I read somewhere that obese people won't get the full benefit of any coronavirus vaccines that come along.  The article said that the obese have this problem with just about any vaccine, not just a potential vaccine for coronavirus.  I decided to embark on a more serious endeavor to lose more weight.  I have a lot of weight to lose before I can go from obese to merely overweight, but I'll set more modest goals for weight loss than that.  The project started a few weeks ago, and I already can count some pretty significant weight loss.  Since late 2018, I've lost about thirty pounds, going from 280 pounds to about 250.  About half of that weight loss started since the pandemic began, with quite a bit of it these past few weeks.  

I decided to eat a lot of the same foods I took on since the pandemic.  Mostly I eat really easy to prepare stuff such as baked fish, or hamburger with Hamburger Helper, or even a corn dog for lunch, for example.  The difference lies in the portion sizes I eat of these kinds of food.  I have one breakfast taco for breakfast instead of two, I have one corn dog for lunch instead of three, and so on.  I look at the recommended serving sizes for everything from prepared Hamburger Helper to peanuts to crackers and try to stick with that.  I snack on fruit lot as well.  I try to eat some kinds of vegetables everyday too.

To mark my progress I give myself token rewards on my calendar, such as a green foil star for following my diet for a day, a gold foil star for going on a walk, and a little animal sticker for not eating things like cake, or cookies, or ice cream.  I also track how many sweetened beverages such a coffee or tea I have a day with a little sticker for each of these kinds of drinks.   I gave up a lot of artificial sweetener and just try to watch my consumption of sugar.  I try to drink lots of ice water with a wedge of lime instead.  

I also give myself a blue foil star for NOT weighing myself over a twenty-four hour period of time.  Very important!  Nothing drives me crazier, faster than obsessively weighing myself every day, sometimes more than once a day.  I try to go some number of days without giving in to the urge to weigh myself.  For example, I can mark five days as my record of no scale-stepping so far, so I then try for a goal of three days as my next marker to set. I tend to set goals that way; go for a little LESS the next time instead of a little more.  That way, if I do make three days in a row, I can always try for more and thus set another record. I try to spend that time NOT weighing myself every day enjoying all of the weight I've already taken off.  At this business I patronize almost every day, I can see my whole body in the store window, and I can see the difference in my improved appearance.  I can just register a lot of happiness on the progress I've made so far without getting all hung up on trying to lose a whole lot more weight. 

Sorry, not going to talk about women for a while, most likely.  That means my remaining NINE unique weekly visitors will have to go elsewhere for their bad woman fix.   In other news.  Issue number 22 is coming along nicely.  I inked FIFTY pages of text to finish that phase today.  I even had enough gas to start the next phase, which consists of outlining the pencil drawings in ink.

I still have two songs left in the guitar/vocal tracks phase of I Make Country Music Records, Sir.  I Make Country Music Records, Sir represents the fifth solo album from the one and only Richy Vegas.  The songs I still have to track are, "Hockey Goon of Love," and "Anna."  I just missed tracking "Hockey Goon of Love" last week.  I fucked up on the last verse, because my guitar pick slipped so much that I had too little pick left to strum with.  "Anna" is a six minute song about Richy Vegas, the Serial Killer Hound.  I still have a ways to go before i get that one down.  I hope I can cram enough to record a passable version by Monday.  Having a live audience to play in front of really helps to get the songs down to where one can play them smoothly.  I really think the experience of having an actual audience listen to one play a song helps one rise to the occasion and builds confidence in one's ability to perform the song.  Oh well, cramming it is.

The Small Press Expo will announce the nominees for their awards for this year's virtual ceremony next week.  I submitted a PDF of issue number 20 for their consideration.  In anticipation of possibly earning a nomination, I ordered ten more mailers in case I received some internet orders for my books.  I didn't order a whole bunch.  I will probably use up most or all of the mailers I will have in less than six months, even if I don't get nominated. 

Back in the 90's I worked in a restaurant with Zac and David.  A girl I call Snolly worked there too.  When she started working there, she would smile nicely as I passed by her in the kitchen.  One day I stared intently at her as she walked by, and it spooked her.  She went on to date a guy who worked there, and she had a problem with me from then on as well.

After I quit working at that restaurant, I tried to talk to Snolly at a party around Halloween time.  She walked off before I could talk to her.  Later that night, as I sat in a room full of people who still worked at that restaurant, I brought up something that happened between James and I while I experienced a blackout drunk at his house in September.  I said to James that he had insulted my honor when he accused me of raping that girl I met at the Cannibal Club in 1989.  My current comic book series explores that time and all the mental illness stuff of it.

Soon after that gathering in that room full of restaurant employees, I suspected a guy named Lane of playing games with me.  I suspected that it centered around Snolly, who was not dating anyone at the time, and how he, Lane, attempted to build her up as a bogus love interest for me.  He would say stuff like, "One good turn deserves another," to the guy who'd just broken up with Snolly as we sat at a table at Trudy's.  I remember one scene, I think it was in Brian De Palma's Scarface, where Lane said, "He got the girl," as Pacino's gangster character treats Michelle Pfeiffer badly.  My memory comes up fuzzy as to what exactly went on the in movie, but I interpreted Lane's remark as a remark directed at me.

I talked to my therapist about this issue, and told him that I would just come out and ask Lane if he knew of any girls at the restaurant that liked me.  My therapist thought highly of that idea, so I tried it.  Lane said he didn't know of anyone at the restaurant that liked me when I called him a day or so later.  

A year later, at a Halloween party, I saw Snolly.  I talked to her a little, and then walked to the store to buy cigarettes.  When I came back she had left.  The next day i saw David at the video store, and he seemed real glad to see me.  David was a real handsome, nice guy who had the kind of platonic friendship with Snolly where I once saw her sit on his lap at the Hole in the Wall.  I asked David years later if he'd ever dated Snolly, and he said no.  Zac had a platonic friendship with her as well.

I thought about those two, and the access they could enjoy to someone like Snolly.  I thought about how I should aspire to that level of comfort with attractive women. I envied their access.  Then I thought, you know, Zac and David never, ever had to make the kinds of intelligent decisions about the Snollys of the world that I have to make on a regular basis.  They just didn't have to deal with the cruelty of anyone who saw them as some kind of major bad guy type.  I feel like I've had to come a lot further, and overcome a lot of things in order to enjoy whatever improvements in my relationship with women that I enjoy these days.

I think a big reason for my relative lack of success with women over the years stems from an apprehension that so many of them have about me.  Namely, that I have formed or will form an inappropriate emotional attachment to them.  Ten years ago, when I asked mostly young baristas and waitresses out in front of God and everyone, this apprehension seemed to result in the defenses a lot of them would throw up in response to my entreaties.  The defenses came mostly in the form of really cruel games that I didn't think they could really justify as a reaction to my overtures.  I wished they wouldn't have such a fear about me just because I asked them out, but there you are.  I asked two older waitresses out at that time, and only one of them played some stupid game, but even she couldn't bring herself to come off as totally rude at the moment i did ask her out, but there's more to that story than I want to get into right now.

So, I think if I give off a general vibe to attractive women that I would form a premature and inappropriate emotional attachment to them at the drop of a hat, that might explain an overall lack of much in the way of opportunities with women in general.  Okay, since those days of ten years ago, I've taught myself how to refrain from approaching certain woman in such a forward manner.   Mostly, these women are still very young waitresses, baristas, or other young women I see on a regular basis on my day to day routines.  Hannibal Lecter said in Silence of the Lambs, about the serial killer Buffalo Bill, "He wants what he sees."  So, maybe going into online dating or something would sublimate my desires enough and I could find more appropriate women to approach for that sort of thing.  Oh well, that's for another day.

I think that the young woman I went on at length about this past year-plus definitely played to the notion that any attempt on my part to approach her for social reasons while she worked at her job would make me look bad.  I guess I should really thank women such as her for providing this siren type temptation for me to fight, and thus I became a bit more emotionally self-reliant and sharper in my game.

Before I sign off, I want to thank the fifteen or so additional unique visitors to this site this week.  That is, fifteen visitors more than usually visit the sight in any given week.  That's nearly double the normal amount.  I don't know how Weebly comes up with these numbers.  When I go about my day to day routines, it seems as if a lot of people in my world have read what I write on a regular basis.  But then again, I have a major mental illness that may cause me to project such thoughts onto people when they greet me or look at me on my daily walks, for example.  Fun with mental illness.  Boy howdy!

Sorry to go on about the same stuff all the time, but here goes.  In my last post I talked about how I never signed on for the Unavailable Woman Deal in regards to the young woman I've written so extensively about for over a year now.  Don't get me wrong, though.  I still liked her and found myself very, very attracted to her, but my understanding of how things go in relation to such women prevented me from chasing her to the ends of the Earth and back.  If I could count on one thing I knew for sure, that would involve the understanding that chasing this kind of person to the ends of the Earth and back would definitely not do it.  So, I very much wanted to get with this person in every sense, I just knew about one way to NOT go about it.

That leaves me with the belief that this person just did not have an agenda with me that involved love, girlfriends, or relationships.  So, basically, if she was never on board for any of that, our deal was never meant to be.   Maybe one day some august body will pin the medal on her she seemed to so desperately covet in whatever agenda she did have with me, if she had any kind of agenda at all.