Week 78 Update

At 0600 hours, the morning was dark, and the sky was dropping the water that it had transported for us from the ocean, as it had been doing all night. It was 47°, not cold at all, as I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, “184.0 pounds!”

That is down a half-pound from yesterday, in spite of the fact that I ate 51.0 points. I could tell that things were going to be a bit dicey later in the morning yesterday, when, after breakfast, and a 16 oz cup of coffee, and a 24 ounce glass of water, my weight had fallen from 184.5 down to 183.5. The biological machine is just filled with surprises. (That is why I am always stepping on the scale and seeing what is going on during the day.) At that point, I decided to go high on my points for the day to try and stop a major downturn on the scale this morning. I did do that, but I did not stop a small downturn. But that is okay. I will take 184.0 any day as a good weigh-in.

The week started off with my last weekly weigh-in being a bit high. So I dropped my points down to 35 last Saturday. My weight dropped a pound and a half on Sunday. I therefore, moved back up to 46.5 points no effect. On Monday, we ate in the room for dinner, and it was a low point meal, and I didn’t eat enough to bring my points up out of the 30s. Still, I held steady on the scale. Tuesday, I felt like I had to do something about the low points the day before, unless I wanted to see the bottom drop out on me again. So, I upped my points to 48.5, five and one-half points over my normal target of 43 points. The scale dropped anyway on Wednesday morning to 182.5. So, I hit it even harder that day, and moved up to 56.5 points. The scale responded with a one pound gain and I was back up to 183.5. Still low, but better. I tried 46 points on Thursday to fine tune it upwards, hopefully without an over swing. It brought me up to within a half pound of my target weight. I thought I was right on track, and was planning for a 43 point day, when I found that the scale had dropped in the early morning again, and so I hit it with 51 points. It is very much like driving a car; I always have to make minor adjustments to stay on track.

For the week, I averaged 46.07 points per day. That is 3 points higher than normal, and even up nearly a point and a half per day from the previous week. My weight averaged 183.79 pounds for this week, which is down nearly three-quarters of a pound from last week. Points up, pounds down. It sure is interesting doing maintenance. :)

I averaged nearly 8 cups of water per day, so I did fine there. The only day I was not happy with was Monday, when I only drank 3 cups.

For exercise, Dotti and I have been using the stairs from the ground floor to the third floor every day, and when I go to work I am hauling my computer bag, loaded with not only my computer, but all the stuff I used to carry around in my briefcase, before the computer became a mandatory accessory to working life. When we go shopping, I get the added benefit of carrying the packages up the stairs as well. We did walk to the mall last Saturday for the Zonie walk, and got in a couple of miles. We have done some other walking here and there, but it hasn’t been measured or timed, so I can’t put in any aerobic points for it.

For work this week, it has been fairly quiet, so I didn’t do a lot of heavy lifting. I did attend the customer's morning 0645 meeting twice this week, which means a fairly healthy walk from the “vendors’ parking lot” in the middle of nowhere, uphill on the way in. When I have to go into the clean room, I go into another building, and have a long series of concrete stairs to take from the parking lot, that rise what would be about 2 stories, if they were in a building. Then once I get to the building there are more stairs inside that would be 2 stories in a normal building. Then after I get changed into my “bunny suit” for the clean room, I have another long set of stairs that run from the “sub fab” up to the “main fab.” Then I have a walk that runs the length of the huge building. This week I had to make that trip several times, including one time time hauling some equipment with me, that I had to install, and then carry the equipment that had been replaced back out to my car. It was not extremely heavy, but it was significant. I also had to walk the length of that building several time, to get over to their shipping and receiving department, in order to ship a part out, after boxing and banding it to a pallet. All and all, it was a fairly active week for me.

Dotti’s eye has been doing really well. She has not had the contact in for quite a while now and she has not had any reoccurrence of the problem. We are hopeful that it has finally healed permanently. She is still using the eye drops and nighttime eye gel (not her favorite) but overall it has been a big time improvement!

This week our weather has returned to normal. Our temperatures are in the 50s for highs, and the 40s for lows, and the sky has clouded up for the fall and winter rains. All is well with the world. :)

This Week in Books I have finished listening to “Out of the Silent Planet” and “Paralandra” by CS Lewis. I am now working on the third book of the trilogy, “That Hideous Strength.” It is significantly different than the other two, and it is longer than both of the others combined.

The first book was a fanciful trip to Mars, with a heaping helping of science fiction (obsolete, and quaint), philosophy, and theological speculation. The second book, was a reenactment of the Bible story of Adam and Eve, set on the planet Venus, and with quite a twist. Again, it was sci-fi, philosophy, and theology all mixed together, by a very good story teller.

The third book is the only one of the three that was entirely set on planet Earth. This one was part fairy tale, part science fiction, and heavily laden with theological ideas, which form the basic framework of the entire trilogy. It even includes an awakening of Merlin the Magician into the twentieth century, as a major plot element. I have already gone through these books a couple of times before, but I still enjoy listening to them on the road.

I have not done much reading in the car and am making very slow progress on Major but I am sure that will change when I get back to my regular grind in Portland.

I did purchase a book by Stephen King, called “On Writing.” It wasn’t his view of writing that interested me so much as the promise of the book cover, claiming that it would shed some light on what his personal life was like. I have always wondered what might be driving a mind that is so focused on the hideous side of life. So, far I have found from the book that he and his brother were raised by his mother, without his father around, and that they had to rely on various aunts and uncles for quite a bit of help. He was very greatly involved with watching horror movies as a child, but at least so far in what I have read it doesn’t appear that he was exposed personally to any great and horrible event. When he was young, his mother graphically described to him something that she personally witnessed, concerning a jumping suicide, and he mentioned the fact that this stuck with him very strongly. Other than the childhood personal upheaval of the moving, and lack of stability at home, and the over exposure to horror movies, and later horror written fiction, there doesn’t so far seem to be anything other than personal preference for the material he produces. So, far the book has been quite interesting. I could tell from his previous works, that politically he and I are not on the same page at all, and this book has brought that out very clearly as well. However, he has always had a captivating style of writing, so I don’t think I will have any trouble staying with this one to the end.

1 year, 181 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.0/185±2/BMI:23.00/WK-78
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story