Men's Large Contingent Part 2 - Weigh in #1

It’s the second Monday of the Men’s Large Contingent Contest which means that we had our first weigh in this morning. Once again I stole Deb’s bathroom scale, hid it under my coat and brought it into work, much like the records I used to borrow from my father to bring to school. I walked into our building looking like I was participating in some weird Show and Tell day.
Unfortunately, only three out of the four participating contestants were available for the 9:30 weigh in. Our fourth, Stephen was unavailable, and immediately the rumors and chop busting ensued. “He’s a bluff!” “He’s at IHOP” “He’s at a fried dough and Ice Cream sundae eating contest.” “He wants a third chin!” He’s fast food binging under some bridge in Charlestown.” Yes indeed, there’s a lot of love in this contest.

The weigh-ins is a somewhat critical component to our competition. In addition to helping keep us on track, for those who are not, means that their financial burden would be increased by $20 each time they weighed in over what they had weighed in previously. Basically, you pay if you lose ground.

This potential punitive action prompted our heroic contestants to employ various strategies which included, voiding the contents of pockets, (Something that hadn’t been done during the initial weigh in) and voiding anything else that potentially adds to our gravitational pull. I’ll let you use your own imagination, but the contestants seemed to appreciate having to get rid of whatever it was in comparison to the initial weigh in where they desperately tried to “hold it in.”
We each took our turn stepping on the scale, and much to our surprise, despite the overindulgence of the Super Bowl (Ralph’s texts were particularly entertaining, especially the one that stated, “I’m eating like I’m going to the electric chair!”) and our respective travel schedules, we each lost about 6 pounds.

It was a great start and we congratulated each other with great enthusiasm. Then we went to an “all you can eat” Chinese Buffet. I wish I could tell you that I’m kidding…but I’m not.

Off to the gym and something called the Sparticus work out. See you in the E.R!

Amtrak

I'm riding the rails, travelling south
Listening to old R.E.M
Already, I'm missing the one I love

Does travelling by train still hold romance
Now that I can plug in, log on, download and Tweet?
Instead, I write long hand
A stream of consciousness recorded with each passing tie

Outside the salt caked cars are halted
Their early Sunday morning drivers impatiently wait while my adventure slowly clangs, clicks and rolls by

The snow blanketed landscape passes by my window,
cold, stark and pale like those early U2 videos when they really seemed to matter
The scene changes with each mile, from this and desolate woods to the small fishing shanty's spread out across a frozen drift

Rusted cars lay in a salvage yard much like the headstones that peek up through the accumulation
Long abandoned box cars and graffiti covered walls

does travelling by train still hold romance?
the bigger question is capturing it.
Every cliche' in the book.

Men's Large Contingent

It's on! This past Monday, my friend's Ralph, Stephen, Tim and I agreed to a weight loss competition. Now that all of us are in our mid 40's we felt the need for additional inspiration and motivation. In what seems like yesterday when Ralph and I were in our 20's, we used to affectionately refer to some of the middle aged woman we worked with as the "Lady's Large Contingent" not realizing that the ongoing years, gravity and the influence of the Italian American (and just a touch of French) diet would unwillingly nominate us to begin a men's chapter. Such is Karma.

Our weigh in took place in my office, and we each took a turn stepping on the scale that I borrowed form our upstairs bathroom (Don't tell Deb). It's one of those electronic scales with the digital read out. I feared that when my turn arrived that it would read, "One person at a time, please." Unfortunately for me the actual read out didn't make me feel much better. Once we all weighed in and established our ground rules, our conversation moved on to the incredible amount of snow that has been hitting our area. There was some discussion of global warming and Stephen mentioned something about the Earth's axis being changed. Thinking about this and our collective poundage made me wonder which side of the Earth we were standing on and were we partially responsible for throwing things off?

Working out and eating right has been a recurring theme in Ralph and my friendship. I remember that when I first met him, he was just finishing up a diet plan that seemed foreign to me. He was avoiding carbohydrates and sticking to healthy proteins like, steak bacon, salami and gabagool. I also seem to recall our intent to begin "lifting." We had great plans to meet at the weight room located in one of the North End schools. We lifted for a few hours, then proceeded to eat the lasagna his mother Anna had made for us, and that's where our program ended.

We're now five days into our competition and things seem to be going well. I've hit the gym a few times this week and I've been using the Paleolithic diet to kick start my weight loss plan. If you're not familiar with the Paleolithic diet, the basic concept is that you eat like our ancestors did for thousands of years. It's also referred to as the Cave Man diet. My friend Dave has had great success with this and he's taken off quite a few pounds. Funny though, that when you think of the Cave Men, they may have been thinner, but wasn't there life span like 34.5 years?

Sports Bar

I ran into an old friend at the airport the other day.
We were both travelling a great distance to attend to our respective business.
It was a brief encounter, but we agreed to meet somewhere in the great city to spend time and narrow the distance between us.
There were no ill feelings, but the passage of time had wedged itself between our friendship.
Long ago there was none, and we were joined side by side on the beach wall with other friends, having great adventures while another and unknown life awaited us.
And in an illuminated corner of a sports bar, it all of it came back, if only for just a moment.

My Brain is Turning into Chumbawamba

Just a quick post to convey a pre-Alzheimer's incident or more likely, just another example of an unfocused wandering mind. I was alone in the house this morning as Deb and the kids had already left for school. I was getting ready to leave and for whatever reason I rattled of my checklist out loud to ensure I wasn't leaving anything behind. It went a little something like this:

I have my wallet
I have my cell phone
I have my building pass
I have a whiskey drink
I have a vodka drink
I have a lager drink
I have a cider drink

Now, I don't know why my checklist evolved or more likely devolved into the 1997 Chumbawamba classic, "Tubthumping", but I don't like it. If you happen to run into me and I'm singing this, please feel free to knock me down, and if I get up again, don't ever stop keeping me down.

P.S. Enjoy the tune that is and will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day!