How do I say I am so sorry? No excuse...

My log book has all the data, but I am just waking up and getting back into exercise and shooting and life again. So I apologize to myself and tell you (me) that I will do better in February than I did in January and December. I will look at weekly updates, February and March lend themselves to that a bit better.

I do get so old and am just starting to understand what that really means and accept it, since my mind dwells back there in the thirty-somethings and I haven't been there for a bunch of years - Germany, between 1978-1982, which were very good years for us.

Restless and troubled...

.. I get up early and write. I was dreaming of military, Europe and the field. Wednesday I weighed 209.5 pound, blood pressure 137/92 with a heart rate of 40 bpm. Thursday I weighed 208.0 pounds, blood pressure of 133/91 and a heart rate of 41 bpm. Today I weigh 205.0 pounds, blood pressure is 159/87 with a heart rate of 41 bpm. Except for going to the chin up bar for some feeble but very needed attempts to get my head above the bar I have not been exercising, and yesterday I didn't even walk to the dock. The pain in my foot has really gone down and almost away, and the swelling is fading into nothing -- my feet are still ugly but functioning very well and I think I will start training again on Saturday -- trying to look seventy when I am only sixty.

The restless worry is about yesterday at the library. I was giving the time sheets to the inmate workers for them to check and then sign. One worker refused to sign it and said he wasn't going to since I had shorted him for the last two months. I was shocked but was sure I had mis-understood what he said, for I would have no reason to short him or any of the workers. Still it bothered me and after he came back from lunch I asked him if he had really meant that I had shorted him, he said yes that he had kept his own time sheet and that I had. Then I asked him if he wanted me to leave, and I think the question bothered him but he said no, that we could just forget about it. Wrong answer, I didn't forget and contacted my supervisors and then his Corrections supervisor since his counselor wasn't in. He sent me the form to fill out for a lay-in until the problem is resolved. Which means the inmate clerk that can't trust me isn't coming back to work for a supervisor that shorts him on his hours and pay.

I didn't short him, but he was the second of the last two workers to say that about my time sheets, the problem is that the time sheets don't allow one to be that creative with time, it is or it isn't the time and the total hours. And if I had made a mistake the workers just point it out and I fix it immediately, I have done that before. So I get two of my last two workers to decide I am crooked, which means to me that they are basically crooked and look at the world as the same. Anyway, I am very testy about my honor - having been treasurer of several different organizations and handling library fines and deposits for two of the libraries I worked at, I really hate being thought of as dishonest and a liar. My blood pressure was sailing right up there yesterday and I felt miserable until my supervisor and the institution said okay to laying him in until he got terminated. Maybe I should pray for us all, I certainly need it.

Little steps, make a journey...

I weigh 207.0 pounds, blood pressure is 140/85 with a heart rate of 41 beats per minute, hopefully with a nice rhythm, irregular is the kind of fellow I want to be, not the way my heart works. I am still hiding from breaking out in muscular sweats for lots of reps and against gravity - the last of the cold lingers but it is going. I walk to the dock and notice that I can see the pathway along the road, the light has returned to my days. The trees aren't as green as this picture, the route is the same and budding has started on some of the early ones, Spring then Summer is to be looked for.

I stopped with my wife at a restaurant, and the waitress asked if I worked at McNeil Island, and I said yes. We ordered and when she brought back the drinks, she said "You're the guy that walks everyday." So easy to build a reputation, just by being a little different. There are, in good weather, other walkers, and a few in bad. Mostly everyone rides the bus, the American way. I have almost always walked down, unless I am running out of time to catch the ferry or I am ill for some reason. People think it is for my fitness that I do the walk, but for that I jog, the walk is for my mental health. The thick tree lined road, twisting with animal sign and sightings, takes me back to walking home in Pennsylvania, wondering where are the French and Indians. I use the time to daydream a bit, to wonder 'what if?' of many silly things. And then suddenly I am at the dock ready for the ferry boat ride.

Only one more time to walk, hard and fast, after arrival at the island dock the race starts to get inside the gates and get to work. I like the surge, passing the Headquarters building, to get to the entry gates, under tower guard control. Up the steps two at a time into Control and then work. My mind is ready, my spirit soared.