Saturday morning, prior to my workout, the scale read two thirty point four. Just four tenths of a pound shy of a twenty pound weight loss in two months time. After my workout the same scale read two twenty eight and change. Working out in near hundred degree temperatures causes impressive water weight loses.
If my math is correct I’m losing about 0.35 pounds a day on average, or a caloric deficit of twelve hundred and forty seven calories. My average daily caloric intake since the beginning of June has been just a fraction under seventeen hundred. The average for the last five days is twelve hundred and twenty two. At this rate I’ll see two hundred pounds by Halloween, and one ninety for Thanksgiving. I don’t expect this rate of loss to continue, eventually the curve will flatten out.
The best part is having people ask me if I am losing weight, or just telling me that they can see the weight loss. The catch is that my pants are all getting baggy. I’m going to have to either have them taken in or buy new ones. I’m hoping to take them in and get maybe another twenty pounds of use out of them before buying new. No one told me losing weight was going to be expensive.
Not that I am complaining, mind you.
It appears that the new WiFi card has cured the iMac of it’s won’t-stay-connected blues. The new card arrived in the mail yesterday, but since it was insured the post man conveniently left me a claim ticket so I could trek to the post office this morning on my way to kendo.
After installing the card (three minutes, a snap) and rebooting the connection has stayed all afternoon. It is nice to have the centerpiece of my multi-computer setup working properly again.
Now that I know these cards can go bad I’m thinking about getting a spare, just so if there is a next time I won’t have to live with the problem for a week waiting for the shipment.
About a week or so ago the wireless connection to the iMac computer started acting flaky. It has never made the connection on its own after being restarted or rebooted. I always have to click the WiFi icon and select my network to get it started. Once connected though, it was always rock solid.
Lately it only stays connected for a few minutes, and it is never connected after being woken up from sleep. Clicking on the WiFi icon reveals no connection information at all. I’ve been able to memorize my 26-character hex key simply due to repeatedly having to enter it. Both of the other wirelessly connected computers (and the Tivo for that matter) are working fine.
Since my Macintoshes are now nearly four years old, they only support the original Airport card from Apple. The one that isn’t MADE anymore. The Airport card that is currently in the iMac was purchased on eBay for the low, low price of $135. Roughly double the LIST price when Apple was selling them. Supply and demand sucks when the supply is finite.
(Note… the blasted connection has dropped again. I’ll have to copy this to the clip board and post it later when the computer is online again.)
So I went back to eBay and ordered another Airport card (this time only $90!) and I am hoping that it solves the problem. If it doesn’t I’ll either have to go downtown and stump the Geniuses at the Apple store, or rearrange the apartment to put the iMac where an Ethernet cord can reach it from the router.
Spam truly is a scourge on the Internet. In the time that it takes my machine to delete the six thousand or so I’ve gotten in the last ten days, I get SIX NEW SPAMS.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!
I guess as long as I can bail the boat faster than it’s sinking I’m okay.
Every once in a while you take a course of action thinking that it will lead you in one direction, while secretly hoping that a desire you can’t even voice will actually come true. Joining eHarmony was just such an event for me. I thought it would lead to meeting some new people, that it would be a good way to dip my toe back into the pool, as it were. Secretly I was hoping that I’d meet someone special, someone that I would really like. Someone who would like me back.
Imagine how wonderful it would be to meet someone who thinks like you, expresses themselves openly and honestly, who responds to you, and to whom you respond, and for whom you have strong feelings after just a short time.
Imagine how absolutely freaking scary it would be to meet someone who thinks like you, expresses themselves openly and honestly, who responds to you, and to whom you respond, and for whom you have strong feelings after just a short time.
Just imagine.
My kendo workouts continue to be good. Having a prior background in karate is surprisingly helpful. While there are virtually no shared techniques except for some of the footwork, the concepts are the same – and I was always good at applying new concepts.
Working out outside has it challenges. Heat, bugs, various brain-dead cretins who cruise by and shout out their windows. But the shared experience makes up for all of that. What I have been missing most about karate was the camaraderie of participating with other people who have a common interest. I was never a team sport kind of guy, so I missed out on the team bonding that the football or basketball team might have in high school. I did try out for the wrestling team, but I didn’t take to the intensity of the Coach’s desire to win, Win, WIN!
Martial arts offers the chance to do an individual pursuit in a group setting. You work with partners, one on one, or sometimes two or three on one, and you practice by yourself - but with other people there. A good dojo (and I’ve found one here) will welcome you no matter what your skill level or dedication level. What is important is that each person is doing their best, striving to make themselves better.
Whatever the reason, I seem to excel at martial arts, and practicing seems to center me and bring me peace.
Somewhere in the last posting, or two, I crossed the three hundred thousand word mark on this site. The little counter at the top of the archive page tells me so.
That’s a lot of words.
Amazing what one guy, with no real purpose other than airing his emotional laundry, can do in six or seven years.
(Keep your 700 monkeys on 700 typewriters jokes to yourself.)
On a whim a week or two ago I ordered a package of “LIVESTRONG” bracelets and a bright yellow tee-shirt. At the time my thinking was, I know four people in my immediate family who were either impacted by, or died from cancer. After having the bracelet for a few days it occurs to me that there is a fifth person impacted in all the cases - me.
When I look at the LIVESTRONG logo on the band around my arm I take it as a reminder to me to live strong. To face life’s challenges head on, with verve and passion. This lifetime is too fleeting to be spent on the sidelines, or worse, in the stands, watching. LIVESTRONG is a composite word that sums up on of my favorite quotes of all time:
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, “The Man In The Arena”, Paris Sorbonne, 1910
I continue to lose weight at a surprising rate. Yesterday morning the scale read two-thirty-three, which is seventeen pounds lighter than when I started in early June. It appears that the Eat Less Do More (tm) diet actually works. I’ve been averaging about 1400 calories a day now and that seems to be enough less, combined with my increased physical activity, to help me lose weight. I’ve been told that ten pounds is a “size” so I’ll be in the market for new pants soon. My current rotation of work slacks are all getting lose around the waist.
I’ve also started to notice less pain and clicking from my knees. The first few weeks of kendo produced some new noises from the left knee in particular but, not only has the clicking gone away, the creaking I’ve had for years in both knees is less. I’m very careful about over extending them or injuring them.
I am now willing to be optimistic that I’ll not only reach my goal of two hundred pounds, but perhaps even one ninety or less.
For the past seven years I have cataloged and discussed all manner of things here on my site. For the most part I was uncaring about the results of recording bits of my life and casting them adrift on the sea of the Internet. Since joining eHarmony however, I’ve found myself being a bit more judicious about what gets posted here and what doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not ashamed of anything that I am or do. In the past I have shared some very painful and revealing episodes from my life here. What concerns me then, is establishing a context. The snippets of my life that I post here are just that, snippets. Someone reading some or all of these postings would get an idea about who I am. (What that idea is exactly isn’t clear to me - I’m too close the Mark tree to see the Mark forest.)
I am teetering on whether to expose my site to the matches I’ve been communicating with through eHarmony. Obviously this site would be a gold mine of information to someone just meeting me. Not knowing what conclusions they might reach as a result of reading it is what gives me pause.
My self confidence in relationships is not the same as say, my confidence at work, or in the martial arts. I’ve only been through a few relationship overtures and I’m not confident in myself. Therefore I’m less confident about exposing this site to potential new relationships. I think as I become more confident in the dating/relationship realm I’ll feel more comfortable about sharing this site with everyone, and I will be less worried about what to say here and what not to say.