Alright, time for an update.

Thus far I've not accomplished anywhere near what I was hoping to at this point in the summer. I've got 5 weeks left or so before moving to kingston and about 10 days of it will have to be spent boning up on math econ and econometrics. So basically one month, give or take.

I figure I'd set some goals for myself during this period, hopefully leading me to actually get shit done and get the ball rolling faster on this OP.

For starters, I want to play 8.5k more hands between now and the end of the month; this should allow me to reach silverstar (bfd, right?).

Other, more important goals involve slight lifestyle changes. I'm going to post them here in order to sort of create more pressure to adhere to them.

Exercise: I generally do about 40-50 minutes of cardio 3 or 4 times a week. I want to bump this up to 60 minutes of cardio 5 days a week. The reason behind this is, primarily, weight loss; I'm not at all concerned with building muscle / developing some kinda douchebag strong guy physique. I'd settle for getting myself down to about 180 pounds from my current 208. Once October rolls around, I'll be playing for the Queen's econ hockey team (probably on the fourth line, heh) so I really want to be in shape by the time that comes up.

Food / Diet: Generally, I want to stop eating unhealthy fast foods as I have grown quite accustomed to doing this over the last 3 years since I moved to downtown Montreal. This should be pretty easy, a little discipline is all it takes imo. Certain foods from certain restaurants are fine - think cold cut sandwiches from Subway, for instance, or a chicken & bean sprout soup from Thai Express, but pretty much anything else is off-limits.

Drinking: So, I've been partying it up quite a bit this summer, which is pretty awesome and all but I've really got to cut down on my alcohol - and beer specifically - consumption. I figure I will allow myself to drink twice a week, and only hard alcohols either neat, or mixed with club soda. Wine is not so bad either, calorie-wise, but if I do drink wine I'll limit myself to 3 glasses or so total.

Sleeping: Been sleeping till about noon almost every day. My goal will be to wake up at 10:30 every morning, and no longer take any naps during the afternoon.

Alright I suppose that's about it. I will post once a week and report on my progress and general adherence to each of these goals. Each of these posts will include a mention of my number of hands played, exercise sessions done, and eating/drinking/sleeping habits for that week.

Starting up a session now. I figure 8.5k hands will require 4 hours played for the next 7 days or so. Obviously, I may be out on weekends so I'll have to put in extra hours mon-fri to sort of compensate for that.

Naturally, I'll continue to post hands / trouble spots / conceptual issues as they come up.

GL me!