Category Archives: Health

Working Out

Posted on by
Reply

My workout regimen is a nightly two hour long cardiovascular adventure.

I start the first hour on the treadmill and over time I have increased the angle on the treadmill deck progressively all the way up to where I now use it, at five degrees of inclination. I set the speed at 3.8 miles per hour, which is enough to get my heart pumping but not enough to take my breath away. I read once that if you were going to use walking as an exercise that if you are short of breath or breathing so that you cannot maintain a conversation well, that you are exercising beyond your capacity for maximum cardiovascular benefit. At some point walking has to drop away and give up to running. I was doing some running on a Nike+ program but when I started to run into joint aching that was a pretty clear signal to me that perhaps I need to stretch out my expectations of running, at least in the short-term. This time on the treadmill, at least by the computer in the treadmill declares that I burn around 745 calories for the entire hour.

The second hour I spend on the Elliptical Trainer. This machine replicates the general motion of cross-country skiing mixed with stair-climbing and walking. I set the time to be an hour and the “difficulty” to 14 out of 20. I don’t really know what the units are for the Elliptical trainer when it comes to its “difficulty” and I think that each machine manufacturer has it’s own concept of this. When I finish with this exercise I’ve burned about 845 calories.

I do this every single night, except on Sunday. That’s the day I select to rest and recover. So far it’s working very well for me. I do have some mildly entertaining problems, first of which is that I sweat a LOT. Even when I wear UnderArmour, which is supposed to wick sweat away. I find myself soaking my entire kit to saturation and then the sweat starts to rain off of me. It’s not just a little either, not a pitterpat, but more along the lines of a light rainstorm. I try to keep from swinging my hands too much so I don’t accidentally splatter nearby people who really would rather not take a shower from me. The sweat gets going on the treadmill but goes out of control on the Elliptical machine. It runs down my face and into my eyes and stings. So I’ve altered my kit and now I have a towel with me. I mop myself up every two or three minutes and by the end I’m wringing what I imagine to be about 300 to 500 milliliters of water out of myself. They say Cancer is a water sign, of this I have no doubt. Along with my issues with water, it’s getting colder outside. No longer can I work out, then dash outside to hop in my car. I did that once, and when the 40 degree air hit me it took my breath away. Evaporation consumes a lot of energy, in moments I was shivering. Now I take my time, change, wear more seasonally appropriate coverings so the short jaunt outside to my car isn’t so breathtaking.

What has it done for me personally? Well, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I started this adventure at 280 pounds, and I was wobbling around there and 278, back and forth. Mostly that was my sedentary lifestyle expressed in my weight. At this point I was hypertensive and really on the road to later disaster and I knew it. Now I weigh in at 242.6. I have lost 37.4 pounds. It’s interesting to see where it loses first. The first zones that showed immediate and surprising (almost shocking) improvement were in my legs. I used to have what I affectionately described as thunder-thighs, because I keep a lot of my weight there. That has since started to drop away. The next place was my ass, which as pretty much disappeared. Then I started to notice the drop in my face and neck, and oddly enough, my wrists and arms. The most resistant area for weight loss is the obvious regions, right along my trunk and back. So I still have a belly and love-handles, although the further I go the more I am noticing that I’m starting to develop an actual body-shape that is in line with my overall goals. I’m never ever going to look like the other gym bunnies, and I’m okay with that, but I am tired of being fat, and that fat made me tired. In a way I’m tired of being tired. That leads into the next expected-but-still-a-surprise personal result for me, my energy level has shot way up. All this exercise has also done wonders for my mood. When I carried all the weight I was always tired and irritable and generally a moody bitch. Now that I’ve shed a lot of that, I find myself not so quick in the grouchiness arena. Exercise physiologists say that regular exercise has benefits for mental health in addition to what it does for the body and of that I believe them. Body image is very important to me and it struck me square between the eyes a few days ago. I was about to head into the gym and I was wearing too much bulk, so it wasn’t terribly cold and so I stripped down to my UnderArmour Heat Gear Tee. Almost always I want to put something else on over that because I’m self-conscious about how I look with such form-fitting clothing on but that day I tossed off the layers and didn’t give it a single thought. When I got half-way to the changing rooms at my gym and noticed that I just had on my heatgear tee, and that I was okay with that, that feeling was like a blossoming reward for all the hard work I had been doing. It’s only going to get better, and I have another 42.6 pounds to lose. When I get to 200, then I’ll be just right where I want to be.

Working out this way is exceptionally dull work. I get out of work at 5, get to the gym around 5:30, and I really don’t get started on the machines until 6pm. Two hours of working out push my days to 8pm before I can even think of going home. While I’m working out I found that mental diversions really help. Listening to Podcasts works okay, but often times I get transfixed by the timer on the machine and then it just drags on and on. Reading on my Nook Simple Touch is better, especially when I can make the text very large. I sweat too much, and so the Nook has fallen out of favor in this use because I don’t want to drown it in sweat and short it out and kill it. What works best to keep my mind occupied while my body chugs away is my iPad. I’ve found that Flipboard, DC Comics app, Uno, Bejeweled 2, and Qrank really work well to keep me entertained so the time just flies on by. When I’m working out at the Anytime Fitness in Kalamazoo, they offer free Wifi so it’s great and very easy. When I’m at the Anytime Fitness in Portage, they don’t offer free Wifi, so I have to create my own Wifi through my iPhone. It’s not too bad, but I do wish I could get Wifi down in Portage as well.

When I began this new regimen I started out dreading my afternoons, schlepping off to the gym and huffing and puffing and sweating like a rainstorm. Now I think I might be getting addicted to working out. It’s not that I really like it, but it’s an odd sort of craving I have now. It’s good for me and is one of the reasons why I’m dropping weight so very quickly and I really don’t have a problem with that. I just wish I had more hours in the day to do the other things in my life. But if trading some fun for what I’ve been able to do for and to myself over these past few months is very much worth it.

Surprised Doctors and Busy Bees

Posted on by
Reply

Surprised Doctors and Busy Bees

Two days ago I went to Sindecuse Health Center here at WMU, which for those who don’t know me very well are the “Company Docs” that provide non-urgent medical care free of charge to University employees. I went in for a blood pressure screening.

Some history is in order to explain why my blood pressure is so important to me. I have a hereditary predisposition for hypertension that I inherited from the males on both sides of my family. My father has controlled hypertension and my maternal and paternal grandfathers both died of associated circulatory failures, heart attacks and strokes. So I am very aware of my blood pressure and like to screen myself for it every once in a while. My biggest problem with it is that my blood pressure is linked to my body weight pretty much directly. I am 6 foot 3 inches and when I weighed 280 pounds (very overweight) my blood pressure was 149/93. That put me smack dab in the middle of hypertension. I am young enough where the doctors gave me an ultimatum, either address this issue now or they’ll write a perscription for me which will start me on the drug treadmill that I can never stop running on once I get started. A pretty direct message if I don’t say so myself.

The fear of the drugs, and in a way the nebulous fear of hypertension on its own was a good portion of my recent decision to finally address my weight issue. I started at 280 pounds and currently I weigh 245 pounds. I have another 45 pounds to lose, as my goal weight is 200 flat and even pounds. When I went for the screening the doctor asked me why I wanted the screening and then I informed her that I had lost a lot of weight recently and wanted to see if my blood pressure was still linked to my body weight, as I really deep-in-my-heart know it truly is. She of course went from one hot-button statement to another. Someone comes in out of the blue for a blood pressure screening is one thing, but rapid precipitous weight loss? It could have been a medical emergency, a very bad sign. She did ask, and I told her that I had simply had enough of weighing so much and being so fat and lazy. Truth to be told, it wasn’t anything really new that I have done to myself except perhaps listen. If you ask any medical or weight-conscious professional about how to lose weight they will yawn, stretch, and mutter “eat right and get plenty of exercise.” It has to be exceptionally dull for these people, they keep on saying the same thing over and over again and people don’t want to do that, they want something magical and instant. So telling her that I was working out every single day and eating better helped calm down the red-button-mashing she was on the edge of with me. My blood pressure at 245 pounds is 136/88. I have lowered both the systolic and diastolic numbers and now I am not hypertensive anymore. I found a chart that doctors use to explain to patients what their blood pressure measurements mean and this chart tells me that I am now regarded by the medical community as “high normal” when it comes to blood pressure. I used to be hypertensive, now I am not. I know that anyone can live for years in a hypertensive state, but like a machine with too little oil, eventually that condition will wear out all the parts, especially the kidneys and the blood vessels in the brain and lead to a sticky and quick end – either renal failure or a stroke, if not something else equally as hazardous and unpleasant.

While my screening was underway, the doctor asked if I had any allergies. I told her that for the past few years I have not suffered from my hayfever or my allergy to poplar-tree pollen1. She asked what I had done to do that, or if I was taking any OTC medications and I told her that I simply included local unfiltered honey as a sweetener to my breakfast in the morning. She looked at me with a curious light in her eyes, as if she had never heard anyone do this before. There is an old-wives-tale/superstition that local honey can alleviate allergies, especially if those allergies are linked to pollen. The honey I buy is from Meijer’s markets and it comes from Onsted, Michigan. It’s local enough apparently to do the trick for me. I apply one serving (21 grams) of honey to my breakfast cereal every morning. I have not had the runny eyes, the clogged nose, nor the inability to swallow properly that usually comes when I’m in the thick of my seasonal allergy attacks. It could be all a giant placebo effect, or it could actually be helping me. Either way honey is good for you, and as a replacement for table sugar it makes a great sweetener all around. Cereal, Coffee, Tea, anything really that needs some sweetening. I keep on telling people about the benefits of local unfiltered honey and every once in a while I win someone over who adopts it as their sweetener of choice. If you have a choice between table sugar and honey, one is more ‘natural’ than the other, just on that basis it makes sense to me.

So I am in the middle of losing weight and so far I’m doing quite well. I haven’t had any injuries and I blew past my old plateau of 260 pounds long ago. I feel really good, I have a lot more energy now than I did before, in so far that I don’t feel so sluggish all the time and nearly everything else in my life has improved. My mood, my digestion, and yes, all the other parts of me that we don’t talk about in pleasant conversation, those have improved as well. When people ask me what diet I’m on, I tell them it’s the oldest one in the book. The one that doctors and fitness people yawn on through when they say it, “Eat right, get plenty of exercise”. I’ll write up my “diet” in another blog entry for those that might want to try it.

  1. Poplar Tree Pollen looks a lot like loose tufts of cotton flying in the breeze. Little white fluffs of childhood terror, at least for me. ↩

Paris Immunizations

Posted on by
Reply

LiveJournal 10/7/2003 –

Just got back from the Sindecuse Health Center and did my part for God and Country, got the “International Travelers” talking to. Most of it was what I was expecting – use common sense and expect theives! But of course realized that Hepatitis B is a concern when visiting West Europe, so sitting down with the wonderful nurse at Sindecuse we covered what to bring… I was pretty much right, Immodium, Pepto, Clairitin-D and Advil. Like most of the docs they were a little taken aback by my allergy to Acetominophen but took it in stride. 

I’ve got the first of 3 injections for Hepatitis B Immunization, the next one is November 7th, and the third in my series is April 7th. I also got another 10-year booster for Teatanus/Diptheria. That’s the one that hurts. When I was a kid it didn’t hurt at all and frankly it doesn’t hurt now… just a little on the weak side I suppose – dead in my left arm eventually once it kicks in. 

The nurse I had was smart with the needles… wipe-poke-pump-wipe-bandaid. The dead HepB virus went into my right arm, the dead Teatanus went into my left arm.

Now I sit back and let my immune system have a jamboree with all the new floaty bits…

Immunizations

Posted on by
Reply

LiveJournal 10/3/2003 –

It appears as though our pitched slide towards Paris is hastening. So far I’ve accomplished acquiring a source of credit to ease the financial surprise of such a trip, we’ve got a great travel package set up that we still have to secure – I’ve got a chat set up Tuesday at 2:15pm to talk to the local docs about what I can expect in my travels and to catch up in my immunizations if I need any – all that’s left is passports, securing the travel package, and securiing the cash (about $500) to have for “spending money” while there… luckily for me Paris is urban and ‘first-world’ enough not to require much in the way of surprise immunizations – at least I’m hoping.

Side Effects: May make your head explode

Posted on by
Reply

LiveJournal 6/17/2003 –

In the annals of history mankind has searched for drugs that answer to our shortcomings and inadequacies – now we have PT-141, a replacement for Viagra that is an inhalable spray through the nose that generates similar effects to Viagra except, to quote: “They also found the drug seemed to help patients overcome performance anxiety because, unlike Viagra, it works with or without visual or tactile stimulation.” 

So, lets hear it for the smart barkeep who has misting equipment set up on the dance floor and loads it all up with a solution of 10 parts water to 1 part PT-141. America will never be the same. 🙂

HINDSIGHT: Drug causes a huge spike in blood pressure, alas, you’re randy but your head explodes. Awww! 🙂

First Workout

Posted on by
1

Today was a beast at work. I upgraded the systems and right afterwards everyone started to complain about how slow everything had gotten with running reports. I knew I was cheating fate a little bit, putting SQL Server 2008 R2 on such an old server but it took and it ran and things were at least after a style, minimally acceptable. Of course, we instantly started to run into issues, mostly PAGEIOLATCH_SH locks galore all over the system. People noticed that immediately, it was a lot like running headfirst into a wall of gelatin. Wheee – fwap – splutch. The server is hosting a 15GB database and it’s got 3GB of RAM to manage. So of course I had to bite the bullet and advise TPTB that we needed a new server. My first design came in at $8500, the next design came in at $3500. I thought we had ordered it, this was all last week that this was brewing. In the meantime people were still complaining so I decided to see if I could write up some non-clustered non-unique indexes that covered most of our biggest and most used tables. That helped out just a little and I was putting pressure on our ordering department for an update for our server. Oh, they hadn’t ordered it yet. They wanted to inform me that they were able to shave $500 off the price, but had to tack on a $25 licensing recoupment fee and that we’d have to fill out the paperwork all over again and get it re-authorized. Well, after some gnashing of teeth and a righteous flurry of emails, the damn thing is ordered. Now all we have to do is wait. The new server will be set up with a 64-bit OS and then SQL Server 2008 R2 will play in that, with 32GB of RAM to play around in. Upon further inspection the PAGEIOLATCH_SH locks are all IO bound issues. Once those go away I should be right on top of things with respect to this report server. I have hope, and that hope extends to when this server IS GOING TO BE SHIPPED. Come on boys. Come to Daddy. 🙂

Of course, we all did the Q&A for what we were going to do for the labor day weekend and thankfully I have nothing planned. I was able to get down to Anytime Fitness on Stadium Drive right after 5pm. I couldn’t get in, but I think that’s because I have to register my keyfob with the management of that one, as Scott and I set up our account with the Anytime Fitness in Portage. A nice gentleman let me in and I got my stuff all stowed and hit the treadmill. I set it for 15 minutes and walked, then for 1 minute (which you can’t do, so it turned out to be 5 on the treadmill) and ran for about 3 minutes. I only had a 1-minute run actually scheduled through Nike+. Once that was done I set the treadmill for 60 minutes and pounded down my 5 mile walk very easily. While I walked I watched the Star Trek marathon on SyFy channel, which was very nice. After I logged that 850 calorie burn I took a short break and got my iPad out and plugged it in and hit the recumbent bicycle. I set that for 60 minutes and started to pedal. I shot another 600 calories and while I was pedaling for my life I was watching Netflix and laughing to a comedy stand-up show that Craig Ferguson did a while back. I was pedaling and laughing. It wasn’t half bad.

One thing that I did notice was that after I was done with the treadmill, and hopped off it, I had this overwhelming urge to move forward even though I really wasn’t. It felt a lot like vertigo. I had to shake it off several times or I was going to drop on the floor and start making little running gestures. I hope that I get used to that feeling, I knew it was coming but when it hit, I was still quite surprised. It’s a very strange sensation. Your body tells you you are walking but your ears inform you that you are not. The disconnect is very disconcerting!

My next step is to have dinner, then chug down 2L of water. Perhaps read some comic books or maybe get a little further on my Nook. We’ll see.

All that's old is new again

Posted on by
Reply

LiveJournal from 2/11/2003

Dull meetings abound, but alas, they are done. I’ve started my weight loss regimen in order to ultimately lose “1 small child” from my overall weight. I’ve decided on replacing two meals with Slim-Fast (which doesn’t have such a horrible aftertaste if you get it very cold and then chase it with water just afterwards) and two snacks in the middle of the day. The first snack is a D’anjou Pear cut into sections and 1 yogurt, then the afternoon is 1 Navel Orange cut into sections (ripped), and 1 yogurt. 

I’ve got a theory that no dietician is actually correct, that they are very much like blind men wandering around an elephant, each one noticing small bits but nobody really understanding the whole. I suppose what is supremely disturbing is that human beings don’t completely understand how human beings digest food and metabolize energy, each “dietician” has their own little gimmick and each one preaches something different. If you were to follow the food pyramid on the back of a loaf of bread, according to present conventional wisdom, you’d expand like a zodiac dinghy because of all the carbohydrates. Others seem to value one kind of energy over others, the all fat camp, the all protein camp, and the all onion-soup-and-cabbage camp. 🙂 I’ve decided to give up Soda-Pop mostly because after I started to read the analysis on the back of the canisters I discovered what I pretty much knew but chose to ignore – that soda is very much liquid candy. I’ve turned to fruits and vegetables to provide the small boosts in bloodsugar that help me stay awake and functioning at work and trying to pare down the amount I eat without really worrying about *what* it is that I eat. I figure as long as I’m not snarfing down logs of lard soaked in bacon fat and butter with a rod of pure cane sugar running thru the middle I think I’ll be ok. My problem with diets that many people are on is in the overall stress they have at having nearly zero selections other than this one type of foodstuff that isn’t as popular as your average American Fast Food Item and then railing at some idea that if you were just faithful to the diet it would work, you can’t injure an idea no matter how angry one gets. While on my diet I haven’t lost any weight however I am getting smaller, so I have this fanciful notion that all my working out (carido, 10.8 miles of biking) combined with the shift and regularity of my food intake may mean that I am gaining muscle mass and losing fat mass, then again, maybe not. I must also consider that I am a slave to my setpoint, that I can try to lose weight but my system will just reject it and preserve where I am for as long as it can, and there in lies the awfulness of diets – how to break thru so you see progress. Doctors have told me that an adult human male who is 6’3” must consume 2500 calories to remain alive, however I consider that I’m doing quite well on 800-1200 calories a day and nothing seems to happen. One other thought along with this is some kind of overall spooling effect, that indeed I’m changing my body chemistry and raising my metabolism and there will be a day when my body decides, “Fine, to hell with this…” and starts shrinking.

I suppose in the end short-term results are always going to lead to some type of heartache because for me a diet isn’t something I have to try, it’s got to be a radical shift in how I perceive food, a long-haul approach. The biggest hurdle deep down in my mind is the ability to let food go, to either box it up for later or leave some behind – perhaps for many of us there is a karmic pressure to never leave a plate without it being cleaned because at one point we died starving and vowed we’d rather die of being too fat than being too thin. Now we get to my question for those that are still with me and reading, I’m faced with a small decision, here it is:

I have a membership to a “Health Club” (used only in the most tangential of definitions) that will run until August of 2003. This place is 1/2 ok, 1/2 abhorrent, they have proven themselves to be a pack of liars and lazy dullards and their management is knitted together by an ever changing pile of “kids” trying to make something work that really isn’t. Would it be wiser to purchase a membership with the University Student Recreation Center (SRC) for $75 and simply let the other place go to expiry and forget it, or would it make more sense to use what already exists in the University to my advantage. The benefits of the SRC is that it’s CLEAN and managed by people who at least are bound to the rules of the university. If I do choose the university would it be better to pay outright or trade Sick Leave for access, even tho trading Sick Leave alters my W-2 withholding slightly? I’m leaning on going to the SRC but since I have this new journal I thought perhaps input from my readers would be a valuable source of opinions.

Nike+ Walk to Run Program

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve started a program using the free Nike+ website which I started using originally because my iPod Nano’s built-in pedometer is built to sync workout data to the Nike+ service. It’s a tight bit of cross-integration between Apple and Nike. Once you start syncing your data, the next natural step is to go visit the Nike+ website. There you find games and challenges and lots of tools to get up and out of the house. Nike concentrates a lot on running and I’ve been doing a lot of walking, so when the Nike+ app lauds me for my best distance run, I know it’s just a long-distance walk.

One of the features of the Nike+ system are complementary coach-programs. You can select from a gallery of training programs to follow to achieve various athletic goals. They have a 5K training program, a 10K, Sprinting, and one that I elected to use called the Walk To Run program. This program is a 12 week long scheduled ramp-up to running. The first two weeks have been lots of walking with infrequently placed bursts of 1 minute run intervals. The idea is to get my body acclimated to running and to make sure all my joints, bones, and ligaments are introduced to this high-impact activity in a way that they can adjust slowly and most successfully.

The program so far has been a pleasure. I was using an old pair of New Balance sneakers, but I have a small laundry list of foot-related and run-related issues. First off, my foot size is unusual. I have a 12EEE foot. It’s big and it’s wide. No shoemaker actually makes wide shoes other than a handful and of those, only New Balance makes really nice athletic-style shoes for people with mud feet like me. My other problems are my weight, I want to lose seventy pounds, and lets face it, it’s not that I want to, it’s that I have to. I’ll have a much longer and happier life if I lose this seventy pound spare tire that I’m carrying everywhere. Another issue, and this is actually something I can’t change is that my feet are pronated. That means as I walk I put an uneven wear and stress on my shoes so that my toes tend to “fall inwards towards each other” as I stand and my heels on the outer edge scrub away. My feet are murder on shoes, eventually annihilating soles and their flat construction. My feet literally bludgeon new shapes into the soles of my shoes over a year or two. At the end of the year, shoes are utterly blown out and I have to toss them in the trash. It’s something I can’t change and I’ve accepted that my feet have this odd geometry. I muse that if I lose this weight, perhaps the pronation won’t be so pronounced. Only time will tell.

So far the Nike+ fitness program is working out well. Thanks to Scott I discovered a great picturesque spot to do a lot of my walking and running, around Spring Valley Lake Park. It’s about 2 minutes by car from my house and the paved path runs all around the lake. It’s about 3 miles around the lake proper and walking it twice gives a great walking workout, plus it’s nominally level so it makes running easier too. That all being said, I have run into a glitch. This weekend I’ll be going to Chicago to visit with friends and this could get in the way of my running program. I’m very fond of being able to “Have my cake and eat it too” so today for lunch, instead of sitting back and eating something bad for me I’m planning on going home, doing a quick-change, and running my program for lunch. I won’t be able to get to where I usually do my runs, but I will be able to get it in. While I’m in Chicago I’ll just have to wake up early and do my program run then so as to not get in the way of everyone else. Thankfully I have selected a fitness program that just requires sneakers, shorts, and a shirt. The gym is the road, and that’s very easy to get to.

So we’ll see how well this goes. My ultimate goal is to run 1 mile, then 2, and so on and so forth. I think that if I can train my body to run I can work myself up to 5 miles and then I can run to work. If I do that every day, twice a day, this weight that I carry around should start to drop off. We’ll have to see how it goes. I’ll blog more as I progress.

Nike+ Coaching Plan

Posted on by
1

My job is killing me. Not in any dramatic way like radiation or asbestos or flaming ceiling tiles, but rather slowly by inactivity. Not that the people at WMU don’t care, they do, encouraging us on a 10k steps a day competition but frankly some of us Morlocks don’t have the time to spend walking about. It’s this idleness, this physical idleness that is making us sick.

I’ve been kicking around for a while that I should start to run. Everyone else is hitting the gym and bettering themselves, why can I do it too? No reason! So I decided that sooner rather than later would be a smashing good time to start training.

The Nike+ GPS app and the Nike+ site, for free, enable anyone with an iPhone to pick up a coaching program. The one I selected was walk-to-run 12 week program. Get started gradually and work myself up to running. I don’t want to compete, I don’t want to run marathons. I just want to drop all this extra weight.

Why not join a gym? Gyms are expensive, socially awkward, and usually frustrating. Waiting for a machine to open up can be an epic pain in the ass. This way the entire outdoors is my gym and technically I can exercise anytime I like, even in the rain. There is no excuse to not walk/run, since I can do it anywhere I am whenever I want and it doesn’t cost me one red cent.

So I will be blogging as I experience this adventure. Not during the actual huffnpuff, but likely right afterwards. Currently I look and feel like a tub of lard that is flopping along wildly. Hopefully with some willpower I can lose this weight, feel better, and maybe run without flopping over like a fish out of water. So keep your eyes peeled as I begin this adventure. 🙂

Winning

Posted on by
Reply

Today was our first walk at Carousel Mall and the grumpy old men were in fine form. They started asking the usual bait questions and I pretty much skipped to the end thanks to both the debt-cieling problem in August and the potential for the world oil reserve currency to no longer be the US Dollar. If neither side can possibly have any hope of winning, there is nothing to argue against. Instead of some “despicable liberal plot” I just met their arguments with economic disaster and that pretty much shut them up. They switched their talk to metal and wood shaping and the auctions they were looking forward to.

Once we finished the walk and the grumpy old men got their coffee at Taco Bell we all sat down. The talk went to their show-and-tell. Near the end the conversation turned to social security and medicare and one of the grumpy old men, Lee, brought up that I should be contributing at least 10% of my income to my retirement plan. I was gracious and thanked him for his advice and explained that as my life stands currently something like that, while a good idea, isn’t feasible currently that really upset him. He ended with “That’s a really defeatist attitude” and I shrugged and said “In my world, it’s the best that I can do.” and that was pretty much all there was to that.

I don’t think the walks will have any more political overtones to them as I have very clearly indicated that I will not be arguing with them. After the walk, Dad and I went to Cracker Barrel and he tried to get my goat again and I pretty much shut him down with “People are just looking for the status quo, to go about their lives without being upset. They are looking for their normal.” and I got the classic response “That’s the talk of the moderates, that is.” and I countered with “It works, people are happy, why should everyone else get upset? If life goes on, why meddle with things?” and that pretty much nipped that line of arguments in the bud.

If there is one lesson that I have learned for all of this is that just like at work, a big jagged stone eventually gets worn down to a smooth one after it’s been bombarded by water over enough time. Just like I have ceased entertaining turkeys at work, I have also ceased entertaining turkeys in my personal life as well.

Really so far, I’m having a very good time and I’m doing quite well at not playing this particular Kobayashi Maru.