Water Weight

So, to answer some questions: no, yes, too much, don't know yet, and thank you.

Seriously. My car is permanently disabled. Well, it's still running, but it's not fixable for less than $1,500 and for a car we only paid a grand for in the first place, it's not worth the investment, especially since the transmission isn't the only thing wrong with it. Thanks for all your concern and commentary. Our plan now is to run it into the ground and see how much money we have managed to save up by the time it goes kaput.

It must be nice, I think, to be in a job where you get paid just to diagnose a problem. Doctors get office visit fees, whether you end up treating the problem or not. Garages get fees for hooking up a computer and driving the car around the block. (I ended up shelling out well over $100 just to find out that the car's not worth fixing...) I give advice to a lot of people. I need to start charging for it, even if (especially if!) they don't follow it.

Sunday, I went for a distance building walk. Toby joined me again. Ug. I do like him, most of the time, but really, spending 7 hours of my weekend with him is starting to be a bit much. Also, he has a revolting habit of chewing with his mouth open, which makes lunch time a trial. Maybe I can find some way to tell him nicely next week that I'd prefer to walk on my own once in a while. I like having company, sometimes. It does make the walk go by faster, and at the same time, I don't want to "wimp out" in front of someone else. On the other hand, it seems like I never get to spend any time... alone. I'm either the go-to guru on food and diet; or I'm "wife" or "mommy" or the romance expert (I cannot tell you how many people come to me for dating/relationship advice... numbers that large don't make sense. I further cannot count the number of people who actually listen to me about it... numbers don't come that small.)

It was a nice enough day for a walk, and we walked most of the way to Leslie's house and then back. Leslie wasn't home, she had plans... So we stopped at the BP station about a mile from her house, had lunch, and then headed back. According to my pedometer, we walked 16.8 miles in about six and a half hours. That's not very speedy, honestly; about 2.5 miles an hour, but we did stop for breaks and...

Well, then it rained.

At first, the rain was nice; kinda light and scattered and cooling.

And then... it rained harder.

And harder.

I couldn't have been any more wet if you'd tossed me in a lake.

Water, by the way, is really, really heavy.

My shoes were completely soaked, enough so that it no longer was worth the effort to try and walk around the 3 inch deep puddles. Water poured through my baseball cap, down the back of my neck, and into my shirt. It was raining so hard, literally, I couldn't see more than fifty feet in front of us (and only that far until my glasses started fogging up... after that, I could barely see at all...).

We walked the last two miles in that downpour.

And soaking wet clothes are really heavy. Between pushing through puddles and how sticky I became (well, the legs of my shorts were drenched and they rubbed together and wow, that slowed me down a lot...) we lost a great deal of ground.

Just as we were getting to my apartment, it stopped raining.

Typical.

"Well, at least it stopped," Toby said.

"Yeah, so instead of looking like troopers," I rolled my eyes, "we just look stupid."

As a note, my weigh in was the suck this week. After losing 4 pounds last week, I was back up .6 this week. My weight loss for this year is the suck. I have ~8.4 pounds left to lose, and at the rate I'm losing, it's going to be 2010 before I'm not paying for meetings anymore.

Sigh.

(And yes, while you're wondering, Thomas lost another 2 pounds this week. Yes, by all means, kill him.)