Tomorrow I get on an airplane for Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan... not necessarily in that order. I will mostly be visiting scott_lynch in scenic New Richmond, with side trips involving a certain truepenny and her mirrorthaw, and mrissa and alecaustin and markgritter and timprov and porphyrin and dlandon, and saladinahmed and colomon and, and, and... well, scores upon scores of my midwestern peeps. And a bonus jaylake!

And I shall be revising Shattered Pillars for submission. Because my vacation--or perhaps collapse--is over, and I need to get some work done now. Even though I would like another month of laziness in order to let my brain grow back after the insanity that was 2010-2011.

Perhaps I will see some of you at ConFusion?

There have been a couple of major milestones in the land of getting myself healthy and fit again. The Discipline is finally starting to reach its culmination. 

NB: I'm not looking for weight loss or exercise advice (I know what works for me, and if you want to know what it is, look back along the tag "the discipline"), and I firmly support anybody's right to live in the body they are comfortable in without societal bullshit or pressure. For me, for health reasons, I've decided that I needed to regain my lost athleticism in the wake of a bad marriage, and I have been working at it since 2006 or so.

My goals include not being incapacitated and dying slowly over the course of my fifties and sixties due to diabetes and hypertension, as my grandmother did. Please respect my sovereignty over my own body: criticism of those goals is not welcome, and neither is criticism of people who are happy and healthy making other lifestyle choices than they ones I have.

As of this morning, I weighed in at 197, thus achieving two arbitrary milestones. The first digit is a one (and has been since December 31st), and my BMI is now 29.95, or below the mystical cutoff from "overweight" to "obese." BMI is kind of largely bullshit... "We've replaced a transparently ridiculous height-weight chart with an opaquely ridiculous number! Let's see if anybody notices!"

But hey, even arbitrary milestones are milestones.

In less arbitrary milestones--I'm comfortably wearing size 14 jeans again and many of my favorite clothes fit me; I ran 4.8 miles in 60 minutes yesterday (that's nearly five 13-minute miles.) and followed it up with an hour of yoga and it felt like the right amount of exercise; I feel fit, in that I constantly surprise myself how easy it is to lift a heavy object or run up a flight of stairs--I can't wait to get back into the climbing gym more regularly, because I have a suspicion I am going to fly up walls; my forearms and biceps look awesome; and when I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirrored surface, I look like me, and not some stranger with my hair; the back fat has vanished and I have collarbones again. Collarbones!

Most importantly of all, my resting heart rate is varying between 60-68, and my blood pressure is back in the healthy range, unmedicated. WIKTORY! I think that qualifies as "fit."

My original goal was 165 pounds (I am 5'8", with a fairly massive bone structure--the strapping 6'1" Viking I'm dating is the first man I've ever been involved with who has broader shoulders than I do, and I regular rip the back seams on men's shirts), with a possibility of going for 155 if I got to the prearranged goalpost and still felt like I was carrying more weight than I wanted. Now I'm wondering if 170 isn't a more sensible goal, given the muscle mass I'm carrying... I guess we'll see how I feel when I get down there. Lighter is better for climbing--human tendons do not like hauling more than about 150 pounds up overhangs. But it's stupid to keep pushing for an arbitrary number if it's not what my body wants, and it won't support the muscle mass that makes it possible for me to do what I want to do.

Ani Difranco, it turns out, is 364 days older than I am. Man, she's going on my inspiration list of incredibly fit people a little older than me, along with Shemar Moore. Have you seen that woman's biceps? She's amazing.

Anyway, I'm really feeling as if the finish line is in sight, and I have my second wind. I've lost something like 95 pounds since 2005, and... well, I feel so much better. You would not believe how much less my knees and back hurt.



tl;dr: It's nice to be fit.

Also, winter has finally found Southern New England. Low today was 0; high today is 20. Gonna go make a pot of tea now. Also gonna go put a sweater on.