Today is my wife Jennifer’s birthday. Anyone who know me has either met Jenn or heard me talk about her knows what a truly incredible person she is – funny, kind, sweet, smart, driven and beautiful. I’m grateful for every day with her.

Among the many things about her that are amazing is her generosity. When my mother passed away Jenn and I were training for the Long Beach Marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through Team in Training. Between that and knee problems, we were unable to participate, simply donating the money that had been collected. Jenn was devastated. Now, 2 years later, her knee is better and she’s participating as a hiker – she’ll be headed to Yosemite this summer to brave the elements and raise money and awareness for the LLS.

For a person who spends so much of her time giving, the best way I could think of to honor her birthday was by helping her to raise money for this great cause. All day today I ask that if you have even $5 to spare, please consider donating it to Jennifer. If you can’t, please pass the link along so we can spread it around. If you’re on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #JennKLBDay.

You can go here to donate.

Thank for making this a special day for a very special girl.

…but are short on time.

For the majority of my adult life, I’ve been overweight.

Hell, who am I kidding? I’ve been straight-up fat. I actually lost a bunch of weight back in 2005 and kept most of it off until mid-2006. Since then, it’s been a steady climb in weight. When my mother passed away. I ate like crazy. I ballooned up to 285 lbs, which is not good when you’re 6′ tall. I kept promising myself that the diet would start Monday – apparently, I didn’t specify which Monday, because I just kept eating and eating.

Then something happened. I got a call from Symantec about shooting more Hal the IT Admin videos. They were concerned about my weight being drastically different than it was when I previously worked with them (it had been over a year). In the nicest way possible they asked if I could lose weight and offered their full support. I realized just how far I had let myself go, and the loss of potential work was the wake-up call I needed. I started working with a trainer five days a week and doing cardio the other two days. I started eating right and drinking only water. When I started back in late October I weighed 279 lbs. When the shoot came around, I had dropped about 16. I even lost a pound or two over the holidays, when I should have been gaining.

Now it’s 2010. I’m going to workout a little later today, and am working toward a goal weight of 185 lbs. I’m at 261 right now, and I’ll be updating this blog as I continue my journey towards being healthy. If you want to follow along with me, that’s be just fine.