Win a set of Beltone First hearing aids

Category5 Technology TV and Beltone Canada are giving away a pair of Beltone First hearing aids (left & right ear), and including a fitting at an authorized Beltone Centre in Canada–a prize valued at $7,000.

Beltone First is a sophisticated, Bluetooth connected hearing aid that uses an iPhone / iPad app to control your hearing aids, and even take calls directly on your hearing aids.

To win:

  1. Register for a free account at www.Category5.TV
  2. Email [email protected] with the subject “Help me hear“. In the body of the email, include:
    • Your username as per step 1.
    • A short description of your hearing difficulty (or that of a loved one, if qualifying on their behalf).
    • Your mailing address (for shipping, in event that you win).
  3. Tune in to Category5 Technology TV on July 29 to win!

 

My wife gave me kisses.

Aside

I just ate 3 Hershey’s Kisses which my wife had packed for me this morning… and I feel like that was way too much candy. My how my mind has changed from when I’d eat a whole bowl of M&M’s.  I think weight loss is less about the body and more about the mind.

I have a 6-pack. But it’s covered in fat.

I finally got myself a bicycle! Yeah, that’s right… 34 years old and I finally have a bike.

When our first child was born, I simply stopped riding. I had no friends to bike with, and with a baby around, it wasn’t like we could go for a family bike ride… so I gave my bike away.

But now, with this being Tali’s 9th birthday, and she has learned to ride a 2-wheeler (while she waited late to learn, she’s a quick study! Started riding on 2 wheels after just 2 tries!) I decided I needed to get a set of 2 wheels myself.

After around a month and a half searching online classifieds for a bike, I finally sealed the deal … a $40 deal.  🙂  It needed a bit of work, but nothing I couldn’t handle myself.

I’ve been trying to lose weight for some time… and making huge headway! I’m down two and a half belt notches.  I’m on the “skinniest” holes of my belt, and getting into my shorts from last year, I’m blown away that the shorts which were snug-but-comfy last year are about 4″ too big for me this year.

It’s about 18 lbs (fluctuating between 16-18 lbs) I’ve lost since January.

So why am I so excited to finally have a bike?

I feel like I’m doing a lot… maybe not all I can, but a lot, when it comes to diet and not overdoing it, but I still don’t get enough “endurance exercise”. I’ve been doing stomach crunches for a few months with great success, but still not seeing the firm stomach I’d hoped for.

And then I read this line in a fitness blog (sorry, I don’t know which one) that I realized had a bigger impact than I thought… otherwise, I would have bookmarked it…

“You have a 6-pack, but you can’t see it for all the fat.”

That’s raw. But it’s true. Stomach crunches are doing wonders, but you can’t see the results like you should, because my stomach is covered in fat.

My hope is that biking is going to help eliminate some of the excess fat and help tone me down to where I should be.

We’ll see!  I may have to blog my progress, if anyone is interested.

-Robbie

Being a jerk never got you anything but burnt grass…

Aside

I found this funny. We had a new neighbour move in next door. Our front yard is shared, but small. With our previous neighbour, it was never a big deal… if I was mowing the grass, I’d mow the whole yard. If they were mowing the grass, they’d mow the whole yard.

But our new neighbour is petty.

It was a bright, hot, scorching day on Saturday. The kind of day where you know not to do anything outside beyond drink a mojito or chomp down on a freezie pop. That was the day the neighbour got out their lawn mower.

They mowed their half of the yard, with a perfectly straight mow line down the middle of our tiny lot. My wife and I rolled our eyes and thought, that’s so petty. Just one week earlier I handed him one of my beers which he downed while watching me mow both sides of the lawn. But here we are, 7 days later, and he wouldn’t have it: this is my lawn, that’s his lawn… split down the middle.

So, things cooled off the next day, and I went out and mowed “my side” of the yard.

It rained the next day, and my side of the lawn looks lovely and green. Remember how hot it was the day he mowed the lawn though?  The “neighbour’s side” of the yard is entirely sun scorched! It’s brown and yellow and dead.

Part of me is glad my neighbour is petty. My side of the lawn looks great.

-Robbie