OK, not really. I decided that the scale in the gym at work is probably more accurate than the one I’ve got at home. Both doctors’ scales, but mine hasn’t been calibrated in some time. So yesterday on my way home, I stopped and weighed myself and then right when I got home I weighed myself again. Turns out my scale at home weighed me three pounds lighter than at work. Damn! So now I’m three pounds heaver than I thought I was, but I’ve still lost as much as I thought I have. And how much is that? I’ll let you know next milestone! :)

P.S. Wordless Wednesday hit its bandwidth limit so I’ve had to upgrade it to the next level of hosting service. With any luck they’ll do that in the next couple of hours and I’ll put up this week’s welcome.

And this week’s sponsor? It’s Netflix, who have lowered my price — cool!

P.S. After my workout, I weighed myself… and then I did the math… and then I did some more math… and now it turns out that since mid-April, I have lost ::drum roll:: 41 pounds!  Yay me!

As in credit refund, in this case.

And maybe you know I think Google is evil.  They’ll be the next Microsoft — mark my words.  You MS lovers can uncover your eyes now.  Yeah, I know you’re out there and I don’t get it.

Anyway, I tried Google Checkout not too long ago.  I don’t even know why.  Actually, I think it has something to do with my boss having a bad experience with it, and my wanting to say, “see you’re just a big doofus and that’s why you couldn’t use Google Checkout.”

Well anyway, I bought these bicycle hoists.  I bought three of them.  What was I thinking?  Well, we’ve got three bikes and I guess I was thinking I’d install these three hoists and then we’d have all three bikes dangling from the rafters of the garage.

And then they showed up and I looked up at the rafters and said, “where the fuck am I going to put these things?”  I’m sorry for saying “fuck” but I actually said “fuck” and so I thought I should be true to the details.

So back in the box they went and here I am thinking well great, now I’ve got to spend all kinds of money on shipping these things back and what a hassle and I hate myself and where’s my knife?

And then I realized it had this nice sticker that isn’t free shipping but only $6.50 to ship this big box of heavy things wasn’t too bad.  I just sealed it up and dropped it at my local P.O.

A few days go by and all of a sudden I get this e-mail from Google telling me that my package has entered the system and get this, is en-route!  Huh?  How did they know that?  I guess that’s the benefit of the many bar codes on the label.

And then today I was notified that my credit refund was all processed and stuff.  So yeah, I had this totally excellent experience with Google Checkout and I want everybody to know how truly awesome and not even evil they are.   Today, anyway.

Pardon my French, but I just finished today’s New York Times crossword. Oh yes, we’re talking about the Sunday puzzle. I’m so addicted, but oh well — at least it’s something healthy and not even terribly expensive. This morning I did last Monday’s puzzle in like nine minutes, but that’s the easiest of the week. The Sunday puzzle, of course, is the real deal. And I did it!! Yay!!!

P.S. The answers became available Sunday night and when I checked… NO ERRORS!!

Angel isn’t a big e-mailer. I send her a note every now and then. Don’t always get a reply. Sometimes it’s a phone call instead. The other day I sent her this funny horse video on YouTube. Didn’t hear back about that, but that’s OK.

So when I checked my e-mail this morning and saw she’d sent me a note, I just about fell out of my folding chair. Seems my neighbor is selling his house. It’s got several acres of open field, so it’s being marketed as a horse property. And the other day Angel was riding down the road while the real estate agent was taking pictures and now she’s in the for-sale ad! Anyway, she sent me a pointer to it. Cool!

And I replied, of course. Told her how cool and they should give her a commission. What else could I say? Couldn’t tell her I wish I could afford to but it for it, which I can’t and I do. I didn’t mention that I’ll add the picture from the ad to my iPhoto and it will be part of my screen saver I watch all day long. Maybe I could have told her how much I miss her. It’s probably just as well I didn’t tell her I’m always thinking her, and I mean ALWAYS.

I think Angel knows how I feel about her, but have I ever actually told her? No, and that didn’t come up in my e-mail eitherand a couple weeks ago I was moving my goats to a different area and I was moving some metal fence panels. Rain came, but that’s not a big deal. Thunder and lightening came on fast and close. I was so close to finishing and even as the strikes got closer and closer I was still tightening metal nuts with my metal wrench, twisting metal wire with my metal pliers. The point is that all I could think was, if I get struck and killed, how will Angel ever know how I feel? That’s something I think about a lot, actually.

And what else would I write… Dearest Angel, Greetings from Maine! It’s a hazy morning but the sun is fighting to shine. The lake was so warm yesterday. I wish you were here. Love, Uisce.

1. How strange that I’ve got a Nirvana song stuck in my head since yesterday and this morning I get an e-mail from Rhapsody telling me that Nevermind is now available. Creepy.

2. Wifey and I are going away for the weekend and Angel will be coming over to take care of Horsey. Maybe Horsey would like to go away for the weekend and I could live in his stall. Hmm.

3. My home workouts are pretty much just free weights now, since I’ve stopped using the treadmill. Did I mention that? My tendonitis is much better since I’ve stuck to bikes (real and stationary) and the wicked cool elliptical steppy thing they’ve got in the gym at work.

4. I was sitting at my desk last night and heard the sound of tires on driveway. I thought it might be Angel but it was just some guy in a convertible that got all the way to the house before he realized he was lost and turned around.

5. I got an e-mail from a high school classmate. Another reunion — wasn’t there one five years ago? OMG how time flies!!

6. I was one of the lost before that last one. I helped organize that one, but didn’t go to the reunion. I won’t be going to this one either.

7. I have to confess I’m a little excited about Barry Bonds hitting the 755 home run mark, confident that if he did take steroids, they’ll find out and take the record away from him.

8. And I even think that Michael Vick deserves his day(s) in court. If there’s as much evidence against him as there appears to be, it will be a speedy trial and he’ll be locked up and never heard from again.

9. Here’s another unpopular opinion: I think the Red Sox should raise ticket prices right up to whatever the scalpers are able to get. Why should those people lucky enough to get tickets be getting all of the profit when they resell them?

10. I just won $3 on one of my scratch tickets. This is from the bunch of tickets I got in my Christmas stocking and have been rolling the winners ever since. I think it started with $25 and I’ve been up as much as $100. The last bunch I bought was right about the break-even point.

11. I still haven’t chosen a presidential candidate. Mostly it’s because the guy I think is most qualified is like a blip in the polls and therefore doesn’t have a prayer of a chance of winning. I think the system really sucks.

12. I’ve sold a few things on eBay in recent weeks. I have to say, as much as they could rest on their laurels if they wanted to, they have made a number of great improvements over the years.

13. Have I ever mentioned that Angel’s mom works in the same building as me? Yup, I see her there every few weeks — including yesterday.

No, not that new me… the other new me! :)

How have I not heard about Second Life yet? Looks like it could be fun! Has anybody tried it?

I know, I know. I should spread them out. But that never works…

** When you see Mass. plates in these parts you know something odd is going to happen. Saturday was no exception and this guy kept slowing down and speeding up and looking around. OK, he’s lost. Tourists, gotta love ‘em. I resisted my roadrageous temptations and I was glad I did. He finally pulled up in front of a funeral home. I guess you never know.

** So many nut-jobs calling C-SPAN this morning… is it a full moon or something? I’m talking about conspiracy theories and “herbal medication” and “victimless crime” — those are surely code words for something, eh? And of the non-nutjobs, so many of the callers were opining on how the government should provide this service or that service. It was all very nauseating, I have to say. I used to consider myself a liberal, but maybe I never really was. Maybe I’m just grumpy.

** I finally get to work this morning and someone has closed my office door… and locked it! I have a key, but WTF?! I never ever lock it and I know it wasn’t locked when I left on Friday. So as I was saying… WTF?!

I keep telling myself I’m going to do a better job of visiting… we’ll see about that. That doesn’t seem to work very well either. :/

The cycling adventure — you all brace yourselves for severe disappointment, cause it’s not really a very exciting story.

And where to begin? The garage cleanup was a major undertaking. You see, I ordered these bicycle hoists online and they finally arrived and… damn, where to hang them? I guess you’re supposed to think about that *before* you buy them. But oh well, back they went. But now I need a place to put the bikes. Aha, the garage has a back door! But there’s all this old garage sale stuff. I’d been threatening to throw it all away, so that’s pretty much what I did. I moved my car out of the garage and I had me a little garage sale. I took all of those boxes and arrayed them about my side of the garage. I told the kids to pick through and whatever they wanted needed to go up stairs. Long story short, everything else went to the dump that day. Many trips, even with the truck. And now I had a corner of the garage for the bikes. Major victory was mine.

And so we jump ahead a couple weeks to this past weekend. I found my old cycling shorts in my drawer — hadn’t worn them in a bunch of years, maybe even as many as I’ve got fingers on one or two hands. I told Wifey I was going to go for a ride. She was on her way to take a nap. Anyway, you know what I heard next? She’s asking if I’m going just to make her feel like more of a slug. Whatever, it’s all getting really old.

All dressed up in my purple shorts and a t-shirt I wouldn’t mind the paramedics cutting off of me in case I was rushed to the emergency room — I set off on my adventure. Oh yeah, my saddle bags a couple bottles of water, my wallet, a couple of cheese sticks in case I was lost in the woods for weeks on end. Hey, you never know!

And I had a mission. There’s this car parts store in the next town and I have been in need of a new tire pump. I figured they had to sell one. Preferably the kind that you hold with your foot and pump pump pump up and down. Oh yeah, with a gauge, too.

So off I went, down the driveway, take a left and go a couple blocks south on the busy highway (not really), take a right on the side road toward my destination. A couple minutes later, I have to say, I was driving by Angel’s road. No, I didn’t stop by, but I thought about it!

But here’s the thing. I kept going “wheeeeee” down a little hill. Didn’t think much about that, but I guess I should have. And another, “wheeeeee”. And another, “wheeeeeeeeee”.

Didn’t take me long to get to the car place and sure enough they did have one of those foot pumps with a gauge. Yay, I made my purchase and it even fit in one of my saddlebags. So it was time to head home.

And everyone of those “wheeeee”’s turned into “aaaaargh” as I found myself with more uphills than I’d like. You’d think I’d know by now, when you live at the top of a big hill, everything else is at the bottom of the big hill. Feel the burn, oh yes, it burns. I stopped to breathe and drink some water. Ahhhh. And I continued a little more and it got worse the further I went. The sweat in my eyes was so bad I had to stop just because I couldn’t see! And this other rider was nice enough to ask if I was OK. If I could have breathed I might have said something, but I just nodded and he went on his way. Drank some more water.

Angel’s house is pretty close to mine, so by the time I got back to her street, I was just drenched in sweat and probably not smelling too good. But even still, I hoped she’d be out for a walk or something. I dunno, I doubt she goes for walks on that street, because her street is nice and shady and wooded. But I was hoping. Oh well.

And pedaled a pedaled and boy does it feel good to be done with a ride like that. My first in so many years, I’m not really surprised it was so torturous. But I’m ready for more. It’s all good. And with my tendonitis bothering me as it is, I really shouldn’t be running.

And did I mention that we’ve got all these equipments at work? Nice grammar, I know. And like I just discovered all these things. I’ve been lifting on the universal machine at work. And yesterday I’d done my lame bike machine workout at home and I saw this stepper in the gym and hey, maybe I’ll do that. I did a half hour on that and it was a nice change, and just a whole new burn to feel! :)

And no smart remarks about “quickie” — unless they’re really smart, that is! :)

Anyway, as Shelli points out I forgot to say “here I am” to let you all know I survived my blood-letting.

So… here I am!

That will be me, soon — my blood, anyway.

I’ve never been to such a big blood drive, not even in college. I got my wait-in-line number about 10 minutes ago (11:40), about 40 minutes into the event… anyway, the number is 132. If you’re here in the room, I guess you’re able to learn my secret identity.

They’ve called about 15 numbers since I’ve been standing here in the gym. 100! 101! Won’t be long now.

It’s sometimes a pain 102! in the ass but 103! this looks like a pretty sophisticated operation. And the local radio station is here and lots of restaurants 104! and I think they’re going to feed 105! me… is there really a free lunch?

Lots of things beeping and a sea of volunteers and donors. Quite the big dealio!

There 106! is a bag of stuff they gave me — t-shirt, maybe it will fit someday. Movie tickets to a place called… is it really Chunky’s 107! or is that some kind of… well I guess it is. A raffle for… who knows what I might win. 108! 109!

Other than saving 110! lives I guess the best part… well besides the free lunch… is that a pint of water weighs a pound and a pint of blood more than that, because it’s denser. That will bring me to a total loss of 35 pounds. I know it’s cheating to do it this way 111! but hey. 112! 113! 114!

They’re really cranking now. Anyway, I was about to say that I’ve hit kind of a plateau. Not quite ready to panic, except that my achilles tendonitis is really bad and I can barely walk, let alone run. Oddly enough it hurts less to run than walk. I’ve got my recumbant bike, good for a couple hundred calories, 115! 116! 117! but it doesn’t get my pulse anywhere near my fat burning range.

Oh yeah, 119! did I mention 120! my cycling adventure of this past weekend? 121! 122! I’ve got some catching up to do, I guess.

Well they’re getting 123! close to my number. Blog you on the other side!

Wow, look at this, a Uisce post. I know, terribly exciting. Hey, for me, it’s going to be the most exciting part of my day, I’m sure.

So how the heck did I get “Home for the Holidays” stuck in my head? If I hum it or sing it, I’m violating one of my Sacred Rules, which is that no Holiday Song may be heard outside of the approved Holiday Season. It’s there in my Book of Sacred Rules, if you want to look it up.

Maybe it’s because we watched For Your Consideration last night. By the same guys that did Best In Show and all of those movies I absolutely love. This latest one wasn’t as LOL funny as some of the others, but it’s like family and you just enjoy getting together, ya know?

Well I’m headed outside now — fully dressed, don’t worry!

Don’t worry, I’m not dead. That’s in case anybody was curious or concerned.

Anyway, I need to test something, so bear with me. Or is it bare with me? That’s a whole nuther story.