Jeff Blogs

Today marks the beginning of the fourth week of my diet program. I was both looking forward to and dreading getting on the scale. Has all of my hard work and dedication paid off or has my body decided enough is enough and is revolting and not taking off the weight? These are the kinds of internal struggles I now find myself dealing with. At the beginning of my diet I weighed myself on January 13th to find that I had reached an all-time high of 210 pounds. I had vowed to myself never to get above 200 and here I was 10 pounds later cursing the bathroom scale like it was the machine’s fault.

I stepped on the scale with my eyes closed saying a silent prayer to the scale gods. “Oh holy being of springs and counter measures. May your justice be swift and may your dial be slow. I pray thee oh mighty bathroom deity cleanse me of the excess weight and I shall praise thy name from the highest toilet!”

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Like many other people I can remember exactly what I was doing eight years ago when I learned of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center the morning of September 11. I am not sure I could classify this as a life changing moment for me but more of an awakening.

Before the events of September 11, 2001 I was someone who took freedom for granted. I didn’t give a second thought to my ability to protest something I did not like or voice my opinion with little repercussion other than fearing I would sound like an idiot.

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Forty years ago my friends and I were complete engrossed in yet another baseball game in our front yard.  It was a daily ritual that lasted from the moment the sun began peeking over the horizon and ended with the last player’s mom called from a far off porch telling us it was time for bed.  There was very little that could disrupt our continuous ball game.  But on a fateful day in mid-July 1969; all play stopped.

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Today is Columbus Day. Well technically yesterday was Columbus Day and today is Columbus Day Observed. It always drives me crazy when the government decides it can randomly change the date of a holiday in order to conform to a workday. I think that frustrates me because the only reason that they move the holiday is so that they get a day off from work. That is like putting my kids in charge of monitoring the cookie level in the cookie jar. No matter how good their intentions I can guarantee that the cookies will be distributed in such a way that they will get the most while the rest of us will get a subset of the total available cookies. The fact that I had to get up this morning and go to work while the postal service, retail banking, and government workers were able to sleep in has not endeared me to Columbus Day Observed. But that’s not the only issue I have with Columbus Day.

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“Bleep, bleep, bleep” Almost on reflex you reach over and smack the alarm clock hoping that this time it will be the death blow that will put it out of its misery. Every morning it is the same thing; a perfectly good dream is interrupted by that alarm clock. You think to yourself, “one of these days I am not going to have to listen to that thing. One of these days I am going to have a day all to myself without anyone telling me what to do.” It’s funny; you’ve been saying that since you were a teenager. Back then the alarm clock was beckoning you to get up and get ready for school. Ah, those were the days. As if on cue the alarm is silenced and instead music begins emanating from the speaker. You lay there being serenaded by Gloria Gaynor as she sings, “I Will Survive”. That somehow seems appropriate this morning and you wonder if that song was meant for you or for the alarm clock that you nearly destroyed again. Maybe today won’t be so bad after all. Even before you could complete that thought the disc jockey ruined the moment when he said, “well there’s an oldie goldie we haven’t heard in a few decades.” Great that is just what you need; another ‘punk kid’ reminding you that you’re not getting any younger.

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