on the rim

 Hello, fellow Trojans, and acquaintances, past and present. I am writing a note as our 40th Class Reunion is coming this weekend. I am not sure that I would say that I am pumped up to go, as, looking at the list of confirmed attendees, I see few that I would consider close friends. Of course, to have close friends attending, would have meant that I had close friends in High School. There were a very few. So why attend?  Andy Smith, one of those selfless people among many many that have spent hours organizing the events laid out beautifully the why to attend. But suppose that you are someone that doesn't interact with people well, and, through no fault of those other students, has built a wall and moat around themselves, and perceive that no one would care if you showed. They care. We care. When you are approaching Social Security age, associations and cliques from your teen years may still exist, or may not, but life has changed many of us. Let me use me as an example. In Hig...

 While I have leveled off on my weight loss, it is a good place, and simply need to focus, and not blow off gains made in the past year. Here are the stats. When I started my pre-surgery diet, I weighed 359 pounds. I, of course, am embarrassed to state that, it was beyond the morbidly obese side of the world, and as I am getting older, knees, back, and hips, were feeling the strain of my daily walks, and while working at camp. When Camp began in 2021, I was 301.4. A loss of nearly 60 in just a little over 2 and 1/2 months. Already things were much easier for me, but would have to still be categorized as morbidly obese. When Camp and Pow Wow finished up, I checked in at 263. Waist size had dropped significantly, and nothing fit. I could still fudge the shirts, but button shirts made me look like an old little kid trying on his dads clothes. By October, I had lost another 30, and had to buy new shirts, and new pants, for the second time. As the weather was changing, it became ever mo...

 Just a quick post today. The milestone passed is not a certain amount of weight lost. It is a weight that I have not weighed since December of 1988, when I hired in at the FAA. I have also gone from being "Morbidly obese" to simply "obese", at least according to the generic male BMI chart. Now I know that  the BMI chart should be taken with a grain of salt, as it doesn't account for anything like actual muscle mass etc. I remember a class in my early college tenure at Mo West, where the instructor spent his summers as a trainer at the Dallas Cowboys preseason camp. He mentioned that Randy White, the great defensive end, was considered morbidly obese (according to the BMI chart), and he had a 5% body fat. Honestly I didn't believe the scale which is in the exact same spot when I weigh. But it became painfully obvious when I put on my Scout pants this morning for the Interfaith Devotional at the Soaring Eagle Camporee, and it was all I could do to hold them u...

As I have expanded my track walking to include scaling the bleachers, two thoughts have occurred to me. 1. It seems like the higher I get on the bleachers the more gravity has an effect, and... 2. Actually bending the knees on the steps makes me realize that the way I walk has been my saving grace with my weight over the years, and I can only credit one thing for that. In the August leading up to my sophomore year in high school, we had the opportunity to get on the field and learning the finer points of field and street marching. No bent knees, but a glide step. If your instrument bobbed, you did a lap. I thought about that this year as I was watching the Paola band director giving guidance to his band on the field while I was walking the track. They weren't getting a proper formation marching off the field, and he was perplexed, as I walked by, I mentioned he should have them do a lap. Yeah, no,  Do you know how hard it is to hide a sousaphone's movement while practicing?  S...

I thought long and hard about this post, as to whether or not it should even be done. In the end, it is obvious the choice I made. I have embarked on a new journey. One that I have really been on several times in my life, as have millions of others. The path is one of weight loss. Of shedding who I am, for who I should be. I struggled on this path for a year and a half, thinking that anything would be better than the one that I ultimately chose.  I have a friend who demonstrated great faith in God, and with the help of family and good coaching was able to see miraculous results. I wish that I had that kind of faith in myself to let God prevail so completely in me. But maybe I do, just a different path. I have tried numerous diets, I even worked with a doctor once for six months, and while I was eating the prescribed food, I lost weight... to a point. At that point, I plateaued, and no matter how much exercise, no matter how little I ate, I was stuck, still categorized as morbidly o...

 I am writing rather than speaking as I want to make sure I get what I want to say right, and truthfully, I do not trust my voice to do so right now. So when in doubt, write it out. Sometimes the blog is a better medium anyway, it is much better crafted, and scripted.  The podcasts are good, I guess, but I get far more traffic on views of the blog than podcasts. Go figure. Probably my voice. Most people would look back at this Christmas, especially in our house, and wonder what we could be thankful for this Christmas season. I get it. It is easy to just break the glass, rather than see it as half full. Let's see, so we can get it over with. A cantankerous writer/podcaster that gets in arguments with people over the election and the direction of this nation.  Alienation of family and friends. See above. Kids that I do talk to spread all over the west, and not travelling this season. A twisted ankle thought to be sprained, well on the way to recovery when a CT scan spotted ...