Max 10 hours per week of TV – Over this week.  I’m tracking this by the episodes I record on the DVR, not necessarily what I watch.  For example I watched last week’s Dirty Jobs earlier this week, but have not watched this week’s 4 hours of 24.

• Double Shot at Love (1 hr) – Its like a train wreck, you can’t help but look!  Down to 3 people left and 2 will be chosen, so there is only one or two more episodes left.
• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Still worth watching just to see Deanna Russo, though previews make it look like its going to be covered in (even more) cheese soon.
• Stargate Atlantis (1 hr) – This one is now over.  Its too bad, they finally seemed to be expanding beyond the “non-stop battle with the Wraith” storyline and were exploring some interesting subjects such as Ancient technology.  I caught mention of a new series coming this summer, Stargate Universe.  Based on the Wikipedia article linked, I’m skeptic that it may be another Star Trek: Voyager rip-off based in the Stargate mythology set.  I hope they do more with it than that.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – I’m using this as inspiration for my weight loss goal.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) -Entertaining and informative… What more can I say?
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Used to hate it, but kind of got into watching it with the wife.
• ER (1 hr) – Same as Grey’s.  This one also has a couple of episodes left and it is done for good.  No spin-off or movie is necessary for this one though.
• 24 (4 hrs) – This put me over my TV goal for the week since they had two 2-hour premier episodes.  This puts me 2 hours over my goal, but there wasn’t much choice in this if I wanted to be able to watch the rest of the season.  From here out it will only be 1 hour per week, so this is really an exception to the rule.  I was 4 hours under budget last week so I’m not going to beat myself up over this.  I’m still making a conscious effort to cut back on my TV viewing and it is working.
• Non-tracked viewing: a partial episode of The Doctors, and a partial episode of The Tyra Banks Show my wife recorded for me to watch.   I probably should count the last one since it was entertainment and not necessarily educational, but it was under a half-hour by the time I skipped commercials so I’m going to let this one slide.

At least 2 books per month – On track.

• Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams – 100 pages to go.
• The Real America by Glenn Beck – 40% of the way through it.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Met.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – 3.1 pounds down direct weight, .46 pounds down on the averaged trend.  This means I’m over the hump and my trend line is moving down, so I think maybe next week I can use the trend to report my results.  Over the weekend I had too much Chinese food at the local buffet.  I was almost sick to my stomach afterward.  The sad thing is I used to eat the amount of food that I did on a regular basis and would feel fine.  I guess since I’ve now been watching what I eat in general it makes it obvious how much I was overeating in the past.  Also related to this is I’ve started going to the gym every morning before work.  I’m ready to kick butts and take names on this goal!

Budget – We’ve done much better on the food expendature this week, but we’ve found some killer deals on “stuff” we’ve wanted to pick up for a while, and have allowed ourselves to go ahead and get it.  Since we don’t have credit cards any more we can only spend cash to get things.  This prevents us from going into any further debt, but does slow down the progress on getting out of debt a little.  We’ll try harder next time.  We’ve also decided to figure out our bi-weekly budget ahead of time and get the cash from the bank rather than the (no fee) ATM.  This way we can get the proper denominations and split the money properly between our envelopes from the start.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Met with room to spare.  I am averaging this going forward, as I may record something one week and watch it the next, so I may not watch an episode of Show A one week, but may watch 2 episodes the next.

• Double Shot at Love (1 hr) – Yes I know this is complete empty viewing, but I have to have some guilty pleasures…
• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Worth watching just to see Deanna Russo.
• Stargate Atlantis (1 hr) – One more episode then this series is unfortunately over.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – I’m using this is inspiration for my weight loss goal.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Its interesting seeing how some of the jobs are done, even if Mike Rowe sometimes acts more incompetent than I’m sure he is.
• Non-tracked viewing: Watched the news a few times and a couple of episodes of the Suze Orman show, and an episode of The Doctors.  Also watched Dangerous Minds, but I’m not counting it since it was a movie.

At least 2 books per month – On track.

• Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams – 3/4 of the way through.
• The Real America by Glenn Beck – 1/4 of the way through it.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Met, and I’m not counting my initial goal posting or the updates.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – This one is a little tough to tell.  The method of measurement I am using is a weighted average, which removes the daily ups and downs and shows my true progress.  If I take last Wednesday’s weight (which could be artificially high) and compare it to today, I’m down 2.7 lbs, but my average shows I’m up .52 pounds.  The average is due to me being a little higher than I was last month, skewing the average.  I don’t want to delete my history in order to change the average, so I think I’ll just use the difference in actual weight for now and start using the weighted average once it catches up.

Budget – Sat down and updated our budget, including some allocated spending money so that we don’t have to use the grocery budget if we want to buy something extra.  So far we’re sticking to it fully, but we’ve got a week and a half to go.

I read the entire book during lunch with time to spare, so it took less than an hour to read. At first I thought this was a bad thing that devalued the book in my mind, but the more I thought about it my view changed. The shortness and simplicity is what drives the message home and makes it available to a broader audience.  If it was a long and drawn out book, most people would probably drop it after the first chapter or two.

The premise of the book is that there are a couple of ways of thinking about a problem.  The incorrect way is to be a victim.  “Why can’t the corporate office give us better sales materials?”  This question makes the asker believe they are a victim.  A better question would be to ask “What can I do to make the best use of the materials provided?”  This question empowers the asker and doesn’t pass the blame off to another person.

If you’re interested in reading a book that may challenge the way you think, check QBQ! out.