White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Woop! Slipping a bit here. Not much to really blather about. First, I thought of complaining about gasoline prices. Like, nobody ever does that. On Tuesday, when oil hit 129$/55gal barrel (Today, it got over 143), I was less than pleased. You know, when our politicians start mincing words about why we cannot drill for oil in places because it would do damage documented in the 1970's or that the oil would not be available for 10 years, I wonder what they are trying to prove. Having us spend MORE on oil is not going to give us any extra funds to spend on alternative fuel research and it is certainly not going to help the economy. Now I'm just getting cranked up here. All for naught. I've heard that we as a nation have actually used LESS gasoline over the last two quarters then the previous year. I cannot imagine how the economy in other countries are doing right now.

Let's grouse about something that I actually have some dominion over. My health. Specifically, my blood pressure, cholesterol and weight. Now, My Chatty and Extraordinarily Friendly Family Physician noted that my blood pressure was astoundingly good (so, the exercise and salt intake is not a problem), we were a bit concerned about all that nasty LDL and lack of HDL in the pipes. This morning, stepping on the scale, I found myself looking at that hard target of 183lb. Of course, it was morning and I had yet to start my daily consumption of vital worlds throughout the universe. Now, I ask myself, why is is really all that hard to loose the weight I would like. It's only 5lb and I've been railing against this last obstacle for quite a few months now. Is it the 2000 kilo-cals we are restricted to each day? Hmmm, apparently not quite true per the little counter I came across. I'm 'allowed' somewhere between 2900 and 3200 per day. So, lets look at my daily orgy of mass consumption and rank each morsel:

• Breakfast Oatmeal 166


• Granola Bar 200


• Lowfat Yogurt 150


• Cottage Cheese 90


• V8 Juice 50


• 4 cups of Coffee 20


• 2 Bunches of Celery 80


• 1 Ramen Noodle Pack 380


• 1 Apple 90


• 1 Orange 85


• 1 Banana 200


• Fresh Salad 100


• Salad Dressing 120

Now for Dinner

• Gatoraid 100


• Beef -or- Spags-n-Balls -or- Fish 1000 cal


• cheese 1000 cal

Yeah, add it all up and weep. About 3831 calories ... roughly 200 over what I really should be scarfing down. I'm going to have to abandon my cheese and beef dinners. DAMN!

Not to leave on a sour note ... I had an interesting discussion with Ghengis the other night. Every other night or so, I'll snuggle with the Tyants when they finally settle into bed (under pain of a set of cold feet on the back at 0300 hours). But I digress. We were talking and I asked him what he thought about the weekend trip to Sesame Place. He was happy with it all, but we a bit miffed that we saw not one Transformer in the place. I was curious about that and asked him where would we expect to see one? He affirmed that on the internet, there is a BOT CON in, of all places, Friggen Rhode Island. I was set back a bit, and countered that he had been to Rhode Island when he was 6 months old and we saw not one Transformer then. He countered that they are to be found in FRIGGEN Rhode Island. My bad, we will look into it when time permits. He is getting this data from a documentary video on the Hasbro site. This year, the conference is in Friggen Ohio.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weight | Diet | Children | Transformers

Labels: Children, Diet, Gas, Transformers, Weight

I'm spent. Exhausted. But not yet fatigued. Still got some spoons left. Tea spoons, but they'll do. Anyways, At TSD last night, after I finished the adult torture session, I was talking to Master Smith about the Tyrants and he made a comment that when Ghengis Jake puts his mind to it, he can really do 'good' karate. He just gets bored with doing the same thing over and over again. Damn. If I were a Green Belt at 5 ... sigh. Kids these days, you know.

Other news: Weight, Diet, and failing hardware. And by failing hardware, I do not mean my obdurate joints and appendages ... and brain-bucket. No, the corpse of the work pc has been sent to the disposal depot and a new one is on order. Hopefully, it will be an enterprise level unit and a 'COTS' (consumer off the shelf) pos. First things first: I'm back down to 185. Even though my dinners are mostly steak/shrimp/wine/cheese, I seem to be shedding that indelible 10 pound layer of 'famine resistant' flesh I've been lugging about since Thanksgiving. Good riddance; just in time for Superbowl weekend. If I could ever reach that 175lb goal (another pertinacious 10 lbs), this is the year. Problem is that I found all that red meat in the freezer and that other goal of eating it all comes first. Right under 'manage the budget better'. Rats.

Work related news, my annual review went well but I'll be picking up pager duty for a week in the near future. That should sour my mood appropriately. I'll be singing my usual caterwaul of discontented grumblings and moans of unjust conditions. Wine, wine, wine.

Oh, and I watched too much television last night after hours. What a waste ... I could have been sleeping. Note to self: Jackass II isn't funny after the first 15 minutes ... watching 90 minutes of that tripe can only be useful as to inculcate the next generation as to what happens when you don't stay in school.

Technorati Tags:television | TSD | Karate | Children | Weight | Wine | Cheese

Labels: Banalities Work, Cheese, Children, Karate, Tang So Doo, Television, Weight, Wine

So, it got cold last night, really cold. I mean it was so cold that my nipples got hard enough to cut concrete! I really should sleep with some sort of clothing on. Now that I've damaged your fragile psyche with that atrocious visual (everyone thinks in pictures, right?), let me tell you why a simple dip into the 40's makes a difference to a molasses blooded northern'r like myself. You see, the Mrs is a Manhattan girl and the Tyrants are half-n-half. A bit of cream and a bit of lutefisk. So, as it turns out, my son looks mostly like me and got a bit of the Mrs's genetics with his eye shape. I'm finding out that he did not get his tolerance of cold from me. Last night, I sacked out fairly early and actually fell asleep. Of course, sometime in the wee hours of the morning (he had to go wee, thus the phrase?) he got up and tunneled into the Mile Wide Bed. He starts out by snuggling with the Mrs and engaging in his most affectionate act so as to get her to let him stay. She is the gate-keeper ... the bouncer. After he has ingratiated himself with her, he will slowly work his way over to my thin slice of acreage and start siphoning off as much heat as possible from my overactive metabolism. Of course, he will stir a bit and reflexively beat the bejeepers out of my internal organs. Must be some sort of hex the Mrs cast on him so that I can share her experience of carrying him (and sis) for 9+ months. So, my hopes of a solid night's sleep was rended asunder. This series of events has had two distinct impacts on me ... one is that I have become more interested in getting the heat distribution fans installed/fixed for the wood burning stove. Priority on now that the ambient temperature in the Manor is now akin to a cryogenic preservation tube. The other epiphany, is that I am sick. The Murphy Factor hit me hard regarding the Flu Shot Fiasco this past Monday. A few days later and I'll be getting my shot ... I have a TSD test this Saturday ... OF COURSE I'll catch some nasty little genetically engineered virus from the Tyrants. Of course, since my body chemistry is out of whack, I'm trying to plow through a class 2 migraine as well. OF COURSE, that calls for brain-chemistry altering medication ... and we all know what that means ... 'DA FOG'. Present in body, but not quite all the way in mind.

Certainly, everything was trucking along fine but that butter-fly wing batting on Monday is now winding up it's Saffir-Simpson Scale 5 hurricane power. In the good-news column (as lengthy as it is) his morning, when I stepped on the scale, I found that I'm holding steady at 185 lb. Not too bad, considering that I threw myself on the candy-bucket to save the kids from the evil sugar monster. Now, all I have to do is survive the holiday season (Grams is an exclellent cookie/peanut brittle source, Gramps is going to possibly make that date roll I eat too much of) and perhaps avoid another round of mutated virus ... tall order, eh?

Technorati Tags:Bed | Sleep |Illness |Flu Shot |Home Improvements | Karate | Children | Migraine | Winter | Weight

Labels: Bed, Children, Flu Shot, Home Improvements, Illness, Karate, Migraine, Sleep, Tang So Doo, TGIF, Weight, Winter