Okay, so I hope you enjoyed some of the longest posts I've ever subjected you to over the past week.  See, while most TV shows, radio hosts, Web site operators and other professions are all taking off the same lame-ass week (seriously, why does everyone take off such a cruddy, gloomy week?), I was here to entertain you.  Toiling away, telling stories and spinning yarns.  Anyway, I imagine I'll revert back now to shorter posts and long, unexplained gaps of silence.

Hey, it's the new year!  2006.  Yikes.  And I just got used to writing "2005" on my checks, dammit.  I don't like resolutions, especially "New Year's Resolutions," because it's so cliched and you shouldn't need a new calendar to make a resolution about your life.  However, this year, simply by coincidence, I think I'll be making a few unofficial resolutions, specifically around self-maintenance.  I am fat again and I need to trim back down.  From April 2003 through that Summer/Fall, I was very strict about keeping myself in the low-carb regime (sort of my own modified Atkins/South Beach) and I lost, at the high point, almost 50 lbs.  I was down to 181 lbs from my career-high of about 230 and I felt pretty good about myself.  It was very motivating to see the pounds going away each and every week as I got on the scale.  I was also very good about not being obsessive and weighing myself every day.  I just picked a day and then weighed myself in the morning every Thursday, I think it was.  I then wrote my weight on the calendar and, as I said, what a motivation that was.  Of course, my knees aching less from carrying around less tonnage also was motivating, as was being able to wear a t-shirt and jeans without feeling like I looked like a pot-bellied 45-year-old hick. 

Anyway, I'm now holding firm at about 205 lbs.  So up a bit from my all-time low (which even I can admit was a bit too skinny for me) but still considerably less than when I was tipping the scales at 230.  In fact, because I knew December would be a hard month to "be good" I basically threw caution to the wind and ate whatever the hell I wanted.  On the 10th, I was 209 lbs; on the 17th, I was 206; and on the 30th I was 205.  So I was actually losing weight through the Christmas season and trust me when I tell you I was not trying.  So, hey, perhaps a reasonable diet and exercise regimin would make it really easy to dip into my "goal weight" range. 

And what is that range?  I've been struggling with this for a while.  See, when I first went on the diet hard-core, I wanted to get down into the 190s (which, from 230, is an admirable goal) and I accomplished that.  Along the way, I decided that 185 would be optimal (I'm 5'11") and so I was striving for that.  I reached 185 but at that point was being what I swore I wouldn't be: obsessive.  I was so into the fact that I saw pounds melting off each week that I wanted to see how low it could go.  I was dangerously close to being one of those people for whom it's never enough.  And that's not good.  (As it turned out, 181 was the lowest I saw on a scale and I'm not sure I could have gone much lower unless I changed my eating habits even more. Read: anorexia beach diet.)  So I think I need to set a goal and do my best to stick to it, even if I reach it with ease (which may or may not be the case).  Regardless, if you're a reader of mine and you learn that I've reached my goal or gone beneath it, force me to order some mozzarella sticks. 

So let's set the goal weight at 190 lbs.  5'11", 190 lbs is a nice, still solid frame and hopefully people will think I look good without the comments that I'm beginning to look "too skinny" (which is what was happening the last time). 

Anyway, that's the plan for January (not "New Year's") and so we'll see how that goes.