July 28, 2009
Woke up to an anniversary. Kathy and I have been married for 30 years. Doesn't even seem possible. As she put it on the way into the kitchen, "It seems like about six years." Yes, if you don't count the teenage years (both Deena's and Tommy's and mine, which is ongoing).

Do Or Die
Harold Roberts asked about The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn. He is a Texas firefighter (and the son of a famous heart surgeon) who developed a 28-Day-Save-Your-Life plan that lowers cholesterol and allegedly burns away the pounds. We started the diet at the end of June. The first week you give up dairy, the second week you cut out oil and fat and basically you avoid anything with a face (this includes fish and poultry). My cholesterol was as high as 260 before my heart attack, so needless to say, this is a big deal trial for me. I'm on several statins so I'm down to below 200 now (I want to say 150), but I have a hunch this diet will lower that number as well. I feel good.

Still banging away on my sketches. Looked up in my daytimer archives yesterday and it appears I started this quest on November 21, 2005:

On my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings, these are bad drawings 9,566 to 9,572, with 428 to go.

Best Name For A New TV Show
Jesse James Is A Dead Man

A couple clarifications on the sneak of Julie & Julia last week. Kathy tells me that the real reason we got in was because two people left (I was over at the door trying to leave and missed this part). Kathy was there to witness this, and confronted the media guy: "Give us the two media seats and we'll take the two seats of the people who just left." The media guy relented. This is even more amazing than the way I told it, because the media guy had offered us the two media seats but we had four people. I was ready to leave, but Kathy hung in there. So the moral is: don't give up just because an event is sold out or full. People often leave at the last minute or get called away. Don't panic, stay present and when you see an opening, ask for the order.

On another front, I realized after I posted that I was describing a contradiction regarding the front row. I was bemoaning that the front row moved in the case of the Coliseum show with Dennis Miller, but I was complaining about being in the front row at the movie theatre. Say what? I didn't explain that this is one of those new stadium seating theatres with the raised balcony and then a group of less desirable floor seats that run right up under the screen, in the front. The undesirable seats were in the first row, but we ended up in the front row of the media seats which is in the middle of the theatre and up about six feet. Hope that makes sense. Most theatres in our area have gone to this mode of seating, but not sure it is universal, yet.

"The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period of one's life."
—Old Vaquero Saying