This week in the neighborhood

I've been taking a lot of photos of the area, along with the kids and such. Check them out on flickr if you'd like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brettgitzel/

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Miles likes to walk around the apartment in a t-shirt and underwear. Yesterday, when I noticed that there was a small wet spot on the side of his underwear, I asked him about it. He said, "Well, dad, I think that it's from when the sunshine came out." I'm not sure what that was all about.

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I know that people love olives. I know that some of you can't put enough cilantro on your Mexican food. I've heard that there are people out there who actually like playing Volleyball. There is a fashion trend now where people without the need for glasses still wear them but without the lenses. I like Hip-Hop music as much as the next guy who doesn't like Hip-Hop music. This, the preface for...

In hockey, the Canucks are into the Stanley Cup Final. I wish them all the best and hope that they can treat the whole event as a learning experience for when they really win the cup long after I have passed away. Olives, Hip-Hop, diarrhoea, melted ice cream, The Yankees, dead bunny rabbits and the Canucks. No offense, Towel Power Nation.

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Back in China, my teacher is still wearing the black contact lenses. I guess that I've kind of gotten used to them, just like how I've gotten used to the bathroom smells that waif into the classrooms. There are just so many annoying things about that school that have slowly turned into slightly fond familiarity.

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A few weeks ago I had a trifecta of unfortunate pant malfunctions. 3 of my top 4 pairs of pants are ripped in the crotch, all on different days in the same week. Can you believe that, Harold Camping?! Anyways, I have 3 other pairs of jeans that I could wear if I lost a little bit of weight. I got them as hand-me-downs from some skinny guy who moved away. Lately I have considered to trying to slim down into those bad boys and there has been slight progress. I am down from 229 lbs to 220 in the last month. I am not insecure about any of this, and besides, my friends insist that I am not fat but just a big and sexy man.

The icing on the low fat cake is that some friends bought be some new jeans off of the Internet. They are cool and they almost fit. So, I am going for it. More bike rides. More sit ups. Less Coca Cola and a few more stair climbs and I should be good. Actually, I might need to construct a more concrete plan. Maybe lifting concrete on a construction site would help?

It's not a midlife crisis, I just don't want to buy another pair of pants when I have 4 perfectly good ones waiting for me all cuddled up in the wardrobe. And, I am still planning for my midlife crisis. I think that I still have 5 or 10 years to come up with a good one.

I think that I just might try to track this on the blog. It might help keep me committed to it. The goal? I would like to tumble all the way down to 200 by September. Impossible you say? I like those odds!