Light Out Wanderlust, help Us To Be Free. Light Out Wanderlust, do It Just For Me…Wanderlust

It's been hella crazy work week. Just seems a lot to get done recently, and I've been working hard to get it all done. It never is really "all done" of course, and therein lies the genius of my job. It's like the post office. There will always be more things to do, no matter how many things I get done on one day, there is more to do the next. And there will always be stupid people, so I will always have the opportunity to do my job. Yeah me!

I did not weigh myself today. Just didn’t feel like it today, give my psyche a break. I have eaten well all week long and I have exercised all week (including not running yesterday but practicing softball for 2 hours, which is harder to do than you might think. In practice, the ball will be hit to you or in your general direction often. During the game, really, unless you are shortstop or left fielder, you get about 4-5 chances/game. And the 4-5 at bats, which you usually get a hit 3 times, so you run 3 times for a few minutes. During practice, there are drills where they hit the ball to you 5 times in a row, some to the left, some to the right, and you run this way and that. So, in summation, it is a good workout.

Carl & I have booked our trip to Amsterdam, so we will be off on May 25. I will drive down to DC on the 24th, stay at Carl’s place, then we will (somehow) get the Dulles on the 25th bright and early in the morning and start our journey. It is only one stop in Newark…but we wait about 5 fucking hours at Newark airport. Well, that won’t be so bad, as if there is any delay at Dulles, we will have plenty of time to get to Newark to get on the plane to Amsterdam.

The hotel we are staying at does have high speed internet access and one free computer in the lobby, so I am hoping I’ll be able to update when I am there. This should be interesting to do.

Carl has already decided that we are eating at the Pancake Bakery in Amsterdam, so I am guessing the diet will be all but lost for the trip. Fortunately, both of us are runners so we might be able to sneak off and run together few times. I don’t know how comfortable I am with running outside yet, but I should try it. The Pancake Bakery looks too good to only go once, and I would estimate one meal there is probably 2,000 calories. Oh, and all the Heineken. We are going to tour the plant, which was great fun the last time I was in Amsterdam.

So I have been feeling better about things lately just knowing that my trips this year are shaping up. Amsterdam in May, Vatican City in June/July, Edmonton in August, and maybe even the North Shore in Minnesota later on in the year. I also want to sneak up to Toronto some time this year, and I hear a Vegas trip is on my agenda for November. All in all, a good bit of tripping for me this year (and there will be no THC consumption for me in Amsterdam!)

Now I just need to mow my front yard. It looks horrendous, like a mini rain forest at the moment.

Science fails to recognise the single most potent element of human existence

400 calories. That, according to the NordicTrack, is how may calories I burned yesterday running on the treadmill. I had a total of 1497.6 calories yesterday, so I burned almost 25% of my calories just running. I like the thought of that, because you have to think that doing anything, walking to printer at work, driving a 5-speed, walking up and down steps doing laundry, washing dishes, anything that I did yesterday had to burn up a the other calories.

The question is do I try to tailor more of my food/activity to burn up more calories? Would that help at all, or would I be setting myself up for failure? I got a good thing going on now, with around 1600 calories/day and running. If I start messing with that, do I risk starving myself and having many more binges like I did on this past Saturday night? But how will I ever know what else may work better for me if I don’t try something else?

See, I’m looking at this whole experience as part of a science experiment. Especially once I started losing weight, as it has taught me more than I ever thought it would teach me. How all these little things can effect on your health. I am even looking forward to keeping this up for a year and seeing how it effects my cholesterol levels, all this running and lower calories and more natural foods.

But I don’t want to wait a year to start seeing how other foods or amounts or slight changes in activity can take effect on my body. Geeky? Or just lame reason to keep doing a blog?

Maybe surrounded by a million people I still feel alone. I just wanna go home

March 4, 2004. This was a very interesting day in my life, and, to be honest, one of the longest days. Actually not the longest, literally, as that was the next day of my life, March 5, 2004. March 4 lasted the requisite 24 hours, whereas in my world, March 5 was about 36 hours long. Literally. See, on March 5, 2004, I took a plane from Bangkok to Korea and from Korea to Chicago and from Chicago to Pittsburgh. And the date never changed, even though I traveled about 26 hours, and still had 7 ½ hours of the day left when I finally arrived in Pittsburgh. But March 4 was a lot of travel on ground and sea to get to the air travel.

I started out on March 4 on the isle of Koh Mak in the Gulf of Thailand. I woke up early, about 5:30 am, and made sure I was packed. Then I spent an hour walking around the beach, watching all the travelers who were leaving before me, just taking it all in. Then Eltee & I took the truck to the pier, where we took a 2 hour ferry ride across the gulf to the port. From there, we took a 30 minute ride to Trat in a tsongtau, which is a pick-up truck with two benches on it, and many people hanging out the back (I also saw school kids sitting on top of a very full tsongtau the week prior.) From there, Eltee & I had lunch, and I finished the last of my shopping, and I was taking everything in I could, as I knew I wouldn’t be back to Thailand for a while. Then Eltee saw me onto my bus and we parted ways.

It was weird, as it was the first time I’d seen Eltee outside of Edmonton. I had known him for 6 years, but always for one week in Edmonton during the year, and then e-mails the rest of the year. And here we were, a different continent from where we were both from, parting after two weeks together, and it was very cool to realize that I had such a good friend, a man who was willing to be my tour guide, translator (limited) and even procured my room before I showed up. That makes Eltee incredibly awesome in my book. I don’t think I can explain it without sounding like some goofy fuckwad, so I won’t. And I don’t think he reads this anyway, so it’s not like I’m ass kissing. Eltee wouldn’t care anyway, so ass kissing probably wouldn’t work with him. I was thinking of how great the previous 2 weeks had been for me. I did this for the first few miles of the trip. And then I noticed the guy who was in the seat next to me.

A tall skinny guy in those baggy, multi-pocketed shorts that had been repaired may times by at least three different colors of thread. And glasses. And a huge Adam’s apple. And hairy, muscular legs. And I thought he was HOT! Oh, and when I started talking to him, he was British, which just seemed to make him hotter.

I figured we had a 6 hour bus ride (it turned into almost 8 with the traffic once we got near Bangkok) so I might as well engage him in conversation. He was from England but had gone to Australia to work 3 years prior, and after working for a few months, decided he didn’t want to do that for a living, so he decided to travel in Southeast Asia. Sometimes he’d go back to Australia to work construction for a few months, then head back out on the road. He said he loved hiking (explained the nice legs) and traveling and drinking. And I thought the whole time he was telling me of his trips “I love traveling and I love drinking, how come I don’t do this?”

He had the courage to leave what sounded to me like a nice life in England, where he seemed to be from middle income family, and has lived on his own in completely foreign countries, not even like just going to Australia or Canada or the USA where we speak the same language. He has traveled through Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, all through Southeast Asia, and even got up to Korea once. He showed me pictures on his digital camera of his trips (one was a quick video of him and a friend throwing a grenade in Cambodia where I guess more well-to-do Westerners with expendable income can pay to do that.) And he had CD’s filled with these pictures that he said he’d one day show his kids and grandkids.

And I kept thinking of how different people react to different life situations. He kept talking about the things he’d seen, and we talked for hours on the trip and got to know each other. He had what he considered a girlfriend in Bangkok (where he complained about how he brought his condoms in from Australia as the Thai condoms were, of course, too small. I never found that out on my own, but OK, good to know.) I found it a fascinating ride, but as the trip went on and on, I found myself becoming jealous.

And it isn’t that I wanted his life specifically. I didn’t want to drop out and just travel through Southeast Asia for 3 or 4 years. I didn’t want to own 2 pair of shorts, and have to keep repairing them to save money. I didn’t want to be thousands of miles away from home all the time. And this is where I sound like an idiot.

I wanted to feel like it was a possibility that I could do it, like I could’ve said throughout this trip “Yeah, I considered dropping out and just following my own wanderlust, but I decided to become a lackey for the insurance industry for shits and giggles,” and deep down, I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t do any of it.

Two weeks away from home seems to be my limit, maybe three weeks at one time, but I want to come home and curl into the same bed and prepare my own food and see my family and pet my cats and have choices on what clothes I was going to wear that day, not just choose which pair of shorts from the two pair I owned were clean enough for that day.

Even my friend Eltee. He tells me about how sometime in the 90’s, when he was in his mid 40’s, he got off the plane from teaching in Asia for many years and decided he wasn’t going to work anymore. And he doesn’t anymore. He has pared down his life to the necessities with few extras thrown in, but it really looks like he has beat the system and doesn’t work. And he spends 5+ months every year in Southeast Asia. And no real job.

I can’t imagine a time when I won’t be working. I don’t have the courage to live more on the edge. Now, if something should happen and I lose my job, I will go out and find a new one. And I will try to make ends meet. I don’t think I could ever just say “Fuck it” and try to live job to job while traveling in a foreign country.

And the more I think about that part, it is just a part of me. I grew up poor, and I never want to be poor. I bought a home last year about 3 miles from where I was born, though the hospital I was born in is no longer in existence. My parents live less than a mile away, my sister lives about 4 miles away, my second job is where I work with my mother and my nephew.

And I wonder if I am just gutless or cowardly. Or, worse yet, settled and old.

Would you catch me if I fall?

2 more pounds. That is the weight loss this past week. And yesterday, I was at 2.94 miles on the treadmill. A little more work, and I will b at 3 miles. Not bad for someone who couldn’t even run 1.5 miles 6 months ago. I think the first week in October when I was running I was at 1.25 miles and thought I’d die. And then I’d sit around my house for 30 minutes trying to recover. Yesterday, I got off the treadmill and about 3 minutes later, I was typing away an e-mail to another friend. Not bad at all.

I worked last night and the movie theater, and then was just craving a Whopper, so I stopped by Burger King on the way home at midnight. Oh, I should mention that the movie theater I work at has the best fries I’ve ever tasted, and I had a handful of them while working, the first time I’d done that in 5 weeks of this diet. I haven’t grazed since I started this diet, and last night I was just in the mood. Having fries just put me in the mood for a burger.

So I ate a Whopper last night. But it didn’t stop there. I have these little appetizer things called “Bacon Cheeseburger Bites.” So I had a small serving of them. Then I was in the mood for pizza, so I took out a Lean Pocket Supreme Pizza and ate that. Then I had 6 Jalapeño Poppers (deep fried dough wrapped chopped Jalapeño with cream cheese.) Then I said “Fuck it” and had a cheese sandwich with 2 slices of low fat cheese on lite wheat bread with lite mayo. Then I had a handful of Cheese Curls (no hydrogenated fats or trans fats from Whole Foods) and then more than a handful of Rice Cakes (cheddar cheese flavored.) And then I was done.

So I estimated my caloric intake of yesterdays binge – 2065 calories and 85.5 grams of fat. Since I did eat two meals yesterday prior to my binge, that is a total of 3140.2 calories and 111.9 grams of fat. Twice as many calories than I usually have in a day, and 3 times the fat. According to one web site, a Whopper has 670 calories and 41 grams fat alone! Fuck!

I wanted to make it through a full 6 weeks before I had a bad day from this diet, and I was one week off. I am not going to beat myself up over it, and I do think I needed on really bad day, so I am glad I did it in a more controlled way (at my house, with my foods except for the fries & Whopper). Looking up that burger online, I should have gone to Wendy’s, though – fewest calories of the major 3 burger chains. But I should have picked Taco Bell, at least for calorie & fat content.

I might try to throw in an extra treadmill session today, just so I don’t feel like a total waste, but it isn’t that important. In retrospect, when I was doing the Atkins diet, I am estimating that I was up to about 4,000 calories per day, sometimes even more. So one day in 35 where I do just over 3,000 calories isn’t going to kill me. I just am not getting on the scale anytime soon!

Mouth is alive with juices like wine, and I’m hungry like the wolf

For some reason I’ve been getting hungry earlier in the afternoon, around 4 pm. I leave work at 5:15 pm, and for the first 4 weeks of doing this diet, I was getting hungry around 5 pm. I can handle that, just jump in the car and go home. But when I get hungry at 4, I stay hungry and have over an hour to ponder how to get rid of the hunger. I am hoping that this is just a recent problem and that I can get back to feeling satisfied with my meals until the next meal.

I am going to the Pirates game this afternoon, so I am off work after 11:45 am, which is taking forever to get here. I hope I don’t get tempted by hot dogs or chicken wings or perogies or whatever wonderful foods they have at the ballpark. And I hope the Pirates can win a series from the Cardinals. That would be nice to see. So far this season, I am 1-1 at Buccos games. I want that to improve.

Not much else to say today. I’ve been working at getting to 3 miles running per day, but really, there is no way to type that up to make it sound too interesting until I finally make it to that point. Except for last Saturday, I’ve been good at this diet, and even then it was under 1800 calories I had. My life has been steady and undramatic, which is just how I like it. But it makes for a very boring blog, eh? If you’ve stayed awake to read this, I give you credit, as I think I am putting myself to sleep.

I’m a travelling man, run away if you can. Cruel world keeps turning, I’m dead on my feet

(Wow - 2 posts in one day - look at me!)

I am right now angry. Angry over the price of flying these days.

I started in 1998 learning that travel was fun. I flew to Edmonton, Canada to see the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. It wasn’t the first time I flew by far (I actually had flown a good bit for my company between 1997 & 2000 when I was on the Diversity Council) but it was one of the first times I’d flown for fun. I have now gone to all but one of the Edmonton Folk Music Festivals since that time, and loved it.

I should clarify that statement. Flying doesn’t bother me like it bothers other people. I don’t love the food, the other people, the takeoffs, the flying in bad weather, the crying babies, the airports, the layovers, the bad movies, the boredom on hour 8 of a flight or the class separation between the haves (First Class) and the have-nots (The Cattlecall.) (And I have been I First Class twice and wasn’t happy with it – I am too much of the blue collar/steel mill worker’s son to enjoy the closed curtain and wine choice. It is only the illusion that you are better than the other person.) But what I do love is being somewhere completely different in a few hours that you just can’t simply drive there.

I remember standing in front of the Reichstag, the German legislative building in Berlin, just past the Brandenburg Gate after touching the Berlin Wall (which is now the largest outdoor art gallery), on my first trip overseas just being overwhelmed. As new as most of Berlin is due to the war, it is the older things that impressed me.

I remember standing across the Thames from Parliament when Big Ben started chiming in, while eating fish & chips out of a newspaper. I was startled at first, as I had kind of forgotten that it was right next to Parliament, but then smiled my greasy smile.

I remember walking across the Bridge over the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. It was one of those moments where everything made sense about travel. I had just petted an elephant, I had drank a beer in a café when Eltee had asked if I wanted to walk across the bridge. Even though I knew where I was, it seemed unreal to me in thought and yet there I was, walking across it.

I remember going up the glass elevator in the middle of the Eiffel Tower with my niece, and she realized half-way up that she was very afraid of heights, and when we got to the top she didn’t want to walk the last 7 or 8 steps to get the open air observation deck on top of the tower (there is a glassed in observation tower under the very top of the Eiffel Tower.) I looked at her and said “Jessie, you don’t want to tell people that you went 4,000 miles to Paris and then you wouldn’t walk the final 10 feet to the top of the Eiffel Tower.” She made it to the top. And then she walked right back down.

And I remember bringing her brother, my nephew, to Paris last year, 3 years after she went. I remember walking down the Champs-Élysées with him, eating frozen chocolate gelatin on a picture perfect day, just feeling lucky that I was able to share this with him.

I am sad today because prices for flights have skyrocketed (pun intended) and it is making our world bigger instead of smaller. I have been looking for flights from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, & out of Dulles Washington DC to Amsterdam, and I have yet to find a flight less than $800.00, and actually most flights are around $1,000.00. It isn’t that I am either cheap or poor, but there is no reason to spend a grand trying to get to a destination, especially when you are flexible. For one weeks flight time.

I have spread my search over about 3 week time frame, and nothing. I understand some increase, but it has increased at phenomenal rate. I look for other destinations, London, Paris, and they are all over $900.00. I’ve gone for far less than this amount in the past, and not like that distant past. More recently.

This rate increase is going to make it almost impossible to see some of the greatest places in the world. And my nieces and nephews won’t be able to see many of these sights, and that angers me. It makes our world bigger and scarier. I understand a lot more about the world just from traveling, and they won’t have the resources to be able to travel very far.

I think many of the greatest joys in my life have come from the wonders of travel, of seeing things that I can’t see out my back door, of meeting people you can’t meet at your local grocery, and at being in situations you can’t get in your home town.

I will still be able to travel because I am single and have expendable income. But what about families with younger children who want those children to experience everything this world has to offer? They won’t be able to afford it. And that is a shame, almost criminal.

ARMOUR HOT DOGS, the dogs kids love to bite!

6 more pounds. I now weigh less than I have since 1998. This low calorie/exercise seems to actually work. Who woulda thunk?

Saturday was the first time I went over the 1600 calorie diet. I was good at the Pirates game on Friday, but with the smell of the good food and a great Pirates game, I succumbed and had 2 hot dogs with relish & onions. Mmmmmm. I love baseball and hot dogs. It just goes together like Maury & white trash paternity tests.

Ran on Friday & Saturday. I have been adding more speed to get up to 3 miles/day. Once that is done I can start with the incline to see what difference that could make. I realize every day that I have a lot more to do, no matter what results I have attained so far in this process. To put it poetically, I have many miles to go before I sleep. Yeah, that is appropriate.

I had quite a busy weekend. 2 Pirates games, went out with friends to a few clubs Saturday night after the Pirates victory, though I can’t say it was fun. I just am not a bar person, and I feel inadequate. At gay bars in any city I go to, I feel like a huge beached whale. HUGE. BEACHED. WHALE. Back a few years ago, when I was at my heaviest, I was in a gay bar shooting pool with Gary. I heard some guys talking about liking one of the guys shooting pool, and I strained my ears to hear who it was they were talking about (there is a brick pillar in the corner of the bar and I casually walked to the side of the pillar opposite of where they were) as one of the other guys said “Which one?” And the speaker said “Not the Marshmellow Man.” Gary is a little swimmers built guy and I was fat. Around the same time we were out of town, and one guy at a club asked Gary why he brought a straight man to a gay bar, and when Gary informed this guy that I wasn’t straight this guy said “Oh, I didn’t know gay men were that fat.” As a result, I have not had as much fun going to gay bars in the past 5-6 years.

Here is a Toby update. He is back in Pittsburgh. He went through 4 days in Chicago to get back to Pittsburgh, but he made it back to…sleep in his car, it seems. He called me about some stuff I am storing in my house for him, came over to get that stuff, fell asleep on my couch, and then left Sunday morning without the stuff he supposedly came over to get. Hmmm…methinks he only came over to sleep in a warm house. And if I’m being honest, I am mad at myself for allowing even to come over. He has started calling me again and again to bitch, moan and complain about his life. He supposedly has a job lined up in Chicago to basically be the live-in housecleaner for some wealthy woman. But he seems to have to finish up some business here before he can move. But he called me about 6 times yesterday to bitch and moan about his mother, about his living arrangements right now, about how he lost his last job, about how he isn’t getting unemployment (he was in freakin’ California for 3+ weeks and missed some appointment – gee, can’t imagine how he lost his unemployment), bitching about everything and I tell him it is his fault and he gets mad at me. I swear he is getting dumber as he gets older. He was a freakin’ Eagle Scout for christsakes. How can he be almost useless now? What has gone from reaching a very difficult level of achievement in the BSA and not being able to keep a job for even a year?

I want him to just move, get out of my life and get on with his own. I know that sounds cold hearted now, but I think I’ve surpassed my nice quota to him for all that he has done for me (or done to me, whichever it is.) My patience and my goodwill have been depleted. If he hasn’t moved in the next two weeks, I think I will have to tell him I can’t talk to him ever again. I am just getting to the point where I don’t care.

Dear God, take him, take them, take anyone:The stillborn,the newborn,the infirmed,take anyone,take people from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Just spare me

I was thinking after reading what I wrote yesterday, and I think I’ve strayed from keeping in touch with friends of mine that don’t live in Pittsburgh.

And here is the irony – I complain about a friend of mine, Brad, who has done the same thing, though he takes it to an extreme. But I complain about him all the time, and I think I recently think I am slowly turning in to him.

Brad is a college friend, and has been my friend since once chilly evening in October 1988 when we officially met each other. We’d been in a few classes together, and I needed something out of one class that I missed, so I went to his room to get the information. And from that long night, we’ve been friends. He is straight, I am gay. He went to Korea to work after grad school (Teaching English as a second language) and I stayed in Pittsburgh. We kept in touch, first by regular mail and then, as e-mail became popular in those crazy days of the 90’s, we started doing regular e-mails. He came back and started teaching at our undergrad alma mater, ESL again. We went on a trip to Edmonton for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, as he had a friend, Eltee, that he’d worked with in Korea who lived in Edmonton. To this day, I go to Edmonton every August for the Folk Music Festival, and stay with Eltee. (I also went to Thailand and Eltee was my tour guide as he winters in Thailand.)

In some weird twist, around the year 2000, Brad stopped talking to Eltee. No reason was ever given. By that time, it was only an e-mail friendship, but we’d all gone to Edmonton (by this time Holly had joined us in our yearly runs to the folk fest) for 3 years in a row. And Brad just stopped e-mailing Eltee. No word why, nothing like a fight or an argument had ever broken out. Brad just stopped.

Where Brad was working was about 90 minutes of my place, so once a month I used to visit and do dinner with him and a few of our former professors from the college. Well, slowly it became every other month as Brad wasn’t always available. Then it became every few months. And then, one time in early 2001 I went up and Brad could not be bothered to set aside 2 hours for dinner. He was running around and doing things and even Gary had stopped to join us for dinner (Gary was also a former college roommate of Brad’s, and he worked near the college, but we were roommates at this time in Pittsburgh area.) and after a half an hour, Gary left as he explained to me later that Brad was treating him like a child.

Now we were such good friends that at one point in time in summer 2001, I bought tickets for his parents to come down to PNC Park and see the Pirates play the Indians (his family is from the Cleveland area) for 2 nights and even got them a great rate on a open apartment at my apartment complex (the complex would rent out fully furnished apartments on a nightly basis, really good deal). I remember it quite well because the Pirates whooped up on the Indians for 3 games, very good time had by me (if not his family.)

Fast forward and I realize that correspondence with Brad has slowed to…nothing, really. An occasional phone call and e-mail. Then, in November 2003, I was in Berlin visiting my friend Christian and I got an e-mail from Brad, saying that he was hoping this was my e-mail address as he’d lost it, blah blah blah. I answer back, saying I was going to have some free time in December as my Thailand trip was pushed from the end of December to the end of Thailand but I still had 2 weeks off at Christmastime. I hear from Brad again in early February 2004 with the “I am so busy now, but we can get together at the end of February” line. I answer back that it sounded like a plan if he wanted to meet me in Kanchanaburi for dinner, except it is over 8,000 miles distance to go for dinner for him, so maybe after I get back.

I then got a phone call in October, out of the blue. I don’t even know why I answered, but I did. Then, when I was buying my house, I sent out some e-mails announcing this to friends, give new address and information. He sent something back saying that he has been so busy buying his home that he hasn’t had time to correspond. First I’d heard that he was a home owner. I wrote back saying that I’d love to see his place and he could see my new place. That was a year ago, and nothing since then. My cell phone number hasn’t changed since last I talked to him, and I have had the same 2 e-mail addresses for years.

So the other day, I got an e-mail from another childhood friend asking if I was still alive, and I realized that it has been 9 months since I last sent an e-mail to him (though I did talk to him in October when I went to DC to see Paul McCartney in concert.) I went onto my sent e-mails, and realized that I hadn’t even sent a response to Christian in Berlin when he wrote back asking about my new house IN JUNE!!

I am now going to work a bit harder to talk to more friends, at least send e-mails out to say “Hi” and stuff more often. I like having my friends. And I like hearing from my friends, so I have to be more responsible.

The walls of my mind are just like I'm climbing on a jungle gym. I am more than content with the state of mind I am in 'cause I am crazy just like you

Running and eating. Running and eating. Work. Running and eating. Running and eating. Work.

This seems to be my life recently. I am not crying about it, but I was noting last night that I came home from work, ran for 30 minutes, spent a few minutes cleaning up, and started making dinner (spaghetti in a red sauce with meatless ground meat & mushrooms). I did watch an episode of “Six Feet Under” while eating (catching up on the last few seasons of that series on HBO On Demand), but once it was done, I started making breakfast (waffles with a yogurt, sour cream and blueberry topping) and lunch (chicken with celery & onion stuffed tomatoes) for today while washing dishes. That took me to about 9:30, when I got on the computer for half an hour and then slid in to bed to read for 30 minutes and then fall into sleep.

I do this Mondays through Thursdays. I don’t work on Fridays. I have my second job during the weekends, but that doesn’t interfere too much with my running/eating schedule (usually only work 5-6 hours a night there.) And that is going to end soon as my Pirates tickets start this weekend.

I think I can do this running/food schedule for a few reasons. One is that I am single, and I do mean completely single – no partner, no children (I am not one of those gay men who consider his cats his children. That is just creepy to me.) There are a couple of people at my work who are trying to lose weight, but they all have husbands, children, houses and pets to consider. There is just me, and me alone in my little world. That sounds sad, but it isn’t meant to be. I have friends and family that I see all the time, but on Monday night when I get home, I only have to take care of myself (my cats only need some food and water, and a scratch behind the ear when I’m sitting watching TV.)

Another reason is actually my work schedule. If I didn’t work 10 hour days, I would try to do more stuff during the week (Happy Hours, movies, dinners with friends, shopping, etc.) thus distracting me from running and preparing food. And having no life for several days each week.

Yet another reason is fear. My doctor has been feeding me the fear of high cholesterol, family history of diabetes and the known side effects of obesity lines for the past 5 years (after all, he fed me the anti-smoking lines for 4 years before I finally quit smoking, so he knows something must work) and they have started to sink in. And after my recent lab work showing even higher cholesterol in March, I started getting even more worried.

And one final reason is desire. I have the desire to lose weight, and after about 8 years of trying different things to lose weight besides this plan, this one seems to be healthy and working. Sadly, it is the weight loss program that we all know about since we were young – lesser calories & exercise. But I am willing to eat a lot less food, to make my own foods from raw materials, to run 30 minutes per day, to write down everything I eat, just to lose weight.

This bitter Earth, can it be so cold? Today you're young, too soon your old

3 more pounds. I weighed myself on Friday, and I was down 3 more pounds, which puts me under 240 for the first time in 3 years. And if I lose 2 more pounds, I will weigh less than I have since 1998, the first time I tried Atkins diet.

I started Atkins in August of 1997, and I was weighing around 245. I then lost a good amount of weight (didn’t know for the longest time how much as I didn’t have a scale then either) and then, during Super Bowl weekend 1998, with the Broncos beating up on the Packers, I laid in bed sick as a dog with infected wisdom teeth. I went to the doctors on Monday morning, and I weighed 207. It has been all downhill since that day (01/28/1998).

Now my goal isn’t to get to 207 lbs again. I don’t think that is possible. I don’t think that I have actually mentioned a goal weight on here before, because I didn’t want to set myself for failure. But if I’m being honest, I think that I should be at about 215 lbs. If I end up plateauing at 220-225 lbs, I will be happy. That is what I was after I left graduate school, and lasted that weight for a while, until after I quit smoking, just after I turned 26. Since that time, I’ve had so much trouble keeping weight down, but I don’t blame quitting smoking; that was the best thing that I’ve ever done for myself. I had so many breathing problems it was tough to walk fast, let alone run. Now, obviously, I can run and not feel like I’m going to die.

I had my first softball practice yesterday, and even though it wasn’t a full 3 hour practice, it was good, and I felt great afterwards. I do have a skinned knee, but that is all, and my arm and legs feel fine. There have been times in the past after the first softball practice where I couldn’t move my legs the next day without being in massive pain.

Pirates home opener his this afternoon, and I will be listening to the game from here in cubeland. Most people at work are surprised that I am not going to the opener, but I have a 20 game ticket plan, so I will get to enough games this year, so I am not worried. And I enjoy listening to baseball, so it isn’t like I’ll be missing too much, and I’ll be at the ballpark this Friday & Saturday for the games against the Cubs. Hopefully, the Buccos will be able to bounce back from such a bad start to get back into the winning column more often.

Can't even come up with a good song lyric to reference

I had veal last night. I loves me some veal! Pan fried with some peppers and onions over brown rice and side of cauliflower. Overall, an excellent dinner. Ran for 30 minutes, faster than before. I think that if I ever get up to 3 miles/day, I might start messing with the incline to see how that affects my running. Or how it affects my weight loss.

I have been thinking recently, as you can tell, on how I can improve myself. Not just physically, but my life overall. I will say that I have become kind of settled into the life of a bachelor. What is the male equivalent to an Old Maid? I think I am turning into that, and I want to avoid that. I am only hoping that I haven’t already turned into the man on the street the kids refer to in fear as “Old Mr. James,” when eyeing up the football that has landed in my yard.

I started writing that upper part a few hours ago, and then a co-worker started talking about his prostate (not a new topic for him, by the way) and I completely forgot where I was going with this post. So I am just going to stop typing now and, hopefully, be able to post more later when I am home. And have to take a shower as I now feel dirty; so very dirty!

Me me me pongo mis jeans (pongo mis jeans) viejos, deslavados hoy serán mis aliados para hacer de este chico un maniquí...

I am in a pair of jeans I haven’t been able to comfortably wear in about a year, so I am happy today. It was almost a fluke that I tried them on this morning. I wore my regular jeans yesterday, the fat ones, and I noticed myself in the mirror in the bathroom and it looked like I had dropped a load into the back. I hate really saggy clothes, and these looked ridiculous, so this morning, I was about to put on another pair of the bigger jeans and they were hanging next to the smaller size ones, so I tried them on, and voila, they fit.

I have a whole rack of clothes that fit me when I was a bit thinner, so now I am going to look into seeing if more of them fit me now. Obviously, I’m not talking about clothes much thinner, but I have realized that I’ve lost 18 pounds this year so far, so that is enough to get me into clothes I was wearing last spring, right before my torn calf muscle. Now I will see if I can get into better shape and have to buy new clothes that are a smaller size.

I am actually happy to be in the shape I am in currently. I ran last night, and it felt good. I even started pushing the distance/mph a bit higher, and I wasn’t wiped out at the end of it, and recovered in good time. I think by the end of April I should be up to 3 miles/day.

The next thing I need to work on is my sleep. It has gotten better of the past 2 weeks, but it isn’t what it should be. In my job, I used to work until 8 pm, which meant I didn’t have to wake up until after 7 am, got to run at that time, take my time showering, getting ready, make breakfast, and then get to work at 9:30 am. I worked (and still do) the same 4 days, Monday through Thursday, but I was finally getting enough sleep, and everything except for my weight was much better. My work was very good, I didn’t have those moments in meetings where you just stare straight ahead and don’t pay attention to whatever is being said in the meeting.

Nowadays, I have to wake up at 5:30 am, and it seems no matter how hard I try, I still go to sleep around 11 pm, just like I did when I was waking up at 7 am, so I am losing about 1:30 of sleep each night during the work week. So my next project, if I lose the weight I want to lose, is to focus on sleep deprivation. There has to be a way to change my body clock to be able to make myself fall asleep at least by 10 pm each night. Without taking pills, even natural ones.

After having written that, I wonder where I can go from here if I am successful in what I want to do. What if I lose weight, lower my cholesterol, don’t need my reflux medication daily (being overweight makes my reflux act up more often), look good, and then start sleeping better? What would be next? I am guessing I’ll have to do start looking at the external parts of my life, such as my beautiful house that needs some work.

But that will all be a year or so in the future before I have to worry about that. If I ever do have to worry about it at all.

Toby update – he called me last night from his brother’s place, so now at least he has visited his brother. I talked to his brother on the phone for a minute, and he has eradicated the Pittsburgh accent from his speech, and he sounds just like a surfer dude, which he is. He is the normal one in his family (having explained Toby to you, let’s just say that after having met all of his family, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree) and it is interesting to talk to someone who thinks more normal and try to get their take on the family. But I didn’t talk to him for long enough to ask why his parents are treating Toby the way they do. Or why Toby treats others the way he does.

How To Be Cosmically Conscious, Cosmically Conscious With Me. Such A Joy, Joy.

1445 calories and 30 minutes running. Kept right on track yesterday. I did have steak, potatoes, mixed veggies and fresh spinach for dinner. I am realizing this 1600 calorie diet is all about portions, and I like that.

I cheated yesterday for lunch. Instead of making lunch, I brought in a Lean Cuisine meal. It was good and all, just not as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be. Only 330 calories of grilled chicken and penne pasta deliciousness, with a side of caramel apple dessert. It was just easier to bring that in than to pack all the food. I am back today to having my fresh lunch, with a pita filled with chicken, sweet yellow peppers, onions and celery chopped up and mixed with some light mayo & Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. Also have some cucumber strips to dip in an Italian dressing and, for desert, strawberries.

Running was getting easier to do, so I started going faster. Now I do about 10 minutes at 6 mph, and hope to get that up to at least 20 minutes total at 6 mph. I know it seems like the height of lazy-comfort, but the run seems to go better when I’m watching something interesting on TV. I am seriously thinking about putting a better TV in place as the one I have is a little mono 19” one, and it isn’t loud enough, so I have to run with closed caption on (or subtitles, it if it is a DVD.) And I am going to run out of DVD’s soon, or at least DVD’s that are good to run to (“Usual Suspects,” though one of my favorite movies, isn’t good to run to.)

A quick update about Toby. He is still in Southern California living off of some other guy. And not having sex with him. I don’t understand what is going on there, but he calls me a few times a week to chat, and he is actually bored. He was supposed to leave on a train ride on Friday, and missed that train. Then he was supposed to leave Sunday afternoon, and missed that train. Then he was supposed to leave Monday morning, and missed that train. So he told me last night that he is going to visit another internet friend in Santa Barbara for a few days, then head out on Thursday, which was the next train available for him. Oh, and he still has the cell phone the first guy gave to him and pays the bill.

I should point out that Toby’s little brother lives near Santa Barbara. Toby has been in SoCal for over 2 weeks now, and hasn’t even bothered to visit him, even though when he told me about this trip, that was the main reason he was taking it, to see his little brother, whom he hasn’t seen in like 5 years. Granted, the little brother is a struggling heroin addict who has Hepatitis, but hey, it is still his brother.

So, for those keeping score, that is going to almost 3 weeks total in one of the most expensive areas in the country, transportation in between the ‘Burgh and SoCal, food and lodging, cell phone use, all lodging and food. And he isn’t spending a dime of his own money. Where did I go wrong?

Carl & I are trying to get a trip to Amsterdam set up for the week of Memorial Day, and the airfare is ridiculous at the moment. Over $900 no matter where we fly out(our choices are Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Dulles) and I want to get that down to about $500, and see no reason we can’t get it down to that price. We are flexible, so that should help getting a better fare.

I have worked at the same job for 9 ½ years, and except for 8 weeks following being fired from an accounting firm in 1994 for being gay (and yes, that was the reason, believe it or not) I haven’t been out of work since January 5, 1992 when I started working on the movie “Innocent Blood” being filmed in Pittsburgh. And I’ve never had a free 3 week vacation. Again, where is that fair? And don’t tell me about Karma, cause that will just piss me off. And don’t tell me about my pension, 401(k) or Social Security Retirement. I don’t want to know about them. They aren't helping me now. And, as my job points out on a daily basis, I could die at any moment.

I want a free trip some time in my life. (this would be the point in our program where I am then reminded that my mother is paying for 2/3 of my trip to Rome with her this summer. Or she is at least loaning me the money indefinitely. But still. Karma, damnit, I want Karma to bite some people in the ass. Just not me.)

Man, am I whiney today or what? And I didn’t even talk about the Pirates game yesterday.

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today! We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.

I have the 20 game plan to the Pirates again this year. I do like that the Pirates are rewarding those of us that have had this plan for several years by allowing us the guaranteed opportunity to buy tickets to the 2006 All Star game at PNC Park. My mother and I will be at the game (unless they have priced the tickets so far out of the realm of possibility I can’t afford them)

Here are my thoughts on the 2006 Pirates:

They will not complete the season with the same players they start with today. I think that at least one, if not more, of their one-year “rent-a-veterans” will be traded.

I think that the young players will push the older players into being traded.

The Pirates will give their young pitchers every chance to succeed this year. Not out of recognizing that more innings = more experience, but out of necessity. They don’t have any veteran pitchers just waiting in the wings.

Ryan Vogelsong won’t be a Pirate by the end of this season. He can take his overly-flared nostrils to Colorado, or Baltimore, or wherever pitchers who once had potential go next year to fade away. Because, unlike all other subgroups of humans, old pitchers DO actually just fade away. After making their millions.

Chris Duffy will have a lot of infield hits and an inside-the-park home run this year. He has to: he’s just too fast!

Zach Duke will be unjustly compared to Sandy Koufax at some point this year.

He will also be unjustly compared to Jose DeLeon & Paul Wagner at some point this year.

Jason Bay will be one of the top 7 outfielders in the game again this year. And the national media will ignore him again.

Jack Wilson will not hit .300 this year. But he also won’t hit .250. He will hit somewhere in between.

Sean Burnett will pitch with the Pirates this season before September call ups.

Kip Wells is Kip Wells, with or without Jim Colborn. This will be the last year in a Pirates uniform for Kip Wells, and no one will be sad to see him go. We will be sad for his inability in the 5 seasons he will have spent here to reign in his potential. He will make more millions next year with some other team like Colorado or Baltimore where mediocre pitchers go to fade away.

Jim Tracy will consistently stick to the righty-lefty pitching match-ups, and I will scream at him at least 3 times this year because of it.

The Pirates will win more games this season than they have in any of the past 8 seasons.

Cherry blossom clinic, lock me in and throw the key away

6 pounds. Finally. On Friday, I weighed myself prior to starting my trip to DC, and I was down 6 pounds. Now, I am happy for this loss, and I realize that I am healthier today than I was last June 11, but this only put me down to the June 11 weight. That is the day I tore my left calf muscle and stopped all minimal exercise I was doing (which included softball, what I was doing when I tore calf muscle) for about 5 months. How anyone comes back from that type of injury quicker in baseball, I don’t know.

That is the reason I got the treadmill, as it was the second such injury in an 8 month period. I “strained” my right calf muscle the previous October. And after tearing the right one, I realized that if I was going to do silly things like play softball, I might as well get my legs into some type of shape. The weight loss program came into play when I realized that after I didn’t do much of anything from June thru October last year that I had gained 18 pounds, and I didn’t like the thought of where that could go if I let it. And then, after 2 months of running (November & December) I still hadn’t lost any significant weight, I knew I had to concentrate on it more.

I was in DC this weekend for the Cherry Blossom Festival. I brought my mother for her birthday. We had planned this for almost a year, since I accidentally stumbled onto it last year visiting Carl and my Mom kept saying she wanted to go. Good thing about living in Pittsburgh, it is only a few hours away from so many places, like DC, NY, Columbus, and a few more hours driving from places like Chicago & Toronto. I won’t add Philadelphia into that mix as I hate Philly. There isn’t one redeeming thing about Philadelphia, except for my few friends who live there. I’d rather not go into it.

I walked for many hours around DC, and then, even though I was good on the food intake Friday and most of Saturday, my Mom & I went pack to Alexandria for Carl to finish work, and waited in Whole Foods…which has a HUGE buffet of great foods available, so I partook in several of them, mostly of the Indian variety. Curry Chicken over Nan bread is just about the best thing you can eat after a busy Saturday. I ate two plates full of good food. And then had half a slice of pizza (Mom couldn’t eat all of her food.) And then I was back on track on Sunday, so I feel good going into week 3 of my completely new fashioned idea of lower calories + exercise = lower weight. I don’t think anyone else is on to this plan of mine.

I hope to have some time later to give a quick entry on my thoughts on the Pirates this year, if only so that I can be ridiculed by people. It is my lot in life, my burden, as a Pirates fan. Cause the Pirates couldn’t possibly ever do anything good; even .500 ball is out of their reach. And a 6th seed in NFL playoffs will never win the Super Bowl.