Justin Germino Ramblings

We decided to do something different for Easter this year with the family, so we took the kids and parents to a western restaurant in Phoenix called Rustler’s Rooste. The drive was about 55 minutes each way from Casa Grande, but we decided to take a chance. When we arrived at almost noon we pulled up to a large restaurant that is built onto the side of a rock formation.

The Easter brunch buffet was satisfactory is about the best I could say for the experience. The few food stations they have are poorly arranged which creates long lines and confusion as to where the stations are and what is served at them. The food itself was not bad, but not great. It was no better or more varied that the local Golden Corral restaurant in Casa Grande.

The biggest problem is how many rude people were encountered and then the sticker shock of the bill. Seriously an elderly woman who was probably older than sixty was shoving into my five year old son and was telling the line to move along. The chaos and rudeness of dozens of people cutting in line, or growling at each other over the wait reminded me of a pit of dogs fighting over the same food bowls.

To make matters worse when the bill came to $130 for 4 adults with tip, I was astounded that we drove almost an hour each way to eat buffet food that was no better quality and twice as expensive than if I stayed and ate locally.

I don’t know if the dinner steakhouse menu is better, but we were all disappointed overall. There are way better buffets and steakhouses to eat at like Cork and Cleaver, Lonestar for steakhouses and Home Town Buffet or Golden Corral for buffet restaurants.

Ah well, at least it made a blog post.

PS. My two sons are still sick and I hope they feel better, I may have to take off a day at work to take them to doctor this week with my wife.

-Justin Germino

I have always been a fan of role playing games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons over the past seventeen years, but I just realized that I am a geek. I know I am a geek because yesterday while working on a garage sale, I dropped my blackberry which fell to the ground popping the back off and the battery sprawling away.

What was my reaction? What clever words did I speak? Most people would say Sh!t or damn, or even “crap, I dropped my blackberry”. Nope not I, I gracefully just said “Man, my blackberry just suffered a critical hit”. Yep, if you know the meaning of what I just said, you are a geek too. For those who don’t know, you are the norm.

It is bad when I think in role playing terms without even realizing it. Ah well, good times, good times.

-Justin Germino

It is a sad feeling when your two year old is feverish and whimpering at night, we felt so bad we tried to let our little one curl up and sleep with us, but he is so restless and just wants to goof off when not in his crib. So up most of the night at various intervals checking and comforting a sick two year old who caught his older brothers cold.

Few things are harder for parents than watching your children not feel well and wishing you could make them feel better magically, so today I took a light day at work and wound up making two trips to Walgreen’s to get a few new thermometers and some children’s Motrin and extra tissues.

I hope the little guy is better by Easter.

-Justin Germino

My Poetry blog is up for voting on BlogNetAwards again, and I am looking for all of my friends and fans to vote for my poetry blog “Wanderer Thoughts”. If you don’t mind sparing a minute of your time, please perform the following:

Step 1 – Click “VOTE for Wanderer Thoughts”
Step 2 – click on Log-in link above the shaded stars
Step 3 – Click on Register link (at bottom of wordpress login screen)
Step 4 – create an account
Step 5 – Login
Step 6 – Once logged into dashboard go back to link in Step 1
Step 7 – Click 9 or 10 Stars
Step 8 – Leave me a comment

Thanks in advance to all of my fans

-Justin Germino

I was all set for the family outing yesterday where my five year old kindergärtner was going on his first school field trip to the Tucson Zoo, my wife, Mother in law and two year old son were following the school bus on the hour drive to Tucson to accompany him and enjoy the Zoo ourselves. We hustled early in the morning and wouldn’t you believe it that on my sons first field trip to the Tucson Zoo I left my camera back home on the dryer packed and ready to go, but forgotten in the morning hustle to get everyone ready.

The wait at the school was a little hectic with a bored toddler in the backseat, but we left for Tucson just before nine and arrived around ten. The Tucson Zoo is quite fantastic I must say, the entire Zoo is fairly small and you can get through all exhibits within an hour and a half, but each exhibit allows you to see the animals close up and they have a Polar bear which the Phoenix Zoo does not have. The zoo itself has so much shade and landscaping that it really is a pleasure to walk in the nice even paths and underways to see all the creatures in their pens. There also is Giraffe feeding which occurs every weekday at 10am, but we did not arrive in time for.

Fortunately my Mother in law brought her camera and I took some great shots with her Fuji FinePix, but I didn’t have the USB cable to offload the pics, so I will do an update post with pictures from the Tucson Zoo at a later date.

I recommend two things for parents out there and those are:

1) Attend every field trip you can with your kids, they only have a few of them and by the time they are grown up you would have missed out on opportunities to have taken part in their adventures which you will regret when you are older.

2) Visit all the different Zoo’s in your area, this is proof that Tucson Zoo is way different than Phoenix Zoo and I enjoyed it even more not because it had more exhibits, but because you can be closer to the animals and there are alot more open enclosures to see the animals better. The Tucson Zoo is also about a third of the price of the Phoenix Zoo at only $6.00 per adult and $2.00 per child.

-Justin Germino

Having lost over fifty pounds in two years I am a little dismayed that I have gained ten pounds in the last six months and most of it is because I have gradually increased my food intake to where I am no longer eating for sustenance but am slipping in larger portions and too much snacking. I had read about many diets including a really good Atkins Diet Review and in the past to lose the fifty something pounds I had followed an eating schedule that was very similar to the Atkins Diet.

I reduced the amount of carbohydrates that I ate and increased the amount of lean meats and healthy fats, increasing avocado, salmon, chicken and other lean meats, but mostly I had concentrated on reducing my calorie intake and junk food intake. I literally read the box on everything I ate and tried to keep my calorie intake measured to between 1800 and 2000 calories per day. That calorie intake combined with working out worked really well for me and I had a slow but steady and very healthy weight loss of about 1 to 2 pounds per week over fifty weeks.

Obviously for optimum health and weight loss you need to increase muscle mass and to do this you need to focus on eating High Protein foods which help your body build lean muscle mass, this in combination with reducing starchy and sugary carbohydrates is one of the most efficient and effective ways to lose weight.

The problem is balance and sticking to this eating schedule, you cannot starve yourself from the cravings you have, so you must measure and meter in the occasional reward for your success without binging. You also need to develop and adapt an eating system and exercise system that will work for you, you can’t fool yourself and go 100% if you only feel like putting in 25% or you will burn out very fast.

Slow and steady is the best course and adapt your eating habits over time not all at once, so no matter what system of dieting, exercise or plan you start and try, adapt to it slowly and stick with it. It is not easy to lose weight, but if you go about it logically, systematically and not jump on something without planning and easing your way into it, you will set yourself up for failure.

Meanwhile, today I ate only a pair of peanut butter sandwiches and a cereal bar for a total of seven hundred calories, that plus my dinner will probably be about seven or eight hundred calories will still leave me at sixteen hundred calories or so which is where I should be eating to stay with my goal of losing ten pounds by June 1st.

-Justin Germino

I took today off of work so I could attend my son’s first field trip to the Tucson Zoo, it is hard to believe I have a five year old kindergärtner who is attending his first field trip. None of us had been to the Tucson Zoo, so figured I would take the day off of my day job and attend to spend quality time with my family.  The weather is very nice and I hope the predictions for a chance of rain don’t come true on the one day I travel to enjoy the Zoo.

I will post some pictures once I process them and do a follow up post about the Tucson Zoo.

-Justin Germino

I have been working out with weights for just over a year now and have toned but am not building muscle at the rate at which I would prefer, I have plateaued from normal intake of food and am considering adding protein to my diet. Stemulite makes an all natural high performance protein powder that is an optimum choice for your body.

Their website has a video explaining the benefits of protein, the advantages of whey protein and how the balance affects the system’s nerves, muscle growth and overall health. Personally, it makes sense that if studied properly there is a crafted metabolic enhancement that can give your body what it needs for peak performance. I found the video and commentary to be better than other competing products, and if I do decide to try a protein supplement, I am very seriously going to consider giving Stemulite a try.

I know several people who work out and every one of them that uses protein formula’s tends to have a higher muscle mass than people who don’t use a protein supplement, so I know that they work if you are consistent to working out. Stemulite mentions that it has benefits to your metabolism and BMI even if you don’t actively work out and I am curious to know if this would help for my days off, since I only work out about three days per week.

If you are seriously looking to build muscle mass and increase strength, consider looking into Stemulite as an option to help you reach your fitness goal.

-Justin Germino

So I decided to upgrade from 2GB of RAM to 3GB hoping the extra gig would add a little extra stability and performance to my system, mostly I use many applications, tabs and windows at the same time and figured the extra RAM would be able to better accomodate all of this. With Chrome using as much as 600mb of ram if I leave many tabs open and Tweetdeck easily consuming almost 400mb on its own, I was sorely pressed for some extra memory.

So far nothing too noticeable after two days, but I haven’t hit my computer as hard as I do during the weekdays, so we will see if I notice a difference the rest of the week. I really want to replace my hard disk with a Solid State Drive (SSD) as these are so much faster and I have heard you have very noticeable improvements in opening and closing applications and working in multiple apps at the same time as the disk load times are much faster than ATA drives.

SSD drives are still pricey compared to Serial ATA drives though and you get much more bang for your buck as far as storage space with serial ATA at the moment, so I am just waiting for a good price point.

In the meantime back to work this week and blogging of course.

-Justin Germino