What a day. My muscles are crying still, especially my quads, biceps, lats and delts (see, I was going to be a medical illustrator and wanted to draw comic books when I was younger, so I took anatomy). I’m not completely immobile, which I thought I would be. I am walking a little funny – I think the look I’m going for is “saddlesore cowboy”. The funniest part is I’m going to do it all over again tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow, thanks to several well-intentioned comments, I am going to get new pants. After using the facilities (taking a leak if you’re not following), I checked out my butt in the mirror. Why didn’t anyone tell me it was that bad? It looks like I’m carrying around a meatloaf back there!! Ok, maybe you did try to tell me, but come on people, you’re my friends: I can take it. They’re all poochy and baggy and damn un-sexy. I will be getting new Not So Fat As He Used To Be pants and shorts tomorrow, rest assured. I was going to try to wait until I got down to 250, but it’s just too sad not to go out and get new ones now.

And for those of you who have posted encouraging comments both here, in e-mail and in person, you have no idea how much they help. It’s funny how great it feels when someone else notices how much weight I’ve lost. I’ve known friends over the years who’ve done the same thing, and I never knew what to say, “Hey, you don’t look like a fat disgusting mess anymore. Good job!” My first thought is always that they’ve got cancer or something and I’ll just embarrass them by saying something. But hey, shouldn’t they know that the cancer looks good on ’em? Now, speaking from experience, it feels great when people notice. So from now on, I’m sayin’ something. People need support. I need support. It’s only fair to give it after receiving so much. Thanks everybody.

I’ve got a loaner laptop… it’s a PC… running Windows 98. I think I’m in hell. It’s about 18-months behind on updates and other tomfoolery. It’s crashed three times in an hour, once giving me the blue screen of death. It’s short on RAM. It’s ugly. They still don’t know when/if I’ll get a new Powerbook. If the stupid thing had landed on the carpet, everything would be fine. I would be using it and all would be happy happy. Now, I’m in Windows Update hell (Windows Update is evil, if you didn’t already know, but I haven’t installed anything yet and the machine really needs it).

In other news, I think I’m going to die. I had my first workout with my Personal Trainer (who is a woman, but we will call Bob to protect her anonymity). It was tough, but I made it all the way through without having an asthma attack, passing out or dying. It’s a start. Tomorrow may be a different story. Already, my body parts are screaming profanities unfit for polite or even impolite company. My shoulders are tied up in gigantic knots. They feel like Delta Burke’s shoulder pads in the first couple seasons of Designing Women. My calves feel like those two loaves of bread I made last week, stones. I am committed though, and I will go buy new sneakers, because hiking boots do not make good workout footwear. I will walk for 45 minutes on the C&O trail this weekend with Max (and Jen if she’ll go with us). I will come in to work on Saturday to use the gym. I will do my squats, push ups, bicep curls and ride the bike while reading CNN on the TV. I will sweat and smell bad and use a communal shower. Not because I want to, but because I have to. I will be a shape other than round and blobbish, and if I’m not, I will at least not be as round and blobbish, and I will be able to keep up with Max and play volleyball, and maybe even basketball again. I now see an excuse to get an iPod… one can only read CNN on TV for so long before diving through the nearest window.

In good news, I think I have the menu all worked out for next week. Jen invited some folks over, and I’m going to make something yum-tastic. Maybe not the soup from last weekend, but maybe. You never know. I’ll post the menu when it’s final and I’ve purchased all the goods.

There was a death in the Lawver family last night as I brutally and accidentally killed my TiBook. Now, it’s not dead dead, but it might as well be. I was putting it away last night when I picked up my case only to realize that it wasn’t zipped up. Unfortunately, the sound the clued me in was my beautiful Powerbook landing with a mortal crunch on the marble base of our hearth in the basement. There it lay, battery sprung out and a horrible crack in its face. The CD drive looked at me from behind its wounds in a grimace.

Unfortunately, it landed on the front right corner of the case, right by the slot-loading CD drive. There’s a big crack in the case right at the point of impact, another right through the bottom lip of the CD drive, and one more small one on the left top side of the drive. The whole case has a sickening lilt to it now, with the right side sitting a little higher than the left. The metal on the bottom is completely separated from the frame, and only held on by the screws. The battery won’t stay in if the machine is moved. The hard drive has a coughing whir.

And the best part is, the computer people don’t have any in stock! So I have to do the whole purchase, approval, wait forever process in order to get a replacement. I think today is a good day to start drinking.

I’ve spent all day mucking about with DOCTYPEs, conditional funkiness and the perils of unattainable goals. I won’t bore you with the details. My mood hasn’t improved, even after listening to Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) about a million times today. Thankfully, tonight is bowling, so I get to go take out all my theological and political frustrations on a bunch of helpless pins.

Speaking of bowling, since I lost all this weight, I can’t use my giant sixteen pound ball reliably. It’s hard to control and it goes all over the place. I’ve switched to using the house fourteen pounders (which are all pink for some reason, not that I have a problem with that – the 12 pounders are baby blue). I’ve bowled really well for me (high score of 146 last week) the past couple weeks with the fourteen pounder, and am tempted to go get my own light girly ball. I think tonight will be a combo-swearing night, as long as W doesn’t bring the kids.

I did smile momentarily today when I reaized that General Conference is this weekend, and I don’t have to go to church.

This weekend, I read articles about the Wright Brothers, an artist who makes photo-realistic art out of fabric, Degas’ ballet paintings, and an interview with Maya Angelou. Along with yesterday’s freak snow storm, and church, the stories help slide me into a deep funk. There’s all kinds of stuff rolling around in my head, and none of it is making me very cheerful.

Let’s start with the Wright Brothers. These guys competed against several world governments and top scientists of the day to become the first men to launch an honest-to-goodness powered airplane. They did it through sheer determination and a talent for breaking large problems into component pieces. They solved those smaller component problems on the way to a solution to the big problem. The article contained excerpts from several letters sent by the brothers to relatives and friends, and a couple news stories about them. The writing in the letters and articles was so beautiful in both form and vocabulary that it made me ashamed of all this tripe on my site. I want to be a good writer, and this site has turned into a journal, only a couple one step removed from the form of my instant messages and e-mails.

Second, Maya Angelou. She’s seventy-five and is never bored. I’m bored all the time. I’ve lost some piece of the fire I used to have. I’m too complacent and willing to sit and let things wash over me instead of standing up and taking the wave head on. I’m tired and unwilling to fight a lot of the time. Ms. Angelou has lived an amazing life, written books, poems for Presidents, sung for albums and still finds time to learn languages and teach. I can barely find the energy to cook when I get home from work, much less do anything else productive.

Third, let’s talk about church. Or, let’s not. I can’t decide what I should say here. My family reads this crap, and so do several people from church. Let’s just say, I’m having a hard time getting up and going every Sunday. I’m having a hard time biting my tongue. There was a whole paragraph here about the other things I hate about church, but I just deleted it. I get why people leave the church now… it’s hard being Mormon when you don’t fit into the “mainstream” of Mormon culture.