July Weight Watch Page

Here is the link to my July Weight Watch Page.

Starting the month about 14 pounds lower than I began April. Hoping to end the month 20 pounds lighter.

EDITED: July 18th - Updated weight figures for July 12-18

EDITED: July 11th - Updated weight figures for July 5-11
(a difficult week)

EDITED: July 4th - Updated weight figures for July 1-4

It's Easy to Be Confused

Before I get to my post I would like to recommend you jump over and read this POST from Fairyhedgehog. As is generally the case, she has found a topic of great interest. Thanks, fairy, for being good at finding these things, and then passing them on to the rest of us.

Now, as to what I was thinking of writing about.

Thought about it yesterday, but as I had already posted I decided to wait a day. Last fall I had a few days in which I did multiple posts, but readers were finding that was a nuisance to deal with, so I've tried to restrict myself to a single post in a day.

For whatever reason I got to thinking about how absolutely stupid people (and I am a people) get when they get carried away with an idea and let it take them past the point of intelligent thinking. One of the more stupid, and offensive actually, ideas is that when a couple conceives a child it isn't just the woman who becomes pregnant. They both do.

This is one of the most a*sinine concepts I've ever heard. Yes, both the woman and the man are affected by the pregnancy, but they are not both pregnant. To claim such is like saying, "You and your spouse have cancer", when it is just your OR your spouse. Or perhaps, "Fred and Joan have a broken leg. Fred fell off a ladder." Everything in a couple's life affects both of them. And when children arrive they are affected, too. So, if the baby on the way is the second, or third, or whateverth child, does that mean the children are pregnant, too?

I understand the concept of inclusion, and trying to make the guy feel like he's part of what's going on. Well, if he's any kind of a man at all he does. And he doesn't need to be told he's pregnant in order to be so. And telling him he is isn't going to change things if he isn't interested. If he isn't interested in the baby he helped create then he has bigger problems than feeling left out. In fact, I doubt he feels left out. He's clueless.

From the day I learned Son was on his way I read to him. Spouse thought I was an idiot, but she was intrigued by me laying on my stomach reading into her stomach. She wasn't sure what I was trying to accomplish, but I wanted our baby to recognize my voice when he/she came out. My hope was that the distortion from her skin and the fluids wouldn't make a big difference. I'll never know. However, at the birth, after the nurse had cleaned him up and wrapped him tightly in a soft, soft blanket, he was handed to me. I began talking to him. His eyes opened and he stared at me for a full hour as I paced the floor, telling him all about things. When he fell asleep I gave him to his mother. (Don't criticize. She was so exhausted she needed the time to gather some strength. She only held him about five minutes and then needed to sleep.)

I was still working in an office during that time. I shared a cubicle with "John". It was rectangular, with his desk at one end and mine at the other. A table, used for collaboration on project and code design, separated us. John was in his early twenties and just married. I was going to be forty in a few months. As co-workers do when there is constant opportunity, we chatted about things. We didn't always look at each other when we did. Didn't have to. We could multi-task: get work done and waste time at the same time. It was great.

Anyway, I made some mention about needing to go out and buy a crib. John stopped what he was doing and spun around in his chair. (I loved those swivel chairs. In fact, when the company got new - and horrible - chairs to replace those we were using then, I bought two for ten dollars apiece. Spouse and Son wrecked one, but I'm sitting in the other as I write this.)

Are you and Spouse pregnant?

No. Spouse is pregnant. I'm just fat.

John apologized, saying he hadn't been clear if I was into that kind of nonsense or not. His wife was, and so he tended to be that way at times, too. Although very much a young guy, John also had no problem with what they used to call, 'his feminine side'. But no one ever called him a woman. His name was John.

Of course, anyone who saw me would not confuse me with a woman either. Don't have the hips for it.

Ostracized By Summer

We are having one frikkin' cold summer. Most people around here seem to be happy with it. On the television the news and weather crews keep talking about how 'wonderful' it has been. Wonderful? It's frikkin' cold! In July! We should be enduring temps bordering - and sometimes exceeding - 100 degrees. (That's about 38-39 for those you who measure in celsius.)

I guess I make a poor Minnesotan. Born and raised here, I hate cold weather. Even as a young person I seldom went outside in winter. Only when I had to. There was a person (who shall remain nameless) from my past who used to say, "I like winter better than summer. At least in winter you can put on more clothes. There's only so much you can take off." Well thank God for that!

Most Minnesotans complain about the heat in July and August and then b*tch about cold in December and January. Not me. I moan about the cold all year long and never complain about the heat. Even when it's too hot for me. It's such a rare commodity in this state. Of course, now that I'm incredibly fat I cannot tolerate heat at all anymore. But I won't complain. The heat didn't make me fat. I did that on my own. And when I wasn't fat I could tolerate anything.

Used to convince Stephen to play best-of-five sets in tennis when it was 101 degrees. That's how I know he had to have loved me. Stephen was not a hot weather person. He was the one who got me to go out into the snow. (The things we do for love.) But poor Stephen would just be melting in the heat while I sailed through point after point. Our most famous match came on a Saturday in August when it was 102 and not a cloud in the sky. I won in straight sets: 6-0; 6-0; 6-0. The only points Stephen won were my three double-faults. The final point was scored on his weak lob to the net. I rushed forward and smashed the ball to the court. Stephen wearily turned to fetch the ball. When he did I noticed him brush his shoulder. When we got to J's Pizza (a favorite hangout which still exists in Spring Lake Park this day) he had downed a couple of Pepsi Colas he confessed something.

Remember when you hit that last point?

Yeah.

Did you see me brush my shoulder?

Yeah.

Well, just as the ball went past me a bird flew over and sh*t on me. I thought it an appropriate end to the game.

It's been so cold around here I decided to put in a Christmas movie last night. Polar Express. Just out of spite. Of course, I fell asleep just as they reached the North Pole. I do that now when I watch movies at home. Fall asleep. I expect I could put in a movie ten minutes after getting a restful night's sleep and be out again before the thing is half through. I suppose it doesn't help that I watch television while laying in a bed.

No hot weather. Not a fun summer at all.

An Easy Way to Fish

As I've written before, I am not, and never have been, real keen on fishing. But before Stephen and I would drive and hike to the Rum River, or Cedar Creek, I would sometimes be up at my uncle's cabin near Grand Rapids. The cabin was high on a hill overlooking Little Wabanna Lake. Little Wabanna was one of those tiny pond-like lakes, great for pan fish and a few northern pike. Only catching the big fish was difficult. The reason was the lake was so inundated with small fish the big fish hardly bothered with bait on a hook.

We used to sit on the big pontoon raft about thirty yards from shore in fifteen feet of absolutely clear water. You could see the bottom. You could also see hundreds of pan fish swimming in the pontoon's shadows. We would row out to the raft with cane poles and a carton of worms. Then we would fish.

This kind of fishing was incredibly easy. Hooks would barely enter the water before six or eight fish would swarm upon them. A quick jerk of the pole and up came the catch - generally a pitifully small sunfish. Sometimes it would be an even smaller perch. The bigger fish were deeper down, but getting the hooks down there was a trial. We would put six or eight lead sinkers on the lines and drop them in. But with all of the small fish the odds of catching a "keeper" were fairly slim. Yet it was not catch and release. The lake was so overstocked with fish that the rule was keep everything. What you didn't eat yourself would be fed to the hogs, or buried in local gardens for fertilizer. There were just too many fish in the lake.

I found this out first hand when Helvie and I were fishing. We ran out of bait and as a joke I just dropped an empty hook into the water. I caught a fish. We thought it was so funny we sat and caught a dozen more. From that day on we never used bait. We just went out with hooks and caught fish. For eight and nine-year-olds it was great.

What I remember, though, is how the fish quit biting around sunset. That was when the lake's surface became covered with water spiders, gnats, and other insects. At that point the fish would ignore even the best of bait and head to the surface to eat bugs. We would sit and listen to the popping sounds all around us. It sounded like a room full of gum chewers smaking their lips. It would last until dark. Then the fish would be done until the morning.

Eventually the lake's overpopulation of pan fish dwindled. I haven't fished there in at least forty years. My aunt still lives there, but I think she's gone most of the year now. The bug population is still high. Mostly mosquitos.

When Cruel and Stupid People are in Charge

So I'm supposed to go to the clinic this month and have my blood retested. There is a problem with that. Well, actually, two problems, but the one isn't that big of a deal.

The big problem is that they won't schedule a time. I'm just supposed to show up. Only I have to fast for twenty-four hours beforehand. The problem with not having an appointment is that I won't think about going twenty-four hours beforehand so I won't fast. So I can't go. The month's half over already, and the only time I think about it is when I'm eating. "Oh. Yeah. I need to fast so I can go get the blood work done. Tomorrow. Maybe."

The little prlblem is I don't have health insurance anymore. It came down to having insurance or a place to live, and a place to live won out. Not that we can really afford the place to live either, but one has to be some place. (I argued this point with Spouse a year ago, but lost out. Pity. The premiums meant several thousand dollars went down the toilet.)

Meanwhile, our brilliant (and greedy and completely clueless) government officials are trying to pass a law making it illegal to be poor. That's right. Those of us who cannot afford insurance will be fined the money we don't have to pay for the insurance. What will they do when we can't pay the fines? Throw us into prison? We've gone backward in time to the days of debtor prisons. At least then we'll have insurance. Pretty good insurance from what I've heard.

Yes, they say the government will subsidize the poor who can't afford it. Right. And you know what kind of insurance that will be? Basically, free clinic stuff. If only our people weren't such arrogant and proud a*sholes they could copy a program which actually works instead of trying to invent something new and ruining a lot of people's lives in the process.

I don't know how much I give a da*n anymore. They say I'm costing the rest of the country billions because I don't have insurance. How? And why am I not seeing any of this money? When there is no insurance to pay my medical bills, who pays? I do. Or, I just don't go (which is more likely). I went two years with three broken teeth because I didn't have dental insurance. I went four years without being checked for diabetes (which I have, by the way) because I couldn't afford it. When I told my diabetes doctor I was soon to lose my insurance he asked me how that would affect me. I told him. I would do what thousands upon thousands of people in my mother's generation are doing: decide between medicine and food. Food would probably win. He said doctors don't like to be told that. Well, I've got news for the doctors: The poor don't much care for having to make that decision. But it's life. And believe it or not, there are actually thousands upon thousands of people who would give anything if they could trade place with me. The son of the people across the street comitted suicide this spring. What do they care about money problems? At least I have my son.

But where is all of this money being spent by others because I don't go to the doctor, or buy my medicine? Lost time from work? Well, I've been dumped from every job I've had because I'm too old to have it anymore, or the greedy b*stards in the financial industry have forced the business to collapse. Yes, Madoff got 150 years. I saw where on the news. They report that it's like a college campus. Maybe I'll get lucky, too, and be sent there. I can room with Madoff.

Hi. My name's Bevie. What are you in for?

Stealing billions from the world and forcing an economic collapse that put millions out of work. And you?

Being poor.

You filthy scum.

Strategy vs Dexterity

I've always been a sucker for video games. Way back in the "dark ages", when computer games came via Atari and Odyssey, games were pretty simple and graphics were almost embarrassing. The concepts were simple and mastering most was not difficult.

There were many games I developed an understanding of in which I simply could not lose. Ever. Not unless I wished it. One was a game my brother Mickey purchased. It was a baseball game. Mickey and I loved baseball. I didn't like the game much because the pitchers could throw incredible pitches which defied all known laws of physics. This made scoring for me difficult. But I only needed one run to win. Every time. The reason was that I learned something about the game. After pushing the button to "pitch" the ball, one had but to tap the controller stick to the left. This would put the ball over the outside corner of home plate. A strike. The batter had to swing. Unfortunately, no matter when he (she) swung, if the ball was hit it did exactly the same thing every time. Roll to the first baseman for an out. I could not be scored upon, so I could not lose.

Another game was Atari tennis. It was also a simple game. Just a version of the original pong. I learned a technique which meant I could return every shot. So it just became a matter of outlasting my opponent.

Breakout was fun. Unfortunately, the original version only allowed players to clear the screen twice. I guess it was assumed no one would do that. Well, some of us did. I think the last version I played continues to infinity.

All regular computer games have had the same problem since the first were created: when the computer plays as an opponent, it must cheat in order to win. The reason is that in order to program true intelligent strategy into a game is cost prohibitive. So the programmers take advantage of the fact that the computer has to know everything in order to process the game. Computer opponents tend to get better breaks than humans. It can be frustrating and annoying.

Take Microsoft Hearts, for instance. I did some studies and determined that there is a 60% chance (on my computer anyway) of me either being dealt, or passed the Queen of Spades on every deal. This is not realistic. As many times as I have played Hearts in real life I have never had that kind of luck. Also, computer players tend to 'gang up' on human players. This can be realistic as I have learned when playing any game with my in-laws. The object in their mind is for me to lose. Then they win. They are a collective entity. So in that regard I guess MS-Hearts is realistic.

Programmers hate it when their software is defeated by humans. They take it personally. I wrote before on this blog how Randy wrote an Othello software program for his computer class in college. He eventually got it so it could defeat himself and Stephen more times than not, but it never beat me. The reason? Randy was using me to get the strategy for the game, and what he was never able to do was program a drastic shift in strategy mid-way through a game. When something isn't working, that is the best strategy.

Games now have much better graphics, but they're not a whole lot different than those of the past. Sports games really suck. Always have.

When I wrote my baseball game it was a strategy game, not an exercise in dexterity. There were no graphics. It was all text. Well, one had to push buttons in order to generate plays. But one would simply tell their pitcher what to pitch, and signal runners when to steal, and signal batters whether to bunt, swing away, or go for the walk. It was up to the players to actually do the task. This was based on mathematical probabilities based on this batter's skill against that pitcher's skill against the fielder's skill behind the pitcher and the runner's speed. It wasn't perfect, but it was interesting.

I actually managed to play a season of 102-games for six teams with a best-of-seven championship. My teams were: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Washington. New York won the regular season and beat Boston 4 games to 1 in the championship. I completed a draft and expansion, adding four teams: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St Louis. But the season didn't make it very long. My saved copy of the game became corrupted and I wasn't able to reload it. The program was lost forever.

Have tried several times to rewrite it, but I get bored and never finish. Writing the software isn't fun anymore. It's playing the game that's fun. No wonder I got dumped.

Growing Up in a Mean Area

The area where I grew up had a good share of characters. I expect I was one of them, at least in the eyes of others. But some of those people were prime examples of why cousins (and siblings) should not marry and have children.

There were plenty of "odd" characters even in my class, but the older classes were filled with them. And what made things bad was that, the odder a person was, the more likely they were to be a "tough".

My brother likes to tell of how one monster of a boy in his class used to sit in the back of the room in math class picking at the wall. Now this boy would have been about sixteen years old. The walls were plaster walls and not sheet rock. In September, when school began, there was a small, pencil-sized hole in the wall. The boy (I'll call him Dorf) began picking at the plaster. The math teacher would yell at him and he would quit, only to start again later. By the time the school year ended Dorf had picked a hole large enough to drive a golf cart through. The school wasn't big on repairs in those days.

The toughs in the are really were tough. When they had parties which got out of hand the police would come in force. And the toughs were stupid enough to fight. Most people were kind of terrified of them. I was. I was only six. But that was no defense against these guys.

I remember getting on the bus late to go home one day. That was always a problem because it meant finding a place to sit would not be easy. I would have to rely on the kindness of others, and there just weren't that many kind people on that bus. There was only one seat with room. Chris's cousin, Dale, had the window, and a seventeen-year-old who had wrecked his car was next to him. They didn't want me to sit with them. I didn't want to.

But the bus driver got mad and ordered me to sit there. The tough let me, but only for a short while. Then he knocked me to the floor. Dale thought it was funny, and the tough, having an audience, knocked me around until enough other students had got off so I could sit somewhere else.

I tried sitting on the floor, but the driver would yell at me. He didn't yell at the tough. He was an old man and was probably scared of the tough. So, to make himself feel better, he yelled at me. So I got pushed around by a nut case ten or eleven years my senior, and yelled at by an adult who should have been looking out for me. At times, it was a nasty area to grow up in.

The boy across the street, Bob, was odd, but he wasn't a tough. What he liked to do was sit in his car, in the driveway, and rev his engine for hours at a time. I don't know what he was doing. Pretending to race, or something. Guess it was better than him actually going out on the roads, but it was annoying. I remember his dad was always in the garage welding. He never sold anything, or brought it anywhere. He just - welded.

Although I was big, and although I was strong, I was still a favorite target for the toughs. They were older, bigger, and stronger. And I was not an aggressive little guy. I liked to have fun. I made fun of things. Any things. Including toughs. They didn't think it was funny. Sometimes I would be making fun of them while they were in the process if inflicting pain. I guess that explains the t-shirt my siblings bought me for my birthday one year. It had a graphic on the chest: A rat about to be killed by an eagle. The rat had it's paw in the air - middle finger extended. The caption was: Last Great Act of Defiance. I was known from my early years as a boy who would accept all kinds of suffering - just to prove a point.

As I aged, some of the more clever toughs abandoned their mistreatment of me. They recognized something I had yet to realize myself. I was as big as them now. And stronger than most.

It would take a moment of fear which would put an end to the physical torments I endured. I wasn't paying attention and got myself cornered. Angry with myself, I took it out on my attackers. They would continue to taunt me and call me awful names, but the physical stuff was done.

In time, they all graduated. (I expect the teachers gave them passing grades just to keep them moving and get them out the door.) By the time I was a Freshman, it was all over. No one who wasn't at least four years older than me would try my size and strength. They knew I was afraid of them, but they weren't willing to risk their own bodies.

Every so often I wonder what happened to these people. So cruel as kids, did they carry that over into adulthood? Probably. Or did they actually grow up and learn how to leave people alone? That's kind of my motto in life. Leave people alone.

Difficult to Live With

Typically, I'm one of those people who drive those who live with me absolutely nuts. It's nothing new. Been that way all my life.

I've heard the tale several times of how, when I was only a year or two old, I destroyed something which had been in the family for several generations. It was a crib. I drove it around the house. Not the 'get down on the floor and push it around' kind of driving. No. I was far more inventive. What I would do was stand up in the crib, grab hold of the headboard (or footboard, depending on which direction I was going), and then shake the crib forward and backward. According to what I've been told (my memory fails me on this point) I was able to navigate doorways and corners using this method. I would drive my crib all around the house. Wooden floors in those days, you know. It only took a few months and I shook the thing apart. No more family heirloom.

I still like to drive. Don't like to stop often. That takes away from the feeling of freedom. But for Spouse, who's bladder is the size of a tea cup, and Son, who gets motion sickness, my excellent bladder control and love of just moving gets to be a bit much. It's more pricey, too.

Growing up in The Old House I had a particular annoying habit. (Annoying to others. Not to me.) I liked to play baseball.

Not that baseball, in and of itself, is annoying. For those who lack any interest whatsoever in it, keeping it out of sight and out of mind is satisfactory. Only I didn't do that. Oh, I would stand in the back yard hitting whatever roundish object I could lay my hands on with whatever baseball bat-like thing I could get ahold of. But I also would throw rubber balls at the house. Endlessly.

I tried throwing a real baseball at the house once. Didn't work out so well. I was stronger than most others several years my senior, and by the time I was in junior high I could throw quite hard. I set up a target on the outside wall of the porch and fired a good, hard fastball. Wham! Right through the wall. In an old post from April 13th I have a picture of The Old House in flames. You can still see the hole I made. It was never repaired. I believe the caption I wrote implies I made the hole with a rubber ball. Not so. It was a regular baseball. I made several soft throws to get my bearings, and then let loose. It only took once to break the old wood.

After the fiasco with the baseball I restricted myself to rubber ball. I think one can still find them, but they used to make rubber balls the same size as baseballs. They'd even color them up to look like one. I used those.

Scratched a strike zone on the wall of the porch (around the corner from the wall where I sent the baseball through the wall) and would spend hours pretending to pitch. Originally I used the same wall with the hole in it, but between my wild throws and the sloped roof I spent too much time running around the house to get the ball. The peaked roof gave me much more room for error. Still threw it over the roof on occasion.

That wall had a window in it. It didn't take long before the window was just an opening in the wall. Yep. Another fastball gone wild. When we were tearing off the old tar siding in order to paint the place, we also took down all of the storm windows and put them in the porch. I stacked them neatly in a row. After the porch window was gone I sent another wild pitch through the opening. I heard the painful shattering of glass. Now I would never have guess a rubber ball could break that many panes of glass like that. But I wasn't figuring on the strength of my arm. I broke them all. Amazing strength. Hmm. Not appreciated though.

But imagine being in the house and listening to the continual pounding of a ball against the house. No wonder the rest of my family likes winter so much. But winter wasn't a total respite for them. I had an indoor trick I liked to play.

I would lay on my bed and toss the rubber ball up to where the wall and ceiling came together. I'd bounce the ball up and catch it back. First with one hand. Then with the other. Did that for hours, too. The Old House didn't have sheetrock. It was plaster over lath. And every so often I would hear some break away inside and tumble down. Thump. Thump. Thump. Hours on end.

No wonder my family has never been keen on me. It's amazing I lived.