I heard an article about StickK.com on NPR this morning. It’s a website that makes you put up money and if you don’t lose weight, you lose the money (to charity). I signed up with a 52-week goal of losing 37 pounds and a commitment of $2/week. If I lose at least the required amount per week, I get to keep $2. If I don’t, it goes to the Freedom to Marry organization. This was actually listed as one of their “anti-charities” - that is, a charity you don’t want money to go to - but I would rather give it to them than some neutral charity that they would pick for me. (You can choose your own anti-charity, but not your own charity. The anti-charities are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, and pro-gun control.)

So anyway, if you want to support me, let me know and I’ll put you down as a supporter. This means you can leave encouraging messages on my board or something. I only just got started on the site, so I’m not 100% sure how it will work out, but I’ve already put up my $104 so I definitely want to do this!

Xmas 2007 is over! Whew. It was not too bad, though I was worried all day about the money situation I posted about a couple of days ago. I got to eat a little more than my diet normally allows, but today my wife is back to being strict and I only got to eat one mini peanut butter cup from all the treats I got yesterday! She did make a delicious dinner tonight though, beans in peanut satay sauce and veggie burgers with ajvar spread.

I think the coolest present I got yesterday was the TV Ears system. When we watched Tin Man over at my in-laws’ house a few weeks ago, I couldn’t hear the dialogue at a volume my wife was comfortable with. Their HDTV doesn’t do captions properly, so my usual way of keeping up wasn’t an option. Fortunately my father-in-law has a massive A/V system, and he was able to wire up some headphones and I could listen that way. They were big and bulky though, and I lost outside sound because I couldn’t hear it over the TV sound in my ears. So my in-laws got me the TV Ears set, and now the TV volume at home can be at a comfortable level for A and I can still hear it! Plus the TV Ears allow outside sound too, so it’s a great solution overall.

I’m a little unsettled by a recent post over at gBlog…if you go look, you’ll see what I mean. It’s right after one of my posts, currently on the front page. It makes me all squirmy and I want to respond somehow but I don’t know what to say.

Mischa keeps having bad dreams. He woke up hissing a little while ago, and just now he was growling in his sleep.

Today we went to the outlets at Leesburg; it was more crowded than I would have liked, but less crowded than I expected. I needed to go to Lane Bryant to exchange some jeans I’d gotten in Rehoboth Beach - you can only return them to another outlet store, and I hadn’t felt like hauling ass to Leesburg before today. But I got the jeans in my size, and bought two sweaters and a long-sleeve fitted t-shirt. I almost bought a cute semi-formal minidress, but it just didn’t do anything for me. I also got a bunch of underwear - I tend to wear mine until they literally fall apart, and A had deemed that I only had about-to-fall-apart underwear, so she made me buy lots more.

Also, she put me on a strict diet. She introduced it in a kind of toppish way - or maybe that’s just how I read it, being a sub type - and so I’m following orders. It is like having my own personal diet coach who goes out to eat with me and everything, which is pretty cool. Right now I’m appalled by how little I get to eat, but I know it’ll get easier with time. It’s just frustrating right now. I think we started on Thursday morning? It feels like forever!

Oh, and my lolrus shirt arrived today. Woo!

I really, seriously, truly need to lose weight. A few reasons why.

• I am surrounded by skinny people. Natural ectomorphs, hardcore swimmers, and teens who are too young to have gotten fat yet. (I was that size when I was in college too.)
• My pants do not freaking fit. Seriously, I have like one pair of slacks and one pair of jeans that fit comfortably, and another couple of jeans that fit uncomfortably.
• I weigh as much now as I have ever in my life, and that’s just kind of sad to me.

I don’t need to be a stick figure. I would be happy with - well, at this point I’d be happy with 155-160. I think my real goal would be 135-140…I could be happy being in that range long-term. It’s the doing part of losing weight that is getting me down…I can’t seem to do it.

Note to self: if you are having a very bad day and you forget to take your meds in the morning, it will turn into an even worse day when your hives sneak up on you. Also, if you are on steroids that make you hungry, and then hang out with people who are doing certain things that give you the munchies, you will want to eat the entire universe. I really hope the doctor I’m seeing July 26th will have a solution besides steroids, because I am finding it impossible to drop the weight I gained on the cruise a month ago.

Geeking ensues, then some philosophical stuff.

I want to spend money! I think I am going to get the wireless headphones via Amazon. Unfortunately they come from a seller who charges almost $12 for shipping, but it’s still better than finding it slightly cheaper on eBay and having to pay out-of-pocket. As long as I can apply my $75 Amazon GC to them, it’s neither here nor there.

But there’s a bunch of other stuff I want - stuff from my wishlist that I had put in my cart for later because I was going to buy it used. And yet I have to refrain from putting it all in my cart, because Xmas is right around the corner. But I want the headphones NOW! I am trying to refrain from ordering anything until after Xmas; even though I know nobody’s getting me wireless headphones, they might have gotten me the very same used items from my wishlist. Augh! I did buy an A/C adapter for my new iPod, but I got that off eBay - no point spending $20 on the official Apple one when I can buy a non-OEM version for $6 shipped. I do have the official Apple A/C adapter for Firewire…but the 5G iPods don’t charge via Firewire, only USB.

Can you tell I’m a little hyper today? I am. I didn’t take my meds today, because I forgot to fill my medbox last night and so I had none left when I was leaving this morning. The really weird thing is that I think I was a better interpreter at a meeting this morning. I’ve known since starting this career that interpreting was a good fit for someone with ADHD - very little paperwork, you don’t have to retain information for long, etc. - but I didn’t think that having ADHD could make my output better. Very strange.

Oh, and I hate everybody who brings in junk food for the holidays. Today I successfully resisted the assorted truffles that were in the office kitchen, and fortunately they were gone after a couple of hours. I even resisted the mini PB cups that were in the candy bowl when I stopped by there for a Starlite mint. Yay for me. I’m hungry though! Is it time to go home yet?

I thought I was going to make it through the day without eating anything off my diet. But I had a couple of bites of pecan pie, and I had more than a few handfuls of trail mix. No wonder I’m not losing any weight at all - I’m still totally sedentary and I’m still eating almost exactly what I should be in order to maintain rather than lose. It pisses me off, it makes me sad. I can’t exercise - I don’t exercise. Maybe I will try again to use the stationary recumbent bike downstairs…but I’m not sure where it went now that the Xmas tree is down there. It’s just downright depressing. I mean, I’m glad I’m not gaining, at least I can maintain, but it’s my own fucking fault that I’m not losing. Aw shit, I’m just depressed.

I had way too much candy yesterday. I kept a lot of it fat-free, but it was still a lot of sugar! Of course there’s still candy all over the place at work, but yesterday was candy day and now I’m going to try going cold turkey again.

Also, nothing makes you feel like a bad cat mommy worse than hearing your always-silent, mostly-deaf kitty start to cry. Amanita never makes a peep, ever - the most we can usually get is a tiny squeak under extreme conditions. But today she had to go in for tooth and ear cleaning and I put her into A’s car. As I was buckling in the carrier, she started crying louder than I’ve ever heard. And of course this is after we had to take all food away last night and she was looking so sad and hungry this morning…yes, we are bad cat mommies indeed!

So it’s Halloween. I went to a little party over the weekend dressed as a “naughty Republican” - gray skirt suit with a miniskirt, and a white buttondown under the jacket. I had a vintage “Let’s Back Ronald Reagan for Governor” button on and that was it. It went well.

I just bought tonight’s candy this morning, because otherwise it would have been gone by now! I got snack size Almond Joy, single-serving Reese’s peanut butter cups, and snack size regular Hershey’s chocolate for the kiddies who are either allergic or simply don’t like nuts or coconut. Although actually, we tend to get more older kids than we do little ones - middle and high school age, rather than preschool and elementary age. Some years we only get a handful of kids at all.

Oh crap, I just remembered that yesterday was the first anniversary of my biological father’s death. Huh.

I booked our hotel in Las Vegas today. It’s only for the part of the stay my wife’s company is paying for, as we will be booking our own extension separately. Yes, I booked for what my wife’s company is paying for…apparently I am a better travel agent than those the company uses. It was really tough to find somewhere that stayed under the $114 daily maximum on President’s Day weekend, but I ended up with the America’s Best Value Inn on East Tropicana Avenue. They have free wireless internet, hooray! Reviews seem to be pretty mixed, some people hated it and some people liked it. If something doesn’t work out with that motel, there is also the Motel 6 on the same block.

It’s very disappointing when you decide “screw the diet, I haven’t had chocolate chip pancakes in a million years, that’s what I’m going to get” and then they are not very good and not very chocolatey at all.