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Showing posts from August, 2011

Week 27: A New Beginning

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It was a triple witching Saturday: I reached by goal of 160 pounds, hit the 75-pounds-lost milestone and attended the first meeting with a new leader after having gone six months with the same one. But, for a number of reasons, I've decided to re-set my goal for the second and last time, to 155. The least silly of those reasons is that 160 is the highest acceptable weight for my height (5'6") it the highest, and it strikes me that shooting only for that would be the sort of cop-out I've been trying to vanquish. It seems like a blur, and that it hasn't take very long to get here. And that makes me wonder how hard I will work to protect my position. A big part of the reason that I have tried to be so transparent is so I couldn't retreat very easily. I'm at 158.5 as of this morning, another new decade and the last I intend to crack. I'm told that maintaining can be tougher than losing, as you learn to adjust to eating more — but not much more. I&#

Week 26: Losing, and losing.

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Joan says goodbye. First, the good news ... For my weekly meeting weigh-in on Saturday I tipped the scales at 160.8 : a frustratingly 0.02 pounds away (relatively speaking, of course) from the 75-pound, trinket-level milestone   and 0.08 from my goal weight of 160 pounds. It was the usual nutsy Saturday morning on the scale: Despite a very tame Friday and not eating terribly late the night before, my wake-up weight was 164.8 — more than two pounds above my previous weigh-in despite an entire week of behaving myself, and nearly four above my best weight during the previous seven days. With my usual morning workout, perhaps a bit heavier on the cardio, I shed four pounds of what I can only assume was water weight. Sheesh. This means that I am likely to hit my goal next week about six months after I started Weight Watchers in as winter waned. It marks the end of a beginning in what our leader describes, without a hint of the schmaltziness it must seem in print, a "journ

Spam Gold: Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me

Wired colleague Dave Mosher shared this on Google+ this morning , and graciously granted reprint rights to Planet Abell. We are choosing to believe this was spam, and not a perfectly-targeted solicitation ...  Hey Dave,   I'm reaching out to you because  *******  is getting a lot of job leads for clowns, and I'm looking for another clown who is interested in taking on more clients.   After checking out your website [Here is Dave's web site : Ed]I think you are a great fit for  *******  and I'd love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I'll start forwarding you potential new clients. If you have any questions about what  *******  can provide, please don't hesitate to ask.   Thanks, Heather +John C Abell

Spam Gold: Dear Escort / Masseuse / Dancer

Quote unquote. Only the contact info is redacted Dear Escort / Masseuse / Dancer   My name is ... and I’m a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. If you ever encounter unexpected trouble with undercover vice, for not having a city license, prostitution or drug possession, you will need a skilled and experienced lawyer, not a public defender to present your side of the story in court.   Los Angeles escorts, masseuses and dancers like you, whom I defended in court over the past fourteen years got their charges  dismissed and reduced, and received no jail time. You will usually not need to attend court as I handle your matter from beginning to end. When the court case is completed,  I will expunge your case, clearing this incident from public view.   If an unexpected situation with undercover vice ever arises, I respectfully invite you to call my law offices for a free consultation, so that we may confidentially discuss the best course of action for your case. +John C Abell

Week 25: One Of Us

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I'm down four pounds this week — two away from 75 total and my goal weight of 160. It feels as though I am tracking correctly again after a month of gaining and losing the same 4-5 pounds in a see-saw session that rivaled last week on Wall Street. But the biggest deal is that my daily PointsPlus allotment has been reduced to 29 — the fewest that Weight Watchers allows anyone. When I started this six months ago, at 235.6 pounds , I had 43 PointsPlus to play with every day. That amount was significantly higher than most around me (I learned and inferred from those occasions when it came up in a meeting) and gave me great latitude. That, in turn, made it much easier to stick with it — how can you find fault with a weight loss program under which it is possible to have a Massive Martini every day and still lose at a pace of more than three pounds a week? Forty-three points was high, but far from the highest, which is 89 points. But 29 is the fewest: It is even the amount allotte

Spam Gold: Vera Desmond — or Desmond Vera?

We all get tons of spam, but I'm double lucky in the personal e-mail department because a) GMail actually stops tons of it and b) a good friend run my incoming through a whitelist server at a secret and undisclosed location before anything reaches my inbox. At work, I'm not so lucky. Entourage does absolutely nothing useful to deal with even obvious spam, and trying to manipulate junk settings and rules is pointless. So I do a lot of deleting. And almost no reading beyond the subject line. I don't know why this particular piece of spam caught my eye, but the horrible bot-like translation and gibberish in this common come-on is almost poetic -- title and all:  Waiting  How are you today my love?  My name is Vera Desmond, her 23-year-old romance of Rwanda in Central  Africa, I want to make friendship with you, I believe that age, race and  language. Distance has an impact on. A good relationship does not exist.  I was very happy to see your response.  Thank you f

Week 24: Give A Penny, Take A Penny

Another gain for me, my second, and slight -- i.e., within the range that would not have jeopardized a lifetime Weight Watchers status if I was at goal. But it's my second gain in three weeks, and basically I have maintained for a month, with two gains and two losses and no movement in either direction. This is fine, of course, except ... I am working harder than ever on the exercise front, and had no "excesses" this week. It is still fine because I am probably trading some fat for some muscle and because muy body is probably making another one of those larger adjustments as I settle into a range with which it is entirely unfamiliar. And it is fine just because it is fine: it isn't demoralizing, and this isn't a race. And it feels as though I am solidly in the 160s, poised to declare a new goal somewhere in the 150s. New this week: I rediscovered my joy of running, and ability to do same. The occasion was a business trip which took me to DC and a fabulous b

In Social Media, Just Like In Presidential Elections, It's About A Choice

Someone added me to a group on Facebook yesterday -- which I didn't even think was possible, since my privacy settings there are akin to "I was never here." Very annoying. So annoying that I not only left that group, but the small handful of others I had joined, for one reason or another, primarily fellowship for whomever was the admin, because I don't participate in any FB reindeer games anyway. But that transaction clarified one of the important, deep philosophical differences between FB and G+ (and all the other non-FB's I venture to say). And my own relationship with FB -- indifference, but a "need" to be there -- may not be as atypical as I imagine. Throwing more and more water on little fires that crop up here and there spotlight what could be fundamentally different dynamics at competing social networks, and over time that can have a material negative impact on what had been a monopoly. One of the interesting aspects of the G+ era is that Goog