Yesterday, after a long and badly self-indulgent respite, I finally started walking again...as in "walking for exercise." I dreaded it. The temperatures in Dallas have been blazingly hot, causing beads of sweat to form on one's face simply from thinking about walking out from the air conditioned comfort of one's home into the hellish heat of day (or night). I really dreaded it.
But, my weight has been on the rise for months and I believe I have hit another record, so I decided it was time to stop talking about it and do something. So, I took a brisk walk for about 30 minutes, beginning at about 8:30 pm. Just five minutes or so into the walk, my dread had disappeared. It actually felt good to be out getting an admittedly modest amount of exercise. By 8:30, the temperature had dropped below 90 degrees, so it was not quite as horrible as I had imagined. I enjoyed the walk, particularly the things I would have missed had I been holed away in my house as I normally would have been.
First, I saw a mother duck and her three offspring (I assume they were hers...but you never know, a ducknapping ring may be operating in my own neighborhood). The offspring were too big to be called 'babies' and that is not the right term for ducks, anyway. Perhaps I should call them juvenile ducks. Later, as I was nearing the endpoint of my walk, I saw a cotton-tail rabbit in someone's yard. It stood as still as a statue until I had gone quite a distance past it, then it nosed about, looking for some tender grass to munch on.
I drank lots and lots of water last night, before and after my walk, following instructions from my physician. Today was the beginning phase of my "annual" physical (my last annual physical was probabably 12 or 13 years ago). It involved blood work, peeing into a bottle, getting prodded and poked front and back by the doctor, and getting a chest X-ray. They ran out of tetanus boosters and the EKG machine was broken, so those will wait until next visit. Back to the water; I was told to fast after midnight, but to drink lots of water. That was easy. The need to drink lots of water also gave me cause not to have my nightly alcoholic beverages, which I took as a sign that I should use yesterday's preparation as the beginning of an alcohol-free period, during which I get exercise, drink lots of water, and cut down on the volume of food intake.
That leads to this evening. I had hoped to have a low-cal dinner to help keep me in line. But I sensed my wife wanted to go out, so I did not insist. She selected a place called La Acapulqueña, a Mexican seafood place quite some distance from where we live, in a neighborhood that I would consider someone "dicey" after dark. I may be wrong; I may be middle-aged-white-paranoid, but I think it's place that one cannot yet reasonably expect to be safe after dark. It was very good.
I had camerones a la diabla, which were very spicy shrimp on a bed of similarly spicy rice, along with...a baked potato. That was new to me in a Mexican restaurant. My wife had huachinango al mojo de ajo, a whole (head on) red snapper that had been baked in a very, very garlicky sauce and had been scored to ease getting at the meat. It was delightful. But, there went my plans for a low-cal dinner. (We both drank iced tea...I feel virtuous.) By the time we left the place at about 8:00 pm, I was stuffed (with chips, three types of salsa, my entre, etc.), so I allowed as I would not be walking tonight for fear of bursting. But, after we got home, I changed my mind; slipped on my leather sandals and lit out. I saw the same ducks, but no rabbit this time. I didn't leave the house until about 9:00 pm, so it was beginning to get dark; it was rather hard to see by the time I got home half an hour later.
OK, back to the doctor. Next visit I will learn the results of the lab work and, if all is well, will be admonished to exercise more, eat a healthier diet, and watch my blood pressure. I will also have the other tests. And then I will be sent off to another doctor for a colonoscopy. Since my gastroenterologist opted to leave private practice about a year ago, I have been sans gut-doctor. Fortunately, my Crohn's disease has not flared up for quite some time, since well before my doctor quit the rat-race, but it's probably best to have a doctor available, so it's good that I will establish a relationship with a new gastro-guy. I'm hoping the physical reveals nothing untoward and suggests I should live a happy and health hundred years.
Life at the office is tough these days. I'm having a tough time concentrating on what I know needs to be done, thereby risking relationships (and contracts) with clients. I need, I think desperately, a vacation to clear my head, but there simply is no time for it until at least the middle part of July. By then, I may have lost my mind.
In about half an hour, I will watch The Tonight Show, something I rarely do. I want to see it tonight, though, because the poster-girl for hate and intolerance in America, Ann Coulter, will be on, along with George Carlin. I am hoping George Carlin's wit is still as keen as I remember it, because there is no question he could embarrass and filet the woman's absurd logic. She needs it.
The newfound blog that I wrote about last night, Learning to Sequencehas some wonderful comments about Coulter: "Coulter's just the tarted-up version of this nastiness, and she's worse in a way because she claims to be using humor. Poison Supreme Court Justice Stevens? "Just kidding!" screeches Coulter. " When she says "this nastiness," she refers to pro-fascist, anti-Semitic, racist swill that was spewed by the likes of Joseph McCarthy and his ilk.
Today Bush swaggered through another press conference, making just enough tilts toward being a "real man with faults" to convince the imbeciles who support him that he is, indeed, a "feeling" man who cares deeply about this country's people. I have to admit, there are times when I hear him and think, "the guy might really believe what he is saying." When that happens, I begin to think, "If he really believes what he is saying, we're in worse trouble that it might seem. This man is too stupid to be allowed to vote, much less run for office."
OK, I should catch a few snippets of news before sports reporting interrupts it...and then, it may be time for fireworks with Ann and George!
No Fireworks
I just watched The Tonight Show. Jay Leno and George Carlin were both far too accommodating of the loathesome witch; they both listened to her and acted as if she were human (maybe she is in some sense, but certainly not human in the sense of being civil and having any emotional attachment to other people). Ann Coulter is, in my view, a dangerous woman; she spews hatred in every utterance and she is facile enough with language to persuade less intelligent folk that she is speaking logically and factually. She is a cauldron of lies. She is the perfect example of psychopathy...taken to extreme.
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