have some kind of a plan in place.

Next Monday, I'll have an update and a plan in place.  I think I'm going to try to narrow it down to 7 things, ala Wil Wheaton.  Also, based on the recommendation of my good friend Sarah, I will give the app HabitBull a try.  Stay tuned.