I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 6:30 AM, and he said, “192.0.”

Yesterday I was hungry a lot. I was ready for lunch not long after finishing breakfast, and dinner did not come anywhere near soon enough for my stomach. I ran my points all the way to the limit of 29 and I used water to fill in the rest. I wasn’t “starving,” but I certainly would have had no trouble eating well over my points if I had not kept a close watch on what I was doing.

Thanks to Michael, the author of the Weight Commander program, we finally got the word that the guy who fell overboard on the Kitty Hawk was someone other than our son LeRoy. That final nagging doubt could finally be put to rest. No matter how old your children get, you still worry about them!

Dotti has been really working hard on the web page the last few days. She got a new server, and had to transfer all the files and links to the new location. She had the dwlz.com URL moved to point to the new server, and yesterday that change became active. I spent the morning updating the links on all my journal pages and transferring them over to the new location. By lunchtime, I could see that look in Dotti’s eye that she needed a break from her work. The late hours and the constant pressing on were taking their toll. So, we dropped everything and headed off to Subway for lunch, and then on to the mall for an ice cream and some exercise walking around looking at what was new in the stores. Afterwards we stopped by a used bookstore and I picked up a couple of old Arthur C. Clark books written about the time I was born, and a few magazines from the 1960s and early 1970s, the years that our country exploded, and from which it has never recovered, and probably never will.

When we got back we sat down and relaxed with a couple of movies on DVD, ending with Snow White, the Disney Classic. We thoroughly enjoyed that movie. It is seldom that I can watch a movie anymore where some part of it doesn’t “tweak” my sensibilities in some way, but Snow White was completely free of that effect, which was a very nice change. They have digitally enhanced the colors so that they are brighter than the ones that the original movie had, and the entire movie looked like it was created today: no scratches, pops, jumps or other indications of age. It would be impossible to make that movie, exactly that way today with the political climate in Hollywood that exists. I am very glad that the original has been preserved. (I would not be surprised to one day see them create a remake of Snow White to push the original aside, and to thereby bring the story into political line, like they have done with The Parent Trap and others, but at least the original will not be going away soon.)

On this Veteran’s Day, I find myself wondering, what the people who first watched that movie would have done if they knew where our country was heading during the second half of the twentieth century. What most Americans do not realize is that the bloody years immediately following the 1937 release of Snow White, had far less impact on the USA than the decades which came on the heals of the Second World War. In other words, aside from economic conditions, the 1950s America that existed at the end of WWII, was far closer to the America of the 1930s (or even that of the year 1900), than the USA of the 1980s and after, was to the America of the 1950s.

After Snow White finished, it was getting late and I lay down to read for a while. As it turned out the story was holding me awake longer than I expected. Normally, I read 15 minutes, or 30 if the story is moving well, but an hour later, I finally felt my eyes start to droop a bit, telling me it was time to sleep.

Neither Dotti nor I really felt up to playing racquetball yesterday. Trying to fit in two sessions on the weekend may not be such a good idea. We can now get over to the gym on weeknights, so it will not hurt (in fact it makes more sense) to play a couple of nights during the week and one day on the weekend. Anyway, that is our plan for now. Hopefully we can make it over to play today sometime.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had a Subway 6 inch turkey breast sandwich. (6 pt.). For dinner I had a half of a Heaven’s Bistro pizza. (4.5 pt.). That gave me a total of 15.5 meal points. For snacks, I had 6 cough drops (2.0 pt.), an All American Ice Cream cone (2.0 pt.), Jolly Time “kettle corn” popcorn (2.0 pt), and 1.5 Kashi bars (7.5 pt.). That came to 13.5 snack points and brought my total points for the day to 29.0.

For water yesterday I drank 15 cups, or 120 ounces.

Working on my second half year…

183 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 5:55 AM, and he said, “192.5.” When I was eating dinner last night, I told Dot that with the big pickle and the sour kraut that I was having, I was going to weigh 193.0 in the morning. Well, I was close.

We never left the house yesterday. We both were busy at work on the computer all day. Dotti was working on her web site, and I worked on my journal, getting my story [link=www.dwlz.com/Al/stories/lifeatsea.html]Life At Sea[/link] up on the web page, and typing in a few more songs for my songbook. We didn’t even watch a movie to relax with.

This weekend I focused on eating within my points (just barely on Saturday but I had 3.5 points to spare on Sunday), and drinking my water. I did not worry too much about salt intake and water buildup. I also did not make it to the gym as I had planned to. I did not worry about the scale at all after Saturday morning, and just focused on eating within my range. So, with the “kettle corn” popcorn on Saturday, and the pickle and sour kraut yesterday, I think I am probably loaded up with water weight this morning. We will see as the week progresses. I certainly did not eat enough to cause me to gain fat-weight, and so that is not a concern.

This is the last week of work before we head up to Spokane for our traditional Thanksgiving visit with Jim and Tammy. We always look forward to that. We get to visit with our best friends and create some great memories, and we get to visit with their children, our little “nieces,” and see how much they have grown over the few months since our last visit. They all seem to enjoy visiting with Aunt Dotti and Uncle Al, and we certainly enjoy visiting with them. I don’t know how many times I have gone there feeling totally stressed out from the problems at work, only to find that a week of relaxation and fun has recharged my batteries and made me a new man. The Thanksgiving holiday is always great too, sharing it with Jim and Tammy and all their family in Spokane who usually drop by for dinner. We have a great feast, and usually Jim and I break out the guitars at some point and sing some songs. All the young ones show up a little older than last time, and a bit more grown up. The rest of us try and hold the line on looking older, but what are you going to do? :) Seriously, this is something that Dotti and I look forward to every year starting right after our visit in the summer.

The rain is falling outside, and we are back to our normal weather for the fall and winter. One of the nice things about when it rains, the clouds hold the heat in from the day, and the temperatures do not usually fall as low. We had a frost in the early morning on both Thursday and Friday, when the skies were clear, but last night the temperature was 49 when I went to bed and still is 49 this morning.

Well it's off to work for another week.

For eating yesterday I had Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had 3 fried egg sandwiches (3.5 pt.), and a chocolate WW Smoothie Shake (3.0 pt.), which came to 6.5 lunch points. For dinner I had 2 turkey hot dogs (2.0 pt.), baked French fries (3.0 pt.), and a cup of sour kraut (0.0 pt.). So, for dinner I had 5.0 points, and for meals, I ate a total of 16.5 points. For snacks, I had 4 cough drops (1.5 pt.), a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), a Mr. Cookie Face ice cream sandwich (3.0 pt), and half of a Kashi bars (2.5 pt.), that I split with Dotti. That came to 9.0 snack points and brought my total points for the day to 25.5.

For water yesterday I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces.

184 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I let Mr. Scale sleep in just a bit this morning, and didn’t step up to be counted until 6:20 AM, at which time he said, “191.5.” Ah, heading back in the right direction again.

The weather was wet yesterday, and every time we have a very wet day after a long dry spell, all the people of Portland seem to forget how to drive in the rain. The traffic backs up and goes a snail’s pace. I am always amazed by the phenomenon. You would think that someone from the Pacific Northwest would be able to handle a little rain. The nickname for people in this part of the country is “webfoot.” It must have something to do with swimming because, judging from the freeways, it has nothing to do with feeling natural in the rain. The theory has been expounded that it is not really the regular Portlanders who are having trouble in the rain, but all the new transplants from California who have dropped in since the last wet weather, who are slowing things down. I am skeptical of that theory. However, no matter what the cause, yesterday I spent a lot of time in a stop and go freeway exercise with my windshield wipers moving a lot faster than I was, both going to work and coming home from work.

I finally was able to catch up on all my paperwork yesterday, from the time that my dialup access was down, and it felt good to finally get that behind me. I hate paperwork anyway, and to have it piling up on me is quite stressful. Getting it all out of the way always takes a load off my shoulders.

Today it is time for another visit to the “House of Pain.” This time it is supposed to be pain free however, because they are going to remove my temporary cap on my tooth, and replace it with a crown. The tooth, I am told, has no nerve any longer and therefore cannot hurt. My teeth are quite resourceful in that area, and so I will only fully accept that theory once it has been properly demonstrated to me, but I am hopeful that it is correct.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.) and Standard Lunch (7.0 pt.). For dinner I had a bowl of instant Cream of Wheat (4.0 pt.), with a half cup of skim milk (1 pt.), giving me 5.0 dinner points, and 16.0 points total for meals. For snacks, I had 18 cough drops (5.5 pt.), two WW Just 2 Point bars (4.0 pt.), and a Mr. Cookie Face ice cream sandwich (3.0 pt). That came to 12.5 snack points and brought my total points for the day to 28.0.

For water yesterday I drank 12 cups, or 96 ounces.

185 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 5:40 AM, and he said, “192.0 pounds.” As I get close to my personal goal range of 185 to 190, I can feel an eagerness growing to get it done with, so I can move on to stable maintenance. But Mr. Scale is sort of dangling the prize in front of me and like an adult teasing a young child, he places it within reach and then yanks it backs. I know that I will reach my desired destination in time, and it will probably be fairly soon, so I can enjoy the game he is engaging in, in a playful spirit.

I feel like I should be eating in the 30 range for points. It would be very easy for me to run my intake up to my old limit of 31 points on many days. I feel like I am pulling in just a bit to hold my eating below 29 points. I am doing it, but it is not as comfortable on certain days as on others. Part of the process is growing used to what I am doing, and part is finding the right number of points to eat to maintain where I want to be. So, I am in a waiting game until my weight finally falls below 190, where I will have lost 50 pounds, and I can start working on stabilizing my weight and moving my points range back up to where I feel it probably belongs.

The weather is carrying some excitement with it this morning. The temperature is surprisingly warm at 60 degrees. The barometer has fallen to 29.79 inches, and the wind is whipping past our house sounding like it is in a hurry to get somewhere. It is blowing in from the south at a pace of 13 miles per hour, and gusting up to 31 miles per hour. Our wind chimes are singing a merry tune that is nearly continuous. It is forecast that the weather will remain the same throughout the morning, with the wind tapering off into the 10 to 20 miles per hour in the afternoon. It is a blustery day.

Driving across the Columbia River in the morning yesterday, I was treated to a spectacular view. After the heavy rain, bringing the visibility to almost nothing the day before, the view was especially welcome. There was a strip of clouds that must have stood 4 or 5 thousand feet tall, and it was lying right along the top of the Cascade mountain range, extending the apparent height of the mountains by that amount. Sticking its rugged, snow covered top out of the clouds, all the way down to its rocky bulge marking the plug in the uppermost lava tube, Mt. Hood still held on to its majesty. The sun, like an old Kilroy cartoon, was sticking its head halfway over the upper line of the clouds, painting everything in golden, early morning colors. What a joy to behold!

After a quiet day at work yesterday, I left a little early to visit the dentist, where I had my lower teeth cleaned, and the temporary cap on the problem tooth replaced with a crown. The temporary popped right off when the dental assistant pried at it with her pliers, and the crown just glued right into place with no problem. The deep cleaning was uneventful and all and all the visit was not bad. The best one I have had for a while.

Dotti and I went to play racquetball after my dental appointment. (In fact, since they were all freshly laundered and quite modest, we got into our gym clothes before we went to the dentist, so we could head right over afterwards.) The courts in the area where we normally play were filled up, and so we went off in search of another court. We found two of them, located up some stairs and off in another direction. The court we played in had a glass rear wall, and up high on the front wall there were a couple of fairly large windows, which was a new feature for me. I had never played on a court where the front wall had a viewing area installed in it. The ball rebounded off the glass well, and so the windows did not affect the game. It was a bit strange seeing people walk by from time to time, and look down on us from the window up front as we were playing. The few times people wandered by in back of the court, we just barely noticed, because we are used to playing with a glass back wall.

Dotti had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before, since she was up working on the web page, so she was kind of tired as we were playing. And, since we hadn’t played in a few days, I wanted to make sure I didn’t overdo things. All and all we had a good workout but we did not play as aggressively as on some other outings. My shoulder and my elbow came through feeling pretty good. I did tweak my shoulder on one hit that I made, but it was not major and the pain worked right out.

When we got home last night I stepped on the scale and it said 190.0 pounds. That is the lowest weight I have seen so far. Of course I got rid of some water when I was exercising and that was why my weight dropped, but it was nice seeing it come so close to the 180s. After that I had a light dinner and a couple of snacks and drank 9 more cups (72 ounces) of water. This morning I was back up to 192.0 pounds but I know I am getting close to my personal goal range.

For eating yesterday I had Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.) and Standard Lunch (7.0 pt.), and just like the day before yesterday, for dinner I had a bowl of instant Cream of Wheat (4.0 pt.), with a half cup of skim milk (1 pt.), giving me 5.0 points for dinner, and 17.0 points total for meals. For snacks, I had 15 cough drops (4.5 pt.), a WW Just 2 Points bars (2.0 pt.), and a Mr. Cookie Face ice cream sandwich (3.0 pt). That came to 12.5 snack points and brought my total points for the day to 26.5.

For water yesterday I drank 12 cups, or 96 ounces.

For exercise yesterday, I played 1 hour of racquetball for 9.0 Aerobic points.

186 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

At 5:15 AM, I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, “191.5 pounds.”

My work day was fairly quiet yesterday. Once it was over, the last light of the day was quickly escaping from the sky, and I headed out on my drive home. I have two main ways that I go home at night, depending on the time of day I get on the road, and the day of the week. Early in the week the traffic heading home in the evening is usually lighter during rush hour, but on Friday it is a nightmare. So, if I get on the road early on a Monday, I will sometimes take the freeway route, which is faster when it is moving. Most evenings I avoid the freeway, because it has way too much stop and go. The other route I take is a fun back road that cuts through a stretch of forest, with a lot of switch back curves, leading to a bridge that has two lanes going in each direction, but just barely, even with no divider between. Once I cross that bridge, there is a run on city streets for a while until I reach I-5 and back into the freeway traffic for just a short hop into Washington State. Last night I took the back route, and it was a nice carefree drive, as rush hour drives go. The traffic was not bad, the drive through the forest was pleasant. Even the city street driving was not as congested as usual, and seeing all the stores brightly lit up gave a warm quality to that stretch of the drive.

There is a Classic McDonalds beside the road at that point that reminds me of the McDonalds that I went to in San Bernardino back in the 1950s with my folks. The arches went from the pavement up through the roof and then back down again on the back of the building into the pavement. The arches in the 1950s were not made of plastic nor lit up from the inside, like the Classic one’s are, but the mental connection is still easy to make. The funny thing is that when I go by, I don’t think of food, but only the nostalgia of sharing happy times with my parents. It is sort of the feeling I get when I see a Christmas decoration in a store window, reminding me of the times I used to go with my mother to the San Bernardino downtown stores, before there were indoor shopping malls for Christmas shopping. Some of the stores, like J. C. Penney’s would go all out in creating fun and interesting displays, complete with moving characters and lots of toys. When I see something similar today, it is enough all by itself to produce the happy feelings, without running in to buy something. I do not miss the food of McDonalds, buy I do miss my father, who passed away in early 1973, and his intelligent quick wit. I am fortunate that I still have my mother, whom I love dearly, and as an only child, it is she that is the last one with whom I can reminisce with about those days of my youth.

When I got home Dotti was commenting on the fact that she really would like to have her printer available again via the network. So, I took another crack at making the thing work. I rerouted the cables, and hooked things up in an “ICS” configuration, using the new Ethernet card that Dotti bought for me, and that I had just installed within the last couple of days. The idea with this configuration is that only one computer actually is connected to the Internet and the other computers on the network are then connected to that computer and it routes their Internet traffic through its connection. It is a safer configuration, decreasing the opportunity for hackers to get into the other computers on the network. After I got the wires all run and I ran the Networking Wizard for the new configuration, everything worked just fine.

So, I did a little happy dance, (which Dotti missed because she was on the phone) and then we set out to get the cable routing into a more permanent form. (I had the coaxial cable strung out across the living room floor just for testing it all out at first. It would never do to leave it there. :) ) Then I dragged the printer out of my study where we had been using it, and hooked it back up in its original position on the main computer. We had moved it before because the main computer was not visible on the network to either of the other computers, while the computer in my study at least could be seen from Dotti’s laptop, although the printer operation was very intermittent there.

Anyway, the network is finally back up and running 100%, and we have finally recovered from Dotti’s laptop having Windows XP on it, which originally blew our network out of the water. We have XP installed on two computers, and the computer in my study has ME with some XP drivers that originally came with it. Also, I ran the XP Networking Wizard on it, from a floppy I had created from Dotti’s XP laptop computer. That takes a nagging problem from off of my to-do list, and should make things run smoother for our future computer tasks.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.) and Standard Lunch (7.0 pt.). For Dinner I had 3 fried egg sandwiches (3.0 pt.), and some instant potatoes (3 pt.), giving me 6.0 points for dinner, and 18.0 points total for meals. For snacks, I had 7 cough drops (2.0 pt.), a WW Just 2 Points bars (2.0 pt.), 3 Dum Dum suckers (1.0 pt.) and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt). That came to 10.0 snack points and brought my total points for the day to 28.0.

For water yesterday I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces.

Well, I am off to face Thursday, which is sure a lot better than being off to face Monday.

187 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 5:40 AM and he said, “191.5 pounds.”

I had another quiet day at work yesterday, followed by a drive home that was not too bad. The roads were wet, and there was a light rain coming down most of the trip home, but traffic moved along pretty well in spite of that.

When I got home Dotti and I had nice evening together, and just before heading off to bed for the night I noticed that my points were only at 22.0, and so I grabbed a WW Just 2 Points bar.

I drank 6 cups of herbal tea and water during the day which helped with getting my water in for the day. In the evening I only had to drink one 24 ounce glass, and since I was busy and not hungry at all, I didn’t need any additional water.

Today is Friday, and tonight our vacation time starts. I am looking forward to that! Dotti and I always look forward to our trip to Spokane at Thanksgiving very much. We always have a lot of fun with Jim and Tammy when we go up there.

It appears that I am going to slowly crawl down to my personal goal range. For two weeks, ever since the second of November, my weight has been bouncing around between 192.0 and 190.0 pounds. The dental problems I had, set my body into confusion, and I still am getting things settled down, so that the real weight trend can be seen. This morning I weighed a half pound more than my weigh-in last Saturday, which gives me hope that I will either stay the same or maybe lose a little for tomorrow’s weigh-in. Looking at my maintenance graph, if I weigh the same tomorrow as I did last Saturday, I will have lost 4.5 pounds in the four weeks since October 20. That is a little better than a pound a week over about a month. That is just great. The only reason things are appearing up and down is because that dental infection drove my weight down unnaturally fast, and then things had to stabilize. They appear to have been doing that for the last two weeks. With any luck at all, from here on in things will move along normally, and I will slide my weight down 3 or 4 more pounds and I will be right where I want to stay. If not by Thanksgiving, hopefully I will be celebrating Christmas in the 180s.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.) and Standard Lunch (7.0 pt.). For Dinner I had 1.5 cups of Life cereal (4.0 pt.), and 2 cups of skim milk (4.0 pt.) which added up to 8.0 points. That brought my total for meals to 20.0 points. For snacks, I had 7 cough drops (2.0 pt.), and a WW Just 2 Points bars (2.0 pt.), for a total of 4.0 snack points. My total points for the day was 24.0.

For water yesterday I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces.

Friday’s here, and I am off to get it out of the way so my vacation can start!

188 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-26/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

*** Weigh-in for WEEK 27 ***

Week Completed:	___27___
Weigh-In Weight:	191.0
Body Mass Index:	23.9
Aerobic Points for week:	9.0
Week’s Average Points/Day:	27.1
Pounds +/- for this week:	0.0
Pounds lost total:	48.5
Pounds to go to 10%:	0.0*
Pounds to go to goal:	0.0**
Pounds to go to 20%:	0.0***
Made LIFETIME: 11/3/2001
* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01 ** Made Goal at 200.0 pounds on 9/22/01 *** Made 20% at 191.5 pounds on 11/3/01

___________________________

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 7:53 AM and he said, “191.0 pounds.”

I was hoping for a loss this week, but it just was not to be. All week long my weight kept hanging around between 191.5 and 192.0. Since my weigh-in was 191.0 last week, I found myself today fighting just to stay put. However, I am not going to complain too loudly at this point. I am sitting in the very low 190s, nearly 50 pounds down from where I started, I think that is pretty cool. I was looking at my pajamas in the mirror this morning and they are like a clown’s outfit, they are so baggy. When I was putting them on last night, I accidentally stepped both feet into one leg because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Suddenly I was reminded of Flo’s picture of putting both legs into a single leg of her “before” pants, and so I went ahead and pulled them up. At first I tried it, just to see if both of my legs would actually fit into a single pajama bottoms’ leg, all the way up. When I saw that they did, I just had to show off a bit, so I showed Dot. (It was a bit tricky walking that way, but I managed it, and I held the empty leg off to the side so she could see it. It’s a whole new world.

Yesterday, I was hoping for a nice quiet, uneventful day at work, so I could just ease myself into my vacation. I usually go to lunch at about 11:30 AM, but I was caught up with something on my computer and it was 11:45 when I was about ready to head out. Just about then my customer came by and said there was a machine problem. So, I gave up the going to lunch plans and went into the clean room to see what was going on. As it turned out, the problem appeared to be cleared up and I made it out to lunch about 1:00 PM. In the afternoon I did some follow up on the problem and the machine went back into production. So, I at least ended the day on an upbeat, and headed home while there was still some light in the sky.

When I got home from work yesterday I was "starving." I had eaten some romaine lettuce, and some celery on the trip home, and a few cough drops. But I was ready for something to eat. I normally go for something very light on Friday nights, and I keep my points on the low end of my range as well. But I ran my points right to the limit of 29 points, and was drinking water like crazy to keep myself filled up. I don’t know what the deal was, but some days you do have to work at hanging onto the reins, lest the horse run away with you. I was able to pull back and stay OP, but I did have to think about what I was doing.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.) and Standard Lunch (7.0 pt.). For Dinner I had 3/4 cup of Life cereal (2.0 pt.), and 1 cups of skim milk (2.0 pt.), and some instant potatoes (3.0 pt.), which added up to 7.0 points. That brought my total for meals to 19.0 points. For snacks, I had 13 cough drops (4.0 pt.), 10 Body Smart Chews (2.0 pt.), a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), and a Mr. Cookie Face (3.0 pt.), for a total of 10.0 snack points. My total points for the day was 29.0.

For water yesterday I drank 18 cups, or 144 ounces.

189 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph