Your tour guide

a quick update for those of you following the continuing saga. I have been on Zoloft for anxiety for 1 week and I have lost exactly 5 pounds. I tried having 2 beers with a meal Friday night and suffered no ill effects. Saturday night I had 1 glass of wine with a meal. while 5 lbs in one week may not be typical it is still encouraging. I have made very few changes other than never having seconds at dinner time and measuring my snack of the week-pretzels with hummus. I continue to exercise as much as I always did. on a personal level I went to Saloon Friday night for the premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 but went home early. Saturday I went to see the movie Beauty and the Beast with friends. Sunday I watched the movie Edge of Seventeen on blu ray at home. I finished the series (or I should say caught up on) Transparent which is remarkable. Not since Six Feet Under have I felt this way about an ensemble cast playing members of a family full of misfits. So...

I guess this space has been dormant since 2011 but even if it's just for today i am reviving it. in part this blog will be a record of my adventures, successes, failures, and the bits that I feel are worth preserving in order to remember them. This week I have begun another serious dedicated attempt to find my way to a thinner more healthy me. I thought about it, I read about some medications and I know there is more than one clinic dedicated to medical weight loss. I will be 39 this year and hope I have more than half of my life out ahead of me. my goal is to spend more of my life at a healthy weight than i did at an unhealthy one. I look forward to buying clothes in any store I choose, having zero anxiety when taking off my shirt or buckling my seatbelt on an airplane, and maybe I will no longer have to worry about dying in my sleep from sleep apnea. It is important for me to say again if you are reading this you probably know me: I don't want your sympathy but I do want ...

When the automatic doors open, an intense gust of crisp autumn wind rushes in, carrying with it a synthetic potpourri of cigarette smoke, car exhaust, air freshener, cologne, and body odor. All the passengers are shaken then rapidly pushed and pulled in tiny motions with every dip or curve in the track. I feel nauseous. I want more privacy. This long haired hippy is sitting too close to me. He smells like weed. Wait- he got up to help someone who dropped something. He's not so bad. I cannot get on a train without thinking of my paternal grandfather. He adored reading all about them and constructing model trains in his retirement. I wonder if he ever rode the subway in New York City, the El in Chicago, or the Tube in London. Probably not. My mind tells me to be cautious or even suspicious in this situation because I grew up in the country where there was no city bus let along light rail train. My dad's voice rings in the back of my mind. His advice from our one and...

Tuesday August 29 1989 My house was very quiet this morning as I awoke to find no one up. Usually my dad is awake viewing the morning news but not today. I was the first awake. For breakfast I had Cheerios. My mother spilled some shell salad on the floor and in came Blacky, one of our cats. August 30 1989 School has been fun the last few days and I think I am getting used to the rules of the junior high. The teachers are fair, the lunch is alright, but the suspense of changing classes with only a limited amount of time is what I like. roaming the halls as a "big 6th grader" makes me proud. September 01 1989 This morning I awoke at 7 o'clock. The bus comes for us at 7:25. I was hurrying around getting things together for school then I clipped my nails. I needed breakfast so I dumped some dry Cheerios in a bag and ran to wait for the bus. No sooner had I reached the top of the hill the vehicle wheeled up the hill. Tuesday September 05 1989 On Saturday my grandma and I went ...

i have begun to type all new blog posts because i am fighting off some mild depression due in part to recently losing my job, which i truly hated anyway. but writing always was somewhat cathartic for me in the past and i think i do it well so i want to use this to get it all out of me. i would love to have something to show for my time off. topic: the academy award nominations were announced today. as i have nothing but time, i watch daytime TV, in between spending hours on end looking at this computer. the schedule is 08:30 AM wake up, adore the cat, and make breakfast. today i also loaded the dishwasher at his point. 09:00AM watch ellen 10:00AM watch the view 11:00AM watch martha 12:00PM watch tyra 01:00PM at this point in my weekday i try to devote a couple of hours to scouring the web for jobs i have not yet applied for or updating my resume and then saving it to websites where employers can search for new employees. i also check facebook and hotmail and gmail. i listen to music a...