Week 390 Update

It was 3:07 AM when I stepped up on Mr. scale. He promptly said "What on earth are you doing bothering me at this unearthly hour? Okay, okay: 198.0 pounds! Now let me get back to sleep."

I don't what it was, but I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. It might have something to do with all the stuff going on in our lives. What do you think?

The Weight Commander Control Panel graph makes this week look like a carbon copy of last week for the solid squares. This level run seems to be a solid trend these days. The only difference this time around is the fact that the hollow squares didn't shoot up to 200 pounds twice this week. My highest weight for any day this week was 198.5 pounds. My eating was completely off this week, as we were down at Mom's for four days, and on the go nearly every day.

Things look like I am simply trying to maintain my weight. I didn't eat 3 meals a day while at Mom's. I only had a couple of meals, and they were not good meals usually. I just grabbed what I could, when I could. It was only the fact that I was going up and down stairs and getting exercise that kept me from doing worse on the scale than I did.

The Weight Commander doesn't let you live in denial though. The numbers on the left show that for the past 4 weeks I have had gains that add up to 3.5 pounds, while I have only had one loss of 2.5 pounds. In other words I have gained one pound over the past 4 weeks. That is not good. I could have been worse of course, but I am not running my journey on that basis. I want good results, not simply results that aren't as bad as they could have been.

The numbers on the right of the graph show that today I weigh 2 pounds less than I did 1 year ago. I weigh 8.5 pounds less than I did 90 days ago! My Future Graph from about 90 days ago predicted that I would be weighing 204 pounds around this time. My Weight Commander Control Panel Graph from then shows that the number you see here (206.5) for 90 days ago was a low reading, well below my average weight for that time. So, I am significantly lower on the scale today than I was 90 days back, both for today's single reading, and for my average weight for a couple of weeks. I am not where I want to be, but I am at least within hailing distance of it.

Sixty days ago I weighed 7.5 pounds more than today. However, then the joy is used up when we come to 30 days ago, and see that I weigh a bit more than I did a month ago. This past month has left me pretty much where I was before October began. Of course that is exactly what the solid squares on the graph are yelling out at the top of their little box voices.

Better than last week, this week's Weight Commander Future Graph shows that I will be losing weight over the next 90 days. Of course at the rate of 1.5 pounds every 90 days, I won't move very far in a hurry, but at least I am heading in the right direction.



The 60-day Weight Commander graph looks like the Rocky Mountains coming down to meet Denver and Great Plains. The sharp drop ends and flattens out into ripples of maintenance. At least I didn't bounce and start heading right back up again. That is my old way of doing things, and I would hate to do that again.



The 90-day Weight Commander graph still is just holding on to the final stages of the upwards climb I went through leading into early August. After that the mountain slope leads down into the valley just like the 60-day graph showed.

The 1 year Weight Commander graph looks like a satellite view of a major river meandering this way and that. It does sort of camoflauge the maintenance I have been producing the past two weeks, with that huge drop after August. All the time from last November right up into August shows a fairly consistent increase. It is clear that 2008 was not a stellar year for my journey. It's most redeeming quality was that I was able to undo what I did for the first 7 months of the year.

Pushing all the way back to 408 days ago, the Weight Commander graph shows how, even before the drop around Halloween last year things were leading into trouble. It wasn't until August of this year that I showed any consistent loss. Once things got emotionally tricky after Dotti's car accident and then Mom's situation came to light, I found that I was having trouble with continuing to lose.

In spite of the stress load I have been carrying, I have not given up, and the scale has not taken off on me, at least not yet. I am determined to make sure that it doesn't.

On Saturday, Dotti and I went to an antique collectible show at "The Expo" in Portland. We always enjoy walking around and looking at the old items that were part of our childhood. I love that feeling I get when I see something that I haven't seen for 30 or 40 years and a flood of emotions come across as memories return in a rush. With all that is going on, we didn't buy too much, but we did have fun.

On Sunday, I took this photo of my lovely Dotti before we set out on our walk. I got in a 6-mile walk, while Dotti walked 2.5 miles of it with me, and then she went into Wal-Mart to shop while I finished the rest of my walk. That brought me back home, where I could pick up the car. I then drove to Wal-Mart where I picked up Dotti with the items she had purchased.

I took a picture of Dotti once more by the statue of the girl running along in a spring dress at the Bridgeport Village Mall in Portland, on Monday. I think I take another one of that statue, usually with Dotti in front of it, ever time we go there. You'd think I like the statue.

This time we went to the mall because that is where the MAC store is located. Dotti's MAC laptop's battery suddenly developed a large bulge and the computer failed to boot up. Fortunately, after the battery was replaced, and the operating system reinstalled, the computer was as good as new. We were in a bit of a hurry to get it fixed, because we had to head down to Mom's the next day, so we were happy it all worked out okay.



I took a picture of Dotti, while she was standing just inside the door of my study on Tuesday, when we were packing for our drive down to Mom's just after that, to get things going for our move.

Behind Dotti you can see a bigger than life-size picture I printed up and put on the inside of my door, and just to the right of her there is another picture of my lovely wife on the end of my desk. One visitor to my study, who saw the many pictures I have of Dotti around the room, joked that if I weren't married to Dotti, someone would think I was her stalker. Well, I just like to have lots of pictures of my girl. And when she is smiling like she is in this picture, all is right with the world!

After we arrived at Mom's we took a walk down to the South Umpqua River, and I caught Dotti was clowning around in this photo, when we got close to the river. She is pointing towards the little creek that pours into the South Umpqua at this point.

That same evening I took a picture of Mom outside as well. She looked like she was happy to see us.



On Wednesday, Dotti and I took Mom into Medford for some shopping. We bought a few things that we needed for the house, as well as some of the thing Mom needed to store up for the winter. (Mom doesn't like to drive up over the pass once the snow sets in, and so Medford is out of reach for her normally during the winter months.) While we were in town, we stopped at Red Robin for dinner. Mom was just getting ready to smile when I took this picture.

The house is just too small for all our stuff and Mom's stuff and our working offices. So, we are building a small structure on the property where I can have an office and we can have some storage room. The ground leveling was begun on Tuesday, but progress will be slow until we get our permits. It would be foolish to start building and then find that the whole thing has to be moved over 6" to meet the code.

Thursday, our contractor stopped in to tell us that he needed to procure some materials for our building project. So, to avoid having things held up, Dotti, we drove right away to Roseburg, to make arrangements for him to proceed. At the building supply store, they had a Christmas tree display out, and naturally, I had to take a picture of Dotti in front of the trees. It is already starting to feel like the Christmas Holiday Season is underway! When I was growing up, it was common to hear everyone smiling and saying, "Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!"

One of the things that Dotti most loves about our new location is the deer. In this one picture I took from our bedroom window, I captured 4 of the four-legged critters in and around our yard. (One of them is just on the other side of the fence.) Hardly a day goes by without our seeing at least one, and usually more deer walking across our lawn. I think I enjoy seeing Dotti's reaction to the deer even more than seeing the deer themselves.

The place where new little building is going to go is out on the cleared area beyond the fence. You can tell that the leveling has begun already, but not much else yet.

Friday our phone lines were installed. It was a bit of a circus getting the phones going, but in the end, all was working, and that is what really matters. At first one guy showed up, but he couldn't run the cable he needed to run without help of a "cherry-picker truck." Fortunately, the second truck came because he found a faulty connection that hanging up one of the lines. The other guy was going to make us wait for a "troubleshooter" to fix the problem next week. It wasn't terribly pretty, but it did all get done in the end.

I found the stuff on their trucks to be irritating a bit, because they don't offer DSL out as far as we live, and here were a couple of trucks covered with art and text asking, "Got DSL?" All the people around where we live would love to get DSL, rather than the 24-kbps dial-up that they have now. We had to get satellite internet or we couldn't have done this move. Fortunately, even though we are in a valley with some sharply steep mountains around us, we have a clear line on the satellite we need.

Once the phones were ready, we were back on the road to Vancouver. We still have a bunch of packing and dental issues to take care of before we can complete this move. Things are starting to shape up, but there is a lot left to do.

In the meantime, we worry about Mom driving, and even being left alone for these short periods of time. The low-life telemarketers are a constant threat to fish her into some scam or another. As if life were not complicated enough, we have to scoundrels on the phone almost everyday trying to pick Mom's pocket. We have decided to expedite what we are doing, and get things done even quicker than we originally planned for. It isn't safe to wait.

Did I really think that we were going a few months of peace and quiet to get some important things done? Silly, silly me.

Life goes on, and we can't seem to slow down the train. So, we just hang onto our hats and hope for the best.

On the weight loss/weight control front, I can take heart in the fact that I am not overweight today. That is a very good thing. I will hold on to that for now, and proceed on my way. On to week 391!

7 years, 173 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6'3" 239.5/198.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:24.75/WK-390

Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds