Back to my old driver's license weight.

I figure the steel-toe work boots required on my new job and the heavy wool coat to keep out the chill has to be making up the 10 lb deficit.

Having plummeted through the basement, I catch glimpses of myself looking gaunt in reflective surfaces. I am eating with abandon. Between last night and this morning I polished off the extra deliciously greasy cheeseburger Dee packed for me when she kindly packed me up for the trip. I also finished the whole bag of gooey chocolate chip cookies the 12 year old resident baker made for me. I'm waiting for the cafeteria at the residence campus I am staying in to open to take on another load of calories and decided to update the blog for a reasonably productive use of time.

I was more reticent to leave home for a week than I thought I would be. Dee and I haven't been away from each-other much over the years, and now it's going to be an every other week thing. In my silly obsessive need to tank up on sensory overload before I left, I neglected the opportunity to spend some quality time with her and the kids and I regret that, as she knew I would.

My room is comfortable, spartan and lonely. I have no computer access from my room thanks to HP.*

*I dragged up here with me my HP desktop. It is cobbled together with duct-tape. I mean that literally I have bright pink duct tape holding a donor power supply to the outside of the poorly designed practically not maintainable case. The HP monitor didn't survive the journey. It won't turn on at all. I think the once clever HP engineers now spend all their time finding ways to make the power supplies in all their products fail on a schedule so they can sell you a new one. Like I would ever by HP again. Ive said it before, I own nothing but HP. I have two dead laptops, just jury-rigged the desktop, and now a monitor. Four out of four of my most recent HP purchases all developing similar issues is pretty telling. Before he messed up the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara developed a pretty similar program for General motors of planned obsolescence. The American car industry is still mistrusted by anyone with any engineering sense to this day. So long HP, I hope you enjoy spending the last of your ill gotten gains on all that expensive advertising in advance of your eventual collapse and restructuring.