The City of God

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 170.5#, 9.5% BF
Morning weigh-in (Wednesday):172.5#, 10.5% BF
Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 174.5#, 10.5% BF

I've got a few minutes downtime -- I'm just back from yoga & breakfast, and I'm heading out to Weyerbacher when they open around noon, to buy a case of their new stuff -- and I thought I'd update a few computer things, ie posting here, as well as adding a few photos from the Sals trail maintenance last month.

It's been a fairly rough week, mainly because of two pieces of news that came my way.

Bad News The First: At the Chain Gang meeting this week (that was Wednesday night) we were discussing where to have our annual Christmas party, and someone mentioned the Christian's Spring Hotel, especially since we had such a good time in their barn at the weekend party -- maybe we could rent the barn for our own party. Rich called them up while we moved on to other business, then came back with the news that CSH is closing and that Saturday (ie today) would be their last day. Aaaargh!

Bad News The Second: This one is a little more serious. My friend Dan sat a few of us down at work the other day, and told us he'd been talking to Vito: his wife had been getting dizzy again (this was probably just after I visited), and passed out in the bathroom the other night. They went to the hospital, where they found out she'd had a stroke: she still has powers of speech, but her right side has lost some mobility. (She's been in rehab at Sloan-Kettering ever since, learning to use a walker and trying to get as much of her mobility back as possible.) Doctors say it was caused by her tumor, which means that the tumor is active again -- and the tumor is inoperable, and she can't have any more chemo or radiation, and so what this really means is that Di is now basically into her endgame. She'll be home in a few days; Vito's probably a wreck right now. This is so sad.

Both of these (of course) put me in a fairly bad mood for the end of the week, though I've been trying to be philosophical about them. Which Brew is gone, and now Christian's Spring Hotel is gone, but Anne and I met at WB and first started hanging out at CSH, so maybe they had accomplished something, like the booster stages of a rocket, or maybe the Roman Empire before it fell.

Di is a little harder to take. She and Vito have led exemplary lives, and I'm glad that she can take some
comfort in her faith and in the expectation of a better world, but that doesn't really leave me with much.

Meantime, I can't make lemonade out of those weights either...

Anyway, Tuesday night was Porters after the gym, where the girls had taken over one corner and were experimenting with a new scene: the "Brew Knits" is what they called themselves, and that's exactly what they were doing -- sipping brews and knitting.

Wednesday was the Chain Gang meeting, Thursday was the gym followed by a visit to Christian Springs -- the usual "Thursday night supper club" (me, Anne, Lee, Judy, and Sally & Joe) though there was no food, and last night was a towpath ride with Larry (Happy Birthday!) and dinner was a pot roast at Anne's. Not sure what tonight will be, but I'll be riding with Anne and a few others at Jacobsburg later in the afternoon.

Those photos are posted (go check them out) and I'm all caught up, so I'm outta here.