Tag: money

My Nintendo 64 on Ebay

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games1 Comment

Nintendo 64

Today is a sad day for me because I had to put my Nintendo 64 on ebay.  I bought it from someone in 2002 and played it a couple of times, but then I didn’t have time for it because I was too busy playing EverQuest on my computer.  I had a lot of fun playing The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, and I never even got to finish it, but I sadly got bored with it when I got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to continue.  It has sat in my TV cabinet all these years.

I bought the other 2 games South Park and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil in 2010 I believe.  I played South Park for like 5 minutes, but I didn’t play Turok 2 so I never really enjoyed it.  I did however have a lot of time with the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time.  I only got to a certain point and then couldn’t get past it and gave up.

So I made some videos of the game play so you can see that the system and games do work.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil – I have to admit, I have never actually played the game so I had no idea where to go or what to do lol.  http://youtu.be/sm_0yG-m1Ow

South Park: http://youtu.be/elYhbZu3Bls

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: http://youtu.be/698xbfc4QUE

My original thought was to sell this on ebay so I could save up for a new bike, but I have a feeling I’m going to need the money for groceries this month.  I hope we are going to be okay for food, but just in case, I would like to sell this so we can survive.

Michelina’s are more affordable than Weight Watchers

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, Food, Health, Noom, Weight3 Comments

michelinas zap ems

I have lost a total of 70lbs over the last 6 months with Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners and Noom.  Money is tight and I can no longer afford the luxury of paying $2 for the WW meals, so instead I had to do some research and find some other cheaper alternative with the same calories, fat and sodium as the Weight Watchers.

My partner of 19 years told me that we should buy the Michelina’s because they were half the price, but I insisted on the Weight Watchers for several reasons.  The first reason is because the Weight Watchers has the name Weight Watchers.  It’s psychological.  If you see it is a product for losing weight, you put it in your mind that if you ate that or Lean Cuisine that you are doing good.  Another reason was because they weighed more than the Michelina’s, so naturally you want more food, even if it was only 1-2oz difference.  My final reason is that the Weight Watchers show up as green in the Noom app while the Michelina’s show up as yellow.  Although, the pizza snacks show up as red.

So since times are tough and we don’t have the luxury anymore, I decided to start buying the Michelina’s.  They are $1.49 at Albertson’s, but they are currently on sale for 10 for $10.  I could be paying .97 cents at Food Maxx, but what’s 3 cents?  I also have coupons for $1 off 5, so if I use 2 coupons then I am really getting 10 for $8.  Not bad.  Although, I printed the coupons and went to the store without them.  Ooops.

michelinas lean gourmet I wrote a post about how the Weight Watchers are better than the Michelina’s Lean Gourmet which I still stand by.  The reason I don’t like the Lean Gourmet is because the sodium is really high and the calories aren’t that much lower than the Zap ‘ems.  They have more flavors in the Lean Gourmet too like the meat and potatoes, which is what I miss from the Weight Watchers.  The Lean Gourmet meals are good, but I have a huge issue with the sodium content.  The Lean Gourmet also show up as yellow in the Noom app, so they aren’t any better than the Zap ‘ems in that regard.

Not all of the Zap ‘ems have vegetables in them so what I’ll do is I will buy some frozen vegetables and when I open the Zap ‘ems, I will pour 1 cup worth on the top and then microwave it for double the amount of time suggested to make sure the frozen vegetables will have time to cook.  My favorite is spinach.  I’ve added broccoli and brussel sprouts too.  I would like to also buy some carrots and put those in there.  It just makes it that much more healthier in my mind and it gives me more food.

I don’t have that much more weight to lose to get down to my goal weight of 170lbs.  Last night I weighed myself at 192.8lbs, but today it went back up to 195 for some odd reason.  Last week on my weigh in day I was 193.6 so I would love to be 191 or 192 tomorrow, but we will see how it goes.  I just hope the switch from Weight Watchers to Michelina’s hasn’t made much of a difference, but I will find out tomorrow.

I am trying to buy a bicycle so I can exercise to help me lose weight, but the only way I can is if people help me out by buying a keychain, my hemp choker or bracelet or some earrings on my Etsy store.  You can use the coupon code NODOMA for 25% off.  It would really help me.  The keychains are cheap at $2 and the earrings are also cheap (inexpensive, not cheap) at $5.  It’s only a couple bucks, and they literally take hours to make each and I’m not asking for much for them.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

@Noom Week 24

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, Diet, Exercise, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

week_24-1 large

This is the beginning of the 3rd week of my 2nd goal to lose weight with Noom.  I started  my first goal on January 5th, 2013 with 63lbs to lose and I lost it with 2 months to spare.  Although I did get lucky that I was 200lbs by my birthday because the weight wasn’t dropping as fast as it was in the beginning, but I think when you have a lot of fat to lose, with just a change of diet it will probably drop a lot faster in the beginning.  Now that my body is used to this new healthy lifestyle, I am not losing weight as easily.

When I started working with Noom, I wasn’t exercising as much as I should have because of my back problems.  I can make excuses all day long, but there really isn’t any excuse for not exercising.  I can do some exercises in my bedroom, on my bed, in my desk chair or standing in front of the TV or even in the hallway or kitchen, it doesn’t matter, but it’s difficult for me to do anything with Degenerative Disc Disease.  I am usually sitting on my desk chair at my desk and of course I have a ton of pain here, but when I go sit or lay on my bed, the pain goes away.

I do have a bicycle and I attempted to ride it on the bicycle trail.  I bought a pair of cycling bib shorts from Bike Nashbar and 2 shirts for cycling, and of course I have 3 shirts from Noom that wick the moisture like my other cycling shirts.  But then I had an accident on my bicycle and broke my arm, so I couldn’t go bike riding.  I bought one of those no flat tubes that’s like a solid rubber tube, but I can’t get it on my wheel and now I’ve ruined the rim AND the tire, so I’m afraid if I buy a new tube, the wires sticking out of the tire is going to pop the new tube, or I might have damaged the rim so there might be metal sticking out of the rim that might pop the new tube.  A new rim is about $30 and I’m sure a new tire is around $20 or $30.  It wouldn’t even be worth my money, I’d be better off buying a new bicycle, but I can’t afford anything, so I have no bike now.

I haven’t examined my bicycle to see if there was any damage to the front rim from the accident.  I bought the bicycle from Walmart in 2004 for $60 so it was a cheap bicycle from the start.  I have replaced about 75% of the bicycle over the years, so I have put literally hundreds of dollars into that bicycle.  The only thing original is the frame, the (I’m going to sound dumb here) the mechanism that the pedals are attached to (LOL) and the chain.  Everything else has been replaced.

Instead of cycling, I’ve been walking which is agony for my back, but I’ve been doing it a couple of times per week just to get some exercise in.  Of course by the time I get home from doing that, I am in so much pain that I just can’t stand living anymore.  Speaking of which, I am in so much pain sitting here typing this that I had to go get the ice pack and take a Vicodin.

walking workout june 14 Anyway, I’ve been trying to walk a mile, but instead of only walking a mile, I will add some distance every time I go out.  Yesterday I walked more than 3 miles.  My back was in absolute agony the entire time, but I didn’t care because I really wanted to burn some calories, which I did.  Here is that workout (left).

I went out with my black Noom shirt, my Noom water bottle and my Noom sunglasses.  I absolutely love my Noom swag lol.  I normally like to go out with my Noom backpack, but I really don’t have anything to put in it, so I don’t have much of a reason to bring it.  If I had a bicycle, I would put my Camelbak inside of it with the hose sticking out and I would clip the hose to the strap to secure it.  I could probably do that on my walk, but I like to hold the water bottle.  I really don’t need 3 liters of water on a 3 mile walk anyway.

My estimated end date isn’t until November, although the Noom weight graph says September 17th if I lose 2lbs per week.  Last week it was September 15th and I lost less than 2lbs this week so naturally the date got pushed by 2 days.  I’m really not in any hurry to be 170lbs though, so no pressure.  I feel that if it happens then it happens.  I don’t want to rush myself because I feel comfortable in my skin the way I am now, so if I lose more weight, then bonus.  The main thing is that I don’t put any pressure on myself to lose any more weight because that’s too stressful and I don’t want my brain releasing cortisol from the stress which will prevent me from losing more weight.  Although the back pain from walking might end up doing that for me.recumbent bicycleI really wish I had a bicycle, it would be so much easier to exercise because then I could sit down the entire time.  I really want a recumbent bicycle though, because then I could sit back which will REALLY be easier on my back.  That would be ideal, but those are REALLY expensive.  If and when I finally get a new bicycle, I’m going to get a beach cruiser or a hybrid.  I mainly just want a bicycle with the big handlebars that will allow me to sit straight up.  My mountain bike had me sitting forward which hurt my shoulder and back, that’s why I had to replace the handlebar with a beach cruiser handlebar.  A hybrid would be better for me than a mountain bike or a road bike (10 speed).  When I do buy a new bike, I will go to Target and get a Huffy because I know Huffy is a good brand.

Anyway, back to reality lol.  This week I weighed in at 197.0 and I still have a way to go to get down to 170lbs.  I am positive that I will eventually reach that goal by September, if not then it happens when it happens.  I will still eat healthy no matter what and I will still go for walks despite the pain until I finally get a new bicycle.

Until next week…

Exercise

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

may 29 walk

I have really been neglecting my exercise throughout this entire diet that I’ve been on using the Noom app on my Android phone.  I have no excuse, but I really do lol.  With my degenerative disc disease in my spine, it’s difficult to walk long distances and I don’t have a bicycle anymore since my last accident which caused me to break my arm.  So the only thing I can really do is walk, which again is hard on my back.

Yesterday I took a vicodin and went out and just walked as far as I could with my Noom swag on.  I was in pain from the minute I left the house until I came home, except the pain was excruciating by the time I came home.  But, what other options do I have?  As you can see from the picture above, I walked 2.21 miles at an average speed of 3.4 miles per hour for 39 minutes and 30 seconds and I burned a total of 263 calories.  It’s not much, but it’s the best I could do.

I hope to get a new bicycle some day, but money is always tight so it’s really difficult to save anything.  I am selling the keychains on Etsy and whatever I get from that will be saved so I can buy a bike.  Of course, I probably won’t sell very many.  I’ve only sold 1 and the profit from that was like $1.87 or something.  So yeah, I don’t expect that to help me buy a new bike.

Until I can buy a new bicycle, all I can do is walk.  It’s free, although I don’t know how free because it does come with a huge cost, and that’s back pain.

I plan on going out again today because I know I should get SOME exercise lol.

The (Frustrating) Sims FreePlay

On By Michel McDonaldIn GamesLeave a comment

The_Sims_Freeplay_1

I have been hooked on “The Sims” since the late 90’s when I first heard about it.  I was living in Hollywood and talking to someone on AOL who lived in Michigan and he told me about it and so I started playing.

I have the original Sims game with all the expansion packs.  I don’t have The Sims 2 or The Sims 3, but I heard they have way better graphics and are way more fun.  Although, I do have The Sims 2 Pets on my PSP, but it’s not the same thing as the PC version.  I also have The Sims Castaway for my PSP, I played The Sims Online when that was available and I play The Sims FreePlay on my Android phone, which is a ton of fun, but it can also be frustrating as hell.  Here is my page dedicated to The Sims.

The Sims FreePlay runs in real-time.  Like, say I have 16 Sims, which I do, and 2 of them go to work at 9 a.m. and 2 go to work at 10 a.m., well, I have to get up at 8 a.m. to get my 9 a.m. Sims needs filled up so I can send them to work.  That only takes a few minutes, but then I close the game and wait until 9 a.m. so I can get my 10 a.m. Sims to work.  That again only takes a few minutes.

So then I close the game and come back to get my noon Sims ready for school and work, but while I’m in the game, I go to use the wardrobe and it crashes the game and when I come back into the game, all of the Sims that I had sent to work are back in their houses.  All of the Sims that I had put to work in their garden who don’t have to work until later tonight aren’t working in their gardens anymore, they are standing in the front of the house or sitting on their couches picking their noses.  What the hell?  Seriously?  Why the hell did I wake up at 8 a.m.?

I don’t really care that that happens because the Sims end up making more money with gardening anyway, but I would love to not have to wake up early specifically to get the Sims to work and then have that BS happen.

My other grievance isn’t just with the game, but I think it also has something to do with my phone which is a HTC One V from Virgin Mobile.  Sometimes when I play the game it’s fast and I don’t have any issue getting around, while other times it’s so slow that I can’t get the screen to move at all.  The Sims characters are all either just standing or they are in mid stride trying to get to where they were going.  Then every minute the screen dims and then in a few seconds the phone goes to sleep and then I have to push the power button, slide the ring up and then wait for the screen that tells me how much my town is worth lol.  To prevent that from happening, I have to be very quick and pay close attention, but it’s hard when the game is sluggish.  The other way to prevent it from happening is to keep it plugged in while playing.  When it’s plugged in, the screen dims, but it doesn’t go to sleep.

I have to admit that it really is a fun game to play, even though it is laggy and glitchy.  I just built a Medieval Castle and it’s pretty cool, although it only had 1 bedroom which sucks because I have 2 Sims plus their 2 teenagers.  It had 2 dining rooms so I converted one of the dining rooms into a bedroom for both the kids.  It has both of their beds which they never sleep in since I have them drink an espresso to fulfill their sleep need lol.  The bedroom is more for decoration really.  I also wanted a place to put their study desk and their bookshelf and to showcase their Karate and Ballerina lamps LOL.  It seems silly, but it’s fun for me.

sims medieval castle sims kids room medieval castle

To answer your question, yes that Sim is wearing an Easter bunny costume lol.  I just took him out of it today and put a more medieval costume on him, the King costume.  Both of my Sims in this house are wearing a King costume, since they are a same-sex couple.  I tried getting the son to use the wardrobe to see if there was a prince costume, but naturally they only had kid clothes.  That’s why the game crashed.  I guess I have to build the costume shop to see if they have kids costumes.  My same-sex male couple have a son and a daughter and I would love for their clothes to match their house, even though I have added some things to the house that aren’t medieval lol.

Well, I just had to rant about it lol.  I guess there isn’t anything to do about it but just deal with it I guess.  I did install the original Sims game on my computer just so I could see the differences, and trust me, there are huge differences lol.

Cheap Rim Strip

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, Exercise, HealthLeave a comment

rim strip

So my new Noom shirt came today, and by the way I just love it.  I thought, now is a great time to put my wheel back on my bike so I can stand next to it and take a picture with my Noom shirt on.  I filled up the kitchen sink, grabbed the tube and pumped it up a bit so I could dunk it under water to find out if there is a hole or not so I can fix it.  No holes, great!  I go back out on the patio and find this (image above).  The rim strip snapped.

Naturally, I googled it and found out that bike stores will give you a cheap rim strip that will over time become brittle and break, which is exactly what happened here.  The good news is that I can buy a fabric rim strip which is obviously going to last longer.

I went to Nashbar.com which is where I buy all of my cycling accessories online, but they only have rubber rim strips.  I went to Amazon and they have them really cheap, like $3 cheap.  That’s not too bad.  If they are that cheap on Amazon, I wonder if they will be around the same at the bike store.  I will check and see when I have the money.  I won’t be able to go out until I have a Co2 pump anyway, so I won’t worry about anything until I get my next check.

Light Strawberry Jam – Ball Recipe

On By Michel McDonaldIn Canning, Diet, Food, HealthLeave a comment

strawberries

I have been on a canning kick lately.  I’ve made my own homemade peanut butter and homemade applesauce and those were a success.  But now for the hard part, sugar-free or low sugar strawberry jam.  As I was Googling the recipe, the first thing in the results was from the Ball website.  It only has 3 ingredients.  Strawberries, Unsweetened White Grape Juice and Ball® RealFruit™ Low or No-Sugar Needed Pectin.  That’s it?  Oh well besides 6-8 oz preserving jars of course, which I have.

light sugar strawberry jam nutrition facts SparkPeople has a wonderful recipe calculator which you could use to find out how many calories go into any recipe.  I went there, added all 3 ingredients.  I figured out with an app on my phone that 8 oz is equal to 16 tbsp.  So I went to my calculator and multiplied 16 tbsp by 6 jars and I got 96 servings.  I went back to SparkPeople and typed 96 servings and my jaw nearly hit the floor when it said that each 1 tbsp serving of this jam is only 2.3 calories.  How?

I wanted to make my own sugar-free Strawberry Jam because of how expensive it is in the stores.  Have you seen those prices?  People who are diabetic can’t get a break anywhere.  If you have a special diet, you are going to have to pay a heavy price, and I just won’t do it.  I can’t recall the exact price, but a little 8 oz jar of sugar-free strawberry jam must be like $5 or $6, somewhere around there.  With this recipe, all I need are 2-1 lb baskets of strawberries which is basically what the recipe calls for, 4 cups worth, and right now they are 2 for $4.  So right there I’ve already saved money with just that.  Basically, I bought 1 jar and I am getting the other 5 for free.  Of course I am not counting the pectin which I already have, but that is only 3 tbsp and I’ll need 1 cup of the white grape juice.  If you think about it, the 3 tbsp of pectin and the 8 oz of white grape juice makes up and maybe another 50 cents for that 1 jar.

Why didn’t I ever think of doing this before?  I mean, how can I ever buy strawberry jam again for the rest of my life knowing it is this easy and basically has no calories?  All your calories in a regular jar of Strawberry Jam is from the sugar and high fructose corn syrup or whatever the heck is in your jam.  All my calories are basically from the strawberries and the grape juice and that’s it.

Do I even need to convince anyone besides the price and very extremely low calories?  I can’t wait to make this.

Nashbar Bib Shorts

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, Diet, Exercise, HealthLeave a comment

nashbar bibs

I have been scouring the internet trying to find a good quality, but inexpensive pair of bib cycling shorts.  I already had a pair picked out from Bike Nashbar.com that were on sale for $30.  They were black with red at the bottom, which perfectly matched my red and black theme, but when I had the money to buy them yesterday, they shot up in price to $45.  I was back to the drawing board.

My hunt for a good quality pair of bib shorts at a reasonable price started over from scratch and I had to scour the internet again.  Unfortunately, bib shorts are expensive.  I have seen them go for as low as $100 and as high as $300.  They are just too expensive for my budget, so naturally my only option was to go back to Nashbar and see what they had and read the reviews before making a final decision.

The shorts (image above) that I bought have the padding in the back, which is what I need for my ergo bicycle seat.  Although I’m sure it’s not enough padding, but that’s the only padding I’ve seen so far for bike shorts so it will have to do.  If it doesn’t work out then I’ll try a new bicycle seat, preferably a beach cruiser seat.  I’d like to keep my $70 ergo bicycle seat because it won’t make me impotent like a regular bike seat would (which it was doing and why I had to buy an ergo bike seat).

The shorts that I bought are called Nashbar Gel Ride Bib Shorts and they were $40.  I know, I could have spent $5 more on the ones that I wanted with the red, but I figured with shipping and tax, it would end up being much more, and it was $50 with shipping and tax.  I guess $5 still wouldn’t have mattered, and in retrospect I’m starting to wish I spent the extra $5, but that’s fine.  I really don’t care what color they are as long as they do the job I need them to do.

Of course I will update this post when I get the bib shorts with my findings of the fit and feel and the feel of the gel on my ergo bicycle seat.

To be continued…

I wanted to buy a shirt to go with the bib shorts, but couldn’t afford to spend any more at Nashbar.com.  We went to Sears to pay the bill and to buy a new scale and they had EverLast sport shirts on sale for $10 each.  They are the kind that wick to keep you dry, which is what I needed.  Here they are.  Red and black.

2 everlast shirts Red everlast logo

My Homemade Peanut Butter

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, Health, Noom, RecipesLeave a comment

peanut butter

Peanut butter seems to cost a lot of money these days.  Don’t you wish you could make your own at more than half the cost?  Well guess what?  You can!

Today I bought a box of small mason jars and 2 tall 16oz jars of Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts.  I was looking for no salted, but all they had were dry roasted, honey roasted and some other flavor that was spicy.  Dry roasted was fine I guess.

I added 1-16oz jar of peanuts to the food processor and blended the nuts until they were in chunks.  I added 2 tablespoons of peanut oil and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt.  I blended it until it was smooth.  Although, it was very dry and I decided to just add a touch more peanut oil to make it more creamy than it was.  I probably went overboard because it did get creamier, really creamier lol.  Next time I’ll just let it blend until it gets creamy on it’s own.  My partner tasted it and he said it needed more brown sugar, so I added 2 more tablespoons.  It did make a difference.

I like these little jars because if I want to make some peanut butter cookies, 1 whole jar is basically 1 cup, enough to make 1 batch of cookies.  Next time I go to the store I’m going to buy the bottling kit so I can start making my own jams and applesauce.  I could literally go crazy bottling jams and applesauce, but at the same time I know what’s in them so I know that I am eating healthier and saving a ton of money.

My New Virgin Mobile Cell Phone

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cell Phone, Gadgets, TechLeave a comment

Well I finally did it, I bought a new Android based cell phone from Virgin Mobile.  Well, I bought it from Amazon, but it is a Virgin Mobile phone.

We were at the mall today and they have a Best Buy mobile store where you can buy cell phones from all the different mobile companies, and they had the Virgin Mobile phones, but they were more than they are at the Virgin Mobile website.

Like take this phone, the HTC One V that I just bought on Amazon for example.  At the Best Buy store they were selling it for $149.99.  It’s on the Virgin Mobile website on sale for $99.99 and I told the clerk that.  He scanned the barcodes and he said nope, it’s $149.99.  I told him to check the Virgin Mobile website and he said it’s $149.99.  I knew it was a bad investment to buy it from there because I could have saved $50 by buying it online.  When we came home I checked and sure enough I was right, it was on sale for $99.99.

Before I made the commitment to buy it, I wanted to check with Amazon first to make sure I could get a better deal and it was on sale for $93.41.  So not only did I save money by buying it at home, but I saved nearly $60.  That’s good because I still have to buy the phone card to activate it which is another $35.

This isn’t the phone that I wanted, but it was the phone that I could afford to buy and sometimes we have to make sacrifices like this.  The reason I didn’t want this one was because it doesn’t have a front facing camera which means I can never video chat with it, but that’s why I have a webcam on my Netbook and my Desktop computer.  But it would have been nice to have the front facing camera for those times when I don’t have a mirror and I need to check to make sure I don’t have food on my face when I’m eating.  I know, I’m strange, but that does come in handy lol.  I’m sure the front facing camera wouldn’t be great for taking self pictures anyway since it is probably a 1MP camera and the regular camera on it is a 5MP.

Besides the front facing camera issue, I did like this phone in the reviews that I saw.  It doesn’t perform as great as the most expensive phones, but it does perform well, from what I’ve seen.  I will have to find out for myself.

I didn’t opt for the 1-day shipping for $18, instead I got the 2-day shipping for $10 which means I will get it on Monday, December 24th which means I will get it just in time for Christmas lol.  If I had gotten the free 5-day shipping, I’d have to wait until the end of next week.  I guess that would be ok to wait, but I don’t want to wait lol.

So yay, welcome to the year 2012/13 lol.  I have been using an old type of phone for such a long time that I won’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve never had an android phone so I’ve never known the joys of apps like the rest of the world does.

I will be giving my phone away to someone who needs it which means I will be getting a new phone number.  That kinda sucks but I wasn’t married to the one I have now anyway, I still don’t remember what the number is lol.

So until Monday…