Weight a While

I'm 51 years old now and constantly joke about how long I've been married. While we have been married almost 28 years I tell people that I got married 50 pounds ago. I can make fun of it but it is really getting to me. I have worried about my weight for a long time. When Karen and I married I weighed about 150 to 160 pounds. Now for the confession. I stepped on the scale the other day and it said 226 lbs. I used to think I carried it well but now I always seem to have to get my clothes just a little bit larger. I have several shirts I can't wear right now because they have "shrunk".

It is no longer a laughing matter. I can't put it off any longer. Just this morning my wife said to me, "When I wake up in the morning and don't hear you breathing I get scared because I think you might be dead". Usually she doesn't hear me because I get up earlier than she does and I'm downstairs doing something. I didn't know it was bothering her this much or that she was worrying like that.

I have obsessed about losing weight even going so far as to participate in a weight loss study at a local clinical research facility. It worked at first but then I gained all the weight back after it was over. My problem is will power, focus and follow through. I always start out with the best of intentions. I've never had anyone really push me to lose weight. I'm tired of being "fat". There, I've said it. I'm fat. It doesn't look good on me. I don't like buying the bigger clothes. They don't look good on me. You don't want to see me naked either.

Today I'm going to start watching my weight go down. I'm publishing a picture with this blog so I can track my progress, and so can you. By December 31st, 2011 my weight will be down to at least 190 lbs. That means that over the next 9 months I must lose at least 4 lbs a month. It doesn't sound that bad. We'll see how it goes.

Graduation

This is just a quick post to let you know that we made it safely back from Utah where we went for our daughter's graduation from BYU. That was back in April 2009. All went well. We weren't able to visit everyone we wanted to see but were able to visit some family.

I'll post pictures and tell you about it in more detail a little bit later.

My Wife

Let me tell you about my wife.  Her name is Karen.  When I first met her she was just a girl of 20, the most beautiful redhead I had ever met.  We were in a ballroom dance class at BYU.  There must have been 24 - 30 people in the class, half boys and half girls.  She was the best looking girl in the class and I just didn't have the nerve to ask her out.  We would dance together every class at least once, and sometimes more often.  It was only an 8 week class and towards the end of the class I thought I would never get the chance to go out on a date with her and I was still afraid she might say no.  So I told her that if she got a 9 or above on the next dance test that I would take her out.  Big prize, huh.  Well, she took the challenge seriously and got a 9 on the test.  She even kept the score sheet to show me.

Our first real date was to go see "Poltergeist".  That was just coming out then.  It was a great movie and she got so scared at a couple of parts she nearly jumped in my lap.  That was the beginning of a long relationship.  We've had a lot of ups and downs.  It seems like more downs than anything else.  But she has stuck with me, through thick and thin.  Sometimes I don't why.  

Where we really fell in love was the night we went to go see the musical, "Brigadoon" at Sundance Outdoor Theater at the Sundance Ski Resort in June 1982.  I've included a picture of us and our friends that we took that night.  And don't you know that both couples ended up getting married the next year!

Most of the time I see myself as the lucky one in the relationship.  I still have a long way to go to be her model of perfection, and I don't think I'll ever get that far, at last not in this life, but I can be much better than I am.  So to see how I do I'm going to try to tell a story about our early life together and then see what I can do better now.  Perhaps if I have people reading this, or at least if I post this online, I'll have more of a reason to challenge myself and keep myself on track.  If you have suggestions for me on how I can do better, let me know.

One Big Eternal Round - College Graduation

Twenty four years ago I graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, UT.  On April 24th my little girl, now 22, will graduate from BYU with a BA in Communications.  It's hard to believe it's been 4 years since she started college.  It wasn't that long ago we moved from Saratoga Springs, NY to Fairport, NY and she was just entering the 10th grade.  Time flies so fast when you get older. 

I think one of the things I miss the most from my college days were the friends I made.  While we aren't as close as we once were, we still like to get together whenever we can, which isn't very often anymore, since most of them are still in Utah and we live in New York.  At the same time, when we do get together it's almost like no time has passed at all.  I look forward to seeing them at our daughter's graduation party.

So to all the college graduates out there, here's to the class of 2009.  Good Luck.