Assorted Revelations

I'm starting to understand why gay people are fighting for the right to be married. It's not that I was against it before (I wasn't), I just didn't really see what difference it made.

Tino and I have been co-habiting for 5 years[1] and have chosen to not get married. Because of that choice, we cannot (legally) assist each other with money for our respective mortgages. This totally sucks. We have to falsely run everything through our parents, and while this is certainly possible, it's downright STUPID and it's vaguely improper. Why the hell should this be wrong? We've paid off a car together, for god's sake. I have joint leases going back to 1996...none of this matters.

The towing company here at work has gotten rabid. There was a joking suggestion about a web cam for the parking lot. People aren't taking the idea seriously at all, but I haven't a clue why. It's dead simple to pop over to Microcenter, buy a decent camera and set one up. It wouldn't cost more than $250, and it would make a lot of employees feel better. Make no mistake, having their car towed from your work parking lot does not make employees feel warm and squishy about your company.

Well, dear readers, I've been hiding something from you. Back in June, I started thinking that maybe I needed to lose some weight[2]. While I've always felt totally powerless against my metabolism, something changed in late June. I'm not sure why I felt resolved all of a sudden, but I do have a totally woo-woo explanation, and since whatever it is IS WORKING, I don't really care what anyone else thinks. I mean, I've already gotten over caring what people think of the fact that I'm a vegetarian, an astrologer and a Libertarian, and all of these things certainly mark one as a oddball.

Now for a slight deviation...

I have fairly large piercings in my ear lobes. I'm not a fan of eyelets, so I don't really see the point of getting them past 2 or 0 gauge (they are now 2). I got them to this point so that I can wear claws and other interesting jewelry. I've been looking for some exotic wood earrings for a while, but I've found none that I like. While I was in San Francisco at the end of June wandering The Haight, I fell in love with a pair of black earrings that appeared to be ebony that were for sale at Mom's Body Shop. Lo and behold they were 2 gauge (I had 4 gauge earrings at the time[3], but since I'd had them up to 2 gauge, I was unconcerned). I bought them and had one of the piercers put them in. No stretching was necessary, so I suspect my 4 gaugers were a bit larger than 4 gauge as I saw the measurement on the new ones.

Only after they were in did I ask what they were: Buffalo Horn. I've always avoided animal parts as earrings. This is not so much because I'm a vegetarian as it is because...well, I don't really know why. I think I found it vaguely gross. The piercer reassured me that these came from Bali and that every last bit of the buffalo was used. He also gave me a little lecture on organic material earrings, which I had never worn[5]. OK, so I'd wear them and see if they were ooky.

They were not ooky. Shortly after that I had one of those lightning bolt moments where you see your future and you see that it is in your control. I decided that I could drop the weight and set out to do it almost immediately thereafter. Say what you will, I think the (I don't even want to say it lest you all think I'm totally insane, but it's really what I think), um, strong buffalo spirit in the earrings gave me some strength somehow.

(This is the point where you simply whisper "Freak" to yourself, say "whatever works for you" and move on.)

Oh, and since July 1 I've lost 20 lbs and I'm still dropping. Halfway through July I was aided and encouraged in my quest by reading the material provided by John Walker, &diety bless him. He also provides Excel spreadsheets that will track a daily moving average and extract an actual daily caloric deficit from this data. It's great, and if you've ever been discouraged while attempting to permanantly change your weight (by your weight seemingly going up and down with no real pattern), I'd encourage you to try his spreadsheets.

For the curious, I'm eating 1200-1600 calories a day (usually 1400, but I try for 1200 and allow up to 1600 so that I can feel extravagant on occassion) and walking about three miles 3-4 times a week. I'm using an OTC herbal agent[6] to control my appetite and give me a little lift, and I've lost 20 lbs. in 6 weeks. I need to lose 40 more. I know this sounds like an astounding amount of weight to lose, but I assure you, that will merely bring me in line with the large frame numbers on the Met Life chart. At that weight, I'm usually a size 10, so it's not like I'll be rail thin or anything.

My friends seem confused about why I'd want to lose weight and can't figure out where I've been putting 60 lbs. I have the good fortune to gain weight proportionately, and since I maintain my curvy shape even when fat...well let's just say I'm lucky that way. It gives people the impression that I'm not morbidly obese even though I am. It also means that no one really notices when I've lost weight, which is kind of a bummer, but I check every day, so I'm over that. The other thing people don't realize is that once you get to a certain point, you fall off the end of the scale of regular-girl clothes. What people furthermore don't realize is that there is about a 2 size gap between regular-girl clothes and fat-girl clothes. I was falling into that gap, and I was really sick of not being able to buy any cute clothes.

Of course now, with the two houses, it's a moot point since I'll never be buying anything discretionary again.

One size down, two more to go. I kind of feel like I'm cursing myself here by announcing my one-third of a victory, but let's hope it's only my silly superstitions thinking that.