Dinhternet

It was great last night to go out for Lil­lian L’s birth­day and to see her, Stacey F, Becca Y, Miyama I, Chris T, Tina K, Michael B, Linda C, Andrew M, and Thu H. Plus their friends. Peggy S, I’m sorry you couldn’t make it and hope that you and your car are OK.

Dur­ing the bar golf game, the chit-chat some­how hit the topic of Miss APhiO, and the fact that Chris T was a con­tes­tant. Appar­ently Tina K did not know this about him. We some­how got into desrib­ing his wardrobe, and some­one asked him, “So how did you like the heels?”

“They were great. They made my thighs…“
– Chris T, mak­ing some up-and-down hand ges­tures.
“Elon­gated?“
– Some­one, try­ing to be help­ful.
“Yeah, they made my thighs elon­gated, like cel­ery.“
– Chris T.

I’m pretty sure I did not mis­hear that, because I turned to Becca Y, the other sober per­son, to con­firm. Can any girls, or other Miss APhiO con­tes­tants, or peo­ple who know Chris T explain that com­par­i­son to me, please?

Time for another Hacker’s Diet update.

Keep going! 22.5 lbs to go!

Weekly loss: 2.5 lbs. — Daily deficit: 1246 calo­ries.
You will reach your goal of 155 lbs on 2009-05-01. (245 days early!)

So far, I’ve lost 21.1 lbs of mea­sured weight (2.3 lbs in the last week) and 17.6 lbs of “real weight” (2.9 lbs in the last week). When I was doing the fam­ily chal­lenge, I had lost 14 lbs at this point.

I’m set­tling into a rou­tine between Sac and the Bay, so I think progress is going to be smoother now. The only upcom­ing prob­lems I see for myself are din­ners with old friends and birth­day sea­son. The sec­ond shouldn’t be too bad since I’ve decided not to drink for Lent, but I’ll have to watch por­tion con­trol for the first. On the exer­cise front, I could always use more, but I’m at a good place right now in terms of results for the time I put in. The 100 Push-Ups and 200 Sit-Ups Pro­grams should help, too.

I man­aged to hit my goal of get­ting under 175 by the end of Feb­ru­ary, and I’m cur­rently going at a pace of about 10 pounds a month. When look­ing at it that way, I sup­pose the pre­dic­tion of hit­ting my goal by early May is accu­rate. I’m just hold­ing my breath and wait­ing for the plateau, though. Oh well, gotta keep my eyes on the pos­i­tive. This is the best progress I’ve had with any diet in the past, so even if I slow down my progress, it will still be great!

Also, thanks to Thu H and Peggy S for your com­pli­ments at Bub­ble Lounge!

I just fin­ished read­ing The Game by Neil Strauss. It’s an inter­est­ing look at a world that all guys want to be a part of, and I think it’s really cool how Neil, or “Style” went around to all the mPUAs (that’s “mas­ter pick-up artists”) and syn­the­sized their tech­niques together.

I won­der if there have been any new break­throughs in the field, or if the sub­cul­ture just kinda imploded, as Style implies it was in the process of doing as his book ended. The major­ity of the advice I see online seems to fall under the “cocky funny” cat­e­gory started by David DeAngelo’s Dou­ble Your Dat­ing. (The link Peggy S sent me in response to an ear­lier post seems to be a toned down ver­sion of Tyler Durden’s “plow­ing,” though.)

The end of the book really dri­ves home the point that I’ve been hov­er­ing around and deny­ing for a while now. Ted said it a while ago on How I Met Your Mother, too. Style’s girl­friend tells him that she likes him for who he really is, and all that he learned as a pick-up artist almost drove her away from him. But he coun­ters that if it wasn’t for all his expe­ri­ences as a pick-up artist, he never would have had the balls to approach her and give her the chance to choose him.

I, like Ted, hate doing the whole bar thing and just want to skip ahead to the rela­tion­ship. But I can never get to that with­out going through the bull­shit first. First order of busi­ness, then, is to grow some balls. Next time I go out with friends, need to give myself a good psych-up in the mir­ror first. (I’ll try to stick with Jack’s “It’s win­ning time, you mag­nif­i­cent sonuvabitch!” instead of Liz’s “Stop sweat­ing, you idiot! What is wrong with you, you stu­pid bitch?” even though that comes more nat­u­rally to me.) And maybe pick up a gim­mick rou­tine to use?