Waddling Towards Fitness: Closing in on Half a Pail!

Close call today! I stopped at Caffe Viale's new street-side coffee joint on 5th at Salmon. Very cool--built into an old (vintage 1970s) Tri-Met Bus Shelter. As is the case when one is fighting an insurgency, a minuscule lapse can be dangerous. Yes, I was attacked by an IFD--Improvised Fattening Device. A pasty tried to jump into my mouth, but, being ever vigilant, I fended it off with a series of lightning-quick jujitsu moves. It fell harmlessly, for me, into the hands of the next-in-line. But, for those of you who aren't battling LARD!, Caffe Viale has the best soup and panini in town for my Lire! And friendly people, too!

As of today, I've shed 1.71 gallons of LARD!, earning me 13.7 pints and putting me in striking distance of my next 1/4 pail. I hope to update the status board soon!

Waddling Towards Fitness: LARD is ALL Around me

Every once in a whatever, I need to come North of the Border to talk with some people that need talking to. As I waddled to the flight north today, I realized that this is as close as I will get to my beloved Coffee Crisp. Tim Horton's? Not a cracklins chance in a pot of boiling LARD!






Bill, I need your help! Talk me down! Give me strength! Sing LARD is All Around Me! ...Find something lean to cook!

OK ,I'm off the ledge. I found a Safeway and got some Wasa Bread (no Finn Crisp available, Javier), some carrots, and smoked almonds which are a steal, by the way at 6 calories per nut. Whew, a magazine of bullets dodged. LARD IS all around me...

War on LARD Update

People ask me, "Jack, how do you do it?" I'm happy to share. Readers of my other blog will recall Javier Boleyn, a pal-o-Dolly-girl's and mine that we take in the Bard from time-to-time with. Well, Javier has kept himself slim and trim all these years. I asked him for his secret.

"Jackie-boy," he calls me Jackie-boy to go along with Dolly-girl, "I'll tell you how I do it. I call it the 2-Step DUH! Diet. It's copyrighted, by the way. It used to be a 1-Step Diet, but nothing will sell that has just one step, so I changed it to 2-Step.

"Now I'm going to tell you the 2-Step DUH! Diet, Jackie-boy, so listen close." I did.




"Step 1: Eat Less." "Easy enough," I thought, but then realized that eating less meant, well, eating less. "OK, I'm ready for Step 2."



"Step 2: Move more." I groaned. "That's it," he said. "Guaranteed to work."




Damn, I knew there was a catch. I thought through the steps again, turning them over and over. I tried to turn Javier's DUH! Diet into 7 Steps--I like things to have 7 steps. I couldn't make it work. There was a paradox. My entire exercise program consists of either waddling to the kitchen to get seconds and thirds or waddling to and from great Stumptown eateries, as all of you who read my other blog know I like to do. "How is it that I am supposed to effectuate both steps?" I asked.






"Simple, Jackie-boy, simple." Javier was about to explain. "Whilst reducing one's intake, one has to increase one's non-food related exercise. I, myself, took up hiking in the mountains. Why just today, upon completing a 17 and one-quarter mile hike before breakfast, I settled down at my table and enjoyed my usual morning repast of a Finn Crisp and half of a grape. That should hold me through my morning calisthenics routine."

Oh boy, this is going to be tougher than I thought. DUH!



Since last I wrote I've lost another 2 and a half pints bringing the total to 9.4 pints or 1.16 gallons. I need to lose another 6 and 3/4 pints to earn my second quarter pail on the LARD-o-Meter. I'm am, however, half way to my goal of losing 15 pounds of LARD before leaving for France on September 6. It's going to be a challenge--I have a lot of business travel between now and then, so I guess it will have to be eternal vigilance and salad.

Waddling Towards Fitness: Update, August 7, 2010

Pictured to the left is a 25 pound pail of LARD. Half of the total amount of LARD that I'm committed to lose as I Waddle Towards Fitness. According to a supposedly trustworthy site on the interwebs, LARD has a density of 0.772 g per ml which converts to 6.42 pounds per gallon. That makes that about a 4 gallon pail. So I need to lose 8 gallons of LARD off my LARD-ASS body.





So far, I'm happy to report, since Sunday last, I've lost 6.8 pints of LARD--that's about 0.85 gallons.








It's not easy. LARD is all around me. Ooo, that's close to the Troggs' song that Bill Nighy parodied in Love Actually, one of my favorite sappy romantic comedies.
I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
The LARD that's all around me
And so the waistline grows

It's hanging all around me
It's everywhere I look
So if you want cardiac fitness
Find something lean to cook...




However, I will triumph over LARD, even as it tempts and attacks me. And a pail of Armour LARD and Bill Nighy are going to be my talismans!

Waddling Towards Europe: New Bill Clinton-Inspired Dedication

Well, I see it's been some time since I wrote about waddling toward fitness. That's because...I'm FIT! Wrongo. That's a lie. No way. No how. Actually, I haven't written because I haven't been very good about my attempts to lose weight and get fit. That seems to happen in the summer when we have yard work to do instead of free time to walk everywhere.

But look at me! Disgusting--I'm as fat as the hog I was eating that night and, by the way, that's not a lite beer in my hand.




However, I took note of the frenzy over Chelsea Clinton's wedding, including the newly-trim Father-of-the-Bride-former-President-of-these-United-States-and-current-husband-of-the-Secretary-of-State. I mean, look at him. Down right rail-like. Apparently he became so under orders from his daughter. I suspect a personal trainer was involved as well. And a chef.

So, it is with renewed vigor that I promise to get back to it and lose some weight--how about a goal of 15 pounds--before we leave for Europe on September 6. 15 pounds in 35 days. I can do it!

Waddling to the Grocery: Spring in Northeast Portland

Spring in Portland is truly a beautiful time of the year and yesterday was a nice spring day. The sun was out, then some clouds blew in, then the sun, then some more clouds and an April shower, then it warmed up and I decided to waddle on over to the grocery to pick up supplies for dinner. The pink dogwoods on our street are at their prime.





And speaking of pink, check out this stretch Hummer that disgorged a gaggle of people at Peninsula Park just as I waddled by. Go here and scroll down half a page to get the details! A wedding party was arriving to have pictures taken. If they'd waited a couple weeks the roses would have been blooming, but I'm sure the photographers these days can throw a few thousand blooms into the background with Photoshop...




It seems to me that the economy around Portland may be picking up a bit. I waddled by a bunch of construction, remodels, landscaping, and various other projects that seem to indicate that money is flowing again. I know we're helping out. New roof starts this coming week.
I waddled past this building that had recently been painted. Now, I've been known to paint around things, but this painter sprayed right over the ivy on the side of the garage. I suspect it will leave a nice pattern after the ivy dies...




To make a decent 4 mile + waddle, I headed to the Arbor Lodge New Seasons instead of our local one. I suppose I could have stretched out the route ahead of the store visit which would have saved carrying food on half the waddle, but I didn't. Next time I will. Waddling to Arbor Lodge requires crossing I-5, and bridges creep me out these days, particularly if they don't have any structure above my head. Vertigo! I don't like to be at the top of cliffs or mountains, but it's only in the past few years that bridges have bothered me. Molly must share that as I remember when she was a little girl she was scared out of her wits on the top of Whiteface Mountain.


Over by New Seasons, I spied this sign. In my opinion, this sign should be posted all over Portland. We have a very active biking community in Portland. For the most part, bikers consider themselves saviors of the earth. They have a great deal of disdain for car-drivers, and little regard for walkers. Bikers become incensed if, for some reason, you don't see them while driving and cut them off. However, do they stop for pedestrians as they are supposed to? 99.9% DO NOT. Sanctimonious cyclers...blergh! They are perfectly happy to run over walkers or zoom around you. Or ride on the sidewalk and fly past without so much as an "On your left..." My prediction? Pedestrian Rage directed at bikers!



Stumptown, like many other cities, is now taking storm water runoff seriously, particularly since the EPA started doing their job, fining the bejesus out of recalcitrant municipalities. These days, when impervious surfaces like parking lots are constructed, so are bioswales. Parking lots slope to these small areas that are filled with native plants. Rather than directing the water (and the stuff from the parking lot that's in it, like oil, coolant, spit, and so on) to storm sewers, and then into rivers, the water percolates into the soil and is used by plants. Yay bioswales!


Children were out all over Rip City (that's another moniker for Stumptown) playing in the outdoors! Yes, playing outside. Unplugged. I saw swinging on swings, hopscotching, rope jumping, tag playing, and bike riding. I saw one young girl steer her bike into an alley and stop as her older brother, making an old-time siren noise pulled up behind her, got off his bike, walked up to her and said, "License, please." She dug into her pocket and produced an imaginary card as he wrote an equally imaginary ticket.


Lots of other things were in bloom. I waddled past tulips, daffodils, azaleas, early rhododendrons, dogwoods, cherry trees, and all manner of other flowers. Grass is stunningly green and will stay so until irrigation season starts and some of us accept the brown that comes with living in the land of seasonal drought. But speaking of season(ing), the rosemary is in bloom all over town.








So, I waddled on home. I did my good deeds for the day. I picked up a nail off the pavement in the middle of 21st Street, saving someone from a flat tire. I helped out neighbor jump-start his 1972 Lincoln. That required pushing that hunk of Detroit Iron, no small feat! Then I pushed my Cleveland Flab around 4.1 miles.