Stomach Stretch - Eat Too Much - Update 16

A quick glance at the Stomach Stretch Chart shows no loss at this morning's weigh-in. The scale was about a half pound lighter than 238, but not enough to claim a single pound. Obviously, my body has decided to use this period once again to stabilize itself.

Nothing exciting this week on the food front, no restaurant meals just home cooking. Son-in-law was here Tuesday and Thursday nights. Tuesday, I mixed some ground beef and fresh ground sausage from the meat market with appropriate seasoning, a couple of which were Worcestershire sauce and ginger soy sauce, and a few finely chopped onions for meatballs to go with the linguine and marinara sauce for dinner. I thot the meal turned out pretty well. I controlled myself and only had 2 meat balls with my relatively small portion of linguine.

Thursday I made some western NC style, homemade pulled pork BBQ, only using beef vice pork. First time I had tried using beef and it came out well; not as good as smoked pork, but certainly adequate. I limited myself to one BBQ sandwich with some of sister-in-law's fine slaw and a few drops of hot sauce on it. Had some con queso style cheese dip to go with it. It was hard not to go overboard with the dip tho. Son-in-law was kind to take remaining BBQ home with him; thus saving me from eating tooooooo much of it later in the week. :-)

It was a dreary week with cool temps, overcast skies and rain. I didn't spend much time outside exercising, but do need to catch up this week. I have a lot of yard work to get ready for autumn, which normally arrives here on September 21, only a week away.

I'm feeling pretty good carrying around fewer pounds and while, as an old fart, I don't really have a spring to my step, I can do pretty well. So, until next week's report.

Do good stuff; have some fun,
JD

PS - September 14, 1959. That is the date that as a recent high school graduate I went to work for NSA at Ft. Meade as a trainee computer operator. Today is the 50 year anniversary of the only real job I ever had. I worked there until January 2004; 44+ years, when I retired. Here's a short story of one of my more vivid recollections of beginning work there.

At birth I was given the name James Dewey; James from my father and Dewey from my uncle John's middle name. My dad was called Jim or some called him Big Jim as he was a pretty good size fella back in those days at 6' 1" and around 210 lbs. They didn't want to call me Jim or Little Jim, so I was 'Dewey'.
When I was a kid I would see these three little ducks, named Huey, Dewey and Louie that were in Donald Duck cartoons. I never warmed to the idea that I had the same name as a cartoon duck. It irritated me quite a bit, but I couldn't do a thing about it. When I was in 11th grade I made an attempt to change to James. I started by signing a test paper in US History class as James rather than Dewey. The teacher, a member of the 'Odd Fellows' stood in front of the class handing out papers and read off the name on my paper, then asked, "Who is this James fella?" Needless to say I was intimidated and embarrassed, and that was the end of my name change while still in high school.

The first day I met my supervisor at NSA. He was holding my personnel information in his hand and after scanning the name he said, "I see your name is James, what do they call you, Jim?" I shook his hand before he could say anything else and said, "Yes sir, they certainly do!" Needless to say, that's the day I became Jim, not Dewey, just Jim. That was a wonderful day for me.

So basically I led a double life. At the super secret agency here in central Maryland, I was Jim while folks outside knew me as Dewey. Since retiring 5 years ago, and with the specter of those damn ducks no longer relevant, I've gone back to the name Dewey for most folks I know. I use the moniker JD for most folks that knew me from work. As you may have noted, I use JD for this blog; BToS JD (JD from the Big Town of Savage).

Things usually work themselves out if you give 'em time. :-)