Week 345 Update

It was 5:38 this morning when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "196.0 pounds!" All things considered, I was quite happy with that.

This week was a busy one for us and there were a couple of challenges along the way. The one that got me was Sunday when Dotti had her two brothers over for a Christmas Season visit. Bob, her older brother, brought his wife and daughter along, to make it a nice family get together. Her younger brother Rip is always fun to have around and Mom was there too.

Of course that was the good side. The bad side was that there were far too many high calorie things to eat, and, well…I ate them. I had crackers and cheese, cookies, and moreo crackers, and more cookies, and then I topped all that off with pie and ice cream. No, not low calorie pie and ice cream either. It turned out to be an 84 point day.

I was down to 196.0 on the scale on Sunday, which was the lowest I had weighed since August 13th, and that is partly why I didn't worry about it too much at the time. The only upside of this was that it happened on Sunday, and by the end of the week, I was able to pull my average points per day back down to nearly the same as last week.

On Wednesday, we went to Sweet Tomatoes for lunch, and I had 19.0 points for lunch. Fortunately, I did reasonably well the rest of the day and came away with a total of 46 points.

My final total average points-per-day was 44.86, and that was less than one-half point over my average last week. I consider that a moral victory after Sunday's excursion out of bounds.

In addition to having the family over for a visit on Sunday, we went up to visit Dotti's mother's grave that day beforehand. Rip met Dotti, Mom and I at the gravesite, and he and Dotti shared some private time at the grave, while Mom and I waited in the car. They were together with their mother when she passed away, and that put a special bond between them.

On Wednesday, Dotti and I took Mom to see the David Cole Queen Anne Victorian Mansion. Dotti and I usually call it the "House of Lights" but that is a hold over from our Massachusetts days when we went to a home locally called "The House of Lights" that was decorated to the hilt with lights and figurines beyond anything we have ever seen since at a private residence. The David Cole mansion has over 2.5 million lights lit up all over the grounds, and we had a lot of fun touring them as well as the mansion itself. It is one of our favorite places to visit every Christmas season, and we wanted to share it with Mom.

On Thursday we stopped by to visit Carole (Screen Name: Oregoncard, which comes from her truly wonderful photographic cards: see http://www.oregoncard.ms11.net/) as she is working on trying to recover from a medical event that occurred before Halloween. She is keeping her spirits up, and hopes to be up on her feet again before too much longer. It is so sad that such a wonderful lady has to go through so much pain and inconvenience. She deserves better.

Since our visit was to the south of Portland, and in the late afternoon, we were looking for something to do afterwards that would be fun and that would push our return home out after the evening Portland rush hour. I had found a place called "Fantasy Trail" that sounded interesting.

When we got there, after a few miles of back woods driving, it turned out to be better than we had hoped! It was dark out, and the temperature was around freezing. As soon as we got out of the car and walked towards the entrance, there was an open campfire blazing that felt mighty warm and inviting. We stood by that for a bit before heading over to the booth to buy our tickets. We then headed over to the start of the trail. Before we got there, we saw bubbles floating around in the air, from a bubble machine, and all at once a snow machine kicked in and we had "snow" falling down on us.

The day had been a wet one, so we were happy to see the moon shining clear when we started our walk. The trail was lined with colorful lights on either side along the ground. There were many little buildings that we came to where figures of people and animals, and toy soldiers, etc. were on display with beautiful traditional Christmas music was playing. So many places that we have visited over the Christmas Holiday Season, have played music that has no feel of Christmas at all. The words might have Christmas themes, but the music definitely does not. But here, all the music sounded very much like Christmas and made my heart glow with Christmas cheer.

At one point we came to a maze, formed from wooden panels, and Dotti got through it first. She had a bit of a head start, because I had stopped to take some pictures, but she didn't waste any time getting through. On the exit side there was a rope supported bridge and the walking surface was very slick. It felt as if ice had formed on certain areas of it. (Later in the evening, when we got home and I brought our trash can in from its trash day emptying, there were bits of ice on it. So, there may have indeed been some ice on this bridge.)

One woman slipped and fell coming out of one of the displays farther along. I had my back turned to the event when it happened, taking a picture, and my heart went right into my throat until I realized it wasn't Mom or Dotti who had fallen. (There were a few people surrounding her when I turned around, and so at first I couldn't tell who it was that had fallen.) Fortunately, the lady, who appeared to be in her 60s, was just fine. She continued walking on and I saw her later enjoying herself. That made me feel much better. But we were all very careful to make sure we had good footing the rest of the way. It was only the entrances to some of the buildings, where they were wet from the earlier rain, that provided any danger at all. Fortunately, we didn't actually have any close calls ourselves.

Dotti and I are planning to make it back to Fantasy Trail next October when they have the trail opened up again. The admission is reasonable and it seems that it could only barely cover the cost of the lights. They also have a castle that they decorate on the inside for you to look at. It wasn't as cool as the colorfully lit forest trail was, but it was fun too. I think it is really nice when people go to this much effort to provide a super Christmas celebration at this most wonderful time of the year!

6 years, 225 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/196.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:24.50/WK- 345

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