Biggest Loser update

Down 1.1 pounds this week.  Small breakfast, small lunch, keep the carbs down at dinner.  Some meals are harder than other, like when we had cheesecake for dessert, or spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner.

Going in the right direction, and I haven't had to take off my shoes to cheat the weigh-in yet.

12 Years Old

My youngest son, Jarrod, just turned 12, and it is making me think about how close we are to the end stage of raising the boys.

Twelve meant seventh grade for me, and seventh grade was the year we started middle school.  It was also the year that we began to have dances, and people started pairing off with the opposite sex, even if it was still mostly pretty tame.  The guys started to get a lot taller, and the girls started to get curves.  Twelve isn't a little kid anymore.

Jarrod is already as tall as his mom.  He takes more interest in girls and sexual topics than his brother ever did.  The other night, he started telling me about the history of condoms.  Apparently the first ones were used in the 1500s and were made of linen.  It makes me wonder how many of us owe our existence to failed linen condoms.

I don't have any regrets for now that the boys are approaching the time when they will move on.  Raising kids is a project, the project of a lifetime, and every step in their progress is a part of the project.  I'm sure I will miss them one day, but right now they seem like they are just where they are supposed to be.

Biggest Loser Update

Each Wednesday, I have an official weigh-in at work for our biggest loser contest, so Wednesdays are the best day for weight updates.

So far, since making my commitment to lose 50 pounds, I have really done nothing to lose weight.  No exercise, and I have not eaten better.  I have light lunches at work, but I make up for it when I get home.  I have stuffed myself on pizza, nibbled on snacks, eaten too much peanut butter.

My scale at home says I lost 0.8 pounds this week.  For the Biggest Loser contest, I lost 3.1 pounds since last Wednesday.  The difference is smoke and mirrors -- eat a light breakfast, and don't drink anything until you weigh in.  I still have a couple of tricks left; I can take off my shoes and empty my pockets.  After that, I will actually have to lose weight.

First, Cheesecake Factory tonight to celebrate Jarrod's birthday.  Then I'll get serious.

Words Into Action Update

I noticed that in my original post on losing weight, I wrote that I would post weekly updates. Monday is generally not a good day for me to post about my weight, because I eat poorly on weekends, but maybe that makes it a good day to motivate me.

I just weighed myself on the scale downstairs here at work. That scale is very accurate and repeatable. It says that I have lost 2.8 pounds versus last Wednesday. That sounds pretty good, but it really is not, because I have not been following my own diet guidelines at all. Last night we celebrated Jarrod's birthday with pizza and ice-cream cake. Still, I'm down, and I have a good lunch for today, so not a bad start.

Somewhere Greener, Somewhere Warmer

Heads Carolina, tails California, somewhere greener, somewhere warmer.

Jo Dee Messina

It's a little early to think about retirement, but that doesn't stop me. Today's post is about the search for a suitable place to retire. Using the process of elimination, let's see if we can zero in on an approximate location.

The most obvious place to think about right away is right where we are now, and I have to admit it's a possibility. The Seattle area is very pretty, and we already have friends here. There is a decent chance the boys will still be here when we are ready to retire, and we may want to be near them. On the other hand, we have already been here for a long time, and the weather is not so great. We got hail and snow today. Retirement might be a good time to try somewhere else.

Next we can eliminate a few places. Some other country? I doubt it; Jackie and I have lots of ties to the United States, obviously, and we won't have the means to just hop a plane every few months to come back and visit. We can't afford anyplace very expensive, so that rules out Hawaii and California. Snow states are out; if it regularly gets below zero, we'd be better off staying in Washington. Cross off Montana, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Alaska and others.

I'm not a big fan of the South. People there are nuts. Something like half of all Southerners think Barack Obama was born in another country. I don't want to live with that many loons. We want to live close to an urban area. Places like Kansas and Arkansas seem a bit remote. The East Coast might be possible, but it is far from Jackie's family and farther from mine.

Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer. Actually, Western Washington is about as green as it gets. But somewhere warmer. Florida is too humid. Texas is full of Texans.

So I see us moving to the Southwest -- Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada. Lots of sun, lots of retirement communities, some big cities, not too expensive. In between Jackie's family in Oklahoma and Texas and my family in California, Oregon, and maybe Washington if the boys are here. Not exactly original, but people retire to Arizona for good reasons.

The picture above is a beach in Florida. If I had shown a cactus, it would have given away the ending.

The Next Not-Quite-The-Top Chef

I have a new goal to pursue: Learning how to cook. Not necessarily to be the next Top Chef, but just to fix dinners for the family, plus maybe the occasional breakfast or lunch on weekends.

My family has gotten away from having dinners together as often as we would like. This has happened largely because the boys have many activities that keep them away from the house evenings. Both boys have archery and Boy Scouts on Monday and archery on Wednesday. Lucas is in a strategic gaming group every other Thursday, and he goes to archery again on Friday. Most of these nights, we each find food for ourselves; the boys usually eat some frozen item, like a Costco chicken bake, and Jackie and I scrounge up whatever we can find.

However, we have gotten in the habit of doing the same thing on nights when we are home, and that isn't really what we wanted. We like having some time together, and the boys need to eat healthy food on occasion. However, neither Jackie nor I really wants to take on the cooking task.

OK, honestly, Jackie is tired of it. She never wanted to be the cook, but she has been by default for many years, because I have not been. She doesn't want to do it anymore. It's not that I mind cooking; it's just that I work, so it's hard for me to find the time. Or so I tell myself. The truth is, I don't like to come home and put something together without any planning, and I am terrible about planning ahead.

So what I really need to do is to get some menus together and do some shopping. Then, each night, I will have to think about the next day's dinner and defrost or make other preparations as necessary. And hey, suddenly that begins to sound so much like the way my mom used to do it!

Not that I don't want to do the Top Chef thing. I actually enjoy making really good recipes on occasion. I just need to learn to cook first.

Turning Thoughts Into Action

I read this article, which is pretty mundane stuff, but turning ideas into action is not my strong suit, so I read it. The first idea is to tell the world what you intend to do. Make a public proclamation. This is me giving that idea a try.

I believe that I can lose 50 pounds in a year if I really try. So that is my goal. By next April 10, my goal is to weigh 230 pounds. There it is. Of course, no one reads my blog, so it's not really so public, but maybe my wife will read it at least.

I actually have a reason for thinking I can lose so much weight. Recently I had to eat a low-iodine diet for medical reasons. There are various ways to avoid iodine without doing anything too extreme, but you have to research what you are eating, make sure foods are not made with iodized salt, that sort of thing. I just chose to avoid anything that might possibly contain iodine, which meant I went on a restricted diet that consisted of vegetables, fruits, unsalted nuts, and just a few ounces of meat a day. And I lost 19 pounds in three weeks.

Now, I wouldn't expect to keep up that kind of pace, but it makes a pound a week for 50 weeks seem pretty reasonable. There is no reason to avoid iodine, so I can modify the diet some -- fish and salt are both OK I think, for example -- but the basic ideas of avoiding grains, dairy, and prepared foods, and eating just a little bit of meat, are very workable.

So those are the thoughts. I'll make the additional commitment to post my progress every week. Now we'll see about the action.

Things My Dad Used to Say

This is the first version of a post that I hope will grow. As I add new things, I will try to put this post back at the top of my blog. I'm not sure how to do that, but I'll figure something out.

Sometimes things that my parents (Mom and Dad both, though I think of many of these as my Dad's) used to say pop into my head, often when I am speaking to my boys, and I have wanted to make a list for awhile. The problem is that I tend to think of these little sayings as they come up, but at any given time, I can't remember very many of them. Mostly, I don't say them myself, but they come to me occasionally when the situation matches the comment.

So I am going to start a list, and I hope to add to it over time. Maybe my siblings will take an interest and help me. With that, here are a few I can remember:

• "Straighten up and fly right." Usually said to me and/or my brother, telling us to stop screwing up.
• "You gotta hold your mouth right." As a means to assist in doing something difficult, like threading a needle.
• "Harder than the hinges of Hell." Meaning quite hard. Apparently Hell has doors or gates with very tough hinges.
• "Dirty ratchifratch." A multi-purpose euphemism. I remember Mom saying this one. Not sure of the spelling. Not sure this word has a spelling.
• "Six ways from Sunday." Doing something several different ways, as in "I've looked at this problem six ways from Sunday, but I still can't figure it out."

These are almost like old photographs to me, a way of connecting with the past. There are many more, but I will have to add to the list as I remember them.

Update 4/18: My sister Pat came up with a couple more good ones:

• "A bump of knowledge."  Said when one of us got a minor injury due to not being careful. 
• "You didn't finish the job."  Dad said this if one of us did a project and left a mess. Finishing the job is cleaning up.

Another one:

• "If it was a snake, it would have bit you."  Apparently lots of people say this.  It applies to something you were looking for that was right next to you.

Additional update:  a Google search for "ratchifratch" or something similar only turns up this post.  Maybe it was uniquely Mom's.

4/23/2012:  "How do you like them apples?"  Meaning what do you think of that?

Tahiti

My son bought me a box of eight jigsaw puzzles for Christmas this year. My family knows me well enough to know that jigsaw puzzles will always be a welcome gift. I finished all eight puzzles already (biggest one was 1,000 pieces), but the gift also helped inspire me to take on Tahiti, a 4,000-piece puzzle that I have owned for about 15 years, but never completed.

This puzzle presents some particular challenges. First, it's 4,000 pieces. I'm not sure what mathematics would say about it, but from experience I know that a 2,000-piece puzzle is much more than twice as time-consuming as a 1,000-piece puzzle. I just did a little math, and if you assume that the time a puzzle will take is related to the number of choices you have -- i.e. you have to choose among 4,000 pieces to start, then 3,999, etc. -- then a 4,000-piece puzzle is about 15 times as hard as a 1,000-piece. That seems about right to me.

Next, I don't have the picture. Jackie bought this puzzle for me years ago, and the picture on the box is a painting of the coronation of Napoleon, in a room with lots of wooden walls. A really large amount of brown in that picture, hardly any blue. So when I opened up the box and found hundreds, then thousands of blue pieces, I knew something was amiss. At some point, in one of my other puzzles by the same manufacturer, I found a little brochure with a picture that I know is my puzzle. The puzzle is called Tahiti, and it is a picture of the beach. Lots of sea and sky, lots and lots of blue pieces, not easy. If I still have the picture somewhere, I don't know where it is, and it was a really small picture anyway. The picture above gives some idea -- beach in the foreground, water and sky beyond, but it's not the same picture.

Another factor is the physical size of the puzzle. The finished puzzle is about three feet two inches by four feet six inches, so it won't fit on a small table. Fortunately, I have something called a puzzle caddy that Jackie also got for me. It's a set of cardboard pieces that fit together and make a good place to build a puzzle. The puzzle caddy is big enough to hold the finished puzzle -- it's really large -- and there are a couple of additional sorting trays that go with it, but I still don't have enough room to lay out all of the pieces unassembled. I'm working on a strategy to deal with this.

Jigsaw puzzles are a good fit for my personality. I like all kinds of puzzles, and I enjoy the solitude of working on them with my chosen music playing. They always remind me of my father; when I work on one, I will often imagine how he would go about it. He used to enjoy them the same way I do, and he taught me how to do them.

I expect that Tahiti will be the culmination of all my jigsaw puzzle endeavors. I have never completed a puzzle this large before, and I don't anticipate that I ever will again. So this is a litle bit more than sitting down at a table and having fun. This one is the ultimate.

A Moral Issue

I am reading a book about healthcare called The Healing of America by T. R. Reid. The book examines how health care is managed in other countries as a way to assess what might work in the United States; however, the author starts by making the case that he basic issue of health care is not an economic issue, but a moral one.

In the United States, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people die every year because they do not have the money or the insurance to get the healthcare they need, and a few hundred thousand go bankrupt each year. In almost all other industrialized countries, those numbers are zero and zero, respectively. In this country, and only this country among wealthier nations, people with money and good jobs get all the healthcare they need. People of lesser means, or those afflicted with really extensive medical problems, don't get the care they need, or end up going into debt to pay their bills.

Most people in this country call themselves Christians. If there is anything to be learned from Christianity, it is that we are responsible for each other. Why is it then that, as a country, we can be so selfish? How can we be comfortable with our neighbors being forced into bankruptcy because they are unfortunate enough to become really ill? Why is it OK that people with less money die every year because they didn't get care?

It isn't a message that we hear much in the public debate, perhaps because it doesn't resonate politically -- Americans just don't care enough about each other to get excited about the problems of their neighbors. But in other countries, it's the moral issue more than ony other that is behind universal healthcare. It's a pretty sad commentary on our country that we don't even talk about it.

We Are Farmers

Bum badum bum, bum-bum-bum.

The fourth and last in the series of insomnia-inducing events (although, really, I didn't lose any sleep over the car) is work-related.

I have worked at Farmers Life Insurance for 10 years, just celebrated my 10th anniversary March 20th. Before Farmers, I never worked anywhere even 5 years; it's been a great place to work. I have had excellent opportunities there.

Anyway, there's this thing at work, and it has caused me to stay awake at night, several nights. But you have to be careful writing about work on the Internet. You have to assume that everyone (or at least anyone) you know at work will read it. And they have policies, and it just seems like a bad idea to give any specifics. So I really can't say anything. But there's this thing at work, and it keeps me awake sometimes.