Hey All,

I’m truly sorry about the anemic level of posting as of late. We’re gearing up at work for the Third International Medicinal Mushroom Conference, which we are hosting out at Fort Worden in Port Townsend. Let me just tell you: if your company/organization is looking for a responsive, conveniently located, service-oriented venue to host a medium-to-large conference, look elsewhere. The place is beautiful, historic, stately, probably a fantastic place to take the family for a long weekend, but beyond that they’re something of a letdown. Need to seat five hundred for a multimedia presentation? Simple, use the Hangar! Sure, it’s unheated and actually exposed to the elements (in a coastal town in the Pacific Northwest), but hey, you can all cower under tarps or something! Want to stream your Conference activities to clients worldwide? No problem! Simply take your computer into the administrative office, plug your modem into the only available phone jack on the entire premises, and away you go….at 52kbps. Oh sure, they have a T1 for the office computers, but they never really thought about offering broadband Internet access to their clients.

Anyway, grousing aside, what time I have not been spending working on Conference materials has been spent sleeping, playing video games or watching DVRed episodes of Iron Chef America, No Reservations and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. My muse is in a persistent vegetative state from overwork….and I have put in the fewest hours of any of the principal people putting this thing together. Needless to say, we’ll all be quite relieved when it’s over.

So in lieu of anything of actual substance, I thought I’d post an update to the diet thang….like anyone cares (please refer to my previous comments regarding the purpose and intent of this site; namely, to entertain me, not you. 😛 )

To date, I’ve lost thirteen pounds. I’m down to 267, the lightest I’ve been in, what, four years? Pretty good for not having taken on so much as a single erg of additional physical activity. Furthermore, I’ve become quite accustomed to being hungry all of the time. I almost don’t notice it any more. If I’m hungry, I drink something, which fools my stomach for a while—long enough for the sensation of hunger to once again be subsumed by work, conversation, Grand Theft Auto, whatever.

The biggest behavioral hurdle is the kind of mindless snacking that happens whenever you’re too close to a source of food. You’re making a salad and you’ve just finished mixing up some vinegar-and-oil dressing and poured it over your greens, but there’s some left. My, that would be tasty on a piece of bread! You rip a hunk off of a nearby loaf and swish it around in the mixing bowl, sopping up the last of the dressing….then you slap yourself across the face and throw the bread in the composter. Idly snatching pieces of stir-fried yummies out of the Tupperware of leftovers while you wait for your dinner to nuke, opening a jar of kalamata olives and popping a few in your mouth while you’re making dinner….this is the sort of behavior you have to stifle.

On the other hand, restricting your idle consumption transforms mealtime into an extravaganza of sensation, particularly since our migration from the world of the Atkins Diet, a benighted landscape of grilled meat, roasted meat, poached meat, meat with meat sauce, meat a la meat….and salad. Last night I made bruschetta, lovely hothouse tomatoes chopped up fine and doused in a dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, dill, marjoram, black pepper, salt and a touch of yogurt, served on a thick slice of artisan bread brushed with olive oil and topped with strips of melted mozarella….It wasn’t a meal, it was a sacrament.

All in all I’m having a hell of an easier time with this 1600-calorie-a-day-diet then my last one, shortly after I was diagnosed as having diabetes. It’s because this was a 100% voluntary act, whereas the last time I was starving myself in a futile attempt to reduce my blood sugar levels without chemical assistance. In other words, to waylay the inevitable—a year later, I had to give up and start taking medication anyway. This time, I’m doing it to improve my overall health, from my diabetes to my herniated discs, and also to prove that I can. By comparison, it’s a piece of cake.

Mmmmmm….cake…..