Weight loss!

Okay, so I weighed in today at a somewhat round-in-the-belly 168 1/2 lbs. after getting off the elliptical machine and stripping to my naked core, no towel or nuthin'.

Yesterday, I was 171 lbs. before my treadmill run and 168 lbs. after, but I think the clothing I had on before and lack thereof after contributed to the discrepancy.

I'm sticking to the idea that I weigh 168, and hoping the 171 was, you know, a cruel joke that those pesky electronic scales at the gym sometimes like to play on me. Not funny guys, not funny at all.

For a guy who once wrestled (in high school) at 112 - 114 lbs., my adult heft is quite a change. Naturally, I have no desire to lose 60 lbs. (I'd look like a scary skeleton, or maybe just French.) I do have much desire to drop 15 or even 20.

For now, I'm going to set a smaller goal of losing 8 to 10 lbs ... in seven weeks. That's 1 lb. to 1 1/2 lb. per week... Not a modest task, but, according to
TheDietChannel.com, those who aim to lose no more than one or two lbs. weekly are more likely to keep it off than those who engage in quick-result, fad diets.

So how do I lose a lb. per week? Well, the Diet Channel has 10 tips for me, and because it's on the Internet, they must be true! Actually, the tips are sensible ones that parrot stuff i've heard elsewhere.

Eat slower; do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, five days a week; add weight lifting and cardio to your workout routine; focus on getting healthier, not thinner, etc. I can accomplish this last part by focusing on my running goal. I need to get back below 9-minute miles for my distance runs. I was so much speedier 1 1/2 years ago... sigh. :(

One tip I didn't know:
One pound is equal to 3,500 calories. So to drop 1 lb. a week, you would need to drop 500 calories per day, on average. (Or 700 calories a day for five days, followed by two days off).

There's two ways of going about this: you could drop 250 calories from your daily intake (i.e. skip dessert) and then exercise for 30 minutes, and drop another 250. Or, the way I figure it, keep your caloric intake more or less the same while exercising for an hour per day.

This latter option is actually hard to do because our tendency is to eat more once we start expending a lot of energy (and if you've ever run for an hour, which is six miles or more, you realize you are using quite a bit of energy!).

Still, thinking this way gives me hope. As long as I can take 700 calories off a day, five days a week, I can drop seven lbs in 7 weeks... If I can push it a little harder, I can drop 10 lbs. in seven weeks.

March 29 was my first way-in date... April 16 will be my final weigh-in date! Yippee yee haw.

Ann Arbor News to shut down after 174 years

There's some disheartening news from the world of news, and no, this time I'm not talking about the decline of the American newspaper.

I'm talking about Saudi Arabian religious leaders, calling for an end to women in the media. That means no women in magazines, no women on television, no women, period. Don't believe me? Believe Yahoo News:

Saudi clerics want women banned from TV, media
"There should be no Saudi woman on television, in any case," they said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090324/lf_afp/saudireligionwomenrightsmedia

But for every really depressing story about the evils that men do (and yes, I said MEN; I pity, sympathize, and emphathize with my brethren on many occassions, but this is just sicko shit) there's also a bit of light and happiness.

For instance, in Thai land, a firefighter was at a loss in how to coax a scared autistic boy off a dangerous ledge. Suddenly, a brainstorm. He got dressed up as Spiderman.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090324/od_afp/thailandchildrenoffbeat;_ylt=Ah_SNge0hOIt5F9o7inKxckeO7gF

Okay, back to the depressing stuff.

The Ann Arbor News, which has published continuously in Ann Arbor, Michigan since 1835, is closing down in July. A new Web site company will take its place. It's a small paper, circulation 45,000 -- about 1/5th the size of the Pioneer Press. But it's still depressing.

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/03/ann_arbor_news_to_close_in_jul.html

not. fun.

Sylvia Plath's son commits suicide

Jeez, poets are a lonely, miserable lot! This is like the Kennedy curse, the Jeff Buckley curse, the ... the... I dunno what else curse...

FROM:

MSNBC

LONDON - Nicholas Hughes, the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, has killed himself, 46 years after his mother committed suicide and almost 40 years to the day after his stepmother, Assia Wevill, did the same. He was 47.

Hughes, who was not married and had no children, hanged himself at his home March 16, Alaska State Troopers said. An evolutionary biologist, he spent more than a decade on the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Marmian Grimes, the university's senior public information officer, said he left about a year ago.

From the time that Plath died, in 1963, Ted Hughes tried to protect and strengthen their children, Frieda and Nicholas, from their mother's fate and fame. He burned the last volume of his wife's journals, a decision strongly criticized by scholars and fans, and waited years to tell his children the full details of Plath's suicide.

----

Why we should appreciate this lousy recession

Ever seen "American Psycho?" I think the one good thing about recessions is that the psychotic metrosexual serial killers no longer have reason to bash a corporate partner to death in the men's room because the font on his businesscard is nicer than their own.

Actually, there are lots of good things about recession. It evens the playing field a bit, returns us to an earlier American dream (fantasy?) of equality and brotherhood and all that. Misery loves company, and no matter how successfully you rose above the masses in your previous outfit, we're all one and the same when we're standing together in the bread line. Or drinking together at the bar ... before noon.

That's what inspired me to recall that scene in American Psycho. When too much money goes flying around, people get pretty annoying. The prissy Stepford wives of America with their botox lips and implant bosoms, the flashy mortgage brokers with their high-end import autos, the Ivy League hotshot who makes corporate vice president at age 24 ... suddenly, it's no longer cool to have too much. Showing off when the guy next to you is losing his house isn't so much fun anymore, I suspect. It's certainly a lot easier to resent. You just got a male pedicure? Not cool. Not cool at all, bro. Maybe it never was.

Okay, enough of that. Let's channel some positive energy now...

There are other things to appreciate about recession, beyond the equalizing lousiness of it. For instance, dirt-cheap home sales is one, bargain airplane tickets is another.

Don't forget vacation deals in exotic locales you couldn't afford before (three nights free at Disney World when you pay for four? Woo-hoo!), and also all those job opportunities in those odd industries and venues that are prospering even as the economy flails, like schools, biotech, environmental consulting, Internet search engine companies and companies that specialize in designing Internet advertisements, pawn shops, and accounting firms, to name a few.

Finally, enjoy the run on breakfast cereal (it's what's for dinner in many American families. I kid you not.)

Here's more ideas from:

Slate Magazine -- In terms of our economic competitiveness, the recession will make the U.S. a better international player in the long run.

Careerrealism.com -- A great opportunity to re-invent yourself professionally, rationalize and explain away why you were terminated, and stop judging others by job title.

And don't forget: Cheap stocks!

What would you add to this list? Hey, this couple thought it would be terrible after dad lost his job as a forklift operator. They hit the gym together everyday now and their health improved, and they spend more family time than ever before!

Two-part Associated Press series on Michael Bhatia, Pentagon's first social scientist killed in Afghanistan

Well, it's late, so I'll use this as a placeholder for now, but suffice it to say the Associated Press has written a two-part series about Michael Bhatia, the Pentagon's first social scientist to die in Afghanistan. Mike was a personal friend and old acquaintance. His humvee rolled over an explosive device back in May.

Here's a link, and the top of the piece:

Michael Bhatia, first of two parts

"One man’s odyssey from campus to combat
Michael Bhatia was on the frontlines of a Pentagon experiment

First of two parts

updated 2:29 p.m. CT, Sun., March. 8, 2009
MEDWAY, Mass. - On the overcast New England morning Michael Bhatia came home, nearly 400 of his colleagues, family and friends turned out to meet him.

Seven months had passed since Bhatia, a 31-year-old scholar in international relations from Brown University, hefted his pack across the tarmac at Fort Benning, ready to begin his sixth journey to Afghanistan.

Every trip had come with risks, but this one was the toughest to explain. No one questioned Bhatia's commitment to Afghanistan, but many disagreed sharply with the way he'd chosen to pursue it."

Why didn't anyone tell me music could be this good?

The SilverSun Pickups have a song called "Three Seed"... and it has me!!!



So what is it about? Abortion, addiction, a street fight, a failed romance?? Others have debated the meaning, here:

SongMeanings.net

An economy built on service is an economy built on selling each other pizzas

What I understand about economics could fit in a thimble, but I do understand this: this economy sucks. Someone's been asleep at the wheel, and the U.S. stopped producing things that the rest of the world wants to buy along time ago.

We seem to be very good, however, at producing lawyers, which is helpful when we all start suing each other for our failure to stay financially solvent and pay back our (student, small business, large business, mortgage, car, medical) loans.

So I asked my friend, the Internet, to pony up a more academic explanation of "What went wrong?" with the U.S. economy. I came across a couple of interesting Web sites and learned more than I care to recall about banking in 30 seconds of skimming.

Here's an attorney and former Congressional candidate out in Illinois who seems a little bit too conservative for my tastes. He's a former assistant county prosecutor and the author of, of all things, "Get Your Illinois Suspended Driver's License Back: Step by Step Instructions."

But when he talks about U.S. corporations investing more money abroad than at home because, frankly, it's easier, he may be on to something!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"The fact is that current policies that have envisioned the American economy as a service economy and left manufacturing to the rest of the world are truly at the heart of the economic problem. We can only survive so long selling each other pizzas."

FROM:
The Problem with the American Economy, by David J. Shestokas