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WEEK 314
Week Ending May 19, 2007

*** Weigh-in for WEEK 314 ***
05/19/2007
Week Completed:___314___
Weigh-In Weight:201.5
Body Mass Index:25.19
Average Weight for week:203.00
Miles Walked for week: 5.64
Miles Walked in 2007:75.99
Aerobic Points for week:0
Week’s Average Points/Day: 38.07
Pounds +/- for this week:-2.0
Pounds lost total: 38
Made GOAL: 9/22/2001

* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01
Goal is 200 pounds.



Week’s Data
Day
Date
Weight
Points
Water
Miles
Walked
Saturday
05/12/2007
203.5
24.5
6 cups (48 oz)
0.00
Sunday
05/13/2007
203.0
42.0
6 cups (48 oz)
0.00
Monday
05/14/2007
205.0
41.0
6 cups (48 oz)
3.54
Tuesday
05/15/2007
203.5
42.5
6 cups (48 oz)
0.00
Wednesday
05/16/2007
203.0
41.0
6 cups (48 oz)
0.00
Thursday
05/17/2007
202.5
31.5
6 cups (48 oz)
2.10
Friday
05/18/2007
202.5
44.0
6 cups (48 oz)
0.00




Week 314 Update

It is May 19, 2007, the two thousand one hundred ninety-ninth day of my journey. I stepped up on Mr. Scale for at least the same numbered time, and he said, "201.5 pounds!"

This week began with the 6th anniversary of the start of my journey on May 12, 2001, shortly after the first DWLZ Conference. I started this anniversary week with my Mom, visiting with her for the Mother's Day weekend. I ended this week saying goodbye to Tammy's Mom. Because of two very special ladies—three actually, because Tammy certainly counts in our motivations as well—Dotti and I have driven over 2000 miles the past month.

This month marks my 9th year since I last had a cigarette. Nine years of nonsmoking, six years of being on my weight control journey, and it all seems so insignificant in the face of events.

This weekend was to have been the DWLZ conference, and we are so thankful that was canceled beforehand. We had some visitors who were scheduled to arrive for this weekend as well, but they also had to change their plans because Dotti had fallen and broken her wrist. This weekend was freed from outside obligations, almost as if the Moirai cleared the path for us to be here this moment. Of course, we would have been here this moment even if we had to have find a way to clear the path ourselves, because this is something that we would never have willingly missed, although we would have very much loved it if the need had never arisen.

How do I begin? According to Lewis Carroll, the King gave some very good advice in such matters to the White Rabbit, "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

Saturday, Dotti and I drove to Mom's house, a drive that takes us down I-5 for a couple of hundred miles and then off the main road for a few more miles. Along the way, we stopped at Subway for lunch and I had a very light dinner, eating only 24.5 points: for me, an exceptional count for a day on the road.

Best of all, Mom was waiting on the other end of the trip to great us with her customary enthusiasm. As always her little arms around me and her little white covered head buried in my chest produced a wonderful feeling of love and joy in my heart. The Al Jolson lyric, "I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles…" seems so true at moments like that.

We had gotten an early start, and so had a few hours of visiting to do before we had an appointment to keep at my old high school. Mom was performing with a group of ladies, all of whom would be called together "A Bunch of Old Ladies" as they performed a geriatric version of "My Favorite Things." The paper that Mom was singing from had a note at the bottom saying that Julie Andrews had sung the parody song on her 69th birthday. (Sadly, as you will see if you follow the link, that part was not true, because Julie lost her ability to sing before that time, due to a surgical procedure that went badly.)

The song went well and a good time was had by all. Mom looked so cute in her outfit and there were some very enthusiastic ladies in the front who really belted out the song.

It was late by the time we got back to Mom's house, and I was definitely ready for bed, because it had been a very long day for me.

Another issue that I was dealing with was the fact that the server for DWLZ was not acting right. It began before we even left home. I did my write up for last week, before we left home. I tried to upload it but the server wouldn't let me in. So, I contacted the host, and asked them to look into it before we started the drive.

When I got to Mom's I found that I still couldn't upload the write up.

Sunday morning, I found that not only couldn't I upload to the site, the site was completely down! I was emailing with the host back and forth and found that the server had just up and died on us, and it had to be replaced. So, the site was down all day Sunday until early Monday morning.

I am frankly surprised that we don't see more of that; it is a testimony to the high quality of the computers that are used that they survive as long as they do. Dotti has created a page that draws in 10's of thousands of people every day. That poor little hard drive on the server must be chattering away all day long.

On average, for the entire 24 hours of every day of the year, a new visitor hits the page every 3.9 seconds. And of course the ones already there don't just leave because the new one arrives. Of course, during the daylight hours they come in much faster than that, and in the wee hours it slows down, but there is no time of the day when it actually is at rest.

When a visitor comes, he usually moves to the Restaurant pages, or goes looking for other content that Dotti has placed there (and sometimes even the items like this that I have created ), and the hard drive retrieves whatever his browser requests to look at as he hits the offered links. A happy visitor will hopefully visit many of the different items at DWLZ and that keeps the hard drive chattering away. Of course the CPU, power supplies, fans, and motherboard, and everything else in the computer is getting a good workout as well. (And I believe that in this case, it was one of these other items that took us down, because they were able to retrieve all of the data off the hard drive when they put up the new server computer for us.)

I honestly do not know how many computers Dotti's Weight Loss Zone has worn out over the years on the server side (I know it has gone through a number on our end as well ) but it has been several over the years, with the over 50 million visitors coming to look at the page. To put that number in perspective, when I was born that would have been 1/3 of the entire population of the United States. Today California has 36 million residents, and Canada has nearly 33 million. Even with the fact that we get a lot of repeat visitors, 50 million is a huge number.

So, it's not surprising that our servers get beat up and have to be replaced from time to time, but that they last as long as they do!

I was happy that at least this outage happened on a weekend, when there are usually significantly fewer visitors affected by the down time than there would have been in the middle of the week.

Sunday we took Mom to Medford, Oregon to do some shopping. On the way into to town Mount McLoughlin was visible and all covered with snow. Since it was Mother's Day, while we were in town we wanted to take Mom to eat at a place that she would feel comfortable. (I promised Dotti that I would take her to her Mother's Day dinner when we got back home, which I did on Thursday). It turned out to be Taco Bell (I can picture Sylvester Stallone's face in the movie Demolition Man, when he was told the name of the fancy restaurant that he was being taken to, and he replied in disbelief, "Taco Bell?!")

Taco Bell is one place where Mom, who is vegetarian, could get a meal that she would enjoy that had no meat and no dairy. (Mom is 100% focused on eating what is healthy, and has very little interest in eating expensive or fancy. Sometimes that means eating at Taco Bell rather than more traditional "special meal" locations. It was Mother's Day, and she got to choose.) We all like the menu there, so it was good for all of us, and since it was late in the afternoon, I was able to push lunch and dinner together into the one meal, and that meant the 17.0 points I ate were able to fit into my program for that eating day. (I finished the day with 42.0 points.)

On Monday, Mom and I took a nice walk in the afternoon. During a previous visit, I had brought my GPS along, and during a long walk, we had noted the distances to several landmarks along one of her normal walking routes. She wrote the numbers down in her diary, so now she has them available.

We started walking, with no set destination in mind, and before long we were up to the 1.77 mile landmark. It was climbing into the 80s, and feeling pretty warm, and we both felt like it was a good place to turn around. It was a fun walk, and at the end we had gone 3.54 miles. Along with getting in some good exercise, we got to do a lot of enjoyable visiting as well. Three years ago Mom had just had triple bypass heart surgery, and today she is walking 3.54 miles without even thinking about it. She is doing very well!

Tuesday Dotti and I said goodbye to Mom and headed home. We had to get things done that had been put on hold for our trip, and to catch up after the server crash with a few items that we couldn't take care of at Mom's. (She has dial up access that is never faster than 24.6 kbs, and it takes a very long time to get anything done on the Internet. I just shut off the automatic loading of images and pictures in my browser and that helps, but not enough.)

We got home before noon and that left us some time in the day.

I ate 42.5 points on Tuesday, and with the road trip included, I am always happy when I don't go over on my points. It is far too easy to do just that if I am not careful. When we stop for gas, the food mart has all sorts of little program-busting temptations that you have to walk past if you use the restroom, or if you buy something that you need. We had Subway for lunch and did pretty well overall.

Wednesday morning about 4 a.m. I woke up with some serious neck pain, leading to a splitting headache and a general feeing completely unrelated to well-being. I don't know if I over did it on Tuesday moving the suitcases and other stuff to and from the car, or if I just slept wrong on it. In any case, it made for a few painful hours before it finally backed off.

I ate 41.0 points on Wednesday.

Thursday I woke up at 3:45 a.m., not feeling very well, and I read for a couple of hours before going back to bed without having even turned on my computer. I woke up again just after 8:00 a.m. and felt a little better.

I was afraid that I might have been coming down with something, because our visit to my old high school over the weekend had put me in contact with a lot of students, faculty, and parents. In our day to day existance we don't see that many people very often. So, it wouldn't have been too surprising if we had come in contact with a bug or two in that crowd. Dotti and I were feeling very tired after getting back and I was concerned a little. As it turned out, I think we were just tired from having life pull us around too quickly for our equilibrium to handle. (And things have not slowed down any since then either.)

When I finally made it up for good on Thursday, I weighed 202.5 pounds, which was a nice move in the right direction. Finally we had a road trip that did not send me off track. (There is something about being in the car. I used to smoke a great deal while driving and it is still one of the hardest times for me to hold the line on my eating.)

When I turned on my computer to pick up my mail Thursday morning, I got a computer reminder: Early Arrival Dinner for DWLZ Conference #6. Wow!

If we had of had the conference this year, Dotti would have been doing it in a bright yellow cast.

But that is a small thing in comparison with what else we are facing. This is the second time the Conference date has coincided with a family tragedy. Unlike what happened with the Fourth DWLZ Conference, this time we will not have to "miss the conference," since there isn't going to be one. However, the timing of the shadow of the conference is falling once again across our lives at an unhappy time.

Thursday would have been the day that friends from around the country would have begun to land in PDX, meet at the Heathman Hotel, and to have their first dinner together. I was struck with the thought that I would miss the hugs, laughs, and smiles, and yes the happy little squeals of joy as Internet friends meet in the flesh.

There will be another conference I am sure one day. It may be in a year or two, but I think when Dotti hits goal again (this time as a nonsmoker!); a celebration will be forthcoming—if I know the Zonies. It was Zonies who created the momentum for having the first conference, and it may well happen all over again. This year the momentum did not materialize, but "absence makes the heart grow fonder" it is said, and in time, who knows?

It had begun already, the emotional roller coaster had once again lifted us to the top of a very steep drop, and we were on our way down into the world of tangled emotions, with trepidation for our loved ones, sadness, and nostalgia for the friends we will not be seeing, while trying to stay on top of our work-related obligations. (E.g. Sunday is the day that the next Newsletter is scheduled to go out.)

Thursday was the day that we were going to do Dotti's Mother's Day dinner that she had missed on the actual day. She could choose any restaurant in town (or Portland if she chose) but she picked Red Robin. So, in the evening, we were getting ready to walk there, when we got a phone call from Tammy. She said her Mom had taken a major turn for the worse and the end would not be too far away. It was too late to leave and make it up before midnight, and so we decided to leave early in the morning, after getting all packed up that night.

We went ahead and did our walk. (It was 1.1 miles going there, and because we took a slightly shorter route back, it was only 1.0 mile on the return.) I got away easy from Red Robin on points, by having a salad and small bowl of chili, which filled me up very well. I even helped save Dotti 2.0 points by taking the whipped cream off the top of her smoothie. At the end of the day, I had eaten 31.5 points.

When we got back home we went into packing mode once more. We pulled all the stuff together that we might need, for a trip of unknown length, and I went to bed a bit before midnight. Dotti stayed up to finish packing, because she could sleep in the car on the ride up.

Friday morning I was up before 4 a.m. The scale said 202.5 pounds at that early hour. I brewed a pot of coffee to fill my thermos, and we did a few other things to get ready and we were on the road before 5 a.m. Since we would be cutting through the east side of Portland, leaving that early would also help miss the rush hour mess.

Sadly, we didn't make it in time; after driving for 5 hours, we got the phone call telling us that Tammy's Mom had passed away while we were still an hour away.

We got to Spokane a bit before 11 a.m. We did get to see Tammy's Mom, and she looked peaceful lying there in her bed at home. She will be missed!

There were a lot of family members dropping in to pay their respects, and I think the people who share in your passing, and who remember you with fondness are the best testimony of how you lived your life. Tammy's Mom has a lot of that on Friday, to mark a life that touched so many!

During the drive I was reminded of the time when I was scrambling to reach my father's side before he died. That time the trip was 800 miles and I was a few hours too late. I can still remember my Dad's sister breaking the news to us at the airport as we got off the plane, still an hour from where Dad had been struggling for his life.

It was only a month ago when I last held Tammy's Mom's hand and wished her well, and I had hopes at that time that she was getting better. We had no idea that hope was only a mirage, because her condition, though undiagnosed, was terminal right then. She smiled at me, and wished me well too. I will carry that memory with me, and take comfort in knowing that the great suffering that she has faced over the years is now over, and she is at peace. I don't know if I will ever be able to touch a guitar without thinking of her, because of the memories I have of her asking me so many times to play and sing her special song, "Amazing Grace." I know that song will be forever bound in my mind to her, and to Denise, Tammy's late sister, who was the reason for the requests. "The Wedding Song," and "Time in a Bottle," the songs I sang at Denise's wedding, have long been tied to her memory for me, and now that the two of them, mother and daughter, are joined, the music will always form a bridge to two people that are very much missed.

It seems almost frivolous to mention it, with the loss of Tammy's Mom, but this is a weight control journal and so I will, for completeness sake: I stayed several points below my limit all week this week. I feel that I am back on track and doing well on my journey once more. The scale has been slowly moving down, and I feel that I am doing the right things to continue in that direction. 6 years, 8 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/201.5/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.19/WK- 314


Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs




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