From the Heart

I think I have to stop reading Facebook now. It hurts me to see people I care about make statements and I can't respond for fear offending them. One of the problems is that I used to believe exactly the same way. I agreed right down the line. I was a conservative Republican voter, a Pro-Life supporter, Anti-homosexual, Anti-secularism, Anti-Cult (Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Hindu, Muslim, Scientology, Buddhism, Zeus, etc). I detested Democrat positions and their politicians, (Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Barny Frank, Barbara Boxer, etc.) I loved listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (they could say no wrong.) I fully support the 2d Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I supported anti-evolution/science ministries. I tithed money and gave to church building/land funds. I helped train my son to be a Godly man. I have been de-converted from the Christian Faith and from believing in the supernatural in general for almost 5 years now. I feel the need to push back on the hateful bigotry I see written. I am a little reticent, because that bigot once was me and I really do love many of those that enable hate and bigotry. I know that they do not really see it in themselves. They think they are being loving and kind and standing up for what is right and holy. I know. That bigot once was me.

Last weekend, all alone, on an empty 9 hole municipal golf course, in a small village in south central Pennsylvania, in a constant windy drizzle, wearing a bright yellow, five dollar rain suit I just bought at the Lowe’s, I started keeping accurate, no mulligan do over, stoke counts for my golfing attempts. I used the tie, Noah, ma, rye, law... method to track my over par swings. I got tire (24) on the first 9 and dove (18) on the next 9. I added tire and dove and came up with 42. I was kind of dejected. Then, using my on board calculus device, I added that number to the par 72 and 114 flashed before my eyes. It had seemed like 42 over should have been much more than 114. Not toooooo bad I guess. But still 42 seemed waaaay to much for me.

Well, that's where I was. Live with it. Accept it. Dry off and go on. So I did.

The following Monday, I got out there again after work. A nice, warm, sunny day so others were on the course this time. I was doing kind of ok on 1 and 2. I topped off the third tee par 5 about 20 feet, grabbed the 5 iron and hit nice where I should have hit it in the first place.

I noticed the lone walker behind me had caught up. He was on tee box so I wave him to come on thru. I moved over to the side, I was over a hill and he couldn't see me. I almost got hit on the fly. But at least he yelled, "Fore!"..."Sorry!" Anyway. After he found out what a duffer I was (on my next swing), he gave me some golf swinging tips. I was about how the baseball swing arc and arm movement and hand movements were essentially the same as those that work for golf only with the back bent forward. And how the thumb comes back toward the shoulder in the batting backswing. The golfing swing needs to come back at the same angle toward the side of the shoulder and not above it which changes the good arc into a bad, digging up the earth or topping the H*ll out of the ball, kind of arc. (which I was so intimate and familiar with) (and had special names for)

Well, like a lot of times when someone shows you something on the golf course, it really works and you're excited that now, this time you've got it! "Look Out, Tiger!" I made excellent contact with the ball using the 5 iron. The ball flew off the sod with that, not so familiar to me, "Click!" that says, "Yep! You got that one!" Like it was shot out of a cannon! 'SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHSHUNK!' When I woke up, I found myself in "The Pose". Always a satisfying experience and what makes you come back for more in the face of stacked odds against you. It's a sorcerer's trick, I tell you!

We did the final 5 holes and I kept making good contact with the ball. We introduced ourselves after a while. His name is Tom. He remembered my name. I had to ask him twice, like a dumb*ss. H*ll! I have Toms all around me! How hard is that? I was amazed about how I didn't even know how I was doing it. Practice the bat swing a couple of times, keep the same angle, low backswing, thumb toward the shoulder, (I could even turn my head and look at my arms and elbow and hand, and turn back to the ball, then swing. I think I just this moment know why I don't know how I did it. I bet you that it's the difference between using mental memory, which I probably always do, and muscle memory. Could be. It's a theory anyway.

Tom left after nine, but I decided to go on and do another 9. I had just chipped over a sand trap on #7 from 20 feet, one bounce, hit the pin and plopped in the cup. Sweet! On #8 par 5, I let Tom go first. I banged one off the tee up even with his drive. Two great shots in a row. Can I keep it up? It feels like putting your last chip in and hoping for a flush. Tom knocked the crap out of his with a wood, up over the hill and out of sight. I couldn't remember the last time even my third shot on this hole went over the hill out of sight. Well, here I go. Bat swing, bend, low takeaway, backswing toward shoulder. Swing! Snap! Tom must have been so proud. Like a jet on slippery air my ball cut through the now frightened molecules of gaseous matter. Up! Over the hill! And out of sight. Never! Not once. In all the times I've played that shot off the side of that hill, had I succeeded like that smack. I climbed up over the hill and found my ball in the middle of the right sloping fairway. Now, from what usually is my fourth shot to the green on this hole, I was going to try to get on in 3. Most of the time, if I don't top it or dig a bear trap in the grass, I knock it up toward the green and land up close to little bunker. Over the bunker, over the sand, over 15 feet of grass, onto the green. But I can't see the sand, I can't see the grass and I can't see the green, in fact, I can't even see the flag, but I know by faith it's there. I hope. It's not very far, an easy pitching wedge. I usually screw it up though.

But now I back looking at my third shot. I know where I want it to go, every time I know where I want it to go, it just never goes there. Like I said, usually comes up short no matter which club I use. This time I do the bat, thumb to shoulder type swing and that ball goes up through the air, into the groove. I couldn't see it hit because the green in above my eye level, but I didn't care, it went through the groove, just perfect, just like I knew what I was doing. Man, O, Man! I needed a mirror to see if it was really me standing there on the fairway watching that shot. The ball was pin high, 1 foot off on the skirt with about a 30 foot, down sloping run to the pin. I was thinking about chipping on. Tom said something about putting from there. I'm not sure what he said. For some reason, I was a little distracted in this dream. I pulled out my putter. I got close enough for par, came up short and took a bogey. But I didn't care. That third shot went through the groove. All else would pale while that memory still hung, suspended, freshly encoded on my Prefrontal Cortex. It put my stroke count up to tomb (13) so far with last hole remaining. It was a far cry from the 24 at this point on the Friday before.

The drive on 9 was nice and straight and pretty far. If you can't drive the green then it just where you want to be. I don't remember which club I used. I didn't put enough on it though and it fell 10 feet short of the green. I chipped on like a pro and tapped in a one footer for par. Was thinking about what that would change my word for my stroke count when I added it to 13. After a couple of mental back flips and a tumble I got it straightened out. "It doesn’t change dummy. You got a par." Wow. And then he said it backwards, "woW". So I stayed at tomb coming off the 9th green. I was kind of elated a bit.

Tom was done but I decided to go around again. I had to get this bat swing deal done a few more times before I forgot how to it. Tomorrow would be too late. I might have wasted too much time already just walking straight to the 1st tee instead of running. On my own, I screwed up all the way to the 1st green. Top, dig, dig, top. But I didn't give up. How could I have lost it so quickly? "That's golf!" they say. I fixed it on the next hole, over drove the 3d par 3 and so on. I was quite happy about playing. I got a dog (17) for a total of 30 over, a 102 this day, cutting off 12 from Friday’s 114.

Maybe this will be like when I started to loose weight last year with a nine month chart of down trending numbers. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm definitely getting out there to do it again as soon as possible.

Once again I enter the blogosphere to hone my shiny skills. It seems the only three things I am consistent with are waking up and dropping off to sleep. Like a wound up clockwork, every day. It's not boring or difficult. It's just something I seem to be good at repeating.

Reading Blogs I am very consistent doing. Well really, only one blog in particular as it turns out. Pharyngula. I am probably repeating myself here.

I returned to the VA nutritionist the other day after 9 months or so of being on the TLC diet deal. I had lost 31 pounds, my blood work and other labs came back so good that she felt compelled to call my home and leave a message to call her. Both the nutritionist and my physician were very impressed. The doctor even immediatly sent out a letter of congratulations and praise that very day. The nutritionist lady told me that the doctor never sends those kinds of letters so she must have been very, very impressed and happy.

This is the fourth time over the last 15 years that they've wanted me to fix myself and the other times I just never followed through with the goods. Now I am their poster child of success and a job well done. I'm not done yet, but it is a very concrete milestone set in the ground of time.

Since I last reported, I have started learning to play the blues on the guitar. I am learning the scales surrounding that sound. And in the process, I am learning a lot of the different scales on the neck. In all my 57 or so years and years of playing the guitar I never knew even one single scale at all. I could sorta pick out some plucks on the strings that sounded better that others and I knew many players could really string them together, but I wasn't able to do it. Of course I knew in my head there were such things as scales, I never thought beyond do, re, mi etc. I didn't know there were such things as Major and minor Pentatonics in every key. I pretty much only knew some chords that some of them sounded better together than others. A little bit of training early on would have been good for my progression. My teacher probably didn't know the scales, but he played the notes that are actually framed and built on particular scales. He was doing it by ear and copying what he saw others doing. I could only watch others and try to do what they did. Turned out to not be too efficient in my case. 40 years later and I am just getting around to learning the A minor Pentatonic scale. Immediate revelation: Oh....That's how they do that! Sigh. I couldn't even remember the names of the six strings except for the 2 E strings. All these years. I definitely didn't know any of the notes on the finger board. They were all just sitting right there under my fingers. I knew a lot of the basic chords and shapes, but no note names. Oh well, it gives me something to do in my waning years. I figure I have 40 or 50 left. If my fingers don't fall off, I'll be playing the whole time.

In a related vein, I am getting a Mac from Ef, probably this afternoon. It will run the software I have to record music in my room. It’s a professional level type deal with a box I can plug in instruments and stuff. Maybe I will upload some more to YouTube hyoidbone54 if anyone is interested. Well, I'm stoked about my weight and my blues. Later.

Well hotdog, I dropped down 33 lbs at the end of 5 months! I hit 197 lbs. whoopee! Of course, that5 was like the day before Thanksgiving so I didn't stay there but rebounded off the low up 3 to 200 even. The beginning of December I popped up to 202 and have stayed under that for the whole month fluctuating from 200 to 202. Sunday was the first day in 6 months that I haven't weighed myself in the morning or in the evening for that matter. I pretty much stopped keeping track of my intake except mentally. If I wrote it all down on my spreadsheet, I know it would go over 2200 cal. per day. I don't want to know, even though I do know anyway. Silly. The discipline of logging it all into a spreadsheet really helped me focus. If I'd do anything with that much regularity I'd be a hero at it.

Let me see...what else have I been doing with that much consistency in the last half a year? I read PZmyers Blog everyday to keep up with all the godless liberals. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ if you are interested.

I played golf nearly everyday. I miss playing with Bob and Skip over at Yinglings every Sunday morning. I think Bob must be busy still with life.

I play Poker Stars Texas Hold'em every day for long stretches at a time. No cash involved just mental diversion. I practice the Pentatonic scales on my guitar and play the blues progressions (like I know what that is) and write little songs to the blues. I got a bunch of them. Some of the phrases really have some potential. I'm getting better a picking the scales. I'm kind of sad that I never picked up on it all these years. Oh well, it's fun and I am getting noticeably better at it. What else? I'm sure there is something else. Hmmm? Nope! Not counting my phenomenal skill at procrastination, that's about it for noted activities over these 6 months.

For Christmas Scot loaned me his collection of Diskworld series stories, by Sir Terry Pratchett. I have started reading the colour of Magic. Pretty cool, I don't know how I missed them. Thanks Scot with one T.

I re-started digging into my crates of things I go from the leaning center. I have a idea of cataloging it all and selling it out on Ebay. All my books and tapes, everything must go. Didn't get too far with it though, just enough to stack some more stuff up on my table surrounding my keyboard and monitor. I tried to sort some of my tools in the boxes and bucket from my on the road installing jobs. I could start my Pawn Shop with what I have that I never use.
Well that's enough focusing for now.
Happy New Year!

It's been 8 weeks since I've employed the TLC diet, recommended to me by my lovely Veterans Administration Hospital Dietician. I am down 15 pounds. Yesterday morning it was down 18 pounds, but at the office picnic I indulged a little bit. I've only indulged once before in the first week with a Whopper Junior with Cheese. After I got home and looked up the Calories in a Jr. Whopper, my head exploded! They're not called Whoppers for nothing. I am pretty much bought into this diet. It's called the Total Lifestyle Change (TLC) diet. Basically it's counting calories and saturated fats. The dietitian lady has me on 2200 calories a day. At first I had no hook to hang that number on. I wondered if it was enough to survive. It turns out to be quite a bit of mass depending on the type of food I shovel into my mouth. It's 650 calories per 3 meals plus 250 for a bedtime snack.
I used to routinely have potatoes with beef gravy, scrambled eggs and bacon and two juices for breakfast. That took the edge off of my grumbling tummy. However, I enjoyed the taste, but the price I paid was over 2000 calories in that one shot! I was killin' myself in more ways than one. My cholesterol is in the 360's, triglycerides in the 1000's and my weight for my 188 cm frame at 104.3 kilograms was obese according to my expert’s charts. 74 inches and 230 pounds. It really was unacceptable. I had to keep getting larger pants, it was pathetic. The medical professional thinks 185 pounds will get me out of the Obese column. She may be right, but I am shooting for 195. I was half way there yesterday morning and I am still almost half way today. YeeHaw!

I am taking it seriously. I am making it fun for me. I have a spreadsheet with every ort and iota of mass I put into my mouth that smacks of calories. It really is easy to keep in the 2200 range for a day if I don't get the killer items. I mean, I have everything listed with its caloric and saturated fat content summed at the bottom for each meal and showing how much I have left till I go over. I keep at or under the 650 pretty easily and a lot of the nights I don't eat anything at bedtime. Of course, I am now into it 8 weeks and I'm just not as hungry because I suppose my stomach has reduced its stretching. I list a few of the Over the Top items on my chart, like Long John Silver's Fish. I’d get 3 pieces and a large Dr. Pepper for a 20 minute ride home. Those are 260 per, 40% of my now target limit, just for one! The little Whopper Jr. is 420 by itself. I really like the taste of these things, but I must moderate. At least till I am out of obese danger levels. I am not going hungry at all. Like I might have said above, I am eating more mass for breakfast than I was before. It's kind of like I count it up and I see I can get more before I reach 650. I am sort of stuffing myself a little bit, it's kind of silly, but I am still losing weight even so. I really don't crave that much food, but I do it probably just because I can.

The lunch meal in the work cafeteria is pretty easy for me, because I like the salad bar (and it's cheap) each time I get a large salad and use vinegar and oil (which I really like since I started using them 5 years ago. I can really taste the items, before; all I really tasted was the French dressing.) Skim milk and a yogurt and vegetable rounds out the Lunch. The yogurt puts me over the 650 a few calories because they are 180 calories at work; the ones I buy at the grocery store are only 80 calories. Most days I leave the yogurt alone and in essence I leave 160 calories on the table so to speak.

I told the dietician 4 years ago that I was going to get under 200 pounds by the next Christmas, but never did it. She kept a chart of my weights for every time I checked in to the VA for an appointment for the entire time. She printed out a line graph showed it to me in June. It opened my idiot mind to reality. 3 solid years of trending up with no end in sight, no downturns, no major corrections, just uptrend. Almost a 35 degree angle up to the right. 36 more months of doing what I was doing was going to put me way over 250, easy! That's not even taking into account the cholesterol and lipid levels! Anyway, she showed the graph to me. I looked at it and said "If that was a stock, I'd be buying it." That was it. I was done. I was finished being dumb, stupid and procrastinating. It was like when I quit smoking the day after my first wife, Lorraine, died of lung and brain cancer. I may have to be psychological beat abut the head and shoulders for months at a time, but eventually I can take a hint. "Dude!!! You're killing yourself!!! Stop!!!" Is that an epiphany?

I work with a guy that's over 500 lbs so it's easy to just say, "I'm not that large.”That's what I call the "Trying to irrationalize it and call it rational." model of cognitive dissonance. I hear there are a lot of former smokers, now sleeping in their own personal flip-top boxes, that used that one too. I'm sure I'll be joining them is sleep one of these days. I guess I've decided to try and put it off for a few more healthy years, if I can.
Well, Tuesday morning weigh in will be two solid months implementing the TLC. I only had 2 incidents that are outliers, the Whopper Jr with regular soda and yesterday's picnic. Not too bad I suppose. 3 days in order to incorporate the picnic's excess calories into my system. It wasn't really gigantically over the top, but it was way over 650, probably like 4000 calories altogether. Still that's over 1.5 days worth of calories excess at that one meal. We will see how it pans out. I'm probably not going to do that again. Especially if it turns out to be hard to recover. I shouldn't have done it in the first place because of the saturated fat and sugar content. Oh well, we'll see. I had the goal in mind and now I can see the when the goal will be met. At my current rate, I'm looking at October 24th to reach 195 pounds.

Later.

Sometimes I hear or read someone quoting the Bible and it seems so mean that I have to look it up to make sure it actually says what the quote says. I don't know why I am still skeptical about the quotes of evil deeds perpetrated and encouraged by Jehovah since the Great Flood Story tops them all for the killing of innocent children.

Ezekiel 9:6
Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

I remember 26 years ago, as I waited to enter the sanctuary to be married, I sat at the pastor's desk, opened a Bible at random and quickly read through Ezekiel. I didn't get to finish it, but I am sure I made it through Chapter 9. I read the words of murdering little children and wasn't appalled with it. It just didn't register. God always gets a passing grade anyway. It must be OK somehow, because it's God doing it. It took a while to break out of that mindset, but breakout I did and I am not going back.

Of course, these are simply stories, made up by illiterate, desert nomadic sheep herders and not to be taken as real history. However, many humans, in this 21st century, actually worship at the altars of this wicked acting Deity. And they encourage their own children and unsuspecting strangers to give themselves over to this God and worship Him also. But once one is freed from these irrational chains of mental slavery, one sees it as a travesty which sadly remains in the world.

"Save yourselves while you still have a life to save!"

Labels: Ezekiel, killing children, loving God

One of these days I'm gonna keep up with this blog. I spend so much time reading PZ Myers' blog Pharyngula which you can find here
practicing my guitar and reading Spanish, that I just run out of time. It's difficult for me to focus on one thing long enough to really get it right. It must be a character flaw. I wonder if I can make money by simply using this strength. The evidence of this in my life stares at me everyday. The stack of papers and notes from my MBA classes are still placed right next to this keyboard, right where I put them on June 5th, 2007. It's sad. Well, on to my selected subject.

As you may recall, I noticed I lacked a belief in God during the last days of 2007. One of my first questions to myself was "When did it happen?" I thought back through time and realized it was some time after the middle of June, sometime during that Summer, but I didn't notice when it happened.

Anyway, during that first year, I got all the literature on the subject and saw many videos and told everyone I was an Atheist, etc, etc. I relaxed and let it all steep and percolate.

For these 3 years, my wife has been married to an atheist, something she didn't sign on for or expect. We both believed the Bible and tried to live the Charismatic way for 25 years. Anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-Disney, anti-evolution, anti-this, anti-that, conservative Republican politics, nearly the whole fundamentalist pizza. Now I am totally turned around on all these subjects. Actually, I never disliked evolution or Disney).

And therein is the rub, funds that are procured by the sweat and toil of my brow are being used to promote these very ideas to which I am now very much opposed. I've been wrestling with this for over a year. I think I know what to do, but I just won't do it. I set a deadline for myself and let it pass. It seems like the camel will be dried to dust and blown away before I do anything. I'm suffering. I just realized it.

Labels: anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-homosexual, atheist, Bible, blogging, God, procrastination, PZ Myers