Had my semi-annual checkup last Friday, and as usual, the Sawbones told me to go away and stop wasting his time.
Yes, for those who are interested: I am in excellent health apart from the standard age-related issues, and plan on staying around to torment my children, snarl at the government and piss off the Usual Suspects (Commies, vegans, gun confiscators [some overlap] ).
Of course I gained weight during the Dreaded Lockdown — who didn’t? — but I have a plan in place to reduce my tonnage considerably, starting only next Monday because starting it during Thanksgiving would be an exercise in complete and abject failure, as any fule kno.
I think I’ll go to the range in a couple hours. For a couple hours.
When did the trope, “a couple of…” lose its preposition? Not criticizing, just watching the clouds pass. My own suspicion is that we’re seeing speech recover its primacy over literacy, which will be complete when the ai’s for speech and text recognition are perfected, maybe next month. If English were a real language this would not be so bad; but being just a pidgin of dialects it doesn’t have much of a skeleton. Like, you know, bummer…
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It’s very much a Southern thing, although I’ve seen it occur in Britishland too, among speakers in the North of Britain — although they’re losing prepositions and even articles like crazy. “I’m going up to the pub” sometimes loses not only the article (“I’m going oop to pub”) but even the preposition (“I’m going oop pub”).
My favorite Americanism is the conjunction of “couple” with “three” — “I’ll be leaving in a couple-three hours” replacing “two or three”.
My father used to say “A couple or three” a lot.
One of my greater sources of curmudgeonly irritation is “could of”. That’s just someone too lazy (or ignorant – some overlap is possible) to say “could have”.
And another thing….
At least you’re not saying “I’m going to hospital.”
> Of course I gained weight during the Dreaded Lockdown — who didn’t?
I didn’t, I lost weight. But that’s in part because I avoided “lockdown” by taking a job delivering groceries. I gained a little back since Halloween, but see below:
> starting only next Monday because starting it during Thanksgiving would
> be an exercise in complete and abject failure
I believe that one shouldn’t try to *lose* weight between Halloween and Valentines day. For two reasons:
1) It’s the darkest and coldest time of the year. Your body *wants* to absorb as many calories as possible. This might not be as true in Dallas as it is in say Wyoming, but it’s 1000000000000 years of evolution.
2) Social reasons. In most years through the first week of January there’s gatherings of friends and family and food and drink are always pleasant. No reason to make yourself miserable, eat, drink and be merry.
I just try to hold the line between the gatherings (most years).
However I just started a new (deskbound) job, so will be ramping up the exercise schedule to coincide.
great news!
If it makes it any easier, the food intake difference over 30 years between lean and morbidly obese is 1 soda cracker per day.
I lost 60 pounds over 5 years being able to act on that simple thing. My weakness was evening snacks. Didn’t even have to give them all up, just not eat that last damn cracker.
Good to hear you’re in rude health.
Good to hear your health is good for an old fart. (I say that with affection being an even older fart)
I agree that Thanksgiving is a bad day to start losing weight. Pigging out on smoked turkey and whatever get made as sides is not a good diet plan.