Losing, Winning, and Running in the Race - Item One

No, the series of items/postings under this title has nothing to do with the neck-and-neck, tooth-and-nail contention for the Democratic Party nomination to beat McCain this Fall. I'm simply getting this blog back up to speed, and helping either of my two readers (two of 'em on good days, and counting myself at least twice) with what's been going on of late. First item:

For her Big Two-Five birthday a couple months back, Daughter-One Shellie allowed me to treat myself to membership in Weight Watchers. She'd been verbally and metaphorically twisting my arm (I usually just pull her leg; she always wins, however) to do so for several weeks, having somehow managed to lose twenty-some pounds herself… off a physique that (to my rose-colored Daddy-spectacles) seemed not to need a loss of that magnitude anyway.

Still, she's now even more beautiful than she was, somehow. Full credit goes to Mom for her good looks, of course; I take credit (along with my sister) only for her sassy-lassie mouth, and occasional bumps and bruises handed her by Life. She could not have turned out better; I'm immensely proud… and generally giggling at her latest escapade-story – the ones she'll admit to, that is.

As of the very beginning of the year, starting weight for me (at 5'9" to 5'10", depending on the thinness of my hair and the thickness of my socks), was about 215(+) pounds; initial weigh-in at Weight Watchers in mid-March – after already having cut back on bad foods, and so on – showed me at just over 210. Successive weeks have confirmed one or two gains of a few fractions of a pound, but otherwise steadily losing, week after week, anywhere from barely half a pound to (last week) 2.6 pounds; current weight (well, as of last Thursday's meeting) is 204.

I really don't want to lose any more rapidly than this; my gut instinct (har, har) is that it should be a gradual process. Having nearly lost a close loved one to anorexia many years ago (not a danger for me), I do have a clear idea of the other extreme.

After the first week with Weight Watchers, I cut out the tasty but stupid McDonald's breakfasts, switching over to a couple light yogurts and banana and/or a fiber bar in the morning, for dinner a Healthy Choice or Smart Ones frozen dinner (as few Weight Watchers points as possible – I buy & eat those listing six points or fewer per dinner/entrée on the package); lunch, when I have it, is various fruits and vegetables… or sometimes a Roy Rogers roast-beef sandwich (no fries!), which is extremely lean – so lean, in fact, that it's served sideways.

I, uh, still have a horrid breakfast most Sundays (I won't detail it for you folks; suffice it to say that slender, health-conscious Shellie really did hang up on me in shame when I admitted the components to her). But that's my one last indulge-me meal each week, and I'll be cutting them out soon, too.

Beyond this, I admit also I'm not really following the Weight Watchers diet plan very closely yet – mostly working into it; swimming out to it from the shallow end – though heeding the various menu/discipline suggestions discussed at the weekly meetings.

Still, I find myself already giggling at how my pants are already getting a little loose around the waist, and how on one of my belts I'm down to the narrowest notch. I don't think I've lost more than an inch or two there yet – but that was a thirty-eight waist in January… and it was only thirty when Shellie was a baby, and I weighed maybe one-fifty -minus.

I haven't set a firm target weight yet; younger brother Doc (maybe an inch taller; he was raised free-range) has a little hint-of-a-gut of his own, yet asserts he masses only 78.5 – kilograms, that is; for the rest of us not graced with a couple years in the Antipodes, it's about 173 pounds. Thus I confirm his theorem that I'm denser. Older-brother Sarge is a little shorter than me, and weighs about 180-something – but he's a Marine; by definition he's not just denser, he's got more muscle mass.

So I think I would like to see myself reach the one-eighties to begin with; a ten-percent weight loss, for instance, would have me at 189.

That's 86 Kg, Doc – now stop buggin' me, and go eat your vegemite.

Coming up: The Aging Child resumes running.

Thanksgiving-Day Leftovers

As I admitted a few days ago, Thanksgiving Day was celebrated at my home with a small, mini-gathering of chunks of the family. In attendance were my mother, older brother Sarge and my sister-in-law-in-law Choggun-Nunim, my older daughter Shellie, and an overweight Maine coon cat masquerading in size and shape and warmth as a large furry turkey someone must have left under the dining-room table.

As I write this – midevening – sister Mew and her husband Arnold, plus kids Casper and JT, are still expected here to help clear out the leftovers… once football's done being played everywhere it's being played.

Mother and I joined farces – er, forces – and did decide to augment the roast beast with a Mae-West sized turkey breast; Sarge and Choggun-Nunim brought kimchee and kimbob (but no chopsticks!), and Shellie some nice crescent rolls and a fantastic (home-made… obviously did not learn from me) cherry cheesecake. No irony there – even though, remember, the gal's shed about twenty pounds thus far, and as always looks beautiful (thanks again to her mom).

Brother Doc – recovering from surgery – and family are out near the Chesapeake Bay, and no doubt recovering from their budgie-approved tryptophan repast. And Alicia and Levi and baybay-Dannay Lee in Boston may well have been eating treyf… so, nu?

Another can't-show is lovely thespian Daughter-Two, Portia: as always, her traditional, Bavarian, and likewise-lovely, mom keeps her little lambs in the corral, come major holidays.

So I gave our young'n a call. After three-odd (some very odd) years of Spanish, she's capstoning her high-school swath with elementary German, and doing quite well. A tutor at home helps… but is hardly necessary. And it turns out she did inherit a thing or two from her dad, though: a penchant for language and puns, the poor lass. As example, once – arrived at entirely on her own – she asked me, "What does a German call a bunch of fruit that's gotten in his way?"

Hah! "Fruit" in German is "Obst"; so I answered: "An Obst-acle?" Bingo.

Example two: she asked: "Then what do you call a German who sells beetles?" Portia meant insects, or possibly VW's, but I was thinking John, Paul, George, Stu, Pete, and Ringo. That one stumped me, but I should at least have guessed, "Ein Musik-car?" – playing off "Musiker", meaning "musician".

Nein. "Ein Verkäfer!" – and for you non-students of German, this is quite funny, since a "Verkäufer" is a "salesman", but "Käfer" means "beetle"! That got a good laugh from me! (Later, I ran these past Daughter One, Shellie, who's better in German than her sister… and has no tolerance whatsoever for puns. They fell flat – and I could have punned off that one in really bad taste, since "fall flat" in German is "durchfallen"… a word that also applies to, uh, intestinal distress. Never mind.)

Sensing the good daughter was on a roll, I decided to butter her up – in a manner of speaking, that is. So I delegated to her the annual Thanksgiving-stinker bilingual pun on her mom (Mutti), who amazingly steps right into it every year; I love this about her – so does our little Fräulein. We take full advantage of it.

Very little coaching at all, and then Daughter sets the phone down a moment and asks: "Mom – are we having duck again this year?" (Conversation is in English; for reference, the German word for "duck" is "Ente".)

"For Thanksgiving? No, we're having turkey." (Mutti's tone is "well, of course it's turkey – it's turkey every year". And "Thanksgiving" in German, by the way, is "Erntedankfest"… so you can see where Miss Innocent-Face is about to lead her poor mom.)

Portia's eyes blink for a moment; (faked) bafflement. "Well… isn't it Ente-Dankfest?"

Stunned pause. Mutti's face takes on a look of utter disgust – say, as though she'd just been slapped by a large, wet fish. And she turns away. Portia's laughing really hard, and Mutti knows where that one came from. No, I didn't see this – but I've gotten that look from her Mutti so many times over the past nearly-twenty years… early on, my name became a curse-word around the house. Heh-heh…

 

Stuffed Full of It Already

You know, people, I'm really trying to get other stuff done here –

1. Job placement

2. College registration

3. Pluck a turkey

4. Finish constructing a multimedia CD-ROM (~360+ text pages, several dozen music tracks, dozens of images and MHT/HTML freestanders, etc.)

5. And plenty more

 – and you go and send me something that gets my soapbox-feet to itchin'; sigh

Fine.

Lovely former coworker (and wry Brit-wit) HeyJude passed me a making-the-rounds email (right on the heels of the same one, from fellow former coworker Electra… but HeyJude's got a cuter accent). The spelling is poor, punctuation ditto, the rhyme is lousy, meter shaky, and it's got unseemly neocon splotches all over it. Nonetheless, here it is, unretouched by your Aging Child:

T’was the month before Christmas
When all through our land
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings the teachers would say
December 25th is just a 'Holiday'.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod
Some thing was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, NOT Happy Holiday!

I responded, copying Electra:

Brother; ain't that the truth! (And you've just sent me a blog-seed… thanks!)

I'm anything but conservative: left of center on a bunch of key issues (e.g., anti- death penalty, pro- increase of spending on health care, education, etc.), but I'm certainly solidly traditional (not "conservative"!) on some issues: family/moral values, no longer pro-abortion, etc.

So whenever a grumbling email comes my way with the names "Clinton" and "Boxer" in it, it sets my teeth on edge, because I can guess that the author is conservative (e.g., pro-gun, pro-Bush, etc.).

Nonetheless, sometimes I do find myself with "strange bedfellows", and at times will concur (not "agree", okay? shudder!) with their stances. This happens to be one.

Putting up a "Merry Christmas" sign is not the same thing as posting a picture of Torquemada under a banner of "Accept Jesus or die!" Puh-lease, people! It really is okay to say "Merry Christmas".

E.g., I've been to two Jewish services (one a seder, the other a wedding), and out of courtesy wore a yarmulke (kept it, too – they're cool!) both times… and didn't walk away afterward with the impression that someone was about to force-convert me into abandoning ham sandwiches and going grocery-shopping on Saturdays.

Likewise, should I have the delight of joining some Buddhists in temple, Hindus in an ashram, Muslims in a mosque, and/or animists around a roaring fire, I'll follow conventions and take my shoes off, squat on the rug, burn incense, chant, rub blue mud on my belly, and so on. That is respect for their beliefs. I'll bone up on my Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Tibetan, Farsi, Japanese, Tlingit, and so on, to accommodate my ability to participate as a welcome guest.

"Equal rights for all" I embrace, and will fight and die for. All are free to worship in my neighborhood, so long as the other neighbors are not greatly inconvenienced or threatened. Please do not hurt anyone out of worship, do not tear up the streets or park on my lawn, and try to keep the noise down a bit between, oh, let's say 11 PM and 7 AM. Beyond that, have at it – and say a prayer for me, too, okay? I'm doing the same for you, folks.

What I will not do is bend over backwards (nowadays it's hard enough forwards) to avoid the remotest possibility of leaving my sister/brother non-Christian (or even non-Catholic) feeling less than respected and honored. This country was founded as a majority-Christian nation, and ought still to be so. Non-Christians are a minority here – though only in faith.

As fellow-citizens (or visitors… legally, too, please), they have all the rights and protections and duties that I benefit from as well. I am committed to seeing to that through all legal means, and do so heartily. That is equality. I will shed my O-neg blood to protect them and their children. To cite just one particular faith's writings: the Koran says, "If you mingle your affairs with them, they are your brothers" (and sisters, of course!); see Surat 2 (al-Baqarah) 220.

Now, get this: EQUALITY DOES NOT MEAN EQUAL BILLING.

"Equality" in this regard is equal protection under the law, equal rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness; voting, employment/pay, non-discrimination, and so on.) It is not "equal" in the sense of one-to-one equal, follow? Or I'd be obligated to build one – uh, let's say "temple to Ra, the sun-god" as a catch-all, okay? – build one Ra-temple for every church I build, one Ra-school for every Christian school, set aside one Ra-holiday in the governmental schedule for every Christian holiday set aside.

I will not post a billboard to the almighty Ra to offset the small pile of Christmas cards I plan to begin sending out after this weekend. Ra will understand, I'm sure. I want my knee-jerk, fellow-left brothers and sisters to understand that, too. I'm really with you guys.

Now, let's celebrate Thanksgiving… turkeys!

Pundemonium: Aurelio Goes Fishing

Even while deep inside I contemplate metaphysics and Catholic mysticism; while driving to and from work and elsewhere listening to music ranging from hauntingly, softly beautiful John Michael Talbot, to rather shallow seventies and eighties charters; while bustling about the office trying to meet the needs of a corporate Director, his staff of three-and-half managers, and their own staffs; and while working with my willpower to start jogging/running a mile a day (may have sprained an ankle leaping off a high stream-bank yesterday evening; so what!)…

Even while all this is going on, still there are plenty of even shallower and sillier things happening around me at home, work, on the road, and just in my spinning head. Let’s have yet another look at the office.

Ben Thayer, the above-mentioned half-manager (i.e., his corporate title includes the word "Management", but not "Manager") continues with his own share of twisting our mangled-Saxon language. The other day, he was on the phone with an offsite colleague, discussing a corporate-wide, ongoing management-improvement initiative known as Full-Spectrum Leadership.

Trained in law, highly skilled in IT, and quite the fan of sports (a graduate of
Georgetown, he was a member of "Hoyas' Loyas"), he also has a bit of smarts to him. So on this call, I heard him say, "Do you remember learning in school about how lasers operate? They call it a ‘coherent' light – by controlling that process they're able to make it come out in just one particular spectral color – red, green, and so on. I've got a question: if it's called ‘full-spectrum' leadership, is it the opposite of ‘coherent'?"

I'd love to've heard her response.

Ben also sheds regular rhetorical questions on me, which I derhetoricize by answering. That same day, he walked up to my desk and asked simply, "Do you need more patients for a paradox?"

I responded without a pause, "Yes; twice as many." Ben began walking away silently. I called after him, quoting Robert Heinlein in "All You Zombies" (not to be confused with the eighties song): "And don't forget – ‘any paradox can be paradoctored'."

Recently one early afternoon, he came up to me with his lunch: some kind of sliced-meat-with-greens in toasted bread with some garnishments – I mean, garnishes. He asked, "Who was the comedian who said, ‘I would not join any club sandwich that would have me as its member'?"

As he walked back to his cubicle, I answered idly, "I believe his name was Reuben."

Ben responded instantly: "You and your rye sense of humor!"

I shook my head (though by now I was out of his sight) and observed, "Still sowing your oats, I see."

Our colleague Aurelio, who sees after some of our department's interests in Italy, has been developing a masochistic interest in puns. When I related this exchange to him, he chuckled admiringly and admitted, "I was just listening to Hall and Oates… and they were haulin' oats!"

He's been getting better at this pretty quickly. He emailed me last week (from maybe six cubicles away), asking me to walk down for a pun he'd come up with. So, sure; I went down to see how the student was putting into practice the course of study I'd been teaching him by sorry example.

Earlier that day he'd been laughing about a pun I'd used a while back, but had long since forgotten: How do Germans tie their shoes? Answer: With lots of little knots-ies. This must have inspired him, since now he asked me: "What is Italy's most hated seafood?"

This was so out of the blue that I groped for an answer, before offering the lousy, "Cala-Mario?"

Aurelio chortled in polite condescension, then answered: "No. Mussel-ini."

I gave him the groan that one deserved – I'm proud of the boy!

It's not all pun and games at work, though. I contribute to lightening the general morale by doing my best to keep my candy-bowl full – and not with cheapo, dollar-store third-rate knockoff candies, either. I keep a custom mix of several known brands, trying my best to include at least one or two different dark chocolates in there as well. (Ben and Gülden both like dark; whereas Electra's coworker husband once made a hilarious face of disgust when he ate one unawares.) Indeed, any of the folks from my department (and others, including denizens of several other floors of offices) do their best to deplete the bowl pretty quickly, while grumbling that I never put anything in there that they don't want.

So yesterday, I blinked in amazement at the rapid depletion of this sweet resource as I refilled the bowl once more – just beyond the top – and brought it over to Senior Manager (and boss) Mick. "Look at this!" I marveled. "I brought in two bags of mixed-variety Snickers, a bag of Snickers Dark only, and a bag of Peanut-Butter Cups. And this is all that's left!"

Mick, a regular customer (and still rail-thin) glanced at the bowl. "Brought them in Monday?"

"Thursday, actually," I admitted, and turned to put the bowl on the low ledge atop my cubicle.

This seemed to distress Mick. He vowed, "Then we'll have to pick up the pace."

Pundemonium: The White and Wrong of the Sweet

I haven't had an internet connection at home since sometime over the weekend. So these last few evenings, I've been trying to figure it out – and I'm not any kind of pro on getting onto the internet, establishing/troubleshooting connections, etc.; I'm much better with programs, and a teeny bit of coding. The connection icon in the system tray showed a signal was getting through at some 11.0 Mbps, or "Excellent"… so why wasn't my older-build Internet Explorer kicking in? 

Dunno. I blew out IE 6.0 and reloaded it from an XP-Pro OS disc I keep handy (and that's another sentence I would have been clueless on a few years ago). No go. Well, then I wiped out the Linksys driver and reinstalled that one, too… nope. So this evening I tried a hardware approach: went to the main router (pronounced "route-er", folks, not "rout-er") and firewall-PC, and began unplugging and replugging various connections, powering down and up, and tested on that unit. 

Sometimes your car refuses to budge, even if you can get the engine started. No, the engine won't start. But lights come on (and someone is home) and bright, radio and HVAC run fine, ditto horn.

Battery seems charged fine, right? Maybe a little corrosion? So you pop the hood, unhook the battery, pour some cola over the terminals, hook back up. On older cars, you take a hammer and tap the starter, maybe turn the fanblade counterclockwise a couple rotations (with the keys out of the ignition!!). Slam the hood, shake the car a bit, maybe kick a tire to make sure the pressure's okay, then get in. 

Car starts fine now. 

There was a debate in front of my desk a day or two ago. Hugo – who rarely touches my candy-bowl – sneered at the mini white KitKat bars (also have dark and regular, plus Reese's mini-cups). He insisted white chocolate isn't chocolate, and began reeling off some regulations covering composition, etc. 

Ben's ears sprang up, and so did he; he strolled up to the desk. "Why don't you weigh in on this," I invited. "So to speak." (Pun ignored.) 

Ben pointed out that his wife is some kind of badge-carrying official with Federal Consumer Affairs Bureau, and – while helping himself to several mini-cups – he began spewing out more regulations, including recent changes… but didn't seem to be coming down on Hugo's side. 

At this point Priscilla wandered up – the talk of chocolate had had an irresistible subliminal effect on her. While she was reaching for a sweet, Ben flung a rolled-up foil wrapper at Hugo, and missed by a country yard. "Terrible!" he admitted, admitting, "That's because I'm not left-handed." Then, glint in eye: "But I'm still sinister." 

"At least half," I corrected, remembering – like Ben – the Latin origin of the word. 

Hugo, firmly: "No; he's all sinister." 

My face must have lit up at this instant, as I suddenly recalled a real stinker of a joke. Ben's eyes grew wide, and he blurted "Uh-oh." He whirled about and began hustling away (this is impressive in a six-foot-plus man who must weigh in excess of 300 pounds). "That's it!" came his voice, already around the corner – "I'm out of here!" 

(This is much the same reaction my older daughter takes when she sees me struck by stinkfully punny inspiration… though she usually immediately orders me to keep my mouth shut to avoid the embarrassment.) 

So I turned to Ben, who was still standing in front of my desk (when did Priscilla disappear? I think she got caught up in Hugo's wake), smiling in curiosity at what kind of rotten egg I was about to lay. 

I asked him, "Did you hear about that guy who had his whole left side amputated?" 

Ben tilted his head back, thinking gamely (though lamely), but he quickly conceded, and rolled his eyes back to me in acknowledgement. I continued, "He's all right now." 

Without comment Ben about-faced and began dragging himself in obvious pain back to his cubicle – but then stopped, and leaned into the cubicle of the boss who sits behind me. (Mick and Ben have done dueling puns more than once; Mick – tall, thin, half-bald, soft-spoken; could be a career accountant – is so dry in the humor department that he practically crackles when he speaks; utter deadpan and thus easily underestimated.) 

I couldn't see, but Ben must have leered mock-tauntingly. "Did Mick hear that one?" 

Mick, taciturn; very dryly: "I heard." 

My eyes widened – this man's hand-in-glove with our mutual boss, the Director, and with his boss, one of the VPs. "Sorry, Mick!" I blurted. 

Mick: "Not as sorry as I am." 

I think earlier that same day, Mick and Ben were urging me to go to Florida and get a job on DisneyWorld's Jungle Cruise ride, since the "guides" toss about outrageous puns. Having been no nearer Florida than Savannah (and that twenty-one years ago), I gave them a "Do tell" look. 

Mick took the ball. "Why did Captain Hook cross the road?" 

I shook my head in bafflement; I couldn't make a connection. "Because he was wearing alligator shoes?" I offered weakly. 

Mick shook his head. "To get to the second hand store." 

This morning… was it Priscilla? No; Gülden, my lovely Turkish coworker. Gülden brought in something I dubbed a Danish pizza: picture something pizza-sized, -shaped, and -cut… but the whole thing is a Danish breakfast-pastry, each slice being filled with cherry, apple, or cheese. Yum! 

By close to quitting time, there was still one slice left, and Priscilla set it out on the group-table near my cubicle. With Hugo standing nearby, Ben made a beeline for it… and cut it in half. I verbally pounced and gave him a hard time, with apologies to Priscilla: "No man does that! If I ever see half a donut, half a cookie or brownie, or half a slice of Danish there on the table, I know one of our female coworkers cut it – it allows her to have it, yet not have it." But a man doesn't do that! We just gulp it down; we wimpier men might wash it down with a diet cola, of course… 

Ben grinned. "But I cut off the good part", he said, muffled. He pointed at the remainder that Priscilla had dropped on my desk. Sure enough, it was just crust and sweet glaze; Ben had purloined the much sweeter apple filling, and little else. 

"You get your man-card back!" I proudly proclaimed. He was redeemed! 

"And he screwed everyone over," Hugo pointed out. 

"Right!" I added. "Now that was lawyerly."