Category: General

I should write something today. But I don’t know what.

I’m sitting in Starbucks, at Pioneer Courthouse Square (of course), people-watching. In fact, hang on…

…OK, now I’m facing in a better direction for people-watching. There’s a band playing down in the Square. According to Citysearch, the band is sponsored by Multnomah Bible College, although the music doesn’t seem to be specifically Christian; the last song they did was a note-perfect cover of The Police’s “Message In A Bottle”.

There are two Japanese girls at a table next to me, conversing in their native language. If Jake was here I’m sure he’d say something to them. They appear to be studying; textbooks open in front of them. One of them has a little PDA/calculator/device open, and it’s covered in stickers of other Japanese faces.

There’s a blonde-haired guy with another iBook; he’s here as much as I am, it seems. He almost always has the chair next to the power outlet (there’s only one here at Starbucks’ so the tables next to it are very popular.

I had lunch at Wendy’s today. A Double with Cheese (no mayo) is 640 calories. It was delicious. I held myself back from ordering fries, even though I had the calories to spare; I want to have a decent-sized dinner tonight. All I had for breakfast was two Cliff Bars (250 calories each) so I’ve still got over 800 for the day.

Went to my nephew’s first Little League game of the season last night. It was a night game; started at 7:30 PM out at Alpenrose Dairy Farm, which is home to the Little League World Series. I’d never been out there before; it’s a great facility for kid’s baseball.

I showed up late in the third inning, and his team was down 3 runs (score was 1-4). My nephew got up to bat (he bats 10th out of 12) and popped up right to the first baseman. Hey, at least he made contact. We cheered him on.

The other team scored another run in the next inning, and my nephew’s team couldn’t get any offense going for a while.

They only play six innings total, so there’s not a lot of time to get a rally going. But then, in the fifth inning (“our” team batted last) the kid ahead of my nephew got on base with an infield grounder. My nephew got up to bat, man on first, no outs, and after getting a full count, swung away and knocked a low pop right between the pitcher and first basemen and over the head of the right fielder, who had pulled too far in. The kid got a double out of it! And the kid on first made it all the way to home!

That was the start of the rally that led to their team tying up the game at 5-5 and sending the game into extra innings. They only needed one, though and they ended up winning their season opener.

My nephew had the biggest grin on his face at the end of that game! He’d done good, and helped keep the rally going!

Normally, when I sleep, I sleep on my side, with my legs pulled up and bent. I heard that it’s better for your back if you bend your knees like that and started sleeping that way.

But now that I’ve lost so much weight, when I lie down like that, my knee bones bump up against each other, and my legs don’t fit together well. I’ve had to start sleeping with a pillow between my legs in order to be comfortable. Just another thing to get used to about my new body.

It’s always interesting overhearing other people’s conversations.

Walking past the tanning booths at my gym this morning, two women were getting out. One woman said to the other woman, in a happy-and-amazed voice, “I orgasmed twice in there!” She was facing away from me, but turned to see me as I walked by.

I stopped dead in place, and put on a mock-shocked expression, which made the girls (both of them) laugh and blush.

Women do that in there?

An hour and 25 minutes to go.

Wish me luck.

Working on a Saturday?

Yes, I am. And, of course, the race tomorrow.

Another lost weekend. At least I was smart enough (and had enough saved vacation time) to take Monday off.

OK, here’s two days I worked up, and they both fall within the 3000-3100 calories/day range:

Day One: Total = 3026 calories

• Energy bar
• Soy latte
• Candy (snacking throughout the day)
• Roasted chicken SubWay, foot-long
• Sun Chips
• Soy Chai
• Quesadilla, 10″ flour tortilla, chicken, w/salsa and sour cream
• Chips & salsa

Day Two: Total = 3010 calories

• English delight (English muffin, cheese, egg, ham)
• Soy chai, 16 oz.
• Wendy’s Double w/cheese
• Biggie fries
• Baja Burrito, steak (From Baja Fresh)
• Tortilla chips & salsa
• Beer, pint

I just thought about what I would typically eat in a day. Or what I used to eat. And, like I posted before, that’s a lot of food! And, as long as I remain as active as I am now, if that’s all I ate, I wouldn’t gain or lose weight. Interesting, yes?

I mentioned last week or maybe the week before that I’ve started adding more calories per day to my diet. Doing it slowly, so my body can adapt, and so it doesn’t hang on to the calories that are coming in.

Even so, I’m still losing about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds per week, which means that with the calories coming in and my current activity level the numbers still show that I require about 3000-3100 calories per day to maintain a given weight level.

Man-o-man, that’s a lot of calories. Or it seems that way, after months of about half that number…

It’s interesting to me that the numbers seem to match. It’s also interesting to me that there’s so much mysticism about food and diet, when from my experience, it’s pretty much all about the numbers. Sure, there are things you can eat that do other things for you, and maybe I’ll see that in the long run, but in the short term, if all someone cares about is losing weight, it really doesn’t matter what you eat as long as your burning more calories than you take in.

I’m not trying to belittle the process; it’s been hard, and I’ve gone over the self-imposed limit many times, but even so, I’ve had greater success longer with counting calories than I did with the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet, once you’re past the induction phase, is just a sneaky method of reducing calories, I suspect. Someday I’ll run the numbers on that to see if my hunch is correct.

In the meantime, I’m going to calculate what a 3000 calorie day would look like and post it here.

…Dammit, I was going to post something but I forgot what it was.

It was short and sweet, and quite possibly funny. But now it’s gone.

Ah, well, time for work. Bleh.

Sadly, the tale of the little shipment that went to Deutschland has nearly come to a close.

The tracking information page shows that it actually made it to Portland today, in time to be delivered. I wasn’t in the office when it was here, but the receptionist, having been briefed by me, refused the shipment and it is now on it’s way back to its point of origin.

Once it’s there, the major online retailer will issue me a credit, and the story will draw to a close. They have not responded to the email I sent them yesterday, and now there seems to be no point to their responding at all. But it would have been great if they had at least acknowledged that there had been a major screw-up. If I was pushier and had more time, I’d harrangue them for a credit over and above what they owed me; after all, it wasn’t just an inconvenience to me, it caused problems for my client (and actually cost me money, since I could have charged her my hourly fee for installing Windows 2000).

I dunno. I’m going to wait and make sure that I actually get my credit. Story’s close to finished, but not quite done.

It’s apparent, though, that I will never know exactly what happened. I’m dying of curiosity.