Monday, August 8, 2011

It's about time

The last time I opened the dusty drawers of this blog, there was a functioning American economy.

With hard-working citizens forced to barter human skulls for rat meat, I figure it's time to write something here. Usually I have nothing going on. Spouting off with inane comments on pop culture loses its luster after a while. So it's funny that over the past two months "stuff" has been going on and yet I wrote nothing.

I have failed you all.

Work has been nuts. I'm now somewhat of a supervisor. My dreams of middle-management have been achieved! While my compatriots wander off on their summer vacations, I've held down the fort at the Eye's sports website. Countless columns on the NFL lockouts ceded to countless columns on the craziest Free Agency news orgy I have ever experienced in journalism. I was so drained that I bought beer at 7/11 at 2:30 on a Friday morning and guzzled it out of a brown paper bag. My eyeballs pulsated with a dull pain and my senses were fried and beer provided the only remedy.

You can guess why I've been too lazy/almost suicidal to blog.

Throw on top the always enjoyable process of moving. I haven't packed a single thing yet and I'm almost exhausted. Hiring movers, buying all new furniture, purchasing mandatory renter's insurance, setting up bills ... this new place better be worth it. I move in the day before my first vacation of the year starts, so I will not be able to enjoy my new South Beach penthouse until early September.

I plan on making this an actual 'home.' Not in the sense of a huddled family around the fireplace, but an apartment that isn't just a collection of furniture in front of a television set. With this in mind, I purchased matching sofas and sleek glass-top tables. I might even get a plant or some artwork.

Also, during the last month or so I reconnected with this girl I mentioned in a previous entry. To her dismay, I had not struck big as an Internet entrepreneur nor had I turned into an Alcide-type hunk. The reconnection was mercilessly strangled in its infancy. The one lasting effect from this tired story was a lack of eating.

There were days when a persistent anxiousness dominated my waking hours to such an extent I lost much of my appetite for a period of about four weeks. Yes, I know I have major issues.

Warning: This part will most likely piss you off ...

Backtracking, I weighed roughly 170 pounds in college. I feasted on an almost daily buffet of coffee coolattas, muffins, pizza and pop tarts. I was still a stick figure, but I did not quite resemble a famine victim. Perhaps a malnourished peasant, but not famine. My weight remained consistent through the Florida years until I contracted food poisoning. The morning after that terrible day, the scale was below 150.

I figured I'd gain it back eventually. While some of it returned, a hefty amount of stranded pounds disappeared. The stress of the past few months curtailed my eating further. At this moment, I'm at 153. When I traveled up north for a short period of time in May, many Sears denizens commented on my noticeable thinness. My mom commanded me to eat more.

You know me: I do what mommy says. While I watch what I eat a little bit more than I used to, I no longer care if I drink too many frappuchinos in one week. I enjoy dessert with abandon. I still don't eat lunch, but I consume large dinners. And while I do my fair share of exercising, the intense heat of the Florida summer, combined with constant rain and work-related exhaustion have curtailed physical activity to some extent.

Yet my weight stays the same. I might reach 154 or 155, but that's about the limit. Could I eat nothing but KFC double-downs and watch every episode of the People's Court for a good month and not gain a pound? I'm starting to wonder.

Last week I went to the doctor's office with an ear issue. (The Schaibles might remember my 2006 stay in San Diego which involved a doomed job interview and nothing but Family Guy DVDs for several days ... that malaise occurred in large part to the same ear problem for which I visited the doctor most recently.)

One of the nurses could not even read my blood pressure because my arm was too thin for the flap. She had to get a smaller one. And after the doctor fixed the ears, she asked me how everything else is going. I told her that I cannot gain weight.

She only laughed. "Most people would cut a limb off to lose weight. As you get older, your metabolism will slow down."

She's right of course. But people told me my metabolism would start to slow in the late 20's, yet it is stronger than ever. While God/nature gave me graying hair, the social skills of a wooden chair, gorilla legs and a pipsqueak of a stomach, they also bestowed upon me a world-class metabolism (and a wicked split-finger pitch.)

Odds are my skeletal frame could gradually shrink until I'm nothing but a poor imitation of Benjamin Button. Before that happens, I must fatten myself up. Stay away from stress and hunching over my laptop and blogging more frequently would be a decent start.

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