A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 402
Week Ending January 24, 2009
Weight Watchers Goal
(the top of my normal weight range)
200.0 pounds
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Week 402 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 01/24/2009 |
| Weight: | 202.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.25 |
| Average Weight for week: | 202.64 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 4.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 13.00 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -0.5 |
| Pounds lost total: | 37.5 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +17.0 |
Week's Data
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
01/17/08 |
01/18/08 |
01/19/08 |
01/20/08 |
01/21/08 |
01/22/09 |
01/23/09 |
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202.5
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201.5
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203.5
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205.0
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202.0
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203.0
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201.5
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CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
GRAPH |
60-DAY
GRAPH |
90-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
GRAPH |
492-DAY
GRAPH |
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It was 6:45 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "202.0 pounds!"
The Weight Commander Control Panel Graph looks like a wave running across the ocean. Its one redeeming quality is that the wave peaks and crests are not too large. I feel like I am just hanging on until the storm is over. It is going to be over isn't it?
If the Weight Commander Future Graph is right, I will be drifting up, but slowly. For now I will live with that, since I am only a bit over my goal. But it is an indication of how far my attitude has slipped that I have allowed this to happen.
If you ran a line through the Weight Commander 60-Day Graph right down the middle of the peaks and valleys, it would move from 197 pounds up to 201 pounds in two months. That is not a good trend.
The Weight Commander 90-Day Graph has a trend that is slightly better than the 60-day graph's but it is still less than awesome.
The best part of the Weight Commander 1-Year Graph is that it shows what happens when I drift for too long without taking positive control. My main concern right now is that I might do the very same thing again this year.
My Weight Commander 492-Day Graph indicates that the long term motion has been along a line that is around 200 pounds. It is at least better than running along at 240.
With a fire in the stove, my new office has warmth but is not nearly finished yet. There are no phones nor computer internet access. We keep hoping for insulation in the roof and a few other little things, but alas...
As things go along, and some of our days are quite trying, I find myself drifting back in memory to other days, when things were not as they are now.
We were down for a visit with Mom at Christmas of 2005. Mom was at her computer and had Dotti's Weight Loss Zone up with her dial up Internet connection. The difference in Mom between then and now is huge.
Once again in 2005, LeRoy, Mom, Dotti and I are out on Mom's deck, with the South Umpqua River in the background. Mom looks 10 years younger there.
June of 1976, Dotti and were married in Vancouver, Washington. Dotti had been living in Portland, Oregon at the time, and I was stationed on Diego Garcia "British Indian Ocean Territory." I was home for 30 days of leave and had to head back to the island after that. So, we moved Dotti down to live with Mom and her husband Jim for a few months, until I could come home and collect my beautiful wife and take her to our first real home together on Midway Island.
Here we are in 1976, my lovely wife Dotti and I standing on some concrete steps behind Mom's house. Dotti is wearing a Diego Garcia coat that I got her, and a Ziggy shirt underneath that she really liked. It is hard to believe that we were ever that young. 
Here are those same steps today. They are buried under the new deck that was put up in the 1990s, and only accessible at all through a door in a wall that closes off a storage area for garden tools and such.
Life changes so many things as it moves along, and yet the old things cling to your memory as if they never left. Are the closed off stairs of today—useless and hidden—reality; or are the stairs under our feet in 1976 reality? Each bit of reality is here and gone so fast it is impossible to grab and hold. Instead we turn to each new bit of it, and accept that as the only one, until it is also gone and replaced by the next bit. Moment by moment, day by day, the various presentations of reality pass by and through us, and leave. From whence did they come and where do they go? Were they ever truly here?
Life was terribly exciting when we were standing on those stairs. We were off on an adventure to Midway Island, where we would have lots of time together to enjoy. New things were waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. We were madly in love (and at least that hasn't changed a bit!) and being together was all we asked of life. Now, we have to rely heavily upon that love to get us through the days ahead.
 Flashing back once more to 1976, the garage was home to a Thunderbird, and painted differently than today.
Moving back to the present our van is parked in the drive way, and the door is closed. The old single piece door has been replaced by one that rolls up like a roll-top desk, so an electric door opener can move it easily.
Here is how the house appeared in 1976, pink and white, with two stories, but the upper story was really a converted attic with very little room.
Today, the remodeling that Mom and Jim did in the 1990s is quite easy to see. The similarity between the two iterations of the house is not very great. The roof was completely redone, as was the upstairs floor.
The color and design of the exterior fit in well with the forest setting, and is a lot more attractive than it had been in 1976.
This picture of the house was taken from very
close to the spot where our new office is sitting. The tank on the right side of the wall was for storing water. There is an air conditioner in the window and a ladder lying along the wall on the left. On the far right was a TV antenna, to get the one station that was available back then.
Today the southwest wall shows its facelift clearly. Instead of the water tank, there is now a stairway up to the deck at the rear of the house. On the roof is a satellite dish that brings in hundreds of channels instead of the single channel of 1976. I am not suggesting that the latter is an improvement mind you, but merely stating it as a fact.
 This 1976 picture of the same wall shows the color a bit better and the storage tank. The air conditioner is winterized with a cover.
Here is the point to all the focus on the southwest wall: Dotti! While I was at Diego Garcia, Dotti had some pictures taken with black and white film and she shipped the film to me, where I developed it myself. I was just learning how to do that, and I didn't get the development right on the film, as you can tell. It is way too contrasty. But these were precious pictures for me at the time, and they still are. I missed Dotti something terrible while I was away and these pictures really helped, in spite of the goof on the developing I made.
Behind Dotti, you can see the ladder and the air conditioner that were shown in an earlier shot. She is kneeling close to the front of the house.
Now my lady has moved to the back of the house over beside the TV antenna pole we saw before. Dotti was the focus of my world back then, and for over 32 years that hasn't changed a bit. These pictures still send shivers up my spine.
The yard lying off the southwest wall is a great place to play whiffle ball baseball, as we demonstrated in 2006, when our kids and grandson came for a visit.
The roof is cut with sharp lines and corners. It makes for some interesting wall configurations on the inside.
The little well and water ramp decoration are sitting right where Dotti was posing with the rose bush back in 1976. As pretty as this looks, it would be much prettier if Dotti were once again posing in front of it!
It's Christmas of 2005, and we are looking out of the window that is now our bedroom window. Off in the distance, the South Umpqua is visibly brown, and it is running higher than normal. In center picture there is the satellite dish that Mom and Jim had installed years ago. They went into television overload for a bit when they went from having one station to having over one hundred of them. Today the power conduit that had been run out to that dish pedestal is carrying the new power cable to my new office. It saved us a bit of money not having to dig up the ground to lay new conduit.
The green here during the winter is different from the green of the summer, but it is still beautiful. And I will never tire of seeing the fog hanging over the hillside trees. I first saw that in 1966, and I still love it!
Okay, it is time to leave the nice safe past and move into what is termed the real world of the present. This week, Mom celebrated her 78th birthday.
We took her to Medford, Oregon and she chose The Olive Garden for where to eat her birthday dinner. Dotti grew up in a family whose head bore the name: Napoli. As anyone knows, who has seen an Italian map of Italy, Naples, the city that all east coast sailors are likely to visit in Italy, is called Napoli. Italian food was common fare at their table, and needless to say, Dotti is right at home in any Italian food restaurant. I, on the other hand, merely hunt around for something I might recognize on the menu, and then hope.
Mom loves the sunshine; happily we had plenty of it on her birthday! Here Mom and Dotti are shining brightly in all that sunlight, while standing in The Olive Garden parking lot.
I am doing some squinting with all the bright light, but Mom looks comfortable standing in my shadow.
With the sun pouring through the window behind her, Mom is studying the menu to see what looks good. She is a vegan vegetarian, and that makes for interesting times at some restaurants, trying to find something she can eat. (No dairy, no fish, no fowl, etc.) She can usually find something that is okay for her.
I put the camera out at arm's length and snapped this. Isn't Dotti beautiful when she smiles? And her hair is starting to grow back long again. I am so excited about that! She looks really good in long hair! I enjoy any excuse to get close to Dotti and so I had an ulterior motive for posing for this picture.
After Mom's birthday serenade by the Olive Garden staff, we took her to the mall to do some shopping. Can you tell that the ladies are in their element here?
 In the mall we found an All-American Ice Cream stand, and I took this picture of Mom enjoying her cone.
Our final stop was at Goodwill, where both Mom and Dotti enjoy browsing the aisles. I went out and took pictures after I had gone through the book section. We found out later that a lady had her car broken into in the parking lot. It didn't happen while I was outside, and she said she had been in the store for a long time. It might have even happened before we arrived. She said she had her suitcase taken by the thief. What motivates such creeps?
Mom was done shopping and walking back to the car. Dotti was not far behind.
The weeks go by, and we seem to be waiting for things to get done. The new building has been hanging us up for far too long, and we can't get settled into the house because we have things there that need to go into the new building, and we have stuff in storage in Vancouver that needs to come down.
I have a work ethic that includes honesty, fairness, and keeping one's word. I have been appalled to find that our contractor has lied willingly, disregarded commitments shamelessly, avoided meeting deadlines religiously, and has only the vaguest notion of what honor means. His view of the world, and his frame of ethics is so alien to my own that I find myself walking around like a flytrap with my mouth agape in surprise far too much of the time. He makes up for this lack of integrity in other areas by admitting openly and freely that we have been dealt wrongly and unfairly. But, he appeals to his financial situation and large family commitments as his justification for stealing both time and money from us.
I will give him one thing, he is unique. I have never met his like before. He is highly likable, friendly to a fault. He can work hard, and his work is competent, if not outstanding. If he had merely showed up for work when he said he was going to, and spent our money only on our project, he would have gotten it done on time and under budget. He is capable of doing that, at least physically. But his life is chaotic and his reasoning befuddled, and he has the mentality of a charity case rather than a businessman. If he fails to meet his commitments to us, he tries to justify it to us with descriptions of his need, rather than a sincere apology and a genuine effort to try and rectify the situation he has created.
I am so flabbergasted by this, because I can't imagine myself pulling that sort of stunt on my own jobs of the past. If I gave the excuses for missing work that he gives I would have been fired, and rightly so. The only reason he hasn't been fired here is because I frankly couldn't bring myself to believe anyone could be this screwed up. I assumed for too long that he would get better, but I didn't realize this was as good as he gets. He is "better." He is "well." He isn't broken or merely recovering from a downturn. We are seeing the real guy every day. We are close to the end, and it would be costly to hire a new contractor at this point. If we had done it in November, when we first started seeing the aberrations he carries with him, it would have saved us a bundle of money and time. Now, it is mostly time he is costing us, because we have paid for the building (more than twice according to his first estimate).
What I am going to strive to do is to focus on the positive for a while, and see if that won't help to allow me to enjoy life more. It has been a long time since I woke up and said, "Wow, I am really looking forward to today!" That has to change.
7 years, 257 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/202.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:25.25/WK-402
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
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