Week 69 Update

I got up at 5:00 AM, and stepped up on Mr. Scale. He said, "185.5 pounds!" That is within a half pound of my target weight, and well within my target range. That is not quite a "month of Sundays," that I have been in my target range, but it is nearly 3 "weeks of Sundays" (20 of them actually) and it has been over a "month of Sundays" (with 7 weeks to spare, assuming a 31 "day" month) that I have remained at or below the top of my target range. I don't know what I would have done if it were not for this journal entry each week, but I doubt that I would have been as focused, and therefore I doubt my results would have been as good if I had not had this keeping me in on track. Thank you, each of you who have been reading what I have put here, and either posted or commented on what you have read. You have been a great support in creating whatever success I may have had.

The temperature was 53° this morning when I woke up, and has dropped another degree since. We had a couple of mornings in the 40s already this week, and I saw some color in a few of the more sensitive trees driving in to work yesterday. Fall is creeping up on us, and it can't come a bit too soon for me.

This past weekend was absolutely wonderful! Our dear friends, Tammy and Jim came to visit us, arriving on Saturday morning. After I had weighed in at 184.5 pounds in the morning, we ended up going to a restaurant, where Jim and I had a high point meal (49.0 points for me), and the girls ate well but with reasonable restraint. The meal was placed late for lunch, and early for dinner, and I did not have another meal that evening. I ended the day with 65.5 points. Sunday morning I woke up down a pound. :) However, I have learned not to push my luck on such things and I held my points down on Sunday, at least partly with planning.

Sunday found us on the road. We drove out the Columbia gorge 30 some miles, and stopped at Multnomah Falls. Dotti's knee was not up to the climb, and so she waited at the base of the falls, browsing the gift shop, and playing with her palm pilot, as Tammy, Jim, and I climbed to the top of the falls. The walk was about 1.2 miles each way, and it climbed close to 700 feet along the way. Tammy had checked her watch before we left and it took us about 40 minutes to get to the top, at a reasonable pace. It took a lot less coming back down. :) After going through the gift shop and the information center in the Multnomah Falls Lodge, we headed a little farther east, and took the first exit from the freeway, which put us on the Columbia Gorge Highway. At that exit there is a house that is now surrounded with tall growth, but which slid down the hill in the rains of February 1996, our first winter here after moving back. The house is missing part of the first floor, scraped away by the slide it took, and of course it is unoccupied today. (The rains came on top of a record snowfall, and so the resulting melt, coupled with the intense rains caused all the rivers to rise. The Willamette river rose 29 feet, and they were sandbagging the downtown area of Portland, trying to keep the water out. Fortunately, the rain suddenly stopped, or it would have gotten really ugly.)

We headed west on the Columbia Highway and stopped at Horsetail Falls, and saw some of the other falls. Unfortunately, it was a very busy day, with lots of visitors, it being a holiday weekend, and so we did not spend much time at any of the falls, if we could find parking at all. (We were aware that it would be like that, so we had arrived early at Multnomah Falls, and had no trouble with parking, or heavy foot traffic on the path to the top. We nearly had that viewing platform at the top to ourselves when we got up there. Coming down, we passed a lot of people heading up that we were glad we had beaten to the top.) During the summer months, the falls are often crowded but when school is in session, the crowds are much smaller, and in the winter time, the parking lots are nearly empty.

Once we got back on the freeway, heading west, and home, we decided to stop at Subway for a sandwich. We then made up our minds that a trip to Mt. Saint Helens would be fun. We headed out. I knew that the mountain was about 50 miles or so from Portland, but that is "as the crow flies." I had forgotten that to get all the way to Windy Ridge beside the crater and Spirit Lake, was 110 miles from our home. Maybe it was fortunate that I had forgotten, because we may have had second thoughts otherwise, since it was around 3:00 PM when we finished our Subway sandwiches. (Since it was a long drive each way, and we were starting late, it turned out to be after 9:00 PM when we got back home, and it was too late to eat. That helped keep my points down to 34.5 for the day.)

On the drive up to Spirit Lake, we spent most of the time passing through lush evergreen forests. We passed beautiful lakes and reservoirs, and enjoyed each other's company. When we got close to the crater, we started seeing some damaged trees, and trees with their tops missing, and then around one corner we went from forest to decimation. The ground for miles was strewn with dead trees laying there like matchsticks. From that point on, for many miles, the devastation, and what little growth had started to take hold since May of 1980, was all that we saw. When we reached Spirit Lake, there on the surface, we saw thousands and thousands of broken logs floating. The hills surrounding the lake were barren and brownish gray. The crater rose up on the left like a cathedral of destruction, tall, ominous, and proud. Behind us there was a tall hill ascending with a trail of stairs. We decided to tackle it. For me, the climb to the top of Multnomah Falls was more exercise than I was used to, so this quarter mile hike, the first half of which was nearly straight up, was a bit intimidating. But we went after it anyway. My legs began to ache almost instantly, and I knew that I was going to be sore as a result of the climb. (As it turned out, I ended up with some very intense cramps in my right calf that night, and some additional soreness in my upper legs for a couple of days.) But it was worth the climb. The view was breathtaking at the top.

I know that Dotti was eager to take these walks with us but her knee was just not quite healed enough yet, and she didn't want to re-injure it. It was sad having to leave her in the car, but she was very understanding. She was able to bowl this week, for the first time since her surgery, and she had her last physical therapy session too. They said that she had exceeded all the goals they had set for her progress during the sessions, and she was well on her way to full recovery!

On Monday, I had dropped another pound to 182.5. So, I kicked my points back up to 59.5. We had lunch at the Timberline Lodge, near the 6,000 foot level on Mt. Hood. At this time of year, the snow is at minimum and there is a great deal of exposed ground, all the way to the top of the 11,240 foot peak. But that will not be for long. (There was a prediction of snow for Tuesday or Wednesday this week. I don't know if they actually got any, but it won't be long until things start whitening up on the mountain.) We walked around the Timberline Lodge, which was the setting for the exterior scenes in the 1970s movie The Shining and toured the inside (which was not used for the movie), and Dotti was reminiscing about when she came to Timberline in high school, when the snow was deep and the fires were raging in the huge fireplace in the lodge. She had an unfortunate skiing accident at the time and broke her leg. They had to sled her down the mountain, and then haul her away in an ambulance to have the leg set.

In the day lodge, a relatively new addition to Timberline, they had a craft fair set up. So, after our lunch, we went through the displays. Everything was handmade, and there were some very attractive and interesting items.

The name Timberline is well taken, because you can see just below the lodge, the trees are thick and green, but above it, the land is bare of trees. At the same elevation as the lodge there are some dead trees, and some sickly trees that tried to grow, but just couldn't make it.

We had a great 3 days with our best friends, and we are so glad that that were able to come down and visit us!

On Tuesday, Tammy and Jim headed home, I headed back to work, and I was back up to 183.5. I hit it again, eating 59.0 points for the day, and that got me back up to 185.0 on Wednesday. Just in case I held my points down to 39.0 for that day, but I dropped to 184.0 on Thursday. So, I ran it up to 44.0 points. In addition to that I took some Advil for my shoulder, which is giving me some trouble, and I had sauerkraut for dinner, with its high sodium content. Friday, the scale jumped up to 186.0. I held my points down to 38.5 and I drank 136 ounces of water, but I took some additional Advil. My weight dropped half a pound for my weigh-in and I am happy.

All week, Dotti has been busy packing, and making arrangements for our move. She is always great about doing that. We have moved so many times that there are usually few surprises when we pack up and go to a new place. We are both looking forward to the new place.

Whatever was ailing my heal last week, has mostly gone away this week. I used a double layer of Dr. Shoals footpads in my right shoe for the hiking this last weekend, and my heal felt really good during the walks. I didn't even notice it, in fact. When I got done with the walks, I could still tell it was injured but it was not too bad. This week, I used the footpads in my work shoes too, and my heal is nearly 100% today.

I hit goal (200 pounds) on September 22 last year, and so I am getting close to one year living in one-derland. Where does the time go? It doesn't seem that long ago, when I first started my journey.

This Week In Books

I continued listening to the audio book Battlefield Earth this week. It is interesting how you pick new things up each time you go through a book.

I am down to the last 30 pages or so in Officer-Cadet by Rick Shelley. It is a war story without good guys and bad guys. The mercenary forces are fighting a foe that they are intent on defeating (as per their contract), but not destroying. It is unlike any war story that I have read before, because there are no national entanglements to the story. It is not the USA against someone else, or any of earthly powers that I am familiar with, who are doing battle. While the participants may have European ancestors, they are nearly all from other planets, born native elsewhere. It has been an interesting study in battle tactics and an immersion into military life once again. I have enjoyed the ride.

In the evenings, I am continuing to read The Case of the Demure Defendant by Erle Stanley Gardner. I was thinking that ethically, I find Lieutenant Tragg to be the most upright and honest of all the characters in the Perry Mason stories. Della Street is not far behind, but she will shade ethics to protect Perry. Paul Drake is really a lot like Perry Mason, in that the only thing that keeps him honest is the repercussions of going too far astray. He often refers to the fact that he has a license to protect, and so he has to stay within the law. The implication is that he would have little problem with lying or breaking the law if he didn't have that license to protect. Hamilton Burger is a pompous ass, who is intent on getting a conviction without great regard to whether or not the defendant is guilty, and if possible he would love to send Perry Mason up the river at the same time.

The hero of the stories is perhaps the least ethical of the group. He is very much like a real life famous defense attorney who I read proclaimed proudly that most of the defendants coming to trial were guilty, but he was all too happy to get them off anyway. While Perry Mason doesn't so brazenly come out and say that, his actions are in that vein. He often has no idea whether or not his client is guilty at first, but he does things that will confuse the evidence and will disrupt prosecution of his client; not by reinterpreting the evidence, or by producing new evidence, but by making the evidence that already exists impossible to use.

Tragg is different than any of the other characters. He wants the truth - period. He will work with Perry Mason when he thinks it will further justice. He will even torpedo his own case if it will nab the real murderer. Burger is much harder to convince to cooperate. Tragg is a professional, who is skeptical and street wise, but he serves the ideal of the truth first. I admire that in a man. The smoke and mirrors used during the battle of the attorneys take intelligence, but are bereft of ethical merit. It is often demonstrated, in real life, that in our court system the one who can afford the better attorney gets "better" justice. (It would appear to me that there is something inherently wrong with a system that claims to provide justice, but at the same time, how much you have to spend to obtain this offered ideal, actually affects the outcome.)

I think the primary "moral" to the Perry Mason books is, "the end justifies the means." If the defendant was declared innocent, and the guilty party was apprehended (which fortunately nearly always happens in the end of the story), it doesn't matter how dishonest, or even sometimes criminal, Mason's behavior was in order to make it happen. Is honesty an end in itself, or is it a tactic used to merely appear honorable? Do we use honesty as a tool, only to be put away when no longer useful? If even a representative of the court feels that the laws only are to be followed as long as his actions are being observed, then what real meaning does law have? And what about sliding along the very edge of the letter of the law, while at the same time flagrantly violating the spirit of the law? Questions. Always Questions. :)

1 year, 118 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6'3" 239.5/185.5/185±2/BMI:23.1/WK-69
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story