A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 437
Week Ending Sepetember 30, 2009
Weight Watchers Goal
(the top of my normal weight range)
200.0 pounds
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Week 437 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 09/30/2009 |
| Weight: | 206.5 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.81 |
| Average Daily Points: | 27.64 |
| Average Weight for week: | 208.29 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 7.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 144.25 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -1.5 |
| Pounds lost total: | 33.0 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +21.5 |
Week's Data
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
09/23/09 |
09/24/09 |
09/25/09 |
09/26/09 |
09/27/09 |
09/28/09 |
09/29/09 |
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208.0 lbs
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209.5 lbs
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209.0 lbs
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208.5 lbs
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207.5 lbs
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208.0 lbs
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209.0 lbs
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28.0 pts
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30.5 pts
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22.5 pts
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32.5 pts
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30.0 pts
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22.5 pts
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27.5 pts
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CALCULATED
GRAPH |
CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
GRAPH |
60-DAY
GRAPH |
90-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
GRAPH |
TIME
CAPSULE |
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It was 4:38 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "206.5 pounds!"
That is a pound lower than any of my daily weigh-ins this week, and that makes me wonder if it is a fluke, or really a loss. So, my first reaction is to compare my 7 day average weight today with what it was a week ago. This week's average weight is 208.29. Last week's was 208.71. So, while my weigh-in drop was 1.5 pounds for the week, my average weight drop was only about a half pound.
Still, that is a loss, and I had an active week, with some sodium and ibuprofen helping to artificially boost a few of my daily weigh-ins.
My daily average for points eaten was down this week from 28.21 to 27.64. Even last week's average was well under my point-limit for my weight, and even under the point-limit for the next range down (22-29), when I go below 200 pounds.
I did have a 1.5-pound loss this week for my weekly weigh-in and I will not complain about that! 
I always like to run through my graphs to get a feel for how things are going overall. I am well into my 8th year of weight maintenance, and that seems amazing. My Maintenance Graph is not all that I would like it to be. I have two data points that hit my upper weight limit for the Normal Range and both of them were before mid-January. None of my weekly weigh-ins fell below 200, and aside from the two already mentioned points, they all were above 200. In other words, I have been overweight for the entire year of 2009. I am going to try to break that trend and get back into my Normal Range this year. I am doing the right things right now to make it happen. I just have to keep doing them.
Sometimes I like to capture the Weight Commander Control Panel Graph after I put in my weekly weigh-in, but before entering the data for the rest of the week. This week, I hadn't updated the data in the program since last week when I ran up the program. The first thing it does is to ask you your weight for today. I put in 206.5 and then, since I hadn't entered anything for the previous 6 days, the program calculated the difference between 206.5 and last week's 208.0 pounds, and divided by the number of days between to come up with the average daily change. It then plotted the points it calculated for. It always makes a nice straight line for the daily weigh-in data, not at all like real life usually produces. Even the solid average squares are far straighter using this method. It was a shame I had to mess it up.
The
Weight Commander Real Control Panel Graph has my daily weigh-ins bouncing around, as real-life daily data always does. Even the solid squares for a line that is heading downward at a reduced pace. Today's weigh-in square is down there all alone with nothing near it. If you look at the other points along the way, where I have a big drop like that, it is followed by a small increase and then a leveling off for a bit before the next drop. (The very first one on the left is an exception, because I was just getting back on track. I was eating much better than before, and the change kept the losing trend going for a few days before stabilizing.
While the downward trend, which my graph shows that I am on right now, would not be a great thrill on a roller-coaster ride, it IS heading in the right direction and that is all that I ask.
My
Weight Commander Future Graph is not as promising as it was last week, where I was projected at being just below 200 pounds by Christmas. This week it has me at 203.5 at Christmas. I think I can lose more than 3 pounds in 90 days, but we'll have to just wait and see. The real upside about this is that it is showing a loss for the future, and I will be happy to accept that.
Well, Al, what have you been doing the last sixty days?
Oh, I have been moving my weight from 220 pounds down to 206.5 pounds.
My Weight Commander 60-Day Graph isn't the sort of slope you would want to take a toboggan down—it is way too choppy for that—the starting and ending point do show a move in a very good direction. It is a trend that I hope to nurture for some time into the future. 
My Weight Commander 90-Day Graph, is the sort of thing that can take the wind out of your sails emotionally. It shows a bit of a loss, but going from the first little dip on the left to today, the change is only slightly down. It is almost like I have gone nowhere. I liked the 60-day graph better.
Still, the lowest point on the entire graph is today's weigh-in number and that is pretty cool. It is definitely something positive, and I will hold onto that!
My Weight Commander 1-Year Graph puts what has been going on into a nutshell. It shows that I am recovering from an excursion into the badlands of overeating, and I have only taken the top off the mountain of excess and still have to work my way to the bottom still.
Taken as a whole, this has been a bad year. And yet, as William Shakespeare entitled his play, "All's well that ends well." If I can take this turnaround that I have begun, and ride it to the finish line of the year, I may yet call 2009 a success.
My
Weight Commander Time Capsule has so far not been something I have been proud of. I am coming up on my second year of using the program. I was not overweight when I started; I was 2 pounds below the upper limit of my Normal Range.
Now I am 6.5 pounds overweight, and it tells me that I have been eating, on average, about a point a day too many calories for the entire time.
I am looking forward to the day when I can view the Time Capsule and say to myself, Self, you have done a good job and you are better off than when you started. I am feeling more confident, as time passes, that day is not too far off. I just have to keep plugging away.
Wednesday, I weighed in at 208.0 pounds. We decided that it was time to turn off our sprinkler system for the rest of the year, because things were going to be cooling off soon and the lawn was going into winter mode. We started putting up our Halloween decorations, because another house had already done so, and the "ice was broken."
Dotti and I took a 3-mile walk together in the evening. It was dark, and we had our flashing red lights on, and some flashlights along with us. We had to get past a spot in the road that is blocked by road construction, with a huge pile of dirt in the middle and large heavy equipment vehicles parked across the road. The flashlights were really handy there.
Then, just a block or so up the road, a meeting of some sort was letting out, and a continuous string of cars was pouring out of a side road, that is a dead end street. We had to walk to the corner before we could find a path through the cars to cross the street. This is normally a fairly quiet road anyway, and when the street was completely blocked we didn't expect any traffic at all. Instead it was like a funeral procession that went on and on. The stop sign at the corner slowed things down finally, and we scooted between two cars and made the turn. That was just about the midpoint of our walk.
It seems like a good idea to try and keep our walks to daylight hours as much as possible in the future. But it was a fun walk.
After the walk, Frostbyte was looking way too relaxed on the back of the couch, and so I walked down a couple stairs and reached over and stroked his neck and chin. Look at him; do you think he liked it?
Thursday, I weighed 209.5 pounds.
It was a special day for Misty, Jim and Tammy's middle daughter. She was getting her braces off, and she wanted her Aunt Dotti and Uncle Al there for the event. I held her hand during the stressful points, but mostly it was just a celebration!
After the braces were off, and Misty's teeth were all polished up and looking like new, we took her to Red Lobster for a celebration lunch.
Friday, I weighed 209.0 pounds.
It was becoming clear that almost no one was interested in our new Fun Zone offering on the page.
It was depressing to me, because I had spent most of a month putting it together:
- I wrote a new short story that was over 5,100 words in length. I have written stories before, but I never put so much time in trying to do it right. I was hoping to create a series of stories based upon Crystal's weight loss journey, but that is looking pretty unlikely now. Very few ever read the first one.
- I next recorded my own voice as I read one of my articles, and created an MP3 file of it. Editing took even longer than the recording session did.
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Next, I captured the audio from Dotti's DWLZ-I speech from a DVD video that we have from our first conference and, converted it to an MP3, after going through another extensive editing process.
These three items all turned out really well in my opinion, so I felt very confident that the Fun Zone would be a success. At $1.95 we were giving it away for next to nothing. But fewer than 10 people were interested in it, and I used a counter to detect the fact that several hundred people a day came to look at it, and then promptly left, uninterested.
- I also picked 3 good (at least in my opinion) very high resolution pictures that Dotti and I had taken, and included them in the package for no extra charge.
- Finally, I had to design the HTML pages where people could come and look over what was being offered, and the PHP page, where they could download the material once they had purchased it.
Looking back on it, I think it was an unreasonably low price, and if we had asked $19.50 it would have been a fairer price for what we were including. But I am too close to the project I guess to evaluate it. We had set the price low so everyone could participate and no one could honestly say, "I would love to buy it, but I can't afford it." Perhaps they thought that because the price was so low it was of no value?
I had a number of people take a look at the page design and other factors trying to spot where the problem was, but, after trying several different things, I came to the unavoidable conclusion that no one found the offering to be of interest.
C'est la vie. Lesson learned.
The only reason I mention this is because it hammered my attitude for a couple of days. I was feeling very down about it. (I had foolishly let my expectations take flight, and reality was a bit painful to face.) In spite of that, I didn't go nuts on eating, although I have to admit I had temptations to do so pulling at me quite often.
What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888
One positive thing about Friday was the fact that I mowed the lawn for the last time this year—I think anyway. With colder temperatures on the way and the water turned off, I think the grass will not be growing too fast for a while. However, as I demonstrated already this week, I could be wrong.
Saturday, I weighed 208.5 pounds. I got off for my 3-mile walk before 9:00 AM. The temperature was 59°F and it was a great morning for a walk. I was reaching the ending on That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis, the third book in his trilogy. Everything was great until I turned the last corner and was just in front of our house when I noticed that something black was lying on the sidewalk. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was my batting gloves that I had put around my baseball bat that I had in the trunk of our car. Oh-oh. This is not good.
Suddenly I remembered that I had found the car unlocked as I was leaving the house for my walk. I locked the car, while thinking that we are lucky that we live in a low crime neighborhood. Oops.
I went and checked the trunk where my bats and batting gloves are normally kept and sure enough the new baseball bat I bought was missing, along with our bag of coats, our binoculars and other odds and ends we keep in a container in the back. Going forward I saw that the glove compartment was standing open and it had been rifled. Our radar detector was gone, and so were Dotti's dashboard holders for her phone and Magellan. We had car chargers for our phones that are gone, and the jerks even took the locking key for our lug nuts, which will do them zero good without the lug nuts to match. All they did there was inconvenience us. But I am sure that will really bother amoral creeps like this. Right.
We also had about a dozen packs of Trident sugarless gum in the car: also missing.
This is one of the things we worried about, when we moved up to Spokane, and we hoped that living up on the hill might get us out of the crime zone, but I guess not.
We went out and replaced a few of the things that were stolen, but we had to use our van, because we couldn't change a tire if we had a flat on our car. We had to wait for Monday to get Honda to help us on that one.
I did eat one thing that I felt bad about, and anytime you feel bad about eating something, that is a sign that a line was crossed. I ate Very Berry Sundae at Costco, which is one of the places we stopped at on our replacement mission. I didn't really want it, but I ate it anyway. I don't like it when that happens, but as Dotti says, "No guilt, and move on." And on I will move.
I was careful the rest of the day and I ended up only 1.5 points over my limit, despite the Very Berry Sundae. And that is something at least.
Sunday, was a big pick-me-up, and it highlighted a very positive thing about moving to Spokane: our dear friends Jim and Tammy invited us to join them on a trip to Palouse Falls. It made the loss of the Fun Zone project (I took it down that morning, because no doubt remained that it was a failure), and even the car break-in seem far less important. We were off on an adventure with our friends, and that was really nice! I needed that, I really did!
It took a couple of hours of driving to get there, but it was worth it. Palouse Falls is a state park and seems really out of place in the dry brown surroundings it is set in.
To enter the parking lot we had to pass this sign.
Since our little Hunter was along for the trip, I took him over to the sign and he was very cooperative in posing for the picture. He is growing into quite the little man isn't he? (It was only yesterday it seems that he was being born. Where did the time go?)
The Palouse Falls was created by the same forces that created Dry Falls, and the Grand Coulee! The Palouse River, which runs over the falls, originally ran directly into the Columbia River. The route of that ancient path runs through Washtucna, Washington, a town we passed through on our trip to the falls. (If you click on the link for the town, and hit the "Terrain" button on the map, you can slide south east on the map and see the Palouse Falls area. If you switch to Satellite mode on the map you can zoom in and get a good view of the area where we hiked around taking pictures.) Today, the Palouse River heads south on its new course that sends it cascading 200 feet (an initial 20-foot drop followed immediately by a 180-foot drop) over the falls.
The Palouse River is 140 miles long, and has its source in the Rocky Mountains, in Idaho. Its mouth, only about four miles downstream of the falls, opens onto the Snake River, which in turn pours into the same river that the Spokane River does—the mighty Columbia River that flows past Portland and Vancouver on its way to the Pacific. Along the way, the Columbia River picks up the water from several other falls, with Multnomah Falls being the most well known, and, since climbing to the top of it was our very first date, it is one that Dotti and I love especially well. (Jim and Tammy have been to the top of it too, and more than once!)
It is amazing the amount of land that is connected by drainage to the Columbia River, including most of Washington and Oregon, and nearly all of Idaho, just a bit of Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah, and even a significant part of British Columbia in Canada, where the river originates, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The area the Columbia River drains is very close to the size of France!
To be honest, this sign caught my eye even before the huge state park sign in the previous picture. We sure love our little Hunter, and think the sign expresses an excellent point of view!
Notice his tee shirt, and what it says. I wonder where he might have gotten a shirt like that?
This is Palouse Falls. Surrounded by brown rock and vegetation, the water contrasts sharply with its surroundings.
We photographers went up on rock cliffs you see above and to the left of the 186-foot falls, in search of photo ops. (By the way, can you believe a man was fool enough to go over that falls in a kayak and, even more surprisingly, survived?)
Look closely at the rock all around the falls; it is all basalt—lava frozen forever in place after having flowed in unbelievable amounts over the land. Layer upon layer of basalt is stacked for hundreds of feet. Just like in the Columbia Gorge and over the entire Columbia Plateau, where the lava cooled and formed a covering thousands of feet thick, the violent origins of this terrain are unmistakeable.
Hunter found a resting place in an odd location. The falls has his full attention as he looks across the open space to the falling water.
That same fence, that Hunter had been hanging on, is visible on the right in this photo. My feet are up against the edge of a very long drop, but I am sitting down. I didn't feel comfortable walking any farther, but I didn't want to give up this vantage point for a photo either.
Look at the far wall of rock and you will see what happens to basalt as it ages. Bits and pieces fall off and form a debris heap at the base of the cliff. At times large sections can break free, as we witnessed at Multnomah Falls, where a boxcar sized rock broke loose and changed the face of the rock behind the falls, as well as leaving a large remnant of the rock at the base of the upper falls.
The incredible forces that produced this landscape downstream from Palouse Falls are now quiescent. The indescribable heat and pressure of layer upon layer of lava being poured over the land is now frozen into cool stone, which is brittle and it easily crumbles. The hydraulic action of the Bretz Floods ripping huge gashes in the stone is now gone, but the channels, and exposed rock it scoured through stand in silent testimony of what happened. Today we see a canyon with a gentle flowing river running through it, where once fire and water were unleashed in all their fury.
Today our pygmy cars move along the top of hundreds of feet of basalt rock. The parking lot on the right is a little spot of green and black, where tiny metal boxes await their even tinier occupants who have come to gaze in awe at this marvel of nature.
The fence, where Hunter was hanging in an earlier picture, is on the right, where you can just see two silhouettes of people. If you look above the leftmost trees, you can see a little covered viewing spot, which is where the picture above of Palouse Falls was taken from.
As I worked my way along the top of the basalt ridge above the falls, I found a crevasse that lay in a straight line with the falls, allowing this shot to be taken of Palouse Falls and the pointed top line of basalt beside it called Castle Rock, due to its simulation in form of a medieval castle.
This view of Palouse Falls and Castle Rock includes some of the wall of basalt that I was standing on. As you might understand, while looking at this photo, there was one occasion when I had an little attack of vertigo, when I tried to work my way out onto a pointed projection over the abyss. I backed up and sat down, so I wouldn't lose my balance at a very inopportune time, and slid out to take the shot. It is the one above where my tennis shoes are visible at the bottom of the photo.
Looking back towards the parking lot from the top of the hill, I spotted Dotti, her eyes peeled, looking for a good shot to take, coming along to join me.
It is interesting how the land around flowing water can be so brown. It takes man to move some of that water to a spot, like the green lawn in the background, and make it come to life with luscious growth. The Columbia River is tapped all along its route as it works its way south through the desert lands of mid Washington, to create farms and greenery that would have been impossible if left to nature alone.
Reaching the top of the hill, Dotti turned back to wave at Jim, Tammy, and Hunter.
Dotti zoomed in on me waving at her as she was catching up with me. I was switching back and forth between the long and the short lens as I walked along. Most of my pictures were with the wide angle, but sometimes the zoom 300mm comes in handy.
 What an exciting tale is told in the rock of this land: lava, cracking tectonic plate action, and huge floods combining over long periods of time to form what we see today. Some of the events occurred relatively quickly, but then long periods of time would pass before the next one.
 Another view of Castle Rock, standing sentry over the top of Palouse Falls. It is surrounded by brown on every side—brown rock, brown grass, and brown flowers—except for the pool, looking like a moat behind it. The Palouse river is running right beside the "castle" but it is running in a channel deep enough to hide it from view at this angle. Even the launching of the water from the top of the falls is blocked by the edge of the precipice projecting out on the right.
This picture was taken from the covered viewing point on the hill behind the parking lot. This 300mm zoom shot shows the channel that the Palouse River flows through leading to the drop. Water marks on the side of the channel show that water is often deeper than it is today. We have just passed through the dry summer months and the water level is about at its lowest point. When the water rises a few feet, the width of the water stream will quintuple and I'll bet it will be a real sight to see!
Sizes of things are hard to judge when nothing is in the photograph by which to compare them. For example, they say that the small ledge at the top of the channel, formed by the now mostly dry rocks to the right of the water stream, is twenty feet tall. That would be like stacking 3 of me, one on top of the other, and still having a foot to spare over the top of the stack.
If you study the rocks closely, you can see why this rock falls into debris piles and wears back so quickly when water rushes over it; it cooled into chunks that are only weakly bound together. Granite is solid and would take a very long time to wear down, but basalt falls apart (relatively) quickly.
Jim came up to join me, while Dotti headed back down to join Tammy and Hunter. Jim and I headed up river and found this mini-falls. When the water is running hard and fast, this is probably just a rapids in the river.
Isn't it amazing how straight the basalt walls are here? Water ripped out the canyon, but it left walls like this. It is very similar to what that same water, gushing through the Columbia River Gorge did to the sides of that channel. It cut many gentle meandering streams off from the Columbia river, leaving them high up in the air, and forming awesome falls, like Multnomah Falls.
Once again, although the walls are nearly ruler-straight, there is a debris pile at the base of each of them.
Jim is hanging on for dear life to the "Falling Can Be Deadly" sign. (I could have used that sign back near the falls, where I was hanging over the drop.)
Here I am on the wrong side of the sign, but, but, well, there was this picture I had to take. 
A marriage made in a demented mind no doubt. It looks like the fence was here first and the bush grew into it, and merged, creating a hybrid something or other. I guess it is better than being alone.
Jim was lined up to take a shot. It almost looks like he has a rifle in his hands from this angle. After his years in the Navy police force he wouldn't miss if it were a rifle, but he is nailing a photo instead.
Looking downriver from the falls, and down the canyon beyond, we were facing into the sun. I used my DWLZ hat to block the sun from my lens. In a couple of of the photos I took my fingers made it down into the shot, but on most of them I could get the sun out without adding fingers to the photo.
We didn't want the ladies to get bored waiting for us, so we headed back along a road we came to, that brought us back to the parking lot and the two outhouses you can see. Sage and desert grass meet up with trees and even lawn grass, thanks to running water that is brought up to the little oasis.
There were signs posted to watch out for rattlesnakes, but fortunately we didn't find any of those venomous critters on this day. They were something I learned to watch out for as a kid walking through the Mojave Desert. Dad always told me that I should never reach over a rock or step over a rock, unless I knew there wasn't a snake on the other side of it. I found my old habits came right back to me when I saw the signs posted here.
I took Hunter for a little walk. (This is when I took the two pictures of him at the top of this write up.) We drove over a bridge as we entered the parking lot, and Hunter and I went to find out what the bridge was spanning. It turned out to be a sharply walled canyon carrying a single set of railroad tracks. I looked over the top of the bridge railing as Hunter stuck his head between the concrete supports.
Jim took this picture of Dotti sitting at a table beside Tammy, with Hunter and I in the background taking the aforementioned sign pictures.
In this picture we see trees and green grass blending into brown grass and then sagebrush, and finally into basalt at the top of the hill behind.
Grampy Al, walking hand-in-hand with Hunter. That little guy is a joy to be with!
Dotti took this photo of Jim and I on our way back from our walk along the ridge. It was a fun day and I am really glad we had the chance to spend the day with Jim, Tammy, and Hunter!
Monday I weighed 208.0 pounds. We took our car to Honda to have the keyed lugs replaced, so we could once again change a tire if required, since the car thieves stole our key for the lugs. It was $70 later that we were back to normal once more.
The server host company for our two web sites had a crash in their network and it took both our sites down at once in the evening. Although they got the sites up by morning, they came crashing down again a few hours later and remained down throughout the day. We were told that the problem was a one-time event, associated with the move to a new set of servers that happened recently. We'll see. Hopefully, we won't have any more of that.
We finished up the day by clearing out our garage, so we could move our car into the garage finally. We made it! Now our car is safely in its home, and there is even some room around it to open the doors.
We have a few things in our back yard that have to be taken away, but the vast majority of the work is done already. It is something we have been meaning to get to, but it took a robbery for us to finally get moving on it.
Tuesday, I weighed 209.0 pounds. As I said the sites were down most of the day.
On the upside, the temperature dropped, and we switched over to our heater instead of our air conditioner. That is always a good thing for me. I like the cooler weather! The days are now shorter than 12 hours, and getting even shorter. It is cool enough to walk all day long, and so I don't have to catch the cool of the morning or evening to do my walking. That makes it a lot easier for me.
Well, another week has come to a close. The past few years, I haven't remained on track as I would have liked, but I haven't given up either. I am moving in the right direction once more and am not far from my Normal Weight Range. It could have been much worse!
Here's to the future!
8 years, 141 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/206.5/185.0±2.5/BMI:25.81/WK-437
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
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