Well here's the text of a blog that I'd thought I'd posted but obviously I didn't.

Merry #@%&* Christmas

Paula and I had a wonderful cruise. It was relaxing and lovely. The best part was waking up on the first morning, opening the curtain and seeing Catalina spread out before us like some Mediterranean island paradise. It was quite breathtaking. Paula and I had a very nice and relaxing time. When we came home it was the weekend of Christmas and we were expecting Paula’s brother and his partner to join us. We called our cabin agents and found out that the cabin wasn’t rented for the next few days so we called Marc (Paula’s Brother) and told them to meet us at the cabin instead of at our house. Off we went for a sleepy, fireside Christmas of debauchery. What a great way to finish the year.

‘Cept of course it didn’t happen that way. When we arrived to our snow encrusted chalet, I opened the door and it was Niagara Falls in the back bedroom. A pipe had burst and water was everywhere. We had a rental the following week so I had no choice but to do the best we could to get it into shape. We got a rug doctor to suck out water and Paula went down the hill to rent a high power dryer. We pulled out the carpet pads and hung the carpets on the furniture to help dry them out. Marc and his partner were so fantastic. There was much of the carpeting that we had to toss and we bought linoleum squares to install. They installed them all, not only did they do all the work but they designed a beautiful floor with a border. They even cancelled some plans that they had down the hill in order to stay and finish the job.

The place looked better when we left it than it ever had and our renters liked it so much they are coming back in March. Meanwhile I am doing my first homeowners insurance claim. There of course was still a lot of wet in the walls and once the renter was gone we had Servicemaster come and tear them out and dry us out. I’m going up this Saturday to see how it went and to get a handle on the work needed to get it back into shape. So Ho Ho Ho the laugh was on us this Christmas. I don’t ever remember working quite so hard on my holiday. It’s a good thing I had just come off a cruise—we were relaxed and ok to deal with disaster, well as ok as you can be I guess.

Paula and I have come to the point in our lives where we need to get a control on what we put into our mouths. Food has always been something fun and comforting that I just take care of when I’m hungry, but we’ve not paid much attention to it as far as how it relates to our health and well being—and it shows. We are coming to the realization that we have a problem and we need to pay attention to food, what we eat and how it relates to our growing waistlines. Logging what I eat, planning the days meals in advance with an eye toward the overall week or months intake, considering my choices and understanding the consequences of each choice—and sticking with my decisions, these are all new concepts for me regarding food.

We did Atkins for a while, now we are doing nutrisystems—whatever, it doesn’t matter, they all work. What’s important is getting a cognizant and thoughtful overall picture of what I am doing to myself with my food intake. These packaged diets are giving me the tools to do that. Once I have a philosophy and a plan in place I can have a lifestyle that doesn’t show its disgusting reality on my gut. Or more importantly in my blood sugar levels. Who wants to be an old, fat diabetic? But that’s what I’ve been working toward all of my middle age.

Netflix sent me Da Vinci finally. Kinda heavy handed. Ron Howard directed it with a Concrete Glove. The book didn’t translate very well. It’s a great idea, exploring the idea of Sacred Feminine in an action intrigue story, it just didn’t play out very well. I’ve given into the idea that I just don’t go to movies anymore. I’m going to have to make an exception for Dream Girls. I love that show and I need to see what they did to try and translate it into film.