Week 58 Update

After a warm day (something over 75°) yesterday, though not nearly as hot as the ones we saw last week, we made it back down into the 50s last night, but just barely. This morning at 4:40 AM it was 59° when I got up. I stepped up on Mr. Scale and once again he said, "184.0 pounds!" I am reminded of a bowling friend of mine, who one time came back from the line after adding yet another strike to a string he was running, and he said with a smile, "This game is easy!" We all got a laugh out of that. Sometimes in life, you through strikes, and sometimes you throw splits.

When you throw strikes life seems easy, but you always know the splits are potentially only a frame away. So, it never pays to get cocky when you are successful, because it can lead to unfortunate surprises. For 3 weeks in a row, and for 8 of the last 9 weeks, I have hit 184.0 pounds exactly. The one week I missed, I was only a half pound down. So, effectively I have been right on target for 9 straight weeks. The two weeks before this string started, I had my lowest weekly weigh-in, preceded by my highest weekly weigh-in, for the entire maintenance period. I went from 186 down to 181.5, before bouncing back up to 184.0. Two weeks before the 186.0 weigh-in, I was back down to 181.5. So, while I am very pleased with how stable my weight has been for the last 9 weeks, I will not forget that things can bounce around when life decides to throw you a split.

Speaking of splits, I had a banana split on Father's Day, when our son took Dotti and I out for a little celebration. That put my points up to 57.0 for that day. On Thursday, although the scale said I weighed 184 in the morning, I just felt like my weight was going to drop the next day if I didn't add a few extra points. I added the points, with a McDonald's McFlurry, and even though I was back up to 57.0 points for the day, on Friday my weight still dropped to 183.0. On Friday I felt good at 41.0 points, and I stopped there, hoping for the best. This morning I was back up to 184.0. I won't copy my friend and say, "This game is easy," but I will say that my confidence is growing in my ability to juggle my points through the week and come out weighing close to 184.0 on the other end. (Knock on wood. :^) )

The temperature is still dropping outside as I am writing this. It is down to 57°. Yesterday was the beginning of Summer. We had the Summer Solstice, where the Sun appears to move as far north in the sky (23°27' offset from the equator) as it ever gets during the year, providing the largest number of sunlight hours of any day of the year, in the northern hemisphere. Of course south of the equator, yesterday was the first day of winter (Winter Solstice) and the cold season is just getting seriously underway. For the next few months, we probably won't have too many days where the high is below 70°, but even so, our lows should drop down into the 50s on most days, which makes sleeping without an air conditioner much easier. :^) My average weight for the week this past week dropped about 0.4 pounds, while my average points per day went up by 1.22. Minor fluctuations seem to have been absorbed without too much fuss.

I had a poor showing for exercise this week. Dotti and I walked around the zoo last weekend, and we certainly got in more than a mile of walking over the day. However, it was not timed, and so I could not count aerobic points. This week I had a couple of days at work where I was on my feet most of the day and performing physical tasks, but once again there was nothing that I could count for aerobic points. So, I got the big goose egg in the aerobic points column of my score sheet this week.

Dotti is still going strong on her quit smoking efforts, and I think that is wonderful and I am so proud of her!!! It is nearly 5 weeks now since her last cigarette!!! WTG Dotti!!!

This Week in Books

I have been listening to the unabridged version of Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 this week in the car. Each time I go through the story I pick up a few more details that L. Ron Hubbard put into the 1000+ page book. It is an action adventure, loaded with chivalry (including damsels in distress), with a wide range of topics brought into the story line. There are the gadgets and scientific concepts created for the background setting, the introduction of an alien race which has to be displaced in order for the local population to continue to exist, financial maneuvering, sociology, horseback exploits, and futuristic dogfights in the air, and even in space. It is fun going through the story of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and his band of fighting Scots taking on the deadly Psychlos and coming out on top in the end. This is at least my third time going through the unabridged version (once before listening and once reading) and it allows me to catch more of the background detail, without being carried along so much with the plot, which I know well by now. (I think it is sad that they ever made the movie Battlefield Earth, because that terrible movie will put people off from reading a very good book.)

I will probably have to set the audio Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 aside, just like I often do with a written book, and take it back up where I left off in the future. I ordered, and just received a couple of new audio books that I will need to get going on soon: The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad; and Rising From the Plains by John McPhee – which discusses the geology of the Rocky Mountains.

I have made some progress on The Anything Tree at lunch. I am somewhere between a third and a half done. It has the feel of "pulp fiction" story to it so far. Things are moving along and that holds the interest.

I have done a bit more reading in The Wonder Book of the World's Progress vol. 2 published by Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1935. It has moved rapidly up to and through the Jurasic period, and well into the Cretaceous period, and about to where we lose the dinosaurs. I am interested in how he will explain that. He has already given hints that he believes it was the change in climate brought on by the moving continents. Of course the meteor theory was still quite a ways in the future when this book was written.

I finished The Case of the Horrified Heirs by Erle Stanley Gardner last night. It was remarkable for the fact that there was no murder in it, although there was attempted murder, and a murder trial, over a woman who in reality was still alive.

Perry Mason is only just tolerable as an ethical human being. He rides the line between hero and scoundrel a lot of the time. If he did the very same things that he does in the book in order to clear a guilty man, you have to call him a scoundrel and morally no better than the criminals he was getting off. (One famous real life lawyer has stated that the vast majority of defendants who come to court are guilty, and he proudly does his best to get them off scot-free. Protecting rights is one thing; intentionally getting criminals off, that you know are guilty, so that they can harm even more people, is quite another. The 1962 Gregory Peck movie Cape Fear dealt with this topic.)

As a case in point, in this book, his client finds her car has been damaged. It suddenly comes to Perry Mason that the car has been stolen, used in a crime, and then returned. So, rather than trying to evaluate the evidence and find the truth, he crashes his own car into the damaged area of his client's car, in order to cover up the evidence. Those type of tactics are not particularly impressive to me, and his general lack of respect for truth, and honesty keeps me from finding him a character that I can admire or entirely respect. The only reason that I continue to read the stories in spite of that, is that he always does what he does in support of an innocent party, wrongly accused. Otherwise, he would ethically be a criminal himself. He has no real respect for the system in which he functions, because he always goes outside of it, and manages to appear to get back inside at the end, just before they throw the book at him.

The greatest enjoyment that I get from the Perry Mason books comes from the settings they carry with them. There are descriptions of aspects of American life that I remember well, which are no longer with us, but highlighted by aspects of the stories. That is fun for me and is why I keep coming back for more.

1 year, 41 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6'3" 239.5/184.0/185 ±2/BMI:22.9/WK-58
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story