Sunday Morning Selfie

Welcome to Sunday Morning Selfie. My name is Joe Bryant and I started this blog as a New Years resolution to lose weight and take a weekly look at my life and lifestyle. Like many resolutions I have slipped a bit on both my blogging and dieting but have returned to provide updates on both!

I Am A Full Time Teacher

To use an old southern phrase I am now busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. 

When I last blogged I had just added Marketing to my class load. Now I also spend an hour a day teaching Business Law. I am officially a full time 1.0, Union dues paying teacher and I love it! But it does not leave much time for blogging or anything that doesn’t directly involve learning about DECA, Constitutional Law or managing a non-com radio station.

Running the radio station and teaching Broadcast Media was already a more than a full time job but was only 60% of a full time paycheck. Adding these two other classes fills out my pay AND fills out my day.

I have never been busier or more career challenged at any point in my life and the only way I am able to teach all of these classes even remotely well is with TONS of mentor-ship and support.

 I teach Marketing 7th period so I attend my colleague Shannon’s 1st period class everyday to learn what I need to teach to get our students ready to compete in DECA.

 I took Business Law at the beginning of October from a teacher who decided to take leave after a LEGENDARY career. She left me with a great docket of guest speakers and my Supervisor Jen has helped me build a engaging curriculum with the aid of a DREAM TEAM of business lawyers. On Mercer Island many of our students have parents in the legal field and that is a huge help!

Jen and the District have also offered me incredible support by providing more resources for running my radio classes and KMIH. We are getting more equipment which Jon our Engineer can use to build students additional studios to work in and I have also been able to contract my former student PD Leah to come in and work a few hours a week as an Operations and Programming consultant.

 Since we are talking radio let me tell you about where you can now hear me “blog” every day!

 

I Am Back On The Air Daily Teaching “Joe’s Class”

As much as I have neglected this blog I have not quit sharing stories and I do it live every weekday at noon on 889 The Bridge. You can listen online, on our app or on 88.9 FM if you are within a few miles of Mercer Island. It’s lots of fun to be back on and I am always joined by a guest, many of which are the students and staff of Mercer Island High or community members.

I am sort of becoming the Garrison Keillor of this affluent bedroom community to Seattle and tell the stories of our school and residents as well as having local celebrities, media people and musicians drop in. The goal  is to be able to teach and model how to do live radio for my students simply by doing it WITH them. We even do some our grading live on the air! It’s the ONLY High School class taught LIVE on the radio as far as I know.

Check out Joe’s Class live weekdays at noon or listen on demand at https://889thebridge.org/segments/ . You will find 35 of my podcasts there as well as TONS of great content from my students including two of my favorite new shows, “Fantasy Island”, Freshman dudes talking Fantasy Football, and “Let’s be Perfectly Queer”, Freshman girls talking LGBTQ issues for teens.

Happy Veterans Day

With my increased class load I SO appreciated having Friday off. That is why I have found some extra time in my weekend to blog. But what I REALLY appreciate is all of those who have served. I wrote the following piece a couple of years ago but it still captures my appreciation as well as anything I could currently express…

I consider myself lucky and think that my luck began by being born in 1963 in the United States. If you are in your late 40’s to late 50’s you are part of what could be called “The Luckiest Generation” of Americans.
We got to experience the world pre-internet but have also witnessed the tech revolution and enjoyed it’s benefits. We got to start careers and purchase homes in a stable economy. We got to see incredible concerts that cost less than 10 bucks a ticket.
But mostly we are lucky because of what we DIDN’T have to do.
We came of age in a rare window of peace in the United States. We were too young to be drafted for Vietnam and were too old to fight in Desert Storm and the long lasting wars against terrorism we find ourselves in today.
As a member of the Luckiest Generation I have not experienced the pain of having my buddies die in battle or the fear of armed conflict.
For those folks of all generations past and present who have served or are serving, I wish you and your families a Happy Veterans Day and a sincere thank you for the sacrifices that have been made so that people like myself can live free. God Bless you all. Joe Bryant

Hollywood Sex Scandals

Show business has been full of misogyny, abuse of power and casting couch practices ever since the era of silent movies and cleaning things up was long overdue. But my question is whats going to happen to all the great content? My wife is going to run out of shows to binge watch. With people like Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen etc. now labeled as pariahs, losing network gigs and studio funding, there may be enough quality but scandal tarnished content to create a pariah/perv network. Do you love House of Cards so much you are willing to overlook Kevin Spacey’s alleged abuses? Is Lucky Louie so funny that you are not bothered that he enjoy’s whipping it out from time to time? Then the pariah/perv network is for you.

This morning I read that Mr. Sulu, George Takei, is being accused of trying to take advantage of an intoxicated male model on a bean bag chair in 1981. I don’t excuse any of this horrible behavior and I am sure more incidents are coming and more careers will be ended, some very deservingly.

But if you start counting stories of inappropriate groping behavior on bean bag chairs in the 80’s a good chunk of the entertainment industry is going down and there’s going to be enough stigmatized content for a new media platform!

 

Catching Big Fish

Thanks SO MUCH to my friends Rich Underwood and Bill Herzog for an awesome time on the Quinault River a couple of Sunday’s ago. We loaded the boat with trophy, chrome coho, had an elk burger, and were off the river in time to listen to the Seahawks game on the drive home. If you want to catch BIG fish Richie is THE GUIDE to fish with and is in the book and online. Just Google “Assault on the Quinault”.  🙂

 

My Current Weight

There are two reasons I think that I have not blogged. #1 is my impossibly busy schedule and #2 is that I have used this as an excuse to completely ignore my diet and health. I “took a break” from 30/10 Weight Loss For Life to deliver Emily to college in Arizona in late August and never found my way back thru the door. However, I have found my way thru the door of many local eateries using the excuse that I am “too busy to cook”. Consequently I find myself weighing 244 pounds this morning which is ten more than when I last weighed and blogged on September 27th.

I have said that if you go back to your old ways you go back to your old weight and the pizza and beer diet has done me no favors. I am not exactly sure how to deal with this and hope that taking a moment to blog and be accountable to myself this morning will be a step in the right direction. I am a dude who definitely puts the Yo in Yo Yo dieting.

With the Holidays approaching I am not going to make any hardcore promises but I do vow to be more mindful of every moment and every morsel I put in my mouth. On Jan 1, 2017 I weighed 256 pounds. I DO NOT want to weigh that much on 1/1/18. If I do then all this blogging and dieting was a big waste.

With that in mind my goal is to regain 230’s status before the Turkey is served in two weeks and to enter the new year with a 20-25 pound loss from where I began. Then I can reset and go at in “hardcore” again. 🙂

This is a lifelong battle of the bulge for me and I need to remember that if I want to have a long life I need to take some corrective measures. Hopefully spending a couple of hours this morning blogging instead of eating is a step back in the right direction.

Cheers, Joe