Shinn the Writer

Fourth Time's a Charm

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This is the penalty for getting a jump on writing the articles for this website early – all I had left was this main section, and I was totally stuck. I had made three starts on it, and none of them were going anywhere. Consider some of what happened:

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• An outfit called Pavement Coatings Co. is applying Fiberized Slurry Seal to several streets in the neighborhood. While the streets need it (it’s sorta like a paving upgrade) it’s caused several unpredictable one-day street closings. Finding my way to where I’m going has been much like a rat navigating a maze.

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• I became conscious of the prodigious output of books, musical recordings and such that friends and acquaintances have produced and why haven’t I done anything like that? I did have a song I wrote and recorded played on the Dr. Demento show a couple of times, but I promised myself an album’s worth of songs and it never materialized. But that started becoming pretty negative, so I stopped.

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• One of my album-producing friends, Gary, came to visit for a few days. He lives in Eugene, which I always envisioned as about a 12-hour drive. I found out earlier this year when I visited he and his wife Eva, and our mutual friend, Dave and his wife Mari, that it’s more like eight. So we got caught up, played some guitar, but that gets rather difficult since our styles simply are miles apart. But we said nothing that’s worth discussing here.

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• I was in Church playing with the Church band Joyful Noise. The service itself was the annual Water Communion Service. I’m generally not much into these special services, but this one asked the question “What do we plan to give in the upcoming church year?” After some thought, my response was “Time.” There was no explanation; it was the time I was going to give myself by not squandering the time I have. But that rant has filled these pages before.

 

But this morning (October 1 as I write this) I stepped on my scale and it distinctly read “199.8”! This is not my end goal, mind you. Having my weight start with a “1” is my second interim goal in my recent push to get my weight down. I started at 218.5. My first was to get out of the CDC’s “obese” category. That was 208.4 (the CDC said that at my height, 209 was obese and 208 was not, so I rounded) and was easy to get to. This interim goal was my own “starts with a “1” so I truncated. This second goal took longer to get to, but required no change in my regimen. Ice cream has been off the menu. I’ve cut back portion sizes. I’ve stopped grabbing junk food (Pringles, candy bars etc.) for my ride home from the grocery store, but not much else has changed. I want this progress to be sustainable.