Fatty Go Home

This is a totally self-congratulatory post, I'll get that out right from the start. So if you aren't in the mood to hear me talk about how proud I am of myself, stop reading.
I reached a personal milestone of sorts over the last few days. Below you see an elliptical trainer; I am this thing's bitch. Every time I go to the gym, I am on this thing to the point that I'm pretty sure my heart is going to explode, and I have more than once, in the midst of an oxygen deprived hallucination, pictured myself blacking out and collapsing into it's churning underbelly. So far that experience has been limited to hallucinations.

When I began my odyssey in September to get my gut, and overall health, under control, I was a portly 85.8 kilograms. In America we'd say 189 pounds. I'm only about 5'7", so that was far from my ideal weight.

So when you get on this elliptical thing, you have to spend about five minutes entering all sorts of biographical information so it can calculate just how many calories you burn, and how far you go. The machine is set to start at 70 kilograms (that's 154 pounds). When I started going to the gym I had to jack the weight up to 85 kg, but I've been steadily working my way down towards 70 kg. Well, I'm full of self-importance and feeling proud that as of yesterday, I didn't have to adjust the weight AT ALL. 70 kg baby!! Next stop, 69, and that's just a crazy number all around.

So I'm deservedly proud of myself, but it's a little bittersweet. I'm trying to shed as many pounds as possible before heading to America in a few weeks because I know there are numerous pizzas and Harpoon IPA's that are going to find there way into my stomach while I'm home. Those are perhaps the two culinary delights I miss most here in Japan, so I always indulge when I go home. I'm taking my running shoes with me, but if the temperature on Cape Cod is anywhere near as low as it's been recently, and if my motivation to exercise when I'm on vacation is anywhere near as low as it normally is, I won't be getting much running done. The hitch in my pound-shedding scheme is that my gym is closed for the next week. So that's a kink in the grand plan, but しょうがない.

Moving on, I'm tantalizingly close to being done with work for the next month. By the end of this week, I should have all my grades posted and all the necessary paperwork done, and I won't be teaching English until sometime in April. Given these circumstances, I do believe I've shaved for the last time this month, and the beard may be reappearing soon (to the delight of my grandmother).

OK, despite the fact that the clock I have on this blog is acting weird, reinventing itself every few days, I can still tell that it's time for bed around these parts. For some reason it's taken me about 45 minutes to write this post. Have a good one where ever you are.