Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 42

    Whatever discomfort I felt in my foot yesterday was multiplied exponentially this morning. As I can think of no injury or event that might have caused this agony, I must assume it to be a flareup of gout. I have been having issues with gout in my right (and recently injured) foot of late, but this is the first time that the pain is so strong in the left foot. I will survive – it’s painful, but not the worst thing in the world. I’ll take Naproxen twice daily for the next few days and it will clear up.

    Yesterday was another ‘I ate too much’ day. I have to remember that eating too many meal replacements is not much better than eating too much anything else. At least I know that I am not going to the starches and carbs. Today will be a better day!

    My weight-loss advice post from Day 40 got a lot of traction. Until now, my best day on the blog had 42 hits, and it was not uncommon for there to be days with fewer than 5 hits. Yesterday, after I shared the article about unsolicited weight loss advice, those hits shot up… 116 hits yesterday, and 54 hits today (so far). This will be a blip and not a trend I am sure, unless my vitriol encouraged scores of new people to follow my otherwise pretty boring blog daily… and to tell their friends to do that same. Not a worry, I do not plan to try to monetize the blog; I use it to try to stay accountable for my actions and choices.

    I looked up the causes of gout, and came up with the following list, some of which I knew about, others I did not:

    The risk factors which cause excess uric acid include:

    • Excess consumption of meat and seafood
    • Obesity
    • Certain conditions like heart disease, kidney disease
    • Family history
    • Certain medications
    • Age – It usually affects between the ages of 30 and 50
    • Sex – Men are more likely to develop gout

    Let’s review: I am not excessively consuming anything these days, but I am obese. I have no heart or kidney issues (that I know of, although I will have a full physical from my doctor in a couple of months). I do have the family history (my father suffered from gout, and I think my grandfather as well). I am about to hit 50, although I remember gout flareups going back 25 years. I am not on any medications, but I am definitely a man.

    All in all, I have 4/7 of these risk factors. I’ll suck it up, and hopefully as I lose the weight, I will be able to shed one of them. No, I do not plan to cut meat out of my diet, but I will cut my intake of it going forward. Growing old sucks.**

    My game plan for today is to try to limit my intake. I had my breakfast shake, I will have my lunch (chicken and salad) and then my dinner (fish and salad), and then an evening meal replacement bar. If you are wondering why I have two meals planned, I was not paying attention and I defrosted both.

    Have a great day folks!

    **The last time I posted that something sucks, it was dieting. This resulted in the comments that led me to write my ‘screw you and your unsolicited advice’ post. Please do not tell me to not grow old, as the alternative is not a pleasant one.

  • Day 41

    Sunday was bad for several reasons; my only transgressions on Monday were quantity – I had two pieces of chicken for lunch and a piece of fish for dinner. I still avoided carbs and starches, and do not think it is the end of the world. Yes, I would like to reduce my intake. No, this level of intake will not ruin my weight loss plans.

    It is hard to believe that today is March 1. I always see this day as a bit of a turning point between ‘it’s still freaking cold’ and ‘it’s starting to get warmer.’ I hope I am right. I know there will still be cold days to come, but the 10-day forecast only has the daily high temperature below 0°c once… although the daily lows will only be above 0°c during the same time frame. All in all, I look forward to using less propane to heat my cigar sessions, but it’s still a month or more away… and two months before I’ll be golfing yet.

    I noticed this morning that I had a weird pain in my foot when I took HRF Princess Sophie for her walk. Maybe pain is too strong a word, but definitely a sensation. I will pay attention to it throughout the day. I am sure it is nothing – I probable slept in a weird position, or while I was teaching yesterday evening, I did not move my feet for a long time. I am not worried about it, but I did notice it.

    I decided today to share yesterday’s article about unsolicited weight-loss advice with my public Facebook group. I did a tiny bit of cleaning up – I do not want the person involved to feel targeted, which she is not. Hers was just the unsolicited advice that reminded me to write it out. I get that sort of advice from all sorts of people all the time and have thought these words many times before. She just happened to be the one who reminded me.

    Today’s plan: I had my meal replacement shake in the morning, and it is almost time for lunch – maybe another thirty minutes. I am going to make myself a salad with some canned salmon. After that, I plan to enjoy a cigar or two on the patio – I have invited a friend over, and hope he is able to come. What I would like to happen next, which is different from what I’ve been doing: At 5:30 I’ll take HRF Princess Sophie for a walk. I will come back in and make my dinner salad and will put my dinner (fish again) in the air fryer and douse it with lemon juice, but I will not start cooking it. I will set an alarm for 10 minutes before my class dinner break so that I can start the air fryer going. My dinner will be at 7:45pm, and that should be it for the day.

    Is that what is going to happen? I do not know. I will do my best to not veer too badly from this plan.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 40

    Today is the fortieth day of my diet. I am feeling better, my clothes are fitting better. I do not feel like a new person, but I do seem to have more energy than I did at my heaviest. I have a long way to go.

    Yesterday was not a good day for my diet. While I passed the greatest challenge (not eating any of my son’s pizza or cheesy bread), I did have a lot of chicken for dinner, and a bag of popcorn. I do not know if it was simply because I miss Leslie (who I drove to the airport yesterday afternoon), or if I just slipped. It is likely the former. Today I have to do better.

    Someone responded to a post of mine on Facebook telling me not to diet, that moderation is the key. She wrote:

    “Don’t diet. I always eat pizza fries ice cream chocolate etc. It’s the portion that matters not the food. A diet isn’t sustainable and why people gain everything back and some. Eat enjoy move on. Now that’s self-love and life.”

    I wanted to say something much harsher, but opted for the following response:

    “The preceding message works fine for people who are 10-15lbs overweight. If (as I am) you are morbidly obese, please consult medical professionals (as I have), and not people who do not understand what REAL weight issues are.”

    Believe me, the first three responses that I typed were much ruder.

    I cannot stand people trying to give me weight loss advice. Everyone seems to think they know the secret. Let me let you in on a little secret: If there was one magic bullet to lose a lot of weight and keep it off, the entire world would be slim. Hey friend, I know your heart is in the right place, but kindly keep your extremely unwelcome unsolicited advice to yourself.

    That, incidentally, is good advice for anyone who is tempted to give weight-loss advice to anyone who is overweight, and who did not ask for it. If we wanted your advice, we would have asked for it. Yes, there is the extremely small percentage of people who do not know how to ask for help, and there might even be people who will be grateful for it… although I doubt it. To help you understand, this is the conversation:

    You: “Oh, I see you are having trouble losing weight. What you should do is this. I promise it will just melt off!”

    Fat Guy/Girl: “Thank you. I will consider that.”

    But here’s the thing: What Fat Guy/Girl is thinking is: “You know what, you sanctimonious prick? I did not ask for your advice, I do not want your advice, and any implication that there is a simple way to lose this much weight implies you think that I am weak and a failure, and without your help I cannot succeed. Do you think I like being morbidly obese? Do you think I do it because it is fun, or because of how attractive it makes me to the opposite sex? You asshole, I am fat because of either psychological or physiological reasons that are none of your damned business… and if they were, I would have shared them with you long since. Also, Ass: Do you think you are the first person to tell me the secret to weight loss? You are not in the top 20. Guess what? Most of you are giving me different advice. You know what the only thing all of you have in common? I did not ask for your advice, I do not want your advice, and it is a shame that it is illegal for me to punch you in the face for giving me your advice.

    Let me make this clear. While there may be others, these are the most obvious categories of overweight people:

    1. People who are happy being overweight. While this is probably the rarest of them, it is a thing.

    2. People who are unhappy being overweight but have not started trying to lose weight.

    3. People who are unhappy being overweight and who have tried and failed to lose weight.

    4. People who are unhappy being overweight and who have lost the weight then regained the weight, often several times.

    There are others, I am sure. Unless someone from any of these categories says to you “Hey, friend… I know you are slim, and I am not, and I would like your advice on how I can become more like you” then they do not want your advice.

    As a bonus, talking about their weight issues is always counterproductive. Guess what? They will know… and it will discourage them more. Your gossiping about their weight problems is just mean and makes you sound like you are still in high school.

    You might know what the psychological trauma they faced is, you may not. Yes, everyone knows I was in the Army, and some people know (or have an idea of) what I went through. Fewer people know about my childhood. You might know it all, you might know none of it. It doesn’t matter. Unless I ask you for your advice, mind your own damned business.

    For the record: Every time you tell an overweight person that the key to life is moderation and portion control, most of them want to reach for a large all-dressed pizza, a double-cheeseburger with a side of fries, or a large plate of deep-fried breaded wings dripping with sauce. If we don’t do that, it is not because of you… any more than if we do that it is because of you. Our weight gain may have many causes, but as adults, we are responsible for it; nobody forced me to make a huge plate of extra-creamy pasta with meats and cheeses and a large plate of garlic bread. I am fat because of me.

    Now please understand the corollary of that: If we eat healthy, successfully practice the self-control that we all need, and we do lose weight, we get the credit… not you.

    Have a great day. I’m going to have my lunch, and then I need a cigar before class starts.

  • Day 39

    I had another great day with Leslie yesterday, despite her taking a pretty nasty fall. She keeps telling me she is super clumsy, but I don’t know if I believed it… until now. Fortunately, she is okay, and was saved from grievous and possibly catastrophic harm by a teddy bear. There are some things that you just cannot make up.

    While I am only taking very small bites of her omelets in the mornings, I will tell you that both yesterdays and todays came out better than usual. I am not sure what I am doing to make them so much fluffier than they were before, but man they are good. The dill (I have discovered that adding dill to things makes most things better) is an improvement, and she really loves the broccoli that I have started adding, but I added those on Thursday too, and they were nowhere near as fluffy as they were yesterday and today. Since today is the last day that I will be preparing an omelet until she returns in a little over three weeks, we can only hope that whatever it is that I have been doing does not get lost.

    I took Leslie to Costco yesterday. I was a little surprised that she reached her current age (no, I am not going to disclose it… suffice it to say she is much younger than I am) without ever having set foot into a Costco. You would have thought from the lineups that World War Three was starting… and judging from what is going on in Ukraine, it might be. I did not take her there to stock up on toilet paper or bottled water or gumballs. A few months ago, I bought her a pair of garnet and diamond earrings from Costco, and she absolutely loved them. She did not know this when we walked into the store, but I was hoping that they would have a matching pendant and chain. They did, and I bought it for her. She was emotional on a level that I am not sure I expected. It seems her ex-husband felt she was so difficult to shop for that he simply didn’t buy her presents. I find her singularly easy to shop for, and her new pendant matches her favourite earrings perfectly.

    After and before Costco, I took her to get her Covid test. I do not like that she is going home today but knowing that she has a return date in a few weeks makes it a bit better. I love having her here, and even when we have minor disagreements, we are always able to resolve them. She and I sit on the balcony enjoying a cigar and talking about… everything. I love my time with her.

    As planned, we collaborated on dinner last night. I prepared the fish: salmon tails marinated in lemon juice, air-fried at 375° for 10 minutes, then liberally coated with black sesame seeds. Leslie prepared the rice, which was also liberally seasoned with black sesame seeds. They were both served on a plate with a helping of gari (Japanese pickled ginger), and it was absolutely scrumptious. That meal is definitely going into the ‘make it again’ file.

    For this evening, I defrosted chicken. I will be eating alone, but because I was not paying attention, I froze the entire pack of chicken together, which means that it had to be defrosted as one. I will prepare them all this evening, but I will eat them over the next few evenings.

    In a few minutes I have to take Leslie to the airport, and I am not happy about that. She will be back in three weeks is what I have to keep telling myself.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 38

    Last night was an incredible night, but yesterday was a very emotionally difficult day.

    The story:

    When I was in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, Esti (my father’s widow) gave me a DVD to borrow of a presentation that my father did. Dad grew up in a poor, very Jewish immigrant neighbourhood of Montreal (that has since been gentrified and populated by Yuppies). Eighty-some years later, there is a group “from the old hood” that is called The Boys/Girls of Esplanade, and they get together every so often to reminisce about the past. At a certain point, they started a tradition that at every meeting one member would get up and give a speech about his or her memories of the old neighbourhood, and how their lives evolved after leaving it. In October of 2017 it was Arthur’s turn, and it was recorded and put onto a DVD. I think he might have told me about it then, but I forgot. Esti was sure he had gotten copies to give to my sister and me, but I know I never got one.

    For the first time since my father died, I heard his voice. I heard him speaking, telling so many stories that I had heard before… and a few that I had never heard. For over an hour, my father told stories about his life, and I was in tears from nearly the first minute. Leslie held me throughout, and when there was something that she couldn’t understand (as Montreal Jews, we often throw in French, Hebrew, and Yiddish words into everyday conversation). At the end of the speech, I called Esti to tell her I had watched it, and then Leslie and I went to sit outside, and I smoked a very high-end cigar in my father’s memory. My father never smoked cigars – he smoked one in law school and got so sick that he never tried another – but he did not mind if I smoked them around him, as we sat on his back patio.

    In the evening, Leslie and I had a date night. I had a very high-end cigar, and I also had a glass of scotch whisky. It was the second dram that I enjoyed this week, and I know that it is completely not on the weight-loss program. The first one that I had was to calm me down during a very unpleasant disagreement between Leslie and me. It was a good dram, but I did not enjoy it because it was just to calm my nerves. The one I had last night was different. Leslie (at my request) brought me a bottle of Glenrothes 18-year-old Speyside whisky, and it was just heavenly. In fact, our entire date night was perfect. I prepared dinner as I usually do, and then I sat outside listening to music while Leslie got ready… and wow, did she doll herself up! My girlfriend is always pretty and sexy, but when she stepped out onto the balcony my jaw dropped. We had a fabulous time, and throughout the evening I think, if it is at all possible, we grew even closer together.

    I think the only cheat from yesterday was the whisky, but it was worth it! We went shopping yesterday afternoon, and I purchased two gorgeous salmon tails that I will prepare for dinner this evening. I also purchased sesame seeds, soy sauce, and ginger. Because of my diet, I cannot take Leslie out for Japanese food… but I can do my best to recreate at least some of that culinary experience for her (and for myself). She is a master of preparing rice, and she will be in charge of that… and yes, despite rice not being part of my plan, I will have a little bit… not a lot though.

    We got up a little later than usual this morning, but we stayed in bed and talked for a long time, so her omelet was a brunch omelet, and she will likely not need to eat before dinner. I had my breakfast shake and will have a salad mid-afternoon. Around 4:00pm she is scheduled for her Covid-19 test (she is flying home tomorrow afternoon) so we have to drive out to the area around the airport to do that, but we will then come home and have dinner.

    It is a nice day outside, and we took HRF Princess Sophie for a nice walk this morning. We will repeat that process this evening. It is our last evening together for this trip, which is sad, but knowing that she will be back in less than a month makes it a little easier.

    Have a great day folks, and enjoy the weekend, wherever you are!

  • War and Sanctions and the Economic Casualties of War

    I am in a quandary.

    Flags of Russia and the Ukraine Divided Diagonally - 3D Render of the Russian Flag and Ukrainian Flag with Silky TextureThis week, Russia invaded Ukraine. We can discuss the reasons behind it, but they are irrelevant. Simply put, Vladimir Putin wants to control the country, while the country wants to join NATO and the European Union. It is clear that Putin is a ruthless dictator who wants to rebuild the Russian Empire, conquering people who do not want to be controlled by Russia.

    The West has imposed sanctions on Russia, which short of declaring war and putting troops on the ground is as much as they can do. Fighting Russia on its borders would be catastrophic for all involved, and so before it gets to that, they are going to try the sanctions. Anyone who knows what terrible effects war can have would support this… unless of course you are Ukrainian and your country has been invaded.

    For these reasons, I support the sanctions. The fact that, as many news outlets are reporting, the effects of the sanctions might take years for them to feel does not diminish the importance of them. Russia invaded Ukraine, we impose sanctions. Everything else might take time, but this is an immediate step that we can take to show our support for the Ukraine and our opposition to the criminal activity of Russia.

    I know people in Russia who are against the war. They are against Putin, and know that he is a ruthless dictator. They want him gone, but are realistic enough to know that he is not going anywhere. These people have already started to feel the effects of the sanctions. This morning, many Microsoft Certified Trainers living in Russia received an e-mail effectively saying that they are not to receive the benefits of being an MCT anymore.

    image

    This is not from an occasional trainer; this letter was forwarded to me from an active full-time trainer who is a nice guy, and who is now worried because he has effectively lost his livelihood, and his ability to feed his family.

    So how can I be in favour of sanctions, yet against the effects of them? It is indeed a quandary that I have had to think about. I feel terrible for the individual Russians who are going to feel the effects of the sanctions long before their government ever will, and I will cry for them. At the same time, I have to cry also for the trainers in Ukraine who are also losing their livelihoods… and often their lives. They are not losing anything because of sanctions, rather because of the invasion that is killing people.

    War is not simple. It is not black and white, good and bad. It is, in a sense… but it is not completely so. This war is a completely unwarranted invasion of a sovereign nation, and there is a right side (Ukraine and the West) and a wrong side (Russia and Vladimir Putin). The response from the west could be stronger and it could be lesser, but for the time being, the effects are being felt by the innocent, where the not-black-and-white part comes in. I feel horrible for the people in Russia who are being hurt by the sanctions, but if the alternative is sending in troops that will result in more death and destruction, then maybe the current economic sanctions (that are hurting the wrong people for now) are the only reasonable immediate response.

    And so, I completely support the sanctions… and I completely sympathize for the innocent people who are being hurt by it. I would love to send this friend money… but with the sanctions what they are, not only would I not be able to get it to him… I would be in danger of having my accounts frozen for trying to defy the sanctions.

    I have thumbed my nose at blockades when they are unjust. I feel that the American blockade of Cuba is not only an anachronism, I think it was a stupid blockade when it was put into place… essentially John F. Kennedy and the Americans taking their ball and going home after the Cuban Revolution kicked out his (JFK’s) gangster friends out of the country, and then foiling their attempted invasion at the Bahía de los Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). I have been to Cuba dozens of times, mostly when I was living in Canada but also several times when I was living in the USA. Yes, I have thumbed my nose at this unjust blockade. Sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine? I’m sorry, but there is nothing unjust about that. Unfortunately, the effect is that many innocent people will be hurt in Russia.

    When the innocent people in Ukraine stop getting hurt and killed by Russia, then we can discuss removing them.

    Conclusion

    It is hard to be for an action but against the effects of the action. On the surface, the geopolitics of a war can be clearly good versus evil, but there are good people on the side of bad who are going to be hurt by the consequences of what their government does, and that is unfortunate. I wish there was something that could make it easier for them, but it is up to them, if they feel they are being led by an unjust dictator, to topple that dictator… and I am not going to go into by what means they should do that. Hoping that he, one of the richest men in the world, and not yet 70 years old, will die soon of natural causes is unrealistic. The people of Russia who are against the war and against the man must find a way to bring about change. It cannot be done by foreigners, who would then be seen by the Russian people as just as bad as we now see the Russian government.

  • Day 37

    There are going to be good days, there are going to be bad days. Then there are the days that are going to start out really well, go really bad in a hurry, and then end up well again. This is the sort of day yesterday was. It had nothing to do with dieting. Suffice it to say that all’s well that ends well.

    While my weight loss is not going as fast as I would like, I am also not starving myself. I might be consuming as many as 1400 calories in a day, instead of the prescribed 900 calories. Knowing (or at least suspecting) how many calories I used to have in a day, there is no way I can eat 1200-1400 calories and not lose weight. The only differences are that a) I will not see dramatic weight loss every day, and b) I will not be depriving myself, and I will hopefully adjust to eating like this, rather than how I used to eat (and what I was used to eating).

    Leslie has a couple of meetings today, and the weather is pretty ugly outside. It is currently -10° outside, with a windchill of -20°, and with blowing snow. By early afternoon it is supposed to go up to -4°, at which point I hope the wind will have died down, and I can enjoy a cigar. For now, the balcony is quite inhospitable, even with the heater.

    I have one piece of work to do today, and it starts late in the evening. I essentially have the day off, which means I can relax and spend time with my girlfriend… in between her meetings, and her preparing for meetings. I also plan to look at the labs and courseware for my class that starts next week… oh, and I will review the evals for the class that finished last night. I suppose I do have some work to do… but it will still be a relaxing day.

    I was showing Leslie some of the custom-tailored shirts that I have, and then I realized that if I am going to do this slowly, I am going to get a few shirts for the next few months. I have them made by a tailor in Hong Kong who comes to Canada twice per year to measure people and to sell. We looked on their site, and it turns out they will be in town during her next visit! She has excellent fashion sense, and we will pick out a few shirts, maybe a couple of pair of pants, and a sports jacket. I do not think I am going to get a new suit, but I still have a month to decide about that. In the meantime, I have to spend the next month losing weight, so that when the time comes, I will be hopefully 15-20 lbs smaller than I am now.

    This is yet another difference between this time and the previous diet attempts. I had vowed to get a custom-tailored suit when I lost 100 lbs in 2017… and I did. In fact, I got two of them. Neither of them currently fit, but they will when I am at that weight. This time around, I want to start dressing snazzy sooner. I hope that by the time I have a wedding to go to (mid-July) I will fit into my 2017 suits, but in the event that I don’t, at least I will have something nice to wear.

    I had my meeting with my diet-buddy last night. I was worried about her because she had missed the previous meeting, so I reached out to her, and she told me what had happened. Neither one of us is on the pace we want to be, but we are both losing weight, which is just fine.

    I see the weather is getting a little better, and in an hour or so I might be able to wipe down the chairs on the balcony and light a cigar. In the meantime, I want to wish you all a great day, and a wonderful weekend!

  • Day 36

    I find that I have gotten into a routine of having a shake for breakfast, a salad (often with either canned salmon or tuna) for lunch, a proper (but well-planned and careful) dinner, and a bar in the evenings. I seem to be doing pretty well with my weight loss on that routine. We will see how it goes. This morning, I made an omelet for Leslie, and I helped her with it… just a few bites, but I have to remember these things when I am accounting for my food. It helps nobody to consume a food and not remember you ate it. “Hey, I cannot figure out why I am not losing weight!?” Maybe it’s because of that half-order of French toast of your child’s that you ate because you didn’t want it to go to waste.

    There are days when I feel that I cannot do anything right. I have to try to remember on those days that yes, most of what I did was good, but it is the things I got wrong that I focus on. That has been my history, because it was how I was taught. “Sure, Mitch… you did great on your math test, you played well with others, you even ate your greens… but none of that matters because you didn’t clean your room. Go there and do not come out until it is spotless.” There are days when I am nearly able to come to terms with the person that my mother was… and then I remember things like this, that to this day sabotage my happiness and that of other people, and I remember why I could not stand her when she was alive.

    Last night I made the fish with Buffalo wing sauce that I planned for, and it was very good. I put a couple of rainbow trout fillets into the air fryer, doused them in lemon juice, and cooked them for 10 minutes and 400°F. The sauce is one that I learned how to make when I was in college from my downstair neighbour who was studying to be a chef. It has four simple ingredients, three of which are almost always in my fridge or pantry anyways. I did have to buy ketchup, as I suppose I had thrown it out when I started the program. Once Leslie is gone, I will likely go back to the boring chicken-every-night routine, but while she is here, I am enjoying mixing it up. I also plan to, on days when I go to the supermarket, pick up a good piece of fish to enjoy that night. I do not like letting fish sit too long… you understand.

    I am waiting on two packages that are set to arrive by Canada Post today or tomorrow, and I am excited about both of them. One is a handle for the Corning ware pots that I am buying from Lyle and Dorothy. Meh, okay. There is a history behind these that is the reason I bought it… aside from the obvious ‘Corning ware pots don’t have handles’ aspect, my mother always had one in her kitchen… and it was something that my sister always said, ‘When she dies, I am taking this.’ She can have it. I’ll buy my own. Fuck you, Jennifer.

    The second package is a lot more fun. I have not bought new funky socks in a long time, and when I saw on Facebook that a buddy bought a pair of dim sum socks, I reached out and asked him where he found them. He told me… and I had fun. The short version of the story is that either today or tomorrow I will have eight new pair of fun socks.

    It is still a bit chilly to sit outside, but if the wind dies down just a little then I will sit with a cigar today. Leslie has a lot of work to do, and I only start teaching at 6:00pm. I suppose my goal for the day is to relax until then, and to not veer too badly from my weight management program. Oh, and to drink water. Plenty of water!

    Wherever you are, enjoy the day!

  • Day 35

    If I could believe my bathroom scale, I am down three pounds from yesterday. I do not believe my bathroom scale.

    For the most part, I did pretty well yesterday; my only cheats were a few honey graham crackers that my girlfriend was eating, and I do not think they did a whole lot of damage. Certainly, they would do less harm than the piece of cake that I had at Lyle ad Dorothy’s the other night – something that I neglected to mention, not out of shame but because I forgot.

    I think my class is going well. I am zipping through a lot of the material because there is a lot of redundant material between the last class that I taught this group, this one, and the next class that I will teach the group. Some of my students are still trying to pull the wool over my head. They log in, make a big show of saying hello in the chat window, and make sure I have marked them as Present in the book. Okay, it’s not a book. I just had a flashback to elementary school where there was an actual book that the teachers all used. No trauma… just a memory.

    On that note, it seems that recently, so many of the memories that are coming up are in fact traumatic. I have had disturbing memories and realizations of my sister (and of my whole family) and of my professional life. It is funny that through it all I am now longing for those wistful days in the Army when I was getting shot at and bombed a lot. For so many years I have been hopeful that one day my sister and I would reconcile; I have come to realize in the last two weeks that that will never happen… and it would probably be a bad thing if it did.

    That is a very disturbing realization to come to, and it is one of the reasons I have been down these last two weeks. To come to terms with the fact that life was better when Hamas and Hezbollah were trying to kill me than when I was with my immediate family (both growing up and later in life) is harsh. My father was a wonderful man, but a weak man, who failed to protect me when I was growing up for fear of my mother (his wife). Many years later, he finally left her. He and I were driving somewhere one day when he asked my forgiveness. I do forgive him, and I love him, and I miss him. But the damage was done.

    I cannot be sure, but these family traumas just might be the root of my unhealthy relationship with food. I am not blaming anyone for my obesity. I am just coming to terms within myself with some of the root causes. How does a high school athlete and soldier devolve into what I became? There you go.

    Fortunately, Leslie is here to help me through it. My friends are here to help when she is not. I have a great support system… now. Maybe, just maybe… if I had had one twenty-five and thirty-five and even forty-five years ago… well, the sands of time are in a one-way journey, and we can look behind us from whence we came, but we cannot reach back and change it.

    I do not know if I will make it through the day without cheating today, but I want to be good because I am planning a dinner for Leslie and I that will be scrumptious. I am going to buy some fish fillets (maybe rainbow trout), and I will make my Buffalo wing sauce for them. There will be some sugar in the sauce (ketchup is an ingredient), but not a lot, and it will be so delicious!

    The weather forecast is not great. Looking at today from yesterday, you would think that we’d be wearing shorts outside, with high temperatures of 11°c. What that would not have told you is that the high would be reached at 1am, and that by the time we woke up, it would be windy and snowing, with temperatures already below 0°, and heading for -8° in the evening. The winds are gusting at 35km/h, which is to say that while I might pop outside for a quick one, today will not be a comfortable ‘sit on the porch smoking cigars’ day. Phooey.

    Have a great day everyone!

  • Day 34

    I am going to the doctor’s office to get weighed today. I do not think that it will be a successful attempt, as I still think my weight is over the upper limit of the scale. However, knowing that my bathroom floor will not allow me to take an accurate reading (and that it might be up or down fifteen pounds!) I decided to go anyways and see.

    My evening class is going well, and with the exception of IPv6 I am extremely comfortable with the material I am teaching now. DHCP and DNS are two topics that I have been lecturing on for over fifteen years, and frankly the changes to them over the years have been minor.

    I was mostly good on the program yesterday… I had a salad with canned salmon for lunch, but for the evening meal I bought and prepared salmon tails for Leslie and I (as well as making a large salad). I put them into the air fryer with lemon juice, a little salt, pepper, oregano, and dill. I air-fried them at 400°F for 11 minutes and plated them alone (opting to serve the salad in separate bowls. I brought the lemon juice to the table to allow for extra flavours, and the result was fabulous. I daresay, I seldom choose to prepare fish for dinner, but it really is an easy dish to prepare. The only cheat that I had yesterday was a slice of all-beef salami.

    For this evening Leslie is marinating chicken, and I know that if she is making it then I will love it. She is a really good cook. She asked me last night over dinner where I had learned to cook, and I gave her a bit of a rundown… yes, the genesis was in my mother’s house, but I cooked for myself ever since the Army, and on several occasions have even cooked for others. My repertoire is not too extensive, but I have a base that I can go to pretty easily. She told me that she asked because her ex was none too handy in the kitchen, and she does not want her son to get to the age of thirty without knowing how to make a sandwich. I told her about my grandfather, who after my grandmother went into the home would eat cans of anchovies for dinner because he did not know how to make anything else. I told her about my father, who I was certain would never leave my mother because he did not know how to make toast. I told her that I do not want to be that guy, and that I want to be able to eat well without having to eat out or order in every meal. I may not be able to make a lot of things, and what I do make is not complicated… but everything tastes good, and there is enough that I could make a different meal for every day of the week if I had to.

    —

    I am back from the doctor, and I am still several pounds above what their primary scale can measure… but they have a secondary scale that measured me at about what my bathroom scale has me at, if we take into account the weight of my clothes. I am unhappy to be this heavy, and I am certainly unhappy with the slower rate of progress (over my two previous attempts at this program); with that said, it is firstly possible that because of the floor/scale issues at the apartment I started out heavier that I recorded, and secondly, I need to remember that I have not been as religious with the program as I was the first two times. I might have already lost 40 lbs, who knows?

    I have a few hours to kill before I teach this evening, and I am going to spend most of that time on the balcony smoking cigars. Have a great day folks!