bluehickey

Jess, I soooooo wish I could skip meals, my body simply will not allow it! There is a lot of issues with low blood sugar in my family and although I've never been tested for it, I'm 90% sure that I suffer from it. If I skip meals, a variety of things can happen to me, the most common one is getting a headache or a migraine. I'll get the shakes and I get insanely grumpy and irritable. In the past when I haven't eaten, I've almost blacked out when getting up out of a chair, getting tunnel vision. In almost all of these situations, as soon as I eat some nutritious food the symptoms go away. My wife can get busy and skip meals left and right and be totally fine physically, and sometimes even lose weight that way, but not me. I get so jealous of people who can skip meals or forget to eat, and their body doesn't freak out on them like mine does. It gets pretty frustrating at times knowing that I need to cut back my food intake in order to lose weight, but knowing that if I do it too much my body will rebel. When I don't eat frequently enough, it's those around me who really suffer because of how unbearably grumpy I get. The world becomes a very negative place in my mind and on one can please me. It's too high of a price to pay, so I do my best to always have a granola bar with me or some saltines on hand when ever I am going to be out and about for a while. I usually keep some food in my armor tote when I troop.

After some strange miracle, I lost over a pound since last week and I neglected to do any exercise or keep track of what I ate. I also started sleeping normally last week.... I wonder if that helped. I did keep my portions down and tried to drink more water. I also snacked a lot on baby carrots which I think helped keep me regular, if you know what I mean,

Welcome back Lucas!

Looks really great, congrats!

Looks great, nice find on those sweet boots!

I could never get that hard hat liner to successfully stay glued in, so I just bought some foam, cut it in a ring shape and shoved it in and it works perfectly and of course is very comfortable.

Don't assemble the kit with velcro only like the manual says, you'll want to make straps that have snaps on the end of them so that all of your connections are much stronger. You are going to need a lot of snaps, so don't get the packs with only 6-10 snaps in them from your local craft store, they are extremely overpriced that way and it will cost you a fortune since you'll have to buy so many packages of them. I'd suggest ordering a bag of 50 or 100 from Tandy leather. The only places I used industrial strength velcro were on the backs of my thigh and calves to get in and out of them, on the back of the belt to open and close it and on the backs of the ribbed shoulder pieces to attach them to the back piece. By the way, I was never able to find E6000 locally, but another garrison member suggested using Goop which is exactly the same thing, and was a lot easier to find in stores.

Looks fantastic, congratulations!

Welcome Tanner, sounds like you've got a good goal set for yourself.

Congrats Mike! Well, I maintained my same weight again this week. It was a pretty rough week: I slept horribly which made me so tired during the days that I had absolutely no energy to exercise. Add to that going on a weekend trip and having to grab food at fast food places along the way, I'm probably lucky I maintained and didn't gain!

Wow, you were away from these boards for 4 days? I think I would die a little inside each day if that happened to me.

When I see that helmet with it's bug-eyes, I have an urge to find my fly swatter and smack it to death.

I agree: don't weigh yourself every day, you'll go crazy like I used to! Weekly weigh in is a better reflection of what's going on with your weight loss.

Well, I'm reporting in after 1 week of trying to lose weight. Here is what I did right: -Did strenuous cardio 3 X - didn't eat dessert or cookies when I could have Things I didn't do right: -I didn't write down/journal what I ate -ate out twice and probably ate too much Result: Gained one pound. I've also been sleeping pretty poorly this past week which can result in weight gain as well. I'm really going to keep a food journal this week and drink more water in addition to exercising.

That looks SO INCREDIBLE!!!! I'd love to troop with that thing!

You could always create a mask using regular tape around the ears leaving only the area exposed that you want to paint. Once the paint is dry, remove the tape to have a crisp line.

Glad you finally got it! Now comes the love/hate part of assembling it all.

Both leg pieces are on the wrong legs.

Velcro them down in the back.

Here is something that you might find useful, it was written by a member of my garrison..... When I went to send in my 501st application, I got really sick of having to sort through the list and find the available IDs, so this is a little program I wrote in C# that does it for you. The program accesses the online 501st roster, downloads it, and displays the untaken IDs, and some stats. If your internet goes down, the program will read from the backup file instead of the online list. Right now there are too many available IDs to fit on one screen, so it also gives you the option to save the results to a file. It will be saved as Available501stIDs.txt in the folder the .exe is run from. This is a very quick project so it doesn't have a lot of error catching or nice features, but it gets the job done. If there is a lot of support I may expand it to be better and offer it in the Detachment forums, etc. Make sure to Save rather than Run http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5722474/Available501stIDs.exe

If you check here: Listing of all current numbers you'll see that they aren't all taken, you just have to look pretty hard. And don't bother looking at all of the low numbers, they are all taken, you'll have to get something 4 digits long for sure.

It's true, 'trooping' really isn't that strenuous on your armor at all. The hardest thing I do in my armor is walk and occasionally bend over. I get all of my black scuff marks on my armor at events where I have to stand close to a TIE pilot, and his armor touches mine. It's a rather silly way to get that used trooper look!

I agree. Being 150lbs you are better suited for smaller armor. If putting together armor really scares you and you want an easy kit, then you could go with AM which is bigger and try trimming the pieces down to make them smaller and more form fitting.

Here has been my experience with the compression type of shirts: I got my first one at Walmart for $10, it was the Starter brand. I got Under armor leggings and paid about $45 for them. Every time I trooped, the leggings were very comfortable, while the Starter shirt was unbearably uncomfortable. I felt like someone was squeezing me entire upper body every time I wore it (yes I bought the right size). I decided to go with a different brand shirt to get some relief. I picked up the Champion shirt from Target for $13. This shirt was a little better, but still not much fun to wear. I finally decided that I would just save up and get the Under Armor brand since the leggings were so comfortable. I bought the shirt and have worn it for a couple of troops and it is a bit more comfortable than the other two.

You have to see the Duomo Cathedral in Milan, it's breathtaking! Make sure to get some Gilato ice cream there too, it's the best you'll ever taste! For Paris the must haves are: Eiffel tower, Louvre museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, and take a river boat tour during the night and see the city in lights!