As the co-chairs of the event, my wife, Denise, and I are proud of all the children that competed. And as parents, we’re so thrilled and proud of our daughter, Alyssa, for placing 2nd in the sixth grade round.

As the daughter of the event organizers, you might think Alyssa has an advantage over other children but instead I think she has it tougher than everyone because her parents are the organizers. Spelling Bees are as much about focus and concentration as they are about spelling and when your parents put the whole thing together and your father is sitting in the orchestra pit running the event, I can only imagine how nerve-wracking it is for her. But she practiced, studied, and followed her game plan for the competition and she walked out with a trophy!

I’ll put together a more formal write-up soon, but needless to say, the day was a whirlwind (we started at 9 AM and had no breaks at all until we ended the day at 5 PM). Congratulations to all of the finalists, the winners, and many thanks to the sponsors and volunteers that helped make the event happen.  What a great day in Billerica!

You can find the list of winners here.

You can read the Billerica Minuteman article here.

Event Details:

• Friday, March 2, 2012 from 7 PM to 9 PM
• Billerica Irish American Club Lounge
• 616 Middlesex Tpke, Billerica, MA 01821

And if you’d like more details on why I’m running and what I hope to bring to the role of Town Moderator, you can read a short letter here.

It’s my pleasure to announce my candidacy for Billerica Town Moderator.

As Town Moderator, the person who leads Town Meeting, I will be focused on making Town Meeting more effective, more efficient, and more transparent. Our elected Town Meeting Representatives spend many hours considering important decisions that impact our daily lives, from the roads we drive on to the water we drink, the schools we send our children to, and the budget used to pay for those services.

In my present role as Vice Chairman of the Finance Committee, I’ve spent the last two years working with the Town Manager, the School Department, and petitioners to prepare for Town Meeting and helping them deliver quality presentations to Town Meeting. If you’ve seen Town Meeting recently, I’m the one with the computer next to the podium, often shifting on the fly between presentations, budget spreadsheets, and bylaws to help address questions on the floor.

I believe we need even more focus on the information brought to Town Meeting as Town Meeting Representatives consider their votes and as Town Moderator, I will continue to show leadership in this area. In my professional career, I’ve delivered thousands of hours of presentations and successfully run hundreds of meetings. I know this experience will benefit Town Meeting should you elect me Town Moderator.

My wife, Denise and I, have three beautiful children and a wonderful life with them here in Billerica. Through the kids, we’re busy with many activities like Girl Scouts for our daughters, Billerica Youth Soccer where I serve as an Assistant Coach for my son’s team, and numerous school activities at the Vining. We also co-chair the Billerica Spelling Bee, an annual event celebrating the academic achievement of Billerica’s children.

Please join me on Friday March 2, 2012 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm for a casual, free meet and greet event at the Billerica Irish American club. You can learn more about the event and about me at www.MikeMooreBillerica.com.

To the voters of Billerica, I ask for your vote on Saturday April 14, 2012 by selecting Michael Moore for Town Moderator.

Sincerely,

Michael Moore

Peace Street

The Town Moderator is the Presiding Officer at Town Meeting, the legislative session normally held twice annually to conduct the business of the Town as detailed in each meeting’s Warrant.

The Town Moderator also makes a number of committee appointments including the Finance Committee that advises Town Meeting on the financial implications associated with the articles presented in the Warrant including the annual budget.

With my professional experience, my experience over the last four years participating in local government, and the opportunity to combine many of my passions (government, technology, presenting, and people), I really feel this is the best role in which I can offer my time and talents to the people of Billerica.

I’ll be sharing more about why I’m running, what I think I can offer in the role, and what ideas I have for how we can make Town Meeting more effective, more efficient, and more transparent in the coming weeks.

Until then, you can learn more about me here.

Thank you and I look forward to a great campaign.

-Mike

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

So I thought I would recap the posts I’ve put together in the last year to make it easy to navigate the articles I’ve written.

• I started telling my own story of weight loss with How I Lost Sixty Pounds in Six Months, January 2010. I shared my story with the community that helped support me along my journey and wrote about it in Success Story Featured on Calorie Count, March 2010.
• After talking with some work friends, I realized that I would do things differently if I started all over again so I wrote If I started my new lifestyle now, April 2010.
• A key motivator for my weight loss was improving my cholesterol which I detailed in Cholesterol Progress, May 2010.
• Beyond weight loss, I’ve embraced exercise as part of my lifestyle and shared my plans in Only If I’m Being Chased, May 2010, detailed my first race in Great Race for a Great Cause, June 2010, and chronicled my biggest race yet in First 10K Finished on the 50 Yard Line!, July 2010.
• I tried working out at home and explained my plans in Taking the P90X Challenge, August 2010 and then explained why P90X didn’t work for me, despite being a great program, in P90X- Not the Right Fit, September 2010.
• I ran one more race before the year ended and described in Race Report- 2010 Lt. William C. West Jr. ALS Memorial Road Race, September 2010.
• I talked about my clothing challenges in Goodbye 38!, January 2011.
• I gave some advice to a friend pursuing his New Year’s Resolution in It’s a New Year and the gym is crowded… for now!, January 2011.
• I reviewed one of my favorite products in Review- BodyMedia FIT Armband Advantage, February 2011.
• And most recently, I shared my point of view in Starting Weight Training–How Long Does It Take to See Results-, March 2011.

Writing articles for this blog has been helpful in keeping myself on track because of the feedback I get from friends and co-workers who read the articles and mention how my story helps motivate them or simply compliment me on the progress I’ve made in the last 21 months.

For people that I don’t know in the real world that find this blog and my articles through my favorite search engine or the other search engines out there, I hope this information helps you and that you find the motivation you need to make the changes to lose sixty pounds or whatever amount is right for you.

Thanks for all of your feedback and best of luck with your own healthy pursuits.

But I think many gyms realize that this feeling keeps many people away from the gym and some companies like Planet Fitness are confronting the issue in a humorous way.

But after working with a trainer at Fitness Together for about three or four months, I started to notice results… not the kind of results that will have me getting oiled up and posing on stage somewhere, perish the thought, but the kind of results where you feel a muscle where you previously didn’t feel one. Or a muscle that you can flex a bit where you couldn’t before.

In fact, I think that the first few months of weight training are all about developing basic muscle tone to activate your major and minor muscles so you can begin to target them with more specific exercise. My personal trainer put me through a couple of months of full body workout exercises before we ever started breaking up my workouts into upper days, lower days, and full body days and I think that was the right approach.

So for anyone just starting out or considering a weight training program, I’d encourage you to consider the following:

• Commit to at least four months of training for at least one-hour 3 days a week since I suspect it will take that long to see some real results. If you’re anything like me when I started, your skeletal muscle percentage is likely so low that you need to get to a normal level before you can really build.
• Feed yourself – don’t starve your workouts since it takes a good diet rich in protein to repair the muscles your ripping during your workouts. I like GNC’s Amplified Wheybolic Extreme protein. Protein is an important supplement to a well-balanced diet.
• Follow a plan – I love the Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises. It has great pictures and explanations of over 600 exercises and it organizes them into simple-to-follow exercises. I type the workouts into a Word document, print them, and carry the book and my worksheets at the gym to track my workouts and refer to the book to make sure I have good form. It’s also inspiring to see a guy I went to school with as the model for the Shoulders chapter. He was always a fit kid but it’s great to see the results Damon Weeks has achieved as an adult. If he can do it, so can I, though it might take me ten years to get into amazing shape like Damon. But I can live with that. I need something to work on so why not my health?

Despite what some people may think, people who carry a book at the gym and write down their workouts are cool, in my opinion, because they are the ones seeing results. By tracking your exercises, weights, and repetitions, you can keep pushing yourself and make sure you’re doing balanced workouts. And that leads to great long-term results.

The people who walk around without a plan and notes do the same workout every time I see them and the repetition isn’t necessarily bad for them but it’s not as helpful as changing things up every four weeks since your body won’t see the same benefit if you don’t change things up. The Men’s Health book is smart since it changes your program every four weeks so your body never gets bored.

In my own experience, the fun doesn’t end after the first few months. I still find myself noticing something new every four to six months. For example, my triceps are really starting to pop out a bit in the last few months. Seeing the results inspires me to keep up the work knowing that I’ll see other noticeable results in another six months or so.

Having faith that hard work and commitment will produce results in time motivates me and I hope it does for you, too.  Hang in there, commit to four months, and then you’ll begin a great cycle of improvements.

UPDATE: I had my Explorer updated with the latest software in August and some of the latency issues I experienced with the touch screen have gone away!

In January, I bought the all-new 2011 Ford Explorer XLT. It’s a complete redesign of the Explorer and it’s very similar to the GMC Acadia that I had for the last three years.

The Acadia was a great car but I only had it for a lease so when the time to turn it in was approaching, I considered the getting a new Acadia but the new Explorer caught my eye, specifically the new design and all of the tech features you get for less money than an equivalent Acadia vehicle with less tech. You can see the similarities between the two SUVs side by side in this picture.

Customizable Dash

The cool tech features start with the displays on either side of the speedometer. You can easily customize the left display with trip, fuel economy, tachometer, and other displays, depending on your preference. I like to display the distance to empty. On the right side, you can choose from entertainment, navigation, climate, or phone settings. I like the navigation display since it shows a little speed limit sign with the speed limit for the road you’re on at the time, if it has the info. Pretty handy!

Center Touchscreen

Most of the tech features are in the center console on the touchscreen. On the home screen, there are shortcuts to the popular features from each of the four main functions – phone, navigation, entertainment, and climate. You can easily turn on the heated seats or jump into navigation using the MyFord Touch software.

I use my cell phone a lot more while driving since it’s easy to hit the voice command button and say “Call Michael Moore at home” and have it dial home with no hands. and because the microphone is just above the driver, the sound quality for me and the other side is pretty good, according to my wife and others I’ve spoken with. It’s so much safer, too! The Sync software downloads the contacts from my Windows Phone 7 device that I’ve paired using Bluetooth so you can use the voice commands with no issue.

I’m really enjoying the entertainment features. I’ve been a Sirius radio subscriber since Howard Stern first announced he was going to satellite radio more than six years ago and Sirius is nicely featured as one of the entertainment sources.

I’ve also plugged in my Microsoft Zune HD. For my Zune, I have the Zune Pass subscription that allows me to download whatever I want from the millions of songs in the catalog for a $15 monthly subscription. So at this point, I have over 4,000 songs on my Zune. I barely used my Zune in my Acadia but I use it almost daily in my Explorer. It connects to one of the two USB ports in the little compartment in the dash. The Sync software indexes the music so I can easily call up songs, artists, or albums using voice commands like “Play Artist Train”…. very nice!

Conclusion

For anyone into the tech features, I think you’ll be excited about what Ford is doing. There are some little quirks at times with responsiveness but overall the experience is very good. I would certainly recommend that you check it out if you want lots of tech features for a very reasonable cost.

Disclosure: Not only am I openly supporting Dave Gagliardi, I’m working on his campaign.

Conversation with the Candidate: Dave Gagliardi from John Gagliardi on Vimeo.