Playing Golf In The Snow And Live Broadcasting it? Sure!

As the practice season kicks into full gear and the weather begins to get a bit better in the Pacific Northwest, getting out on the course is usually more fun. Of course, there are those days where the weather is less than stellar and I'm lucky enough to be out on the course alone. This is the type of round that happened Sunday at Echo Falls. Out on the course with a good shot at getting in 18 holes in some brisk, but nice enough weather. Unfortunately, by the 15th hole, the weather had changed a bit and things got a bit crazy.

Anyways, as you can see from the video above, I managed to play that 15th hole pretty well and I can't wait for the snow to melt off long enough to get back out there. From the sounds of the weather forecast, that's not going to be very soon, but maybe by the end of the month. Either way, Playing in crazy weather is definitely fun, just remember to keep it that way and not stress about scores at the end of a day like this.

This video was live streamed to the Back In The Fairway YouTube channel. Make sure to follow and subscribe to the channel to keep up with my golfing adventures!

It Was Revealing To Say The Least...

The first dance event of the year is in the books. The Reveal is the yearly display that our studio puts on to showcase the competition dances for the upcoming season. While this year's Reveal was a bit different in a few ways. Still, it was a weekend that will not soon be forgotten on many different levels. I won't go into great detail too much since it was just the start of the year and you'll hopefully be seeing a ton in the future about the different dances, but let''s just say that the weekend started off rough but got way better from there.

So, to all the dancers, Amazing Job! To all the parents, We Survived! And to all the readers.... Until next time!

Becoming A Bit Less Me

So, this is me. What you see here is a gradual progression of the last 12 months of my "face". Starting with the top left corner, which was just over a year ago, when I was near my heaviest. Then on the bottom left, you have a snap of a slightly smaller me that was taken in August of 2018. The top right is from October of 2018 and finally the bottom right is from January of 2019. This is the first part of the crazy journey that has been on going for years, but is finally starting to stick in the last 4 months.

Just 4 short months ago, I began eating differently than I ever have before. See, normally I start looking like the guy on the upper left. Then I crash diet until I look somewhere between the guy on the lower left and upper right. After dropping down about 30-40 pounds in a few months, I start to repeat the process of getting to look like the guy in the upper left again. It's my life cycle and it's just how it's been for a number of years now. What happened differently this time was a completely new way of looking at food and what I ate - and it seems to be working for me much better.

So before you freak out when I say the word - KETO - hear me out. I know that the Ketogenic Diet gets ripped apart in mainstream media and fitness people site all sorts of studies and give opinions on why it is awful for people, but quite a bit of what they say isn't exactly correct. If I listened to what people say about Keto, there's no way I would do it either, but, as I said, that's only half the story. Keto isn't a license to eat all the bacon you want nor does it say to consume all the calories you can eat in one day. Keto also has various versions, all with different requirements and ways of doing things that sometimes cross over and sometimes don't. Keto has become a generic pop term that people like to dismantle before actually hearing out the people that are trying to stick to it.

With that in mind, here's what "My Keto" looks like to the outside observer:

 - No processed sugars - no candy, soda, etc... 

 - Keeping carbohydrates to a minimum at meals - usually around 7g.

 - Consuming higher amounts of natural fats - both animal and plants.

 - No excess snacking.

Now, you may look at this and wonder, what guru wound't agree with a diet that limits sugar intake, cuts down on snacking and increases natural food intake, but there are plenty of people that think that Keto simply means wrapping all your food in bacon and covering it in mayo. Some people see it that way and others are actually changing how they view food and how they eat daily. That's where my change happened, even though it's completely backwards from everything I've ever thought before.

First, I'm eating a bit more at meals (instead of more, smaller meals), snacking less (instead of having more smaller snacks), skipping meals when not hungry (instead of forcing food to keep from getting too hungry) and staying away from anything processed (instead of liquid meals or shakes of some kind.) It's really strange and different, but my body is reacting well, I feel better, my blood pressure is down and I'm consuming far less sodium, cholesterol and, for lack of a better term, crap, than I did before.

So, since August, I'm down 62.8 pounds and I'm going to keep on keeping on with this way of eating, even after I hit my goal weight. At some point, the losses will slow, my body will find it's natural weight and I will be happy with that. Until then, I look forward to becoming less of a man than I am today and keeping myself that way into the future. 

It's Been Far Too Long...

October 8, 2010… It’s been a long time. In fact, over 8 years has passed since my first post on this blog and this year, this year is going to be different. Life changes are happening, my daughter is growing up fast and I’m finding myself once again. I’m not sure what exactly this year will bring, but I know that I want to get back to keeping this up so that someday, when I’m not here anymore, my little kiddo and her children can look back on this and see more of me than just a few photos and such. I’ll think of it as a digital diary that will last as long as they need it to and hopefully help her remember the good times, the not so good times and even the moments that we wish had lasted forever. This is going to be a big year…

Starting off, it’s another season of competition dance! Yes, the first few months of the year will be spent soloing, tapping, group dancing and competing against other dancers trying to be the best. There’s four dates already set, plus the reveal and the showcase, then a trip to Disneyland to take part in their Dance The Magic summer event. It’s going to be awesome!

Next up, I get to get back into golf a bit more serious this year. I’ve signed up for a tournament series that will run from March to October (with some good breaks in the middle) that will get my competitive juices going again. Not only a great thing for me, but also a great thing for everyone that knows me and has to deal with me. I can’t wait to get going with that one.

On a more somber note, we lost my father-in-law in August of last year. While he had become more distant after moving from Duvall, it was still shocking. In his passing, we are taking on one of the loves of his life, a 1946 Studebaker “franken”pickup that we will try to do justice to and get back on the road this summer. It’s going to be a crazy huge project, but when it’s done, hopefully it will be a part of him that Evie will be able to remember for as long as possible.

From there, it’s hard to say what else is going to happen this year. Sure, we have plans, but let’s see where the year takes us. Hopefully I will be better about updating this, at lease monthly, so I can keep this record going for everyone else. Anyways, that’s my first update for 2019 and hopefully I’ll write more soon!

A Weekend Of Projects

One of the joys of owning a house is being able to add some touches to make it your own. This weekend started off with a few of those little projects that really started to make our place, ours. From the screen door we added to the front to the beginnings of the office upstairs, the house is slowly, maybe even room by room, starting to become ours. Obviously, the changes for the weekend started out front. The new screen door will allow us a nice breeze in the evenings and quite a dose of sunshine during the daytime. It’s a needed and welcome addition to the entry.



Moving on to the first room redo that we have going on, or as we like to call it, the office. Gone are the closet sliding doors, having been replaced by Evie’s art nook. A perfect little area for all of her creativity to come out and be put on paper, canvas or whatever medium she wants to work on. We will get to getting some cubbies and cabinets for her to hide all her work away soon, but this is part one of the art area for her.



Moving around the room, the primary walls are now a dark blue color, which will be accented by a white desktop with a computer and sewing area. It will also have plenty of room for crafting as well, but we’ll make sure we make every effort to keep in clean and organized. I’ll post some additional images of the desk top once we convert the closet doors to the tops of the L-shaped desk and anchor it to the wall. then we will need to find a few drawers and some wall cabinets to really create a usable space.

For now, this was the weekend project, and things are coming together nicely.

My Most Amazing Trip To… Part One

A funny thing happened last week, and I really couldn’t talk about it until yesterday, but that’s besides the point – because yesterday – well two days ago – this is about to get weird… I left Seattle yesterday (Saturday, May 13th) and arrived in my destination 16 hours later – or almost Monday. Yeah, this international dateline thing is very strange. Anyways, sorry to ramble, but here I am, in humid and hot Taipei, Taiwan. I was fortunate enough to be placed on an HTC Elevate promotional trip to view the launch of the next new HTC device, LIVE FROM TAIWAN!



I’ll be honest with you and say that yesterday is not something I am going to highlight too much, since 15 hours were spent in the luxurious Boeing 767’s that I was travelling on, and frankly, there’s only so many ways to present the back of a seat, so I won’t bore you with that. Of course, I do have to mention the staff on the plane – with a special shout out to the “PDX to NRT” leg – You were amazing! Never before have I been trapped next to Captain Elbow for 10 hours and felt so well taken care of. I don’t know how such a small person can take up so much room, but he did – and you still made the flight enjoyable.



From there, I cleared through customs as quickly as possible and moved along to the hotel, the Regent Taipei. If you ever get the chance to visit, I highly recommend this hotel. City views, shopping, food, everything you need is here and the rooms are AMAZING. Today (day 2) we have a pretty busy morning, followed by a pretty lazy afternoon – which means some sight seeing time! Then we have a dinner tonight before we get some “rest” for the launch of the new device tomorrow! Anyways, if you want to catch the live stream, it will be at www.htc.com/launch on May16th at 2:00 PM Taiwan time, or 11PM (May 15th) in Seattle. Should be fun.

I’ll make sure to post some additionally fun photos as soon as we are out and about today. Make sure you are following me on Twitter (@waazzupppp) and the hashtags #ElevateU and #HTCLaunch to see all our adventures!

Did 10,000 People Really Read This?

Back in May of 2010, I started this little blog as a bit of a diary, and a bit of a reminder of what goes on in my life. My daughter was almost one and I was in the middle of my 3rd year of being married to my amazing wife. I never really thought that I would keep this up as long as I did, and honestly, with how many huge breaks there have been, I’m not sure it counts as ‘consistent’ updates, but I’m trying to get better. Today, I checked my unique reader stats for the first time in a long, long, long time and saw something very amazing – 10,033 unique visitors have hit this site. That means, somewhere on this planet, over 10,000 people have read something about me and my family and that’s pretty cool.

So, whether you are one of my tech friends, a dance dad or anything in between, thanks for reading and I’ll try and keep the fresher content coming.

So, We Bought A House…

It usually takes awhile for things like this to set in, but we really just did something crazy, yet amazingly cool… We bought a house. It wasn’t like we came into a ton of money suddenly and went out and found a dream home, but we are no longer letting someone else make money on the place that we live. Instead, we are building our future, together, inside our own four walls. Sure, one of them is shared, but still, we own this land – or at least we will once the bank is paid off. I’ll sign off on this for now, but I’ll definitely post more about the little projects that we are doing inside to make this great place all ours!

So, I Played A Round Of Golf This Weekend...

Yeah, so the rains, winds and snows have made it next to impossible to get out and play some golf over the winter. Fortunately, it seems we caught a break yesterday and I was able to sneak out to Riverbend for a round. What started out as a bit of a guessing game based on my range session about 15 minutes before teeing off, turned out to be one of the better rounds I've played in quite some time. While it wasn't perfect, my driving was pretty decent, short irons and wedges were sharp and my putting was pretty much on fire.

From the opening tee shot to the end of the round, I was able to hit good shots from just about everything in my bag that was a 6 iron or under. I had a few "issues" with the longer irons, but overall, they were small in comparison to how well I played. The round ended with a +4, 76 on a rather wet and soggy course. I'll take that all day long and be very happy with it. With all the stresses from the outside world right now, it was good to kick back and relax for a great round.

PS - I'm shooting these with a new mobile from HTC, the HTC U Ultra. You can trade up here if you want images as good as these - Trade Up to the HTC U Ultra!

Encore Dance Seattle

It was time for another weekend round of dance competition, this time, it was the Encore Dance Seattle event. The girls took the stage in the 7-8 year old category - a bit out of their normal range, but a little push is always nice - and performed their dance "Whistle While You Werk It" one more time. The performance went well and scored the girls a High Gold for the day. The competition had really stepped up this time, so there were no special awards or extra bonus prizes this time around. The biggest hurdle was jumped this weekend in the fact that it was the first time all the girls has performed together on stage. No sick kids or injuries this weekend, which just made it a win-win for everyone.

A Weekend Away: Sequim And The Olympic Game Farm

We all have those days where you just want to get away from it all. Normally, we just do a bit of a day trip drive and call it good. This weekend was a bit different though. With all the stress of life happening, we decided to make a run for the hills and find a hotel with a swimming pool to crash at for the night. We looked around the internet for a bit and then found the perfect thing – Sequim and the Olympic Game Farm. So we made our hotel reservation and jumped on the ferry for the ride from Edmonds to Kingston. We’ve probably made this drive a few dozen times, so it was a pretty familiar trip, right down to the summerish weather we got.



We arrived over in the Sequim area pretty early in the day, so we decided to hit the Game Farm first. Since the pass you purchase is good all day, we figured we could take the tour once or twice, then head to the hotel to check in. The Game Farm was spectacular as usual. It’s a drive through tour of a ton of different animals from all walks of life. From peacocks, like you see here, to the reindeer you see behind it. There’s something for everyone.



Evie and Ara’s personal favorites were definitely the llamas. These little guys really freaked them both out. Myself, I enjoyed the little guys quite a bit. This one and I had a bit of a pose off going, but I think he won.



As we progressed through the route, we came upon the yaks, which quickly became Evie’s favorite for the 20 seconds that we drove through them. She was back to tigers not too long after this, but the fact that she let one eat bread out of her hand is pretty impressive. From there, we finished the route with only some minor scuffs and scrapes on the car from the bison. Note to all that travel to this wonderful place, please do NOT stop on the wild game trail, you may have cleared the big guys, but the cars behind you have not!



After that, the kiddo was starving, so we hit a little place in town called The Oak Table. It was recommended by almost everyone around, so we jumped in to find the little place pretty crowded, but not so much that we couldn’t get a table. After we ordered, it took a bit for the food to arrive, but honestly, it was the best omelet that I have ever had. I guarantee you that we will be back there the next time we hit Sequim on a trip.

After lunch, we had an early check in at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Sequim. I was really expecting a ‘Motel 6’ quality room, but much to my amazement, it was actually a pretty nice room with a very nice bed. We could have done without the kids windsprinting up and down the hallways until 12 AM, but other than that, the hotel was very nice. The pool was excellent, especially for the two plus hours we had it completely to ourselves thanks to the front desk letting us check in early. One word of advice for this hotel though – if you can get them to move you to the END of the building, it’s a bonus. Our room was about 20 feet from the elevator and they are not sound proof doors.



After a delightful evening of swimming at the hotel (I think we logged about 5 hours the first day) and dinner at a local Thai restaurant, we settled in for the night. In the morning, we hit the complimentary breakfast early and then played at the pool for another few hours before checkout time. After we checked out, we decided to hit Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. We were about 95% sure we were lost on the way there, but eventually that crazy road wrapped around to the entrance to the park. Unfortunately, the gorgeous weather that we experienced on day one had completely flown away by day two and we were getting cold and miserable quickly. Still, the park was amazing and we can’t wait to plan a trip back when the summer weather is here.



Since we were in route back to the ferry, we decided to stop and grab lunch before we went too far. We stopped at a pretty well reviewed place called the Snug Harbor Cafe. I won’t go too far into my review of this place, but the food was ok and the service was good – if you were a regular. If you weren’t, you pretty well got forgotten in your little corner of the world, but that was probably ok. As we watched from our corner table, we saw the wind, the rain and even the snow begin falling and blowing through. It was a pretty crazy weather day. After a quick stop in Port Gamble for some real coffee, we jetted back into Kingston to catch our ferry home. All in all, it was a great little overnighter.

Dancing The Day Away At Starpower Seattle!

The first dance competition of the season is in the books. Starpower Seattle was first up on the list this season. We were down a dancer (stupid flu season!) but the girls did a fantastic job. They rated a 4.75 out of 5 and won just about everything under the sun for the weekend in their category. They took first in their category, 5th overall in their division and also won awards for Girl Power and top entertainers! It was a total blast and everyone had a great time. Now for 5 long weeks off until the next one. Maybe I can get some golf in if the weather gets a bit better!

The Official Start Of Our Year–The Reveal

This weekend was the official launch to our year. It’s not a big party or anything normally associated with ‘new year’ stuff, but rather a dance event. This big event is known as “The Reveal”. The Reveal is the showcase that is put on just before the start of competition season for our dance teams. This is Evie’s second year on the Mini-Elite squad at Platinum Dance Center. This year’s theme is Rosie The Riveter, and they are performing to a fun song called Whistle While You Work It. 

The routine went off without a hitch, even though Evie didn’t perform her signature Kick-over move due to a strained shoulder – yes, my 7 year old dancer has been to a physical therapist to have her shoulder looked at already… Wow! – and the company members looked amazing! This is going to be a great competition season for all of them. The official season begins next Saturday, so wish Evie luck!