Let's see. At the end of November I weighed 131. How much do I weigh now?

131.

I'll just wuss out and say the Holidays got to me. Yeah, that's it. So what now? I still want to get my bodyfat percentage to 20%. I may have quit the diet, but I did not quit going to the gym. Except for 2 weeks when I had a buttload of time off and was too lazy to do anything.

One thing I did notice: I liked how I felt when I went 3 weeks without any alcohol. This might be WTMI but my sex drive came back. Note to myself: beer and sex don't mix. Funny, they did in college.

So what happened in December? Besides the holidays. Well, got to see the family of course. My sister got me the Wiseguy story arc on DVD with Kevin Spacey in it for a Christmas present. I loved that arc. I used to like Spacey, too. What the hell happened? I thought he'd rank up there with Bill Paxton and William Fichtner for best damn character actor but he took the Tommy Lee Jones route (just say 'no' to bad scripts, guys, especially if you're in the position to pick and choose!).

Sorry - I digress. Jon and I rented a 172 and flew into a Cobb County airport. General Aviation rules! One day I need to get my private pilot's license. We stayed at my brother's house and drove with him to my sister's on Christmas day. Andrea married a good guy. He's a hell of a cook, too. Anyway, mom and her husband were there, with 2 sets of his relations, and old friends Hector and Victor (Hector has lost weight!). Spent a good amount of time discussing weightlifting with them. We watched Bad Boys II which sucked. Michael Bay needs to be guilliotined. Or at least pilloried.

The New Year's party at the drop zone was a blast. I drank too much. My friend Jeff did his thousandth jump. He got pied for it - old skydiver tradition. I have 926 jumps. I want my thousand before my 40th birthday (May 17th of this year) I bet I can do it barring a catastrophe or a busted ankle.

I have started with stiff-legged deadlifts at the gym. I'm doing three sets of 12 reps at 85 pounds. Man I can feel that in my glutes big time. It's a nice complement to squats, which I feel mainly in my quads. I'm still shying away from heavy loads - ironically I can bench more than I squat (my max on the bench press is about 100 pounds). As for the deadlifts - like a lot of people the weight I can handle is limited more by my grip than my glutes. Time to add a Farmer's walk to the mix.

Anyway, I'm back on the wagon and back on the plan. I read a great book on Ketogenic diets called 'The Ketogenic Diet' by Lyle MacDonald. It's available at his website Body Recomposition.

What I've watched: Finished the Sopranos. I'm so glad Carmella finally threw the cheating bastard out! Finally someone I can cheer for.I've also finished the first 3 seasons of Angel (thank you, TNT). I don't like it as much as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it has its moments. Favorite: Lorne.

I finished the Forsyte Saga (part 1): Bossinney (the ninny) died in a carriage accident, Irene left Soames (which made me like her a lot more than I did), Soames is still a creep, but after some time (and a good deal of stalking) he finally divorced Irene and got involved with a woman who would tolerate having his child. It took a damn long time, but I finally felt something for Soames when he cried while bonding with his baby daughter.
The End.

Part 2 will air on PBS later on in February. Part 2 has (or so I have heard) Soames' grown-up daughter falling in love with young Jolyon Forsyte (Soames' cousin) and Irene's son (she had him near the end of part one). Hm. Second cousins. And people make fun of us folks in Alabama.

PBS is showing part 1 again right now so I set TiVO up to record it. TiVO is nifty - I can set it up to record things by actors so it is currently set up to record anything Damian Lewis, Christian Bale, Eric Bana, Ewan MacGregor, and Jason Isaacs is in. Of course it's not very discriminating so I accidentally caught part of Sweet November and nearly had to claw my eyes out when I saw Isaacs in drag. Jason I love you but you were just not made to wear dresses.

I saw Return of the King, of course. Loved it. The movie that affected me the most recently was 24 Hour Party People - loosely based on Tony Wilson, Factory Records, and the Manchester music scene from the late 70's to the early 90's.

I rented it because I owned quite a few Factory records back in the days of vinyl, and I was wondering what kind of mention they would give to one of my favorite bands: Joy Division. To my surprise and wonderment, they had a big chunk of the movie. The fellow who played Ian Curtis did a bang-up job - got the epileptic robot dance style down and everything. This movie was supposed to be a comedy, but I was in tears by the end of it. Era gone by, and all that. I have put some more Michael Winterbottom (director) movies on my Netflix queue.

I was also very sad because I had not known that Martin Hannett had died. He was very much a genius music producer. He was played in the movie by Andy Serkis (Gollum in Lord of the Rings).

I worship Michelle Yeoh as a Goddess; I saw 'Yes Madam' last night and it pissed me off. It also had Cynthia Rothrock in it -with that cast you would expect a lot of asskicking but nooooo. Most of the movie centered on these three thieves who bumbled around a lot. Dammit, if Michelle Yeoh is in a movie, I expect someone's ass to be kicked at least once every 10
minutes! It came across as a comedy, but the only thing that made me laugh were the 80's clothes and hairstyles. Rent Wing Chun instead.