After having attended the last two San Diego Pride Parade’s in the last couple of years and having to work, I decided this year I was going to make sure I saved a few days of time off so that I could take part in the festivities this year. And with the Chantal Kreviazuk concert in Los Angeles last week, I decided to add a few more days to my time off request and as a result I was able to take part in quite a few activities.

On Tuesday night, after I had stopped by Jorge Cruise‘s office to say hello and show off the results of my 47 pounds of weight loss using his incredibly awesome Belly Fat Cure program, I treated myself to a late lunch at Which Wich sandwich shop in Hillcrest and then because I was in the area, I saw The Center for San Diego’s LGBT community was hosting a Bear Pride Bingo event that a lot of my local friends were attending, so I quickly sent in an RSVP and headed on over to the event. For $15 for a packet of bingo sheets, $2 for a dabber, and $1 for an optional game, I was set. I didn’t win any of the games but came very close on a few occasions. I did happen to know a couple people who did win, namely Vito Grandolfo and Tim Palmer. I even went with Vito and his friend Earl Shearin over to Brians’ American Eatery for a post-Bingo bite to eat. (Many thanks to Earl who wouldn’t let me pay for my meal.)

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On Wednesday morning I received an early morning call from Jorge Cruise who wanted to know if I’d be willing to participate in a little experiment for his documentary that’s tentatively being called “Death By Sugar.” After he explained what he was looking to achieve, I was definitely willing to participate, albeit a little hesitant about consuming a high quantity of sugar for the experiment.

The tests were going to involve some blood draws and in order to get a pure sample Jorge called me early to ensure he caught before I had any food for the day. So I agreed to have nothing but water between then and the noon meeting time at the office of Dr. James Novak in Pacific Beach. When I got to Dr. Novak’s clinic, Jorge was already there waiting for me. I was introduced to Jared Davis who was here to film the experiment and Kelly Wiggin, a nurse in Dr. Novak’s office, who like me had been through Jorge’s Belly Fat Cure Program and lost weight. Kelly had been in an earlier test case group and she will be featured in the final version of the Belly Fat Cure book so be sure to look for her testimonial when the book comes out! Kelly was going to be in charge of taking my blood draws.

The initial experiment was going to consist of a blood draw to show what my blood looks like with no food in my system for over 14 hours. So basically blood in a fasted state. Then I was to consume approximately 300 grams of sugar, and then we would do three additional blood draws, one at ten minutes following the sugar, one at thirty minutes following the sugar, and then again at one hour following the sugar. Now keep in mind, I’ve been on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program for the last 12 weeks and I’ve had no more than 15 grams of sugar per day in those 12 week, most of the time I’ve averaged about 7 to 10 grams of sugar per day. So a meal consisting of 300 grams of sugar was going to be more sugar in one sitting than I’ve had in the last 30 days combined.

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Twelve weeks ago, when I first met Jorge Cruise, I was 47 pounds heavier and 10 inches bigger around my belly. I had read in the Costco Connection magazine that Jorge was looking for 100 participants to take part in his Belly Fat Cure challenge. The purpose of the challenge was to find testimonial cases for the program when it officially launches either in December of this year or January of 2010. Jorge had previously done a couple of local based testimonial case groups through San Diego Magazine, and the Costco Connection was the third and final group to get the chance to preview the materials before it gets officially finalized for the launch.

I had submitted my name and a couple of shirtless photos that I wasn’t too proud of along with my application to the program and a hope for the best. I was pleasantly surprised to not only be selected to be part of this group which would meet online weekly for the duration of the challenge, but I was also selected to be part of a smaller group of San Diego based Costco members that got invited to Jorge’s office to personally get introduced to the program. Unfortunately, Jorge’s busy schedule prevented more than one additional in person group meeting with him, but it was still an honor to be selected.

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Last night I got the opportunity to see Chantal Kreviazuk play a very small and intimate club in Los Angeles called, The Hotel Cafe. The venue can hold about one hundred fifty people, so it was pretty small and the venue wasn’t the easiest to find, fortunately, Google Street View maps made it relatively easy thanks to being able to identify the surrounding businesses.

Chantal was third on the lineup of four artists performing each performing for about 45 minutes starting at the top of the hour with the first artist taking the stage at seven. Tickets to the event were not sold in advance online so it was kind of a crap shoot to just drive on up to Los Angeles from San Diego. But what the hell, I took a couple days extra off work to do this as I love Chantal’s music and it was worth it to me to come. I didn’t even know how much the tickets would be at the door either. So when I got to the venue and found out they were only $8, it was one of the best concert bargains all year.

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Mind Movies, the powerful Law of Attraction Video Creation Ki,t is relaunching today. What this means is that if you buy it anytime today or within this week, you’ll have access to several bonuses that aren’t normally included. These include bonuses from Bob Proctor and Joe Vitale of The Secret and many more. (Click here to see the bonuses.) Additionally, with the relaunch they are giving away a free upgrade to Mind Movies 2.0 version when that becomes available. However, that bonus is strictly limited to the first 3,000 people who purchase a Mind Movies creation kit. So you’d have to act quickly to get in on that bonus.

One of the things I like best about the relaunch is that Ryan Higgins and Natalie Ledwell have finally gotten smart and are just outright offering the digital download edition as the version you’re buying. The last time they launched Mind Movies, you had to buy a whole physical kit for $200, and you would get free access to an online kit so you could get started right away. The didn’t just outright offer the digital kit without the physical kit unless you happened to catch one of their special one week only sales for the digital kit, which was nice, but didn’t give you much time to act before it was gone again and you’re stuck ordering the big physical kit. So for a very reasonable $49 you can get your Mind Movie Kit today. (Don’t worry though if you want the physical kit, you’ll get a chance to upgrade your digital kit purchase to a physical one for an additional $49 + $14 for shipping) when you purchase the digital kit today).

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Amazon has recently expanded the usability of their Amazon Kindle devices. The Kindle device is best known for being a reader for electronic books and the ability to subscribe to newspapers and other regularly updating content sources. Well Amazon has expanded this subscription option to now include blogs. For blog site owners who choose to participate, giving their site’s visitors an additional avenue to read the blog on the go.

The service will not be free, as Amazon will charge approximately 99 cents or $1.99. It hasn’t yet been determined what prices they will charge but essentially consider the cost as covering the Kindle WhisperNet wireless delivery system. I have gone through the process of applying for Ryan’s Incredible World to be carried by Amazon’s Kindle Blog service, but it will be Amazon that determines the price, I have no say in the matter. This site should be listed in the next couple of days and I’ll post an update when that occurs.

Unfortunately, the subscription content is not yet available through the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch Amazon Kindle Applications, so it’s strictly for actual Amazon Kindle users initially. It’s nice to have an additional avenue for people to find and enjoy this blog. If you’re interested in purchasing an Amazon Kindle, they’ve recently had a price reduction to $299.00 for the regular size model and $489.00 for the DX (larger sized) model. Click here to visit Amazon’s Kindle Store.

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Thanks to one of my good local friends, I’ve had Benny Andersson’s new album for well over a week now. The Benny Anderssons Orkester (BAO) has compiled a bunch of songs from their three previous albums and translated a handful of songs originally sung in Swedish into English, and added an all new song and released the album with the intention of releasing it outside the Swedish market. To help make it more readily accessible for the English markets, they’ve even renamed the band for the album calling themselves, the “Benny Andersson Band”

The most successful singles from the previous albums have been sung by Helen Sjöholm. From BAO’s first album, “Vår Sista Dans” topped the Svensktoppen (Swedish language song charts) for 30 weeks of it’s 56 week stay on the chart. It makes it’s official English language debut on “Story Of A Heart” as “(If This Is) Our Last Dance.” The song has been performed in English for the live performances BAO has done outside of Sweden such as Glasgow and Minneapolis, but now fans can officially have a studio recording of the English language version. And from BAO’s second album, “Du Är Min Man” which was originally released on July 11, 2004, and to this day still hasn’t left the Svensktoppen charts, that’s 5 years on the chart, 261 weeks and counting according to Swedish Radio. It is officially the longest charting song in the history of the Svensktoppen list and it also has the distinction of being the longest running song in the number one spot, which it held for its first 38 weeks on the chart. The song makes it’s officially released debut as “You Are My Man” on the album. However, it does have some interesting history as an English language song. Prior to the Minneapolis, Minnesota appearance of BAO, a promo CD containing a recording of the song in English was sent out to the attendees. However, the lyrics to that recording are different from the new lyrics featured here on the officially released album. So the promo CD as a collector’s item retains it’s value. I’m still undecided if I like the new lyrics as featured on the album, I think it could be that I’m just so used to the promo CD’s lyrics that I can’t get into the new ones. In any case, it’s still a welcome addition to the original Swedish version.

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We’ve all had bad customer service experiences, and in most cases when you bring it to the company’s attention that caused the bad experience, they do their best to try and retain you as a customer and provide some form of resolution. Well David Carroll, attempted in good faith to get resolution from United Airlines when his Taylor guitar was damaged by careless baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare who were seen by passengers on the plane tossing the checked guitar case around. After months of conversations back and forth with various people at the airline and the airlines flat out refusal to correct the error on their part, David Carroll has decided to take matters into his own hands and creatively deal with the situation.

David ended his final conversation with United Airlines with a pledge to write and produce three songs and make videos for each song and release them out to the public so that the world would learn about what United had done. The first song and video entitled “United Breaks Guitars” is available for viewing on YouTube and I’ve embedded it here for your viewing pleasure. The second song has been written but the video has not yet been made and the third song will be coming according to the report on David Carroll’s website describing the story of his bad experience with United. To read about David’s dealings with United, click here to visit David Carroll’s blog.

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Garnier Nutrisse Cream hair coloring has partnered with Chantal Kreviazuk for her upcoming tour that will support her new album, called “Plain Jane” coming out later this September in Canada. As part of the promotion where Chantal has filmed a commercial promoting the hair coloring, fans have the opportunity to enter a contest to win tickets to the upcoming tour, and can vote for the Garnier Nutrisse Hair color that Chantal will wear during the tour. The best part for entering the contest is for the first 5,000 people who enter the contest, they will have the chance to download “Ordinary People” a song that will appear on Chantal’s upcoming album.

To enter enter the contest, just point your web browser to http://garnier.ca/extraordinary/ and fill in all the required entry blanks. Technically the contest is limited to Canadian residents as you’re suppose to enter your Canadian postal code, so if you aren’t a Canadian and want the song, you’ll need to have a postal code to enter. (Just Google any business in Canada.) Fortunately, I still have family in Canada and just entered one of their postal codes. I doubt I’ll win tickets and it’s unlikely I’d be able to go anyway. As for the required phone number entry I just entered my cell phone’s number and it took it just fine despite the number originating from the San Diego area. I just want the song as Chantal is one of my favorite artists. (In fact, she’s playing in Los Angeles next week on July 13th, at the Hotel Cafe).

Chantal is also previewing her lead single, “Invincible” from the album which gets released to Canadian radio next week. It’s available to be listened to on her Myspace page, which you can get to by clicking here. And she’s also previewing a video clip showing the recording of another upcoming song called “Today” on her Facebook page, click here to visit her Facebook page. (more…)

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June was an interesting month, as I really kicked my Belly Fat Cure eating program into high gear and I actually shed a lot of weight during the month of June. But at the same time as far as my running is concerned I got very bored with the running and have pretty much taken a break from it. Not just a couple of days here there, but more like a whole week. I’m just getting the feeling that running is not the most effective use of the time I’m willing to spend on my health.

In May I ran 51.65 miles, but in June I only put in 35.03 miles. And the funny thing is that I’ve been weekly measuring my weight and taking inch measurements of my waist circumference and in the weeks I’ve not run at all, I’ve lost more weight than the weeks I have run. So this is rather discouraging for wanting to continue running. So maybe rightly so or not, I’ve decided to take a bit of a break from the running. I haven’t replaced it with any other form of exercise yet, but I think it might be time to start incorporating some weight training to replace the ineffective cardio workouts. The only challenge the cardio workouts were becoming were just attempts at running the same distances in shorter times and they really weren’t feeling like much of a challenge.

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