Haven’t Posted in a While…

Posted by blackcatloner on

I haven’t really posted in a while because there really hasn’t been anything going on. After all, it is winter in Central New York and we are now officially one month into the year. Managed to survive January, a time for frozen water meters, 20-below-zero weather and 300-dollar electric bills. I think that this winter was by far the worst winter I’ve experienced since I’ve been in Central New York. It was pretty much alternating between a foot of snow one day, sub-zero temperatures the next. Some days, I feel like I’d rather stay in my nice warm bed than get up.

That’s winter in Central New York for you.

In other news, my status at work changed for the first time in over three years: I ended up stepping down from my department manager position and I’m back to being a stocker again, this time on the 2-11 shift. I can’t really get into too many details for obvious reasons, but the long and short of it was that this past holiday season at work broke me. However, things on the new shift are going well. It’s a lot faster-paced and easier to keep the shelves stocked, not to mention much less stress.

Another benefit of my new shift is that I get to sleep a lot later and I don’t have to set an alarm. I can get what I need to do done rather than come home too wiped out to do anything except eat, sleep and binge-watch YouTube videos.

Anyway, this month’s gonna be very busy. For starters, my birthday is on Tuesday and they’re forecasting yet another snowstorm. Then in two weeks, I have jury duty for the first time in about 20 years. The last time I had to go, I was living downstate and I ended up getting excused. I’m not sure what I will be serving on the jury for here but even if I did, by law I can’t say. All I know is that this month is gonna be interesting.

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Just Another Year

Posted by blackcatloner on

Well, here we are, people: 2019. Another new year full of potential opportunities. And hopefully this year will be better than last year. Well except for the losing 80 pounds part.

In my last post, I mentioned that I did not spend this past Christmas alone like I did last year. Instead I went to my folks’ place which is about an hour away. Instead of gift cards, I got a pair of boots from my brother and I got a cat tree for my kittens from my folks who ordered it online from Chewy.com. Also my mother gave me a recipe book I made in elementary school. The first page was her recipe for pizza burgers. She figured it would come in handy since I’m living alone and I usually cook for myself.

Also while I was at my folks’ place, I found out something new about my mother’s cat Loki and it’s not the fact that he’s a little more fully grown up than he was when I was last there. I found out that “he” was actually a girl cat mainly because she was a little “chattier” than usual and for a girl cat, you know what that means, right?

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The next night after work, I was able to put together the cat tree for my kittens and they seemed to enjoy it. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that I adopted two kittens during my break from producing content. One is named Scooby and the other one is named Cringer. So I guess this means I’m a crazy cat man again.

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And of course, my nephews came over for New Year’s. I got to spend a few days with them and my brother playing video games on the PlayStation 3 while my brother played Fallout 76 on the PlayStation 4. We also watched It (the more recent one) and Venom (which was pretty good by the way). When they left on New Year’s Eve, my nephews decided to leave the PS3 with me so I can play some games too. I finally got the opportunity to get caught up on Red Dead Redemption which I started playing over two years ago. I don’t think I’m doing too bad for someone whose gaming experiences consisted of Nintendo and PS2. I might just be a gamer yet.

Other than that, I have been thinking about what to do for this year as far as content goes. As of right now, I have pretty much run out of ideas as far as the One Lone Cat. As a matter of fact, I was actually starting to think that doing the vlogs under my real name was a bad idea.  I only did it because I wanted to go professional but the drama from the YouTube front the last couple of years changed all that.

As I continue to brainstorm how I want to do the podcast, I’ve been toying with the idea of “resurrecting” Blackcatloner. Since I’ve gotten older, it’s probably better that I go the podcast route after all. But I’m still stuck on what to do. I don’t know whether to do a small daily podcast or a once-a-week long podcast. I guess I’ll see what happens.

I hope I can maintain some degree of consistency this year as far as the site goes. I’ll try to post some more written diary stuff as the year goes on but other than that, that’s what been going on for me this past holiday season. And now that the long holiday season is over, it’s time to get back to business.

 

 

 

 

Where Did the Year Go?

Posted by blackcatloner on

Here it is, Christmas again. Survived yet another holiday shopping season at work. And I figure I’d post this while I sit here and do my traditional viewing of A Christmas Story on the ol’ DVD player. So it’s time to take stock in the year.

For starters, the year went by too fast. It’s like, “Where did the year go?” But to be fair, 2018 has been an interesting year to say the least. There were some down moments like for example, I lost my YouTube partnership after YouTube updated their partnership terms of service as a result of the fallout over the Logan Paul dead body video. And the sad part of this is that this year marked ten years since I started the whole YouTube thing. What a way to celebrate an anniversary. At that time, I was uploading my videos to the site as a reaction to the Adpocalypse last year so I wasn’t too concerned except for the fact that how was I gonna be compensated for what my videos made from my six years as a YouTube partnership?

I eventually got compensated after cancelling my Adsense account for both my YouTube channel as well as the Chester Gillette site, which came out to about seventy dollars (thirty dollars of it being from YouTube). Toward the end of summer, I uploaded the One Lone Cat vlogs that I originally uploaded to the site to YouTube to see if I can get my partnership back but to no avail.

And since there’s nothing more I can do for videos and that includes One Lone Cat, I decided to get back to writing and I am in the process of restarting The Blackcatloner Podcast since I found a podcasting site where I can distribute my podcast to iTunes, Google Podcasts and so on. I have already recorded two sponsor ads for the podcast and I hope to finally have a new podcast up possibly after Christmas.

However, there were some good things that happened this year, the most notable of which was my weight loss which I started in April and as of Christmas Eve (yesterday) I have lost a total of eighty pounds. I lost weight by way of exercise (using the 8fit app) and a diet where I can still eat what I want but have water as my beverage of choice. I have gotten praise from people online when I documented it on Instagram. I did get a couple of people asking me if I was okay because I lost so much weight. As far as I’m concerned, I’m probably in the best shape physically since… ever. The only downside is that I’m actually less tolerant of cold than I used to be.

Of course I have been lapsing lately as far as working out goes mainly because of stress from work that’s been leaving me drained but I want to try to get back to that as soon as I can. That while my lack of working out hasn’t affected my weight loss, I would hate to have my good work undone.

Well, that’s pretty much what’s been going on so far. At least I’m not spending Christmas alone this year like I did last year. I’m supposed to be going to my folks’ place in about an hour so I figure I’d throw this out quick. So Merry Christmas to everyone and hope to see you before the year’s out.

State of the Site

Posted by blackcatloner on

I guess since I haven’t posted anything in three months I should probably put something up to let everyone know that I am still active even though it’s more on Instagram and Twitter than anything else. And as I write this, I am getting over a very bad cold that kept me out of work yesterday and my throat isn’t exactly 100 percent but I need to do this now.

Since I last posted (the last One Lone Cat vlog I did) I worked at my first Gem and Mineral show at the Herkimer County Fairgrounds. And then I followed that up two weeks later by working the booth at Herkimer Diamond Days. However, for some odd reason my younger nephew didn’t want to go to Diamond Days even though there was a car show as usual. I didn’t go to the car show so no video footage this year. I did have fun at both. I also took my nephews to the Herkimer County Fair again even though we didn’t do a whole lot this year due to lack of money. I wound up documenting this year’s fair on Instagram where we watched a circus and a Power Wheel demolition derby.

And when my nephews went back to Buffalo, everything slowed down because it’s fall again and as usual nothing happens in this area during the fall season that warrants a video or anything. The weather hasn’t been very good the last couple of months. It’s been rainy and it’s been very cold. However, I did start to renovate my house again. I started painting the living room, got rid of the couch in the living room which also doubled as my bed for the last year and a half and got a new chair. Right now I am in the process of replacing the living room window.

Also toward the end of the summer, I started uploading the remaining One Lone Cat vlogs and other videos that I uploaded exclusively to the site to YouTube because I was hoping to try again to regain my partnership after all the drama earlier in the year. But at the same time, I am sorry to say that One Lone Cat is on permanent hold right now because right now there really isn’t any more I can do with it without sounding repetitive. However, I do have some ideas for projects. For one thing, I’m toying with the idea of starting up the podcast. Then I also got another possible idea and that is to possibly do a sort of fanfiction where I decide to resurrect my Blackcatloner persona that takes place after I decided to transition from Blackcatloner to One Lone Cat and started uploading under my real name. Either way, it ought to be a lot of fun. Just need to get through the holidays first. Hard to believe it’s only two more weeks till Black Friday. It’s like where does the time go?

And I have an update on my weight loss: As of Wednesday I found out that I am now down to 185 pounds which means I lost over 75 pounds since April which is probably one of the biggest accomplishments I have ever done even though I haven’t worked out as much as I should have. Hopefully I can get back into that soon.

And that is pretty much the state of the site as fat as that goes. Keep your eyes peeled because soon I will be having new stuff coming.

 

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