Well… it’s Friday.  Remember when I said I was moving weigh-in to the end of the week?  Well, it’s come.  I’ll be upfront here: something in the back of my head had me convinced this week would see some weight gain, so I was none to excited to hit the scale.  You see, I haven’t done my walking in almost two weeks.  With no shoes, concrete and textured asphalt were beginning to make ground beef out of the bottoms of my tootsies, to the point where it was nearly impossible to stand for a couple days, much less ambulate.

I figured the scale would announce another two or three pounds added to my weight – especially since I did a stealth weigh-in (unreported here, I know!) on Monday, and I was half a pound heavier than last week.  Half a pound is not a whole lot, but it meant I missing my daily walks was having an affect on my health, so I was prepared for the worst.  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

Somehow in the last four days I dropped six pounds.

That’s right… as of today, I’m at 488 pounds.

I have to admit, I don’t know how it happened.  Oh, I’ve been active, getting around as I can.  I’ve been drinking a sixteen ounce glass of water about every hour.  I’m still sticking with my dietary changes.  I did drink a soda last weekend – something I haven’t otherwise done in well over a month – but outside of that the only thing I’ve had to drink other than water is unsweetened tea.  No sweets.  No seconds.  No snacks.  For the most part, I’ve stuck with it on weekends, too.  I even did non-walking workouts a couple days.

Despite all that, I can’t imagine how it would account for six pounds in four days.

But I’m not complaining! Being in shock and awe over unexpected loss won’t make me foolish enough to, as the old saw says, “look a gift horse in the mouth”.

We’ll see where it goes from here.  In less than four weeks, I’ve dropped twenty pounds.  I still have a long way to go, somewhere between 275 and 290 pounds, but I am more encouraged now than I have been this whole time.

Have a great day…  I know I will!

(Oh… and the little logo.  Do you folks watch Game Show Network?  Bob Saget (formerly of America’s Funniest Home Videos and sitcom Full House) hosts a GSN show called 1 vs. 100, which is sort of a mashed up hybrid of Deal or No Deal and Jeopardy! with a little bit of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? mixed in.  If you like trivia gameshows, it’s worth a watch.  Anyway, yeah, I borrowed their logo (though mine is nowhere near as nice or flashy as theirs), because the idea just made sense to me.  It’s me – the fat guy on top – versus my weight, trying to win the million dollar prise of making myself a better person.)

The clouds rolled in from the west, a rippling ocean of mile high waves crashing against one another in a maelstrom of destructive force.  Lightning flashed in its depths; explosions of thunder pealed through the sky, the roar of a furious dragon setting the very air aflame with blinding bursts of power.  The wind swept over hills and swirled through valleys.  Trees trembled with fear as their leaves were carried away, yanked from their branches by the invisible tentacles of the coming storm.  Thunder sounded again, this time deep and rolling; the malicious laughter of a titan shook the very ground.

Finally came the rain, and the storm’s edge, the unpredictable anger of moments before, faded into the tears falling to splash upon the earth below.  In those tears there was life and joy and hope for the sun to shine once again.

Clouds are one of the few things in this world that manage to make me feel small.  These pictures were taken this morning, as a storm pushed its way over southeast Kansas.

Today has been an interesting day already, and I thought I’d share a few things with you.

Ms. Awesomesauce, The Digital Kid, The Coppertop, and I all got up at five thirty this morning, knowing some chores needed starting, and they were best done in the cooler part of the day.  (Adventure Girl was away, staying the night at a friend’s place.)  The little one and Ms. A started clipping some of the shrubberies around the house, while I and our other son started organizing the garage.  I offered to trade tasks, but she wasn’t interested in the garage at all, not with all the spiders we’ve been finding around here, lately.

Lo and behold, she was right!  Spiders galore!  Mostly wolf spiders, and a variety of garden spiders, and even a brown recluse or two had taken up residence in our messy garage.  I was in for a bit of a shock, however, when I picked up a bag of clothing only to see the monster pictured here.  Easily the biggest wolf spider I’ve seen in my entire life, with a leg span over four inches across, and a body nearly an inch long.  He looked vicious, and even threatened me a couple times.

Shhh… don’t tell Ms. Awesomesauce, but we released the big fellow back into the garage.  Hopefully he’ll clean up some of the less savory creatures crawling around in there.

It wasn’t ten minutes after we let the spider go (to be fair, it “escaped”, but neither The Digital Kid nor I made any attempt to stop it), when The Coppertop came into the garage with a tiny praying mantis.  Now, I’m used to the big, pale green and dirt brown ones you see out in Arizona, but this one was tiny and bright green – almost neon!  It was both a climber and a jumper, and used our redhead child like a jungle gym for a little bit before he let it go.  I snapped a couple pictures, but they were too blurry, sadly.

The next find was the most vicious looking moth ever.  With it’s wings spread, it looked to be nearly five inches across, and it was colored like a badger!  Well, sort of.  Being huge fans of the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender, (where you often see two creatures melded into hybrid forms) we quickly decided it must be something of a cross between the two species and named it a “modger”.  I got a couple good shots of it, too.  In the one here, you can see how fast its wings were moving.

As I got close, it flexed its wings and launched itself away, over the fence and around the corner of a neighbors house… followed closely by a hungry looking robin.

Poor fellow.

At least the robin had a good meal.  Too bad PETA couldn’t convince the bird to become a vegetarian.

So.  Spiders… bugs… what other creepy-crawlies could we find today?

How about a snake?

Cute little slithery slider, huh?

This one showed up while The Digital Kid was raking away some holly leaves in the front yard.  We pounced on the unsuspecting little reptile and it spent the next fifteen minutes or so enjoying the warmth of my hands.  For the most part, it didn’t move much, just stretched out and curled its body around my fingers.  It tried to get away twice, but I gently held onto it until our oldest could get some grass and leaves into an aquarium so we could keep the snake around until Adventure Girl got home.

She’s home now, and I’ll be turning the legless wonder loose as soon as I’m done with this post.

… which is right about now.

On the off-chance you haven’t seen this yet…

For those who don’t know, this is the big-screen, live-action adaptation of a rather popular cartoon series from Nickelodeon, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Excellent show, and it looks like Shyamalan might actually be making up for The Happening with this one.

So… I know what you’re expecting.  It’s Monday, the day I’ve posted my weight for the last three weeks.  You’re waiting for a weigh-in post, and I have this inner compulsion to give it to you.  After all, you’re the folks rooting for me, cheering me on, and need your encouragement as much as I need mine.

I am, however, going to have to disappoint you.

This weekend, I came to a realization.  It struck me as odd that I would do my weigh-in on the day following the two days during which my “lifestyle changes” were more relaxed.  Yesterday, for instance, I ate pizza, and the day before, I had more bread than I ought to have.  For two days a week, I’m allowed to slip a little, though I’m still not eating sweets or seconds, and to weigh myself after those days of freedom seemed to me a bit out of order.  As a result, I’m moving weigh-in days to Friday.

Hope you don’t mind!  Four more days, and I’ll let you know if there’s been any progress.  In the meantime, I should warn you; I haven’t exercised as much as I would like.  Largely this has to do with a complete lack of walking for the last week and a half.  You see, I was walking barefoot, on a hyper-textured track, and the asphalt was tearing my feet up.  For a few days I was so blistered I could hardly stand, and I refuse to hit the track again until I get some shoes.  Now, you might think that’s a simple proposition, but shoes for me are difficult to come by.  I need something exceptionally wide, and deep, as well.  I can’t just walk into a shoe store and expect something to fit.  The shoes generally have to either be custom made or, at the very least, special ordered.  Custom made shoes can run anywhere from $400 to $1000 and more, while special orders can usually be had for under $200.  Both have been a bit out of my price range until recently.

(Eventually I hope to have the pictured pair of boots custom made to fit me, but they’re a bit on the pricey side at $550, so I’m going to have to put that on the back burner for now.)

I’ve got a pair of shoes coming in; they should be here this week.  Until then, it’s just me and the shovelglove, and I don’t know if that’s really going to effect weight loss.  When I’ve just shovelgloved, and not walked, I’ve gained muscle mass faster than I lost fat, and as a result, gained weight.  While that’s not a bad thing, per se, I’d rather not gain any while trying to slide down the scales.

Anyway, gain or loss, expect an update this Friday, July 3rd!

Okay, so the title is a little deceptive.  It’s taken from one of my online haunts, Fark, where the running gag is that Mac-users are smug, conceited, and clueless.  I’d like to think I know better, of course.  I am a Mac user at heart, an aficionado of Apple’s oft-maligned products.  I’ve used them off and on since they were first introduced in 1984, all the way up to the switch to OS X.  My current situation is, sadly, Macintosh-free, though I hope to pick up a Macbook during my second year of college.

That said, I’m not going without my Apple fix between now and then.  Despite lacking any fruit-branded electronics for the last seven years, and being hopelessly lost in Microsoft territory, I have something coming in the next couple weeks able to render me, erm… fruitful.

Uh huh.  I ordered an iPhone 3Gs.

There’s something empowering about the iPhone.  I’ve been watching them since they were first introduced in 2007, when I called it a “high powered widget that really adds nothing to my day to day life”.  Since then, Apple’s smart phone has only gotten better; it has 3G wireless capacity, better screen functionality, and thousands of third-party applications waiting at the App Store.  Still, it’s just a widget, which means something in my life would have to change, so that it would add something to the daily experience.

Well, as you folks know, I’m headed back to school this fall.  I met with my college counselor on Tuesday, and yesterday finished off my enrollment.  I’ll be heading in to get some catch-up tutoring in Algebra (because darn it, it’s been twenty-four years) in a couple weeks, so I’ll be prepared for the college algebra class I never took despite having a couple years of school under my belt.

Outside of school, I’m getting out and exercising more, walking daily.  (Well, I’ll return to walking daily once my shoes arrive.  Walking barefoot on the hyper-textured asphalt track we have here tore my feet up last week, leaving them blistered and on the verge of bloody.)  I’ve got some other, more active projects in the works, too, so I’ll be away from the house a bit more.

Given all of that, Ms. Awesomesauce and I decided I was going to need a cellphone.  Being the pseudogeek that I am, I just couldn’t see getting anything but a smart phone with internet capabilities, and the iPhone seemed to be the best possible choice, given the options available and the discount I managed to swing.

So… count me among the Apple-enabled again!  It feels good, for the moment.

At least until I get the bill.

Have you ever climbed Mt. Everest?  Parasailed across the English Channel?

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Is your life interesting?

If you haven’t seen the commercials for German beer Dos Equis, you should mosey over to YouTube and check them out.  The ads star actor Jonathan Goldsmith, whose career is long and varied (under both that name and “Jonathan Lippe”, he has appeared in dozens of well-known series throughout the 70s and 80s), but otherwise unremarkable.  Still, the brewery’s marketing folks would have you believe his character is The Most Interesting Man in the World.  Just how is he interesting?

• He has been known to cure narcolepsy… just by walking into a room.
• His organ donor card includes his beard.
• He lives vicariously through himself.
• His reputation is expanding faster than the universe.

For me, the fixation with this kind of self-promotion started with the letter a young man named Hugh Gallagher sent in with a college application.  He made wild claims like, “Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear”, “I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes”, and “I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening”.  These Don Equis commercials only remind me of Gallagher’s sense of humor, and while they evoke a chuckle or a smile, they don’t seem to be the degree of concentrated mirth I get from the aforementioned essay.

Still, seeing just how intriguing this man of mystery might be, I’ve begun to wonder if I couldn’t be just as remarkable, if I really tried.  Or if I marketed myself that way.  Think of it – we could all be interesting! – all it would take is a few million to spend on advertising and a witty, even nonsensical line or three.  Sure, the promotional funds might be a bit difficult to come by, but given time and effort, I’m certain we all have it in us to present ourselves as the most interesting people in the world.  To that end, I present to you my own list of unverifiable, but utterly believable “facts”.

• I run marathons backwards while playing classical overtures on my kazoo.
• The FBI, the CIA, and Microsoft have all utilized my amazing skills at stealth ping pong.
• I posthumously interviewed Flipper using a can of tuna and a Magic 8-Ball.
• While on vacation in Japan, I glided from the peak of Mount Fuji to the center of Tokyo atop the world’s largest paper airplane.
• I rarely misspell names.  When I do, people usually change their names to match my spelling.
• If I am cut, I bleed dark chocolate.
• I have never weighed more than one hundred and eighty pounds.  I simply wear a three hundred pound weight suit to stay in tip-top shape.
• A single strand of my hair, tied around the wrist, guarantees virility.
• I was adopted by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but ran away to avoid undue media attention.
• After becoming stranded in a bus during a blizzard, I saved forty seven children, three teachers, and a school mascot with a roll of fishing line, two mechanical pencils, and a half eaten Big Mac.
• I once borrowed a psychic’s powers and used them to find a lost wiener dog and a good source of gourmet ice cream.
• My telephone number is “1″.
• I don’t drive a car.  I simply tell it where to take me.

I am… the most interesting man in the world.

How about you?

Parkour.

Freerunning.

Are these terms familiar?  I’ll admit, I had heard neither of them until a couple years ago, when something I saw on television prompted me to investigate.  At the basic level, parkour is the art of efficiency in motion, the ability to get from Point A to Point B with as little deviation as possible.  It’s movements are non-traditional; instead of climbing stairs, you may leap to them from the side, throwing yourself over their banister.  Instead of going around a picnic table, you might go over it – or even under it!  It’s really amazing to watch.  If you haven’t before, you should take the time to look it up on YouTube.  Some of the traceurs (people who practice parkour) you’ll find there are simply astounding.

Related to parkour is the art of freerunning.  Like the art from which it descends, freerunning focuses on non-traditional ambulation.  The difference between the two is summed up on Wikipedia:  “[People practice parkour] in order to improve their ability to overcome obstacles faster and in the most efficient manner; freerunners practice and employ a broader array of movements that are not always necessary in order to overcome obstacles.”  You’re more likely to see flashy acrobatics with freerunning than with parkour.  It’s a philosophical difference, when it comes down to it, not so much a matter of what you do but why you do it.

While they’ve existed in disorganized forms for most of history, parkour and freerunning have been a sort of unnamed interest in popular culture for a while now.  There’s a scene in Bladerunner toward the end shows a bit of freerunning style, and more modern movies like Quantum of Solace and Paul Blart: Mall Cop showed how effective it can be.  Video games have even gotten into the gig; with freerunning being so closely related to skateboarding, Tony Hawk’s branded games, especially the most recently released, have included certain moves evocative of the skill.  In Assassin’s Creed, you plan the assassin Altair, member of a group of historical assassins in the Middle East during the Crusades.  Altair list strong and agile, climbing, leaping, and swinging throughout Jerusalem and other cities in the region.

So… why is the 490+ pound man talking about parkour?  Good question.  I’m glad I asked it for you.

You see, a few of my online acquaintances of mine and I were discussing the subject and I mentioned that, while I am in awe of the feats of which traceurs are capable, I’d never really consider myself a candidate for learning the art.  One of the people I was talking with posted a link to a video of a man who, while not in as bad a shape as I am now, is probably a bit chunkier than my target weight, performing parkour feats.  They weren’t as grand as what I’ve seen some of the wiry guys active in the sport perform, but they were a start, and something he’d managed after only nine months of practice.

I was suitably impressed. Needless to say, I’m far more interested in parkour this afternoon than I was this morning.

That said, I’m about two hundred pounds heavier than I’d need to be to even consider most of the tricks those guys manage, but I think as I get closer to my target weight, I’m going to have to find a good area in which to practice.  Add to that the sad fact of my poor history as a skateboarder (back during my teen days in Arizona, no less, so it’s been at least twenty-one years), and I might have a pretty serious challenge to overcome.  Still, I want to give it a shot.  Eventually.

Chalk that down for another plan for the future.

This week was rough.  I walked, but there were a few problems.  You see, I walk barefoot.  I do so for a number of reasons, all my own, but I was foolish enough to walk barefoot on the track this week.  The track we have nearby isn’t dirt, isn’t rubber, and isn’t standard asphalt.  It’s hyper-textured asphalt.  Needless to say, the few days I’ve walked on the track over the last couple weeks have left my feet feeling as though they’d been attacked by coarse sandpaper monsters.  Raw and blistered, I could barely stand on them all Thursday and Friday last week.  That meant no walking.

I’m looking for a better place to walk now.

That said, I did manage to drop a few pounds.  Four.  One less than I’d hoped for, but given the circumstances (and the Father’s Day barbecue at the in-laws’ place yesterday!), I’m not complaining.  It’s four more pounds toward my goal, which is better than four pounds away from it, right?  Besides, losing four pounds in a week is nothing to sneeze at.  If I could pull that off every week, I’d be able to complete the weight loss phase of this self-improvement plan in under a year.

That’s not going to happen, and I’m okay with it.

I’m starting to shovelglove more.  Every couple days I add on more exercises or more reps or both.  I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get to the fourteen minutes you’re supposed to do, but I’ll get there eventually.   In the meantime, I’m doing it multiple times a day, just to make up the difference.

So… four pounds this week.  Maybe another four next?  We’ll see.  I’m guessing I’ll see a loss of two to four pounds a week for a while.  It might plateau at some point; I’m told it happens and not to be discouraged, so I’m already building up the confidence levels needed to see me through those times.  In the meantime, I’m just happy this week’s weigh-in was less than last week’s.

• just got Twitter Tools installed at bigsimon.com, so he can tweet from the blog now. Ugh. Tweet? Does he reall have to call it tweeting? #
• isn’t nearly as tired as he ought to be. #
• just ate more than he should have, but not so much it’ll cause a problem. Spicy, too! #
• is dancing to the beat of a different drum. The drum is being accompanied by a string quartet, seven kazoos, and a aquaggaswack. #
• is ready for the daily grind and off to do his morning walking. Walmart, this time, instead of the track. Nobody at the track sells Borax. #
• is considering playing Santa Claus this year. Hm. Bleached beard. #
• figures he better get some rest. #
• yawns and stretches. Somewhere out there is a track with his name on it, and now he’s off to find it. #
• believes the best possible future is the one you create today. #
• encourages everyone to read his latest post, either on Facebook or at bigsimon.com, and take part if you can! #
• thinks he’s got the RSS-feed blip fixed at Facebook. Please read the last couple posts at Facebook or bigsimon.com and help out if you can! #
• is finally going to head to bed. Goodnight! #
• is up and ready for the weekend! Thinking about adding socks to the donate list! See http://www.bigsimon.com/ for info! #
• is getting ready to play a RPG with the kids, a game of magic where different color M&Ms produce different kinds of power. *wiggles fingers* #