A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 436
Week Ending Sepetember 23, 2009
Weight Watchers Goal
(the top of my normal weight range)
200.0 pounds
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Week 436 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 09/23/2009 |
| Weight: | 208.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 26.00 |
| Average Daily Points: | 28.21 |
| Average Weight for week: | 208.71 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 18.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 137.25 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -2.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 31.5 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +23.0 |
Week's Data
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
09/16/09 |
09/17/09 |
09/18/09 |
09/19/09 |
09/20/09 |
09/21/09 |
09/22/09 |
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210.0 lbs
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211.0 lbs
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208.0 lbs
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209.0 lbs
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208.0 lbs
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207.5 lbs
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209.5 lbs
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34.5 pts
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27.5 pts
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32.0 pts
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26.0 pts
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30.0 pts
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24.0 pts
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23.5 pts
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CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
GRAPH |
60-DAY
GRAPH |
90-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
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It was 8:26 AM when, for the 3057th time on this Journey, I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "208.0 pounds!"
I am down 2.0 pounds from last week, I weigh 31.5 pounds less than I did 3,057 days ago when I began on this lifelong effort to control my weight.
It is interesting to remember that 31.5 pounds is 504 ounces, which is the equivalent of 63 cups of water, or, since there are 16 cups per gallon, I have lost the equivalent weight of 3.94 gallons (1 cup shy of a full 4 gallons) of the liquid. When I imagine putting 4 gallon jugs of water into a backpack and carrying it around with me all day, it makes me happy that I have reached this point, even though I want to continue to lose more.
Remembering our accomplishments, while still aspiring to reach even higher, is important to help hold our motivation at a strong level. Knowing that we have done something of value already makes it easier to continue to try and do more of value in the future.
My Weight Commander Control Panel Graph has the solid squares falling in a linear fashion for the week, even though the daily weigh-ins go up and down. On the left it shows that this week I lost 2 pounds, last week I gained 1/2 pound, the week before I lost 3 pounds, and 4 weeks ago I lost 1/2 pound. For the past 4 weeks the net result is a 5 pounds decrease in my weight. 
On the right side of the graph it shows that today I weigh less than I did 30 days ago, 60 days ago, and 90 days ago, albeit only a pound and a half better than the latter. Still, I am making progress again.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me is the fact that I still weigh more than I did 1 year ago. A whole year has gone by, and I have 4 extra pounds to show for it. It sometimes feels like my journey is a study in frustration. Still, I keep trying, and that is something I can feel good about, despite the sometimes poor results.
The Weight Commander Future Graph puts me at 199.89 pounds, four days before Christmas. "I'm getting 'Normal' for Christmas!" (With apologies to Roy C. Bennett and Sid Tepper who released their popular Christmas classic when I was 4 years old in 1955. Incidentally, they also wrote a favorite of mine: "Red Roses For a Blue Lady," three years before I was born.)
I am quite happy with how my Weight Commander 60-Day Graph looks now. If you drew a line from the starting point to today's point, it would approximate the flow of the entire graph. There were naturally some ups and downs, but the general trend has been towards reaching this point. The first 30 days of the graph were less clearly heading downward, but still there was hope even then of things going right, despite the upwards spikes. (They fortunately were not wide plateaus, but instead just momentary lapses.)
My Weight Commander 90-Day Graph is less exciting. The gains and losses all pretty much balance out and I ended up about where I started. On the one hand, I was starting to climb up to my old weight on the first half of the graph, but I then corrected and turned it around to move back down again. It makes it look like I am just barely hanging on, not doing more than keeping the lid on a pot that wants to boil over. Of course that has been the story of my journey the past few years.
I am left to wonder what happened? Nearly the entire first 4 years of maintenance were almost effortless it seemed. My graphs were all locked in solidly in my target range until the very end of year 4. (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, and Year 4) Then things just got away from me, and they have never returned to that happy condition I was in before. (Year 5, Year 6, Year 7, Year 8)
Looking back at the time things started to slip away from me, it was just about the time our Hunter was born, although the two things are not connected.
I know I went through some changes about this time, because in 2004 I walked a lot of miles, especially the second half of the year. In 2005 I started out doing well, but I ran into an obstacle that tripped me up psychologically, and I faded, and I finally stopped walking at the end of 2005. (I was reminded of the cause of my problem a couple of months ago, and while I am not going to discuss it here, as I look back at it, it was a stupid thing to get hung up on—but who says a weight loss journey is always run on the intellectual side of the road?)
When my caloric needs fell off, due to a decrease in exercise, I didn't slow down enough on my calorie intake. That might very well have been the little snowball that started the roll down the mountainside. In any case, things have not been the same since then. Maybe, I can fix that. I am going to try!
My Weight Commander 1-Year Graph looks like I climbed to the top of a volcano and am trying to find my way down the other side. If I continue on the same course that I have been on since the start of September, I think I will be finding my way down that far side, and will continue to move on past the low point shown on this graph last November. I will not be able to reach that point before the old low rolls off the left side of the 1-year graph, but I will be able to use Weight Commander to run a longer time period and pick it up again when the time is right. My goal is not to reach where I was 1 year ago, but instead to get back to where I was 4 years ago!
Wednesday, I weighed 210.0 pounds. It turned out to be a good day for exercise!
Last Friday, when we went with Jim and Tammy to the Interstate Fair, we got there too late to be able to get over to see the animals. (Like Dotti, Tammy enjoys seeing the animals, and we all felt bad she had missed them.) So, on Wednesday we went back again in the daytime.
Near the gate where we entered, there were some llamas that were saddled up for children to ride. (More on that with the Hunter visit to the fair. ) With a light colored llama on the left, and the two lovely ladies on the right, one might forget to look farther back where Jim is looking at a darker colored llama, and beyond him you can see a lot of old tractors on display.
Posing before the National Guard car and trailer, Jim looks right in place with his Vietnam—Desert Storm hat on. Jim, as you probably already know proudly served in the Navy, and retired in 1996 as a Chief Petty Officer; and we are all very proud of him and his service to our country!
As anyone in the Navy can tell you, the Navy wife serves as much as her husband does! Tammy, Jim's better half, was there dealing with the demands placed upon every Navy family, caused by worry, separation, and what seems like perpetual relocation. Raising 3 daughters while dealing with running a house and managing a life that feels as if it were broken in two, was something that Tammy did, and she did well.
Still lovely, after more than 31 years have passed since that 1978 summer when another Navy wife moved in across the cul-de-sac from this one, along with her ET2 husband (later to become ET1 before leaving that duty station). When I got back from a three month school in Millington, Tennessee, Dotti and Tammy were already friends, and wondering how they could get their two very different husbands to get along. (As you can tell, they found a way. )
Tammy's beautiful blue eyes can go from twinkling laughter, to heavy stormy seas—a time when everyone in our group knows they have been given "the Look." I don't get her to pose often enough, but when I finally do, I am always happy that she graced my lens. Jim and I are very lucky guys to have such beautiful wives, both inside and out. Even when the ladies forget that it is true, we never forget, because we see it every day. Thank you Tammy for the photo!
We were inside a train car when this picture was taken. It is a museum, that shows many train related items, most of which are associated with the trains running through Spokane. (Over Tammy's shoulder you can see out the window, and though not visible, there is a little train ride that Hunter was to ride a little later in the week.)
Jim took this picture of me. If I were not in the picture, the size of the wheel would not seem to be all that large. However, the fact that this drive-wheel towers over my head shows that the scale that trains are built on is amazing! Even old steam engines like this are technological marvels.
Compare this machine with the things that were built before the 1800s and the contrast is sharp, and remember that we consider this steam engine to be antiquated. Just a few centuries ago, life was not all that different from thousands of years ago. Now, a man can see incredible changes in his own short lifetime.
And even the rate of change is increasing. Think back a few decades. There were no personal computers, let alone an Internet. Go back a little farther and there were no TVs. Farther yet, and phones and electric power to homes were still off in the future. Even ball-point pens didn't arrive for the public until the middle of the twentieth century. So many things that we take for granted today were unheard of a short time ago. (Cell phones, digital cameras, and email come to mind.)
Computer computational power is doubling every year, and even that change is accelerating! Memory is getting larger, and CPU's are getting faster. Hard drives are exploding in capacity from just a short time ago.
I can clearly remember when a 30 MB hard drive was considered huge, and now they are into the Terabytes, and Petabytes can't be too far off into the future. Today IBM has a 20-Petaflop computer on the drawing board. That is a computer that can perform 20,000 trillion (or 20 quadrillion) floating point operations in one second.
It is impossible to picture this for me. To make it even more interesting, "integer arithmetic" is far easier for a computer and can be done faster than working with decimal fractions (floating point). But as an example, think of doing simple multiplication of single digit numbers. (This is even simple for integer arithmetic.) If you had a sheet of paper in front of you with a string of problems like 2 x 3 = ? and 7 x 9 = ?, how many of them could you do in a second? Let's say you can do 1 a second. How long would it take you to do the same number of calculations that a 20-petaflop computer could do of the more difficult floating point problems in one second? It would naturally take you 20 quadrillion seconds, which is 633.7 million years! That is a lot of seconds!
Going that far back in time would put us into the Precambrian Era, and all the land on Earth, rather than being divided up into the continents that we are familiar with on the map, was pressed together into a single supercontinent, that today is called Pangaea. Life in the Precambrian was very simple (in fact fossil evidence for life in that era is almost nonexistent), and nothing you would recognize today as even being animals had appeared yet on the planet.
Another way of looking at it is, pretend you could take a step that is 1 meter in length. How far would you be able to walk in 20 quadrillion steps? You could walk 2 light-years! That is far enough to walk all the way across our solar system and back again, 1000 times! (That is assuming that you define the diameter of the solar system as being the orbit of Pluto, which is 80 AU across.)
The point is that we are getting into numbers that are so huge, we can't really picture them. With a computer like that, we are approaching the level of activity that the human brain has. As the power of computers grow, at some point they will probably be able to design their own descendants better than we can, and then things will really pick up. It is already amazing, but we haven't gotten started yet on where it can go.
Okay, it is only the wheel of a locomotive, but it is a harbinger of things not yet dreamed of. Hold onto your hats!
Dotti caught me with my glasses off. Still recognize me? (I always chuckle over the Superman comics where Superman works entirely around reporters, who are supposed to be observant, and a pair of glasses fools them all into thinking that Clark Kent is a completely different person.)
Dotti took this one of herself, and I had to include it. She is so beautiful when she smiles! It not only lights up her face, but it also lights up my whole world. Her camera has a viewing screen that shows up on the front of the camera, so taking pictures of yourself is much easier, and you can line them up painlessly.
In one of the cars in the train museum there was a train set running. Jim was asking the operator, while I was looking on and listening, if they had any trains that ran using the overhead power wire that was routed over the tracks. The operator said that he only used the middle third rail to power the trains.
Jim and I both had train sets as kids and it always brings happy thoughts of those fun times when we see a scale model train set running.
Dotti and I had a great time with Jim and Tammy at the fair, and we are lucky to finally once again live close enough to them to see them more often now.
It was a hot day, and at home, I waited for the sun to get low on the horizon, so the temperature would drop, and then, in order to add to the 1.5 miles we walked at the fair, I walked the 3-mile loop around our neighborhood.
Thursday, I weighed 211 pounds. I was over points on Wednesday, hitting 34.5 for my total. At the fair I had a 6" sub sandwich from "Sub Division." They make an incredible sandwich and it was worth the 12 points for the shorter sandwich, because it was loaded up with food, and I was filled up solidly, with no return of hunger before dinner time. They cut the turkey as you watch them build the sandwich. Every thing is fresh and hearty.
Then for dinner on Wednesday I had 8.0 points worth of good food. With all the walking we did, I was sure that no real harm was done, and I felt confident that the increase on the scale would be only temporary.
Thursday was the third anniversary of the start of our Alaska Cruise with Jim and Tammy. What a great bunch of memories we have of that!
I spent the day working on the Fun Zone. I got the short story ready to go in all the different formats, and worked on designing the drop page for our visitors and the download page for those who would participate in the Fun Zone. It was a long day, but I felt good about how it all looked.
That evening, as the sun was dipping low on the horizon, Dotti and I walked the 3-mile loop around our neighborhood.
As you can see this commonly used road is completely blocked by both dirt and heavy equipment. A young lad is climbing one of the dirt mounds in the road in the distance. In the foreground my lovely Dotti is making her way down another dirt mound. We are almost past the blocked area at this point, and will be returning to the normal blacktop surface shortly. However, the traffic load on the road is understandably lighter than normal and it made walking easier, without having to worry so much about cars coming by.
Dotti has her "Got Oxygen" tee shirt on from the Multnomah Falls gift shop.
Jamie and Hunter came by for a visit on Thursday, and Hunter was excited about our upcoming trip to the fair with the two of them. It is really fun watching his excitement when he is looking forward to doing something!
Friday I weighed 208.0 pounds.
Jamie said that Hunter was ready to go to the fair at 6 AM. Unfortunately, it did not open until 10:00. 
When we got inside the Interstate Fair, we once again came to the llamas right away. This time, we had a passenger for them. Here is Hunter high in the saddle and having fun on his llama.
We continued on straight, and soon ran into the entrance to the train ride. They gave Hunter a paper engineer's hat, with "Look Listen & Live" on it. (I guess that has replaced the old railroad standby: "Stop, Look, and Listen.") Doesn't he look serious in it?
I think, along with Hunter, we all enjoyed the ride. The route wasn't terribly long, but they did go through it twice. 
Grammy Doe took this picture of us guys, and Hunter has his power grin going. His enthusiasm is contagious, and it makes us all enjoy what we are doing more when he is so happy about what he is doing.
Two beauties! The train was just about to pull out when I took this shot.
After the train pulled
back into the station we made a point of taking a picture of Hunter sitting on a little photographic set that Tammy spotted on Wednesday. Hunter is just the right size for the seat made by the trunk.
I remember my folks having a suitcase that was almost identical with the one to Hunter's right that his hand is resting on.
Hunter climbed up on the fence to get a better look at the llamas.
I had to get a shot of Jamie by one of these trash cans. They had decorated all of the trash cans in the animal area with simulated Holstein cow hide. Since she was a little girl she has liked cows. Whenever we see a cow we think of her.
Dotti loves animals and always enjoys ones that like to be petted. This llama was very happy to let her pet him.
While Dotti was petting this goat, he stuck his head through the bars and grabbed a bit of Hunter's paper hat. It must have been tasty, because he kept trying to get more of it.
As we worked our way back towards the exit, they finally got the kiddies' rides going. Hunter enjoyed this car going around in a circle and up and down along the way. There was even a "boing" sound, as if those big springs on the wheels had hit a bouncy part of the road.
On this "ride" the idea was to climb up inside and go up rope ladders and down slides and other fun stuff. The only problem with the ride was that Hunter was too short to go into it, unaccompanied. However, with an adult, he could go in. So, Grampy Al went in with him, and I had to keep asking him to wait for Grampy, because Hunter has a lot more energy than I do and he could have left me in the dust. But he was nice and waited for me.
This is a landing we reached after climbing a rope ladder. Hunter was patient and posed for me so I could take this picture. Jamie and Dotti were still down on the ground below.
Jamie rode this roller coaster with Hunter and she is showing him how to hold his arms up as they were going down the drop. Hunter liked it so much they rode it twice! (The second time they went to the very back, and rode the last car.)
I think Hunter had a great time at the fair, and I hope Jamie did too. Dotti and I just loved spending the time with the two of them. They both are wonderful, and we are really lucky to have them in our life!
After the fair Dotti dropped me off at home, and got back to work on the Fun Zone project. I had been waiting for some feedback on the story I had written and I got a couple of responses in the afternoon. They were all positive. One of them was from a friend of mine who has proofread some of my stuff in the past and who has not been involved with weight loss or the web page. He always was very good about pulling no punches and telling me when things were not right. I asked him to give his unvarnished opinion on the strength of the story and he came back with:
I think the story is very good. It is strong and forceful. I have no negative comments to make about it.
It certainly does ring of real life.
I am aware that my comments may seem minimal, but that is because there is nothing I feel needs to be said in the way of suggestions. It is very good, just as it stands.
This is not a man who is subject to flights of emotionalism, and so this was as good as I could have possibly hope for. He is a good friend, but he won't sugarcoat things like this up. I felt much better after receiving this.
I got a couple more confirmations from others that the story was ready for publication. I was beginning to feel very positive about it. (I knew I was happy with it, but that is not always a clear indication of the value of a piece. The only criticism I receive at all was about the title "The Drop of Crystal" being mistaken for a drug connection. I did a lot of searching in Google to see if that phrase was commonly connected to anything in that area and I couldn't find any negative connection with it. So, the story was ready.
I next started working on the graphics for the various parts. I put one together for Dotti's MP3 speech, and another for my story. It was starting to all come together. The Newsletter was going out on Monday and I needed to have this all finished up.
Saturday I weighed 209.0 pounds. I finished up all the graphics for the project, including the one for the MP3 of me reading my article and the wallpapers. I next moved to the MP3 itself and got all the formats prepared, both high and low resolution scan rates, so people could choose a smaller file size for a MP3 player with limited capacity if necessary. I wanted this to be as user friendly as I possibly could make it.
I took a 3-mile walk at 1:30 PM and it was only 69° out! The hot weather had finally broken! When it cools off like this, I can walk at any time in the day and that makes it all much easier.
I held my points down to 26.0, which can't hurt.
Sunday, I weighed 208.0 pounds.
Well, this was it. I had one day left to get the Fun Zone in final shape. I created files for the short story that were PDF, TXT, HTML, and DOC. I wanted to makes sure that whatever people wanted in that area they could find it. I finished up all the HTML files to get things set. All that was left was the Newsletter send off, to kick off the new project officially.
I took my 3-mile walk on Sunday at almost the exact same time as I had on Saturday in the early afternoon.
When I got to the spot that was closed it was still blocked completely to automotive traffic. Looking back (eastward) the way I had come, you can see the road equipment being used as a roadblock to traffic. The road itself is much flatter than it had been earlier, but they had one pile of dirt to move, and they still needed to lay down some asphalt. Still, it was getting closer to being finished.
Turning around 180° and looking to the west, there are two fences stretched across the road. They really wanted to make sure no one tried to drive through this stretch of road.
You can see tire tracks running under the fence on the right. Those almost certainly belong to a vehicle owned by a construction worker, or the construction company itself that is contracted to do this work. The fences were probably just moved out of the way whenever the workers needed to get through.
It was a nice sunny day, but the temperature was still below 70°! It was great walking weather!
Once past the fences, I turned and looked back one last time to see the entire roadblock package. The fence on the right looks a little worse for wear, but from the progress they have been making, it shouldn't be too much longer before the road is opened back up to normal traffic.
Monday, I weighed 207.5 pounds. It was the big day! Dotti sent me the rough draft of the Newsletter, which wasn't too rough at all! I added the ads for the Fun Zone and we were ready to go at 11:40 AM when we shipped the newsletter to 88,131 people.
I received an email from a good friend that said, "It's exciting. Fingers crossed. :-) " That was how I felt too. Unfortunately, we saw very little activity with the Fun Zone, which was very disappointing.
We found a couple of corrections that needed to be made in the Newsletter, and we shipped it again with the corrections. By the evening, all of the work I had put into the Fun Zone and the Newsletter had me feeling very tired. I was ready for a break.
Tuesday, I weighed 209.5 pounds.
I was in need of a break. I took a 3-mile walk that started just before 8 AM, and the temperature at the end of my walk was 43°. The sun was up and shining, and that allowed me to wear a windbreaker over my flannel shirt and remain comfortable the whole way.
Dotti and I decided to go to Wonderland and play some miniature golf. We called up LeRoy and asked if he would like to join us. He said he would and we were set.
I started off by going to the batting cages, and ended up swinging at about 225 pitches. The machines have a common ball return mechanism and it was not working well. In the 70 mph cage the machine ran out of balls and I had to wait long periods of time between pitches. I moved over to the 60 mph cage and it was loaded up with balls, so there was no waiting. After hitting the balls from the 60 mph cage, I was hoping that the 70 mph cage would pick up the extra balls and be ready to go, but it wasn't. I finally gave up on it and moved over to the softball machines.
Unfortunately, before I left the 70 mph baseball cage, I fouled one pitch off my shin. As it turned out, it bruised deeply, down to the bone. I was hobbling pretty good when we went to play miniature golf.
The fast pitch softball machine was even worse than the 70 mph cage. I finally had to leave that one before I got through the balls I had paid for, because it had gone several minutes without throwing a single ball. One of the balls it threw nearly hit me, because I had been waiting for a long time and then all at once one pitch came flying out.
At least the slow pitch softball machine worked fine. I was able to hit on that one as much as I liked with no waiting.
As I indicated, after I finished, I was limping, but it didn't stop me from playing. We played miniature golf on the outside course for a change, because the weather was great; it was finally cool enough to enjoy being outdoors. It is always fun to have LeRoy with us. The atmosphere is pleasant and relaxed, and we have fun. We are very fortunate to have such a great son!
I managed to keep my points down to 23.5 for the day, which is really low. That coupled with the exercise I got helped to give me a good weigh-in today.
I can only hope that the Fun Zone picks up. It will be a shame if we have to give it up. I was hoping to be able to make it a monthly offering, with new items each month.
Overall, I am happy with my week. I ate well and exercised. I lost 2 pounds. I would be happy if all weeks turned out this well for my journey.
8 years, 134 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/208.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:26.00/WK-436
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
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