This has been a great day.
Weight-wise I'm feeling great at 236, down 37.5 pounds or 13.7% of my body weight from August 31.
Work-wise it is a day to get a lot of things done other than working on the Kindle project: shipping some books I sold over the weekend, posting some new listings on my Windwalker Books storefront, and writing a more manageable copywriting assignment - 10 pages on various subtopics related to hybrid automobiles. I also caught up with numerous errands: the bank, the post office, returning 7 DVDs to the public library and getting another 5, and two trips to CVS (the first one to get a replacement battery for my digital scale and the second one to pick up Epsom salts for my housemate Raven who signed up for a movement class on Saturday and, as a result, can no longer move).
The only errand that I didn't complete from those that were on my list when I left the house was a haircut, but I forgot that Fast Phil is not open Monday's. Tomorrow or Wednesday. After all, I like Fast Phil. You get a good barber, you got to stick with him. Especially if he has a sign in the window that says "Haircuts $10," like Phil does. Besides, I know the new, fastidiously old-school chain barber shop that just opened up near the Shepard St. Starbucks is open Monday's, but they won't cut my hair and trim my beard for less than $28.
I also got to the gym in the morning and had a more balanced routine than usual -- a little over 30 minutes hard on the elliptical plus double sets of 4 weight machines, the way Stewart tells me I should be doing, because muscle burns calories. Like I need more muscle. Followed by a steam and a nice hot (106 F) jacuzzi. New man.
But it keeps getting better.
I spent a good part of the afternoon with Danny, my 9-year-old son. He got his purple belt today in karate, and I am very proud of him. He is an amazing, creative, thoughtful, caring, imaginative boy.
He started this karate thing almost a year ago and he was frankly not terribly enthusiastic about it. He does not, shall we say, self-identify as a jock. But he is toughening up in the ways that a 9-year-old boy should, and he has dedicated himself to doing the karate well. He gets a lot of good feedback from Sensei Bobby, who runs the karate school, and he has responded really well to it.
Back home, after karate class and after Danny worked on his homework for a while, we were talking about this blog. He and I have talked a little bit about the possibility that I might turn some of the blog into a book, at some point. Today we were kicking around the idea that, if I published a Kindle e-book edition of the Big Man Getting Smaller book, I might be able to find some way to link to the music, the soundtracks, which for me (and for some readers, I know because they have told me) are certainly a big part of what makes it all fun. Danny understood that, of course, and then we had another little sub-discussion about the title of the Big Man Getting Smaller book.
When I first spoke to him about the idea of a book, I suggested the title Big Man Getting Smaller: How I Blogged My Way to Losing 100 Pounds. To be honest, it might have been a bit of a case of the goal being driven by the felicity of the title. That was a while ago, before the more recent and very natural slowdown in the velocity of my weight loss.
Today I suggested that I might want to ratchet down to a book, or perhaps a Kindle e-book, entitled Big Man Getting Smaller: How I Blogged My Way to Losing 50 Pounds. I told Danny that I might be able to reach that goal in January, and that of course, I could always go ahead and write the second book if I were to complete the second 50 pounds of the original goal.
"Yeah," said Danny. "Then you could call the second book Big Man Getting Smaller: How I Blogged My Way to Losing Another 50 Pounds! And then you could bring them out together as a boxed set!"
Danny is 9. Does this boy have a future in marketing, or what?
I first came across Johnny Adams when I was down in New Orleans organizing po' folk and eating po' boys* about 30 years ago. Like many a great bluesman, he has a way of inviting you in to the story he is telling when he sings you a song.
My favorite of his songs is one called "A Losing Battle", the last track on his Reconsider Me compilation album. Angelynn Grant turned me on to it on her excellent Coffeetime radio program on WMBR. I can't find his version of it on Youtube, you can get it from iTunes for a buck. And this cover isn't bad at all.
* It would be really lowlife to make a stupid crack here about rich girls, or not that there's anything wrong with that.
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