Week 351 Update "

It was 7:00 a.m. when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "199.0 pounds!" After what I wouldn't call a stellar week, I feel very happy to come away with a one pound loss.



It does make me feel better looking at the Weight Commander graph for this week. The hollow squares are all looking pretty good and the solid squares are trending downward, which is always a good thing. Most of the activity for the week for both types of squares has happened below 200 pounds, and that is great!

The future graph looks even better! It shows me falling steadily all the way to May, where I will be down around 194 or 195. But I am still not really happy with this week.

First off, I haven't been doing any walking at all. I wanted to make 2008 a good walking year, and so far it has been worse than last year was. Dotti have made some plans for the upcoming week and I hope that we follow through on them. But only time will tell—making plans is easy, carrying them out is not always as easy.

Secondly, I had a couple of days where I went over my upper limit of 46 points. It wasn't as bad as two weeks ago, where I zoomed up to 81 points, or even as bad as last week, where I hit 63.0 points one day, but it was 61.0 points, and that is too high. Fortunately, my other two excursions high this week remained in the 40s, and I was able to have some lower point days to make up for it. My average points-per-day was 45.57, just under my maintenance limit.

This has been a busy week, with Dotti cutting through our house like a Tasmanian devil in reverse; bringing order out of chaos, rather than the reverse. Both of our offices have been reorganized, as well as our living room. Since we were already in the moving mode, it was easier to just tear into things and get them set up in a way that would be more efficient. While it was easier to tackle the project, it wasn't easy. Dotti has lost sleep, while collecting bruises from head to toe and scratches on hands and arms. She is an incredible dynamo when she sets her mind on a project.

I had a second Vista computer fail on me, just yesterday. With the new office set up I finally fired up a computer for the first time, that we had purchased a month ago, to replace the last disaster. This one crashed in one day. (At least I didn't have time to get too settled into it this time, and moving back to my XP computer was fairly painless.) I have had nothing but trouble with Vista, while Dotti is doing fine with it.

My XP computer is getting on in years, and it is just a matter of time before it dies on me. So, I would like to get up and running on a new one that will last at least a couple of years.

I hate changing computers! In my earlier days of computing it was a great adventure to get a new model. I loved all the new features etc. Not any more. I only change because I have to, never because I want to. Software gets more demanding of computer resources and any peripherals you buy demands the latest upgrades in both software and hardware. Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away. It is an endless spiral. But my needs are not great from a computer, and I don't need to be running along on the cutting edge. I mainly want dependability, and so far the Vista computers I have tried have been just the opposite from that.

And it is a serious pain to move over to a new computer. Moving the data is one thing but you have these terrified software companies like Microsoft who think that they might lose a bit of profit from their billions of dollars flowing in like the Mississippi River, and they won't let you simply install their products (e.g. Microsoft Office) that you purchased at an outrageously high price, on a new computer without calling their (push 1 for English maybe) help desk to get authorization, like some beggar or thief. If I ever find a way to be Microsoft free while still being able to do what I need to do with my computer, I am sure I will jump at the chance.

After writing the words above, I decided that the chance is here right now and so I did jump. I began typing this on my Gateway XP and I am continuing it on my new Apple Macintosh iMac. Enough is enough. I keep hearing Mac owners singing the praises of their computers, and so I am going to see what all the shouting is about.

While watching the dust settle from the changes in our house, and feeling the pressure begin to mount for the approaching Dotti's Newsletter deadline, the busiest month of the year for DWLZ.com came to a close. We had nearly 1.1 million people pass through Dotti's Weight Loss Zone in the month of January. During this past busy month, our newsletter subscriber base grew 55,221 to now over 60,000, and 8,500 people stopped by Al's Essays. Our email mailboxes never get much of a rest and there are always 5 or 10 things that need to be done, but it keeps life interesting.

February is usually a pretty busy month too, but it is slower than January, as many of the eager New Year's resolutions sadly start to dwindle into, "I'll wait 'til next year."

Eating this week found me walking on the outskirts of OP land. I averaged 45.57 points per day, and that is right at the top. In addition to having a Very Berry Sundae at Costco and a two-scoop waffle cone at Baskin & Robins (Peanut Butter Chocolate and Cherry Cheesecake—a real case of needing to hang my head in shame as I wipe the grin from my face because it was so terribly good), I ate at Red Robin once, Taco Bell twice (including Friday night before my weigh-in) and once at Cisco's, a Mexican food restaurant.

Cisco's is the first local restaurant that we remember eating at in Vancouver. In 1995 we flew out on a 4-day company-paid "house-hunting" trip. After renting a car we drove around looking the place over. (We first looked north of the Columbia River because it is the city where we were married in 1976, and we hoped the prices would be more reasonable, but we stayed here because we love it.) We were getting mighty hungry as we were driving, and so when we spied this nice looking Mexican Restaurant we had to stop. We had been regular patrons of Chi Chi's back in Peabody, Massachusetts before they closed it down and remodeled it into a Hometown Buffet. We had to stop.

We enjoyed the meal and then pulled away, in search of houses. A few months later we arrived with all our worldly goods to set up housekeeping in our new home. One day, after settling in, we decided to see if we could locate Cisco's for another meal. Today, we would have the address and a Google Map printed up in two minutes showing us how to get there. But, since we were still living in the pre-internet "Dark Ages" then, we had to rely on our memories. We drove around the area where we thought it was, but we couldn't' find it. We had to settle for another restaurant that we didn't like as well. Weeks went by, and we always had our eye out for that restaurant. Where did it go? Where had we seen it?

Then one day Dotti spotted it on a back road not too far from the Vancouver Mall. We had forgotten that it is tucked away off of the beaten path just a bit. So, we went to eat there a few times, but each time the food began to disagree with Dotti and we finally had to give it up.

We had not been back since before Dotti lost her weight in 1998, but on Wednesday, we took another shot at it. And we were sadly disappointed. The food was greasy and not up to the standards of our regular Mexican food place near our house. It is amazing how much our tastes have changed over the past 10 years, and no real surprise that Dotti's stomach had rebelled against what we were eating back then.

Hopefully, I will be able to do a little better next week. I was technically just under the wire on my points, but I would like to be down a bit from that. Also, I need to exercise more.

6 years, 267 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/199.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:24.87/WK- 351

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