Many of you are now shaking your heads and muttering, "What the hell? Time? All this jerk does is sit around at work bugging me over instant messenger! Surely he can take time out of that 'busy' schedule to write a friggin' column!" Much of the time, this is true. I attempt to maintain a deadline of "by the weekend" for writing this, because I know I won't work on it over the weekend (I don't like to drink and write, people get hurt that way), and if I get busy at work on Monday, it won't get done. (In this case, "get busy" means "have a bunch of work piled on me," not "take a coworker to da baffroom and freak dat thang.")
As it happens, I'm stuck at work on a Saturday whilst we move data around (which consists of every so often typing a command and then sitting here waiting for it to finish), so I have a spare moment to update y'all on the joy that is my life.
A sober moment: as I write this, people are searching all over East Texas for the remains of what at 8:59am was the space shuttle Columbia and its occupants. Another hard reality check for the NASA program: is it really safe to continue using 25 year old vehicles to take people in and out of space? Sure, the shuttles are lovingly maintained and sparingly used, but back in mid 90s I was driving a 1972 Pontiac Grand Ville and I couldn't trust it to get me to school and back.
It is to be expected that the world experiences a similar outpouring of emotion, differing only in scale, from that felt after, uh, that day about 17 months ago. I suppose this is a good thing, but all I can think about is how many other people die every day and go unremembered outside of a few friends and family. How is someone that was unfortunate to be on a plane that got crashed into a building more a hero than a wino freezing to death from the cold in a New York City winter? Why do the families of the people that were killed that day deserve to get a big handout from the government, when every day hundreds of people die and their families each get nothing more than a $255 check from the Social Security Administration?
Back to more humorous drivel: About this time last year, many of you will remember that I was attempting a weight-loss program entitled "I Better Lose Weight or I'll Die." This program was partially successful; while I have lost absolutely no weight, I did manage to stave off death for another year. Later on in the year I began an exercise program that involved going to the gym about twice a week and spending 45 minutes doing an aerobic workout, and another 45 lifting weights. This ended after about two months when I bought a motorcycle and spent many an hour repairing it. (Clearly my subconscious was telling me: why the hell should you bother getting yourself into shape if you're just going to kill yourself on a bike? My subconscious tells me many things, which is why I often drown it in alcohol. Die, curséd brain, die!)
Well, I am yet again on a "health kick." This time it consists of less exercise (I find myself rather busy nowadays) and more dieting. My daily food intake consists largely of vegetables and fruits, with an occasional small piece of meat for dinner, with copious drafts of water, and a daily injection of uncut Asian heroin to dull the stomach pain. I am now pretty much hungry all the time. Also, I drink so much water that I have to pee about every 15 minutes, all day long.
What brought this on, you may ask? The discovery that I am no longer maintaining the weight I've held since mid-college, 250 pounds (give or take). I weighed myself and discovered that I tipped the scale at approximately 260 pounds. This puts me beyond "kinda chubby" and strongly into "Mary Mother of God, save us from The Great Talking Whale that irks our souls!"
I would like to lose 40 pounds. Yes, approximately a small child. All the silly Body Mass Index charts I've checked out say that a person of my height (6'3") should weigh no more than 200 pounds to be considered "fit." If I weighed 200 pounds, it would be because I'd lost a leg to a wolverine attack, but I figure a nice trim 225 would make me the sexiest bitch west of Tom Brokaw.
Here is an example of my dietary day: