Urban Life

The Filipino neighbors - Alex's family - are playing mahjong on their back patio tonight. We joke about them sounding like a bunch of chickens, but really it's a nice kind of sound: exuberant, and perhaps mildly intoxicated. The cook - as we call him - is back again from one of the several-month stints he does on Alaskan fishing boats. Alex lives there with his girlfriend, her parents, and their one year old son Noah. And sometimes the cook. It's an eclectic neighborhood we live in but we know all our neighbors and there really aren't any bad apples. Music from the community center gets a little loud some Saturday nights, and the herd of drunken bikers firing up their choppers when the Queen of Hearts closes can be enervating. Hope, the 92 year old spitfire across the street is out working in her yard most days and likes to chat. Hmmm... I just looked up "spitfire" and the definition is more negative than I intended. She's actually quite nice, just shockingly active and sharp for her age. That's what I meant. Terri, across the other street, asked us what color we'd like her to paint her house since we'd be the ones looking at it. Funny. We seem to run into our friends from the cafe all the time. I almost ran over Nick the other day when he suddenly appeared from a side-street on his skateboard. He was too busy smoking and jamming out to some tunes on his comically huge headphones to notice. He and Sarah have a daughter, Coco, who is Austin's age. Nick still thinks he's 19. Toshi and her sons Cameron and Devin moved in with her parents John and Sylvia (behind us) a while back. I could go on and on, but this is starting to sound like the news from Lake Wobegon. Mostly I'm just rambling in a more or less continuous stream of consciousness as we contemplate maybe moving downtown to the Pearl in a year or two. That would certainly be a higher class neighborhood, and with a pretty great high school for Austin. But then, we know everybody here. This is the first time in my life that I've really felt comfortable with my surroundings. I think we all do. Hmmm...

The House Burned Down Today

Not really. Just checking to see if anyone's actually reading this. Hellooooooooooo???

Oh yeah, 193 lbs. today. Like watching a glacier melt.

The Drinking Man's Diet

Anyone ever heard of the Drinking Man's Diet? Looks good to me. Basically Atkin's with cocktails. While Googling how many carbs are in an olive (about 0.5 for green olives, practically 0 for black) I kept getting listings for calories/carbs in various Olive Garden dishes. Um, if you're trying to lose weight, don't eat at Olive Garden. Duh. 193.4 lbs. today.

Visual Aid

194.2 lbs this morning. I guess as long as there's measurable daily progress I can live with it. My face is noticeably less chipmunky and my jeans fall off without a belt now. Less than 30 lbs to go.

Food Poisoning

Lost a couple of pounds rather suddenly last night/this morning due to some bad ham. Not recommended.

New Scale

Pretty exciting, huh? I weighed 198.8 lbs at 5pm. At 6pm I weighed 199.2 because I drank some water. After going pee I was back to 198.8. Finally, an accurate (or at least consistent) scale. We'll see what it says in the morning.
Today I only walked 1.24 miles, but burned 2001 calories against consumption of - ready for this? - 759 calories. No wonder I feel faint. Everyone reading this blog (which means Cari I think) knows how stubborn I am and here's where it pays off.

End of Week 1

It's been about a week and I'm down about 8 lbs so far, but some of that's probably water. In the past, by eating zero carbs, I've been able to lose about a pound a day up to about 25 lbs and then it gets harder. I'm hoping the added exercise will speed things up. I don't have the patience for prolonged dieting and would rather just tough it out for few weeks. I realize permanent changes must be made as well, but I want to be at my target weight now, not a year from now.

I ordered a new scale from Amazon that will hopefully be more accurate and consistent so I won't have to guesstimate as much. (Is it so hard to make an accurate scale? The last one wasn't cheap and it just sucks.) When I get it, and assuming it lives up to all the gushing reviews, I'll start posting my weight as well.

Thank you Cari for reading my blog! :-)