Super bowl catch up

I was so focused on finishing the Hawaii update that I forgot to mention the Superbowl party a couple weekends ago.  This was the third time that we have hosted the party and I think this was the largest crowd yet.  The CFO said that the final count was 21 people, which is a lot of people to add to our quiet house.  Included in that count were 7 kids, ranging from under 2 to 15 years old… not good since I wouldn't exactly call our house "kid friendly." If the crowd for future super bowl parties gets any bigger, I'm going to have to get a bigger TV, OR set up a projector and screen in the basement and start building a home theatre down there.  Hmm... I really like the sound of that idea!

I have been trying to do different food “themes” each year and this year it was “taco bar.”  This turned out to be a good, relatively easy self-serve meal; I prepared traditional ground beef and chicken for meats and we had a counter covered with possible toppings.  We seriously overestimated the amount of tacos that people would consume after they finished grazing through a table full of appetizers and finger foods that our guests brought with them. I am sure that no one left the house hungry and those who wanted to take some left overs home were able to.  Even after sending food home with people, we still ate tacos for a few days afterwards, but I guess it is better to have too much than not enough.    Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the event, I guess I was too busy making sure there were warm shells and tortillas for our guests.  That is the one problem with hosting the super bowl party, you don’t get to sit and watch the whole game.

I also decided that this was the year to introduce some low stakes wagering on the game, so we did a cheap game of super bowl squares.  I say "cheap" because we only charging 25 cents per square, for a total pot of $25.  I did a low buy in so that we were certain that we would sell all of the squares... I think I will at least double the buy in for next year. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the football squares game, you set up a 10x10 grid and people write their names in the squares that they purchase.  After the grid is full, you randomly draw the numbers 0-9 for across the top and then again along one side.  One set of numbers is for one team and the other set is for the other team.  At the end of each quarter, you take the last digit of each team's score and whoever has the square at the intersection of those two numbers wins.  Since our pot was small, the payouts were low ($3 for the first quarter, $6 for half time, $4 for the third and $12 for the final score), but it added some interest to the evening.  Of course, the hosts did not win anything… one couple won the first and second quarters, and other people won the third and fourth quarters.  It seems like everyone enjoyed this addition to the party, so I am sure it will return next year.

I took this photo outside our house after a light, early morning rain.  I was taken by how the sun was reflecting off the rain, creating a ring around the sun.

Last weekend was quiet and, after hosting the big party, we enjoyed the quietness.  I hit the gym 6 times last week and the CFO managed to roll out of bed to go 5 times.  I hopped on the scale last Saturday and was happy to finally see a little bit of progress.  I have dropped almost 5 pounds since setting my all-time high weight when we were on our cruise over thanksgiving.  I only have about another 10-15 more pounds to lose to be back down to where I want to be.  The CFO did not get on the scale, so I don’t know how her progress is going… and I’m not sure that she would want me to write about it anyway.  So far, the Mon. spin, Tues. weights (upper body), Weds. spin, Thurs. weights (upper body), Fri. spin, and Sat. weights (legs) schedule seems to be working well for me and I’m not getting bored with the routine yet.  Getting up when the alarm goes off at 4:40am to go to the gym has gotten a lot easier for me too…  Seriously, it isn't that bad.  The only negative side effect of it is that I am now nodding off at 9:45-10pm while watching TV.  No more late night TV for me.