We Are The Littles

I don’t have much to tell other than I’m finally getting a treadmill here in Port Harcourt! It’s been a long time coming, and it won’t be here immediately but it will be here.

The boss left for his USA vacation trip on Saturday so I hit him up Friday night when he was all happy about leaving. When I get home, I’m going to buy one (the same model I got for us at La Casa de Little) and I’ll have to deliver it somewhere in Houston to an international shipper that will put it in a cargo container and ship it over the water.

Hopefully it will be here by the time I return for my next hitch in January. That means I’ll have my weights and I’ll have my treadmill. Now if I could just ship MBM and the kids over in a cargo container all would be perfect.

Nah. I’ve just been internet-less or exhausted the last few days.

Like I said earlier, I didn’t have internet access on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Then Monday rolls around and it comes back. Problem was, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep one single minute Monday night. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea. It just wasn’t happening. But, If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because I haven’t been exercising for the last few days due to the rain. So, maybe I just wasn’t tired enough. Who knows?

Tuesday was a whole different story. After being up for 40hrs or so I was more than ready to sleep. No problems that night. That brings us to Wednesday night. I just finished running (3mi), took my shower, and I’m settled in for the night.

I can’t say I have much news. I guess no news is good news. MBM is keeping busy with all of her cooking creations. The kids are still busy with school, karate, theatre, and playing outside. I’m still busy at work (no internet there for the last 2 days!) and the boss is heading out of town for a month on Friday. Bad news for me.

So, that’s about all I know. I did update Gabby’s site yet again tonight. Go see it and check out more funny pics of her Royal Hairness Heiness.

So, Friday I had a hankerin’ for some pancakes. I asked the cook to go to the store and buy some pancake mix and make’em on Saturday with some bacon and eggs. The store was out on Friday and Saturday was sanitation day which means nobody can be on the streets until 10:30am. So, he went back Saturday morning and got the stuff but by the time he returned the moment was gone. It was too late. No pancakes for me on Saturday.

I woke up this morning at my usual time, 5:30am, talked to MBM for a while and then decided to attempt my own pancakes (the cook has Sundays off). The result is below. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. The pancakes are just regular old pancakes. For the eggs I chopped up a FRESH clove of garlic, threw in some salt & pepper, and a little bit of cheese. Cheesy garleggs and pancakes.

Since it’s Sunday, the day of rest, I plan on doing as little as possible. I’m still on my push up quest and still trying to run as often as possible. I did a measly 2mi run yesterday, but I did a whopping 72 push ups on Friday! This Tuesday is my two week test to see how many I can do consecutively. Should be interesting.

That’s all I have for today. If you haven’t seen the Halloween pics MBM put up make sure to scroll down and check them out.

From POTD's

So, I’m back in PHC and back on my quest to get back my girlish figure. It seems like my quest only happens while I’m here as long as it’s not the rainy season and not back home. When I’m in the USA there is too much to do with theatre, karate, baking classes, book clubs, neighborhood stuff, catch with the boys, homework, shopping, etc… When I do have free time the last thing I want to be doing is running around!

Anyway, MBM and I have a little contest going that should help jumpstart the process… Assuming it doesn’t rain everyday like it did last hitch. FYI - it rained most of the day yesterday. Our contest involves tiered mileage. Tier one is 40mi, Tier two is 60mi, and Tier 3 is 80mi. We have 42 days to run as many miles as we can. Our total mileage will fall between one of those tiers and we get a prize for that tier. Make sense? If we both run 50mi we both get the 40mi tier prize. We haven’t decided what the prizes are yet but they’ll be decent… Like $50, $100, & $150.

You can follow our progress here. The sheet is still blank, but today is the starting day so it should be filling up fast.

I gotta get to work. Over & out.

Ok, so I’m back home and we’ve been busy. Very busy. Extremely busy.

The day I landed we had to hit HEB to grab some groceries since all of our food was lost during the hurricane. We didn’t have power at the house for about 4 days so the stuff that didn’t get taken and used by our friends had to go to the dump. HEB was the only store in the vicinity that had grub.

Sunday we went to church.

The kids finally went back to school today. They were out for more than a week. We noticed that we did get some water damage in our kitchen on our lovely hardwood floors. Gotta get the insurance folks involved in this one. We’ve cancelled our Comcast high-speed internet service and cable since they are awful. The internet only works when it wants to and it gets really old when your 6,300mi away and trying to talk to your wife and her internet keeps going out. So, AT&T will be out this Thursday to hook us up with better internet and cable. Hopefully better. We got free installation and all that jazz and the monthly charge is about the same for more services. Comcast bites. 

I also switched our home phone service from Comcast (they bite) to a VOIP line from Vonage. It’s only $25/mth and we get unlimited local and long-distance calling to anywhere in the USA and some other places we’ll never call. 

Then I got a quote on a fence to keep Rocky contained. It’s not cheap. Hopefully I’ll get that done before I leave again. 

Today we went to IKEA to get furniture for the boys room since they have virtually no place to put their clothes and toys. We walked out of there with two dressers, one big multi-drawer thingy for their toys, and a couple of cool lockers for their room. Now I have to put them all together! That’s not the worst part though. The worst part is that IKEA had no air-conditioning so we had to shop in the 90deg heat. I was not happy. Not only that, the store is laid out in such a way you have to walk down every single aisle to get to the check-out counters. EVERY SINGLE AISLE and the place is huge. The prices might be right but the layout pretty much stinks when there is no A/C. I understand their selling tactics but I don’t like’em.

Gabby is being Gabby. Pretty and prissy and happy more often than not. I’ve taken a few new pics that I’ll put up on her site tomorrow (hopefully). In the meantime, you can see a silly video I took by clicking here.

I found a tiny little snake outside last night. Picture below. 

Carolina is at her latest cake-making class at Lonestar College. The class was supposed to begin at 6pm and the instructor is nowhere to be found. It’s now 6:21pm. There are other people there waiting with her so she has the right day, time, and class location. Lonestar College bites too!

And… We’ve started our running routine again. We ran last Friday and today and plan on running 4 days a week for 3 to 4mi per day. Hopefully I’ll get it back up to 5 or 6mi again soon. I need it. 

O’yea, the boys have also started back with Karate and Savannah is rehearsing for her play after school. The play will run from Oct. 15 - 20. Expect video of that when the time comes. I’m hoping to embarass her royally when she gets on stage.

Ok, baby momma is away so baby daddy has to go scrounge something up for din-din. Poor children don’t know what they’re in for with my cooking!

We’ll start posting regularly again… Assuming we can find time!

From POTD's

Well, MBM is gallivanting around town with Weezer. She’s slacking on our “Little” site so I felt the need to provide you with some much needed entertainment.

Nigeria, is as always, the same as when I left last time. Nothing much changes. We did see some real-live captured militants a week or so ago. That was interesting. The militants are the bad boys of Nigeria. The ones that have big-bad weapons and like to kidnap expats for fun. However, these militants were not very scary. They had recently attacked the Nigerian Navy not far from our offices. Of course the Navy opened up a can of whup-ass on the bad boys and captured 20 or so of them. They apparently stripped them down to their skivvies, blindfolded them, and threw them in the back of some Navy pick-ups. The pick-ups then drove by us in traffic. Word on the street is those fellers will never be seen again. Pretty freaky huh?

Oh, and a truck cut us off in traffic on the way to work the other day. Our guards didn’t take kindly to the act because they thought it could have been the bad boys trying to get us. They jumped out of the chase car, pulled the driver out of his big rig and proceeded to beat him senseless. It was not pretty. Guess here they beat first and ask questions later. We always think they (the guards) have their heads up their wahoos. Guess they really do pay attention.

As for the running, it hasn’t been happening this trip. It’s the rainy season and has rained EVERY SINGLE DAY that I’ve been here so far. Not necessarily during the day, but it usually starts around 5:30 or 6:00pm, right around the time I get home and want to go run. It bites. I haven’t started my quest for 100 consecutive push ups yet either. Guess I’m just lazy this trip.

So, that’s all the stories I have so far. What do you think about our new website banner with all of our little pictures? Cool huh? I also added the trip countdown timer on the right-hand side, updated Carolina’s Latest Gallery (bottom right in the sidebar), and updated my latest reading list (also bottom right in the sidebar). If you’re bored give it a gander for something interesting to read. Oh yea, don’t forget about Gabby’s Virtual Baby Book. You all have been pretty quiet over there lately.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

It’s painful to look at, but the weight-loss button on the right-hand side is back up to where it was at the beginning of my last hitch, minus 1lb. I fell off the wagon when I got home last time and gained it all back in one fell swoop! Sucks to be me. Now I have to do it all over again. Guess that’s what happens when all you do is sit there and stare at a tiny baby for hours on end. This time it’s not MBM’s fault… It’s Gabby’s!

However, I did come more prepared this time. I have my trusty GPS watch to track my runs. I have my trusty iPod and Nike+ Sports kit for music motivation. I have plenty of water flavor packets to keep off the Diet Coke (not high in calories but bad for you nontheless.) and my cook has started right with no instruction. See picture below for what was cooking tonight. Doesn’t look too appetizing, but nothing a little salt, pepper, and Louisiana Hot Sauce couldn’t fix.

To top it all off, I’m going to try my hand and the newest exercise craze that has taken the internet by storm. It’s a training program designed to take you from 0 push ups to 100 push ups (consecutively) in 6 weeks. I’m going to do the initial test tomorrow night and get started on it on Saturday. Who wants to join me? You can check out the program at One Hundred Push Ups. If you’re lucky I’ll capture it on video for all you stalkers to see.

Finally, I do have pictures of the adventure Justin and I went on last weekend at the Houston Aquarium. Hopefully I’ll get those up sometime tomorrow.

Port Harcourt out!

Well, the run I had tonight was probably the best I’ve had in almost a year. We got home from work late and I talked to MBM for quite a while and I almost didn’t go but of course I got to feeling guilty about it and took off. I did a little over 4.5mi in 45min - around 9min 45sec per mile and didn’t stop once. When I get my total time up to 60min and my speed down around 9min miles I’ll be close to the old days. I figure by the time I get back for my next hitch I’ll be there… Assuming I can keep it up while I’m home!

As you can see from the title, I’ve been eating as healthy as ever and that probably has a lot to do with my runs getting better. Yea yea yea MBM, I know you told me that many moons ago. Go ahead and say it, “I told you so!” After many buttchewings the cook has done away with the butter, mayo, most of the oils, and I’m pretty much on a grilled chicken and veggie diet. Today for lunch I had a grilled chicken breast and a pile of spinach and onions. I’m sure my breath was SAAMOKIN! Tonight I had another grilled chicken breast with green beans and one of those big white things that some folks call a leek and others call a Nigerian radish. Either way it was pretty tasty. POTD #12 is a picture of tonights dinner. POTD #11 was from Saturday night.

In other news, the boss is leaving for Lagos tomorrow so I’m back in command for a while. Not something I’m looking forward to. This hitch has gone by easier and faster than any of the others, I just hope it doesn’t get to crazy for the next few days.

And finally, there is a slideshow below of MBM’s thrifty finding’s of late. She’s taken thrifty to a new level by spending all of our money on cheap things. I don’t know how well it’s working though. When we bought a few expensive things we didn’t have any money. Now she buys a bunch of inexpensive things and we still don’t have any money! Something is not right here. (That’s a joke mom, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Nobody is going hungry.)

To end it all, it’s 10:30pm and I just had a guy call and holler and scream at me over the phone about one of our compressors going down. Guess my last few days are going to be fun filled after all.

Later.

So, today was just another typical day at work. Nothing very exciting happened. Nothing to tell. It’s the first day out of the last 5 that it wasn’t pouring down rain when I got home. The sun wasn’t out (it hardly ever is) but I didn’t do my daily run. After 4 days of complaining you’d think I would have been out there as soon as I got home… But I was tired and really not in the mood. Tomorrow will be better. T.G.I.F.

But, the big news of my day was my dinner. After almost 35 weeks of eating trash here I had a talk with my cook (see yesterday’s entry), gave them some money, and POTD #9 is what they came up with. If you look at the picture you’ll see grilled shrimp stuffed with mushrooms on skewers with onions, tomatoes, and peppers. On the side, broccoli, mushrooms, lemons, and that big white thing they call a radish. I’ve never seen such a radish, actually thought it was fish at first glance. Anyone know it by another name? Anyway, I ate the skewers complete with all the attached onions, peppers, & SHROOMS (but I didn’t eat all of the loose shrooms. I ate a few though). I ate the broccoli. Don’t tell MBM but it wasn’t half bad. They seasoned it with something and it didn’t really taste like broccoli. And finally, I ate the radish-thingy. It didn’t have much plant flavor either but had some kind of seasoning. It was OK, I’ll eat it again. So, the majority of my meal was ruffage and it was good. And I ate it. POTD #9.1 is your proof.

I told the guys only to cook from my menu, but the store didn’t have any boneless chicken breasts so they bought whole-small chickens and said they are going to skin them and debone them themselves. Did I mention I was impressed? Why didn’t I tell them to do this long ago? Actually, I told my old cook to do it but he didn’t know how.

So, there you have it. Hopefully they can keep this up and I might just have a fighting chance while I’m here.

Finally, MBM made it home from her journey North. She’s at the doctor’s office right now getting a check-up on the wee-est one. Savannah is on her way to Florida, James is still in WF, and Justin is wreaking havoc in OKC. And I’m still here.

Later.

From POTD's

So, I signed up for the one week trial on Weight Watchers.com. Things here are bad enough and the patented Gabe Little Diet doesn’t seem to be an option. Not only did I sign up, but I had a talk with my cook about how I wanted him to cook and I gave him 7 recipes (one for each day of the week) and told him he was not to deviate from the plan one bit. No extra butter, mayo, oil, etc… If it ain’t on the list it ain’t in this house. I was told yesterday where I could find decent boneless chicken breasts here so all of my recipes are of course chicken-based. They also had to be Port Harcourt ingredient friendly (which means stuff available here and that’s not much) but I think I found 7 that will do. Wanna see’em? Of course I put them on line for your perusal.

As for the family, MBM is on her way back home from Oklahoma City, Savannah is getting ready (I assume) to leave for Florida tomorrow, James is living it up in Wichita Falls, and poor Justin was left behind in OKC to spend some quality time with Weezer & Poppa before hammin’ it up with the Manthei’s in Texarkana. O’yea, I’m still stuck here in Port Harcourt. All alone. With nobody to keep me company. All alone. Woe is me. Woe is me.

One more thing… The POTD! I thought this would be a nice touch on the outside of Brenda’s Bar. Kind of matches the joint and gives it a little character. Who knows, might actually keep some of the drunks from peeing on her asthetically pleasing welcome mat.

Oh, and another one more thing… It rained pretty much all day yet again. The jump rope is looking better all the time. If it rains again tomorrow I guess I’ll have to give it a shot.

From Picture of th…