On All My Motions

( No big news, just this and that in passing. )

And that will do for now.

I have occasionally mentioned my wife’s mobility issues. Well, they’ve been increasing.

( The way it’s been. )

There’s still a ways to go. Even so, things might be beginning to work out.

So, yes, as I indicated in a previous post, Susan and I went to one of the prime locations to view the total solar eclipse. We’d seen warnings that there might be traffic slowdowns (from all the other people doing the same thing), so we started off early by car. No problem on the way in, we went 112 miles in 104 minutes. Susan had made an advance arrangement for us to stop in a church parking lot — they were renting out the space as a fund-raiser for a youth summer camp — and we got our placard with several hours to spare.

Now in no hurry, we got a late breakfast in a local restaurant. As it turned out, one of the other patrons was a retired astronaut, in town with a scientific crew to film the eclipse, and he let Susan take a photo with him to send to Amber in China.

Back at the church, we sat under the awning for a few hours, talking with the church people managing the parking lot. As it got closer to the time the eclipse would begin, we moved to camp chairs next to our car. The guy right next to us was a medical student from out of state … and I had to tell him that, no, it was not safe to look directly at the eclipse without protective eyewear once the sun was fully occluded by the moon. (In fact, my understanding is that full occlusion is when you’re most vulnerable to eye damage. I’ve been hearing this stuff for years, how does a medical student not know it?)

The eclipse, once it began, took over an hour to fully manifest. We used our special glasses to track the progress. The funny part was that the visible light changed only very gradually, and when change actually showed it was …weird. It was as if the sunlight were both bright and dim at the same time, or like looking at sunlight through polarized sunglasses. One of the automatic lights on a nearby building came on even before any dimming began, so clearly the sensors could detect the change before human eyes could. Through the eclipse glasses I could see the sun narrowing to a thinner and thinner sliver, while it remained almost full (discernible) light around us. Susan had heard that the change in light would make red and green colors look odd as the eclipse progressed, so we both wore red; she claimed she could see the difference, I never did.

Once full occlusion was in place — but not before that moment — it got dark all at once. That was also when I discovered that the eclipse glasses, which had allowed us to safely view the eclipse as it was progressing, were too dark to use in seeing the full eclipse (the famous black disk with a bright corona). Susan felt a cooling in the temperature while it was full dark, but I was focused elsewhere and didn’t note it myself.

Traffic stacked up on the road to the Interstate, so Susan and I found a place to eat, hoping some of that would subside in the meantime. If it made any difference, I couldn’t tell; the drive we’d made in a little over an hour and a half in the morning took more than three times that long on the way back, and we kept running into slowdowns — and even complete stoppages — as far as within ten miles of our RV home. (We had discussed taking the RV and just staying overnight, but with all things taken together it was less hassle to keep our home parked and make the trip by car.)

So that was my experience with a total eclipse. Mildly interesting, no huge deal in total; mainly, I would have just felt dumb to not do it when the opportunity was there. For everybody who found it a great experience, good for you; not everybody is wired the way I am (be a very different world if they were).

I reached my target weight a bit ago, and yesterday I made it to target-minus-5 (with over 25 pounds lost). Consequently, I’m setting a new target, which makes me — by the new measure — at target-plus-25. I’ve bought new (slimmer) blue jeans twice since I started, now showing 4 inches less around my waist; the new setpoint is to get me back to the weight I had to maintain while in the Army. Even that would be 20 pounds over my ‘lean’ adult weight, but I was at least able to remain fit in the Army, so that’s worth aiming for. And, of course, the lighter I get, the easier it will be for me to stay active and in shape.

Just one of several things going on for me right now. Encouraging all the same.

Some years ago, during one of my visits to China, I was horrified to discover I’d almost got up to … a certain weight. Now I’m trying to work my way back down to that weight.

And almost there. I read a book last year that laid out how almost all weight loss methods work, and then stop working. At the end of it, it claimed that the proper way to lose weight was with periodic fasting. That seems to work for me. Two weeks ago I was down to certain-weight-plus-14; this morning, it’s certain-weight-plus-1.5. I did two fasting periods, and I’ll end the most recent tomorrow.

Till the last day or so, I barely noticed, and I found that eating nothing for a few days is much preferable to eating too little for weeks at a time. I’m a fan of, and believer in, low-carb diets, and I’ll be looking to get back on that for maintenance, after achieving my current target weight.

Of course, then I’ll have to start planning for my next target: the weight level I had to meet to satisfy Army requirements. And maybe, after that, I’ll begin aiming toward what was my active adult weight before I passed age 50.

Small steps, and keep making them.

( We’re probably looking at ANOTHER delay in our long-term travel plans. )

Took my wife’s dog out for a walk today. For some reason she chose to do her squat on the side of a slope, and I had to quick-step out of the way, because —

— you know what? It really does roll downhill.

Almost caught up by now.

( The third-biggest thing I haven’t mentioned over the past five months: )