yep, that’s just me channelling my inner TS (actually, while I haven’t been keeping up with all this, they song is kind of catchy, and apparently she’s a bad girl now? I don’t get it. Also, Madonna did all this stuff better 30 years ago).

Whatever.

I had a weekend. It was a pretty good weekend, all told. Friday after work, I took a nice bike ride, then went and bought myself new pants. After losing almost the weight equivalent of my youngest child, it was time, although I’d been kind of avoiding it, because buying new clothes is making the commitment that I’m going to continue to fit in them and the weight isn’t coming back. Yes, I know this makes no sense, since I made the commitment to lifestyle changes to drop 75 pounds, but I don’t know, buying pants makes it seem, I guess, real, in a way that actually doing the hard work didn’t.

Anyway, after trying some things on, it turns out I made my waist measurement six inches smaller. I am wearing the same size pants I wore in high school.

Problem is, I still feel like a fat guy, no matter what I do. I’ve been that most of my life, on and off, so that’s the general mindset, even though I know logically that I’m probably in the best shape of my life right now, and I get catcalled by teenage girls and have been told by my youthful bandmates in Dimensional Riffs that I’ve become “the hot old guy.” I’m sure there’s a cool german word for this feeling (a strange, almost-antonym for kummerspeck or something), but I don’t know what it is; it’s definitely related to impostor syndrome though.

Heading into Saturday, despite my triumphant small pants expedition, I awoke seriously feeling the weight of the depression I talked about earlier last week. As I was largely uncommited for the day, I kind of gave into it for at least a few hours. I went out to do the grocery shopping (had nice experiences at the local farmer’s market and at Lidl, the new German chain that’s coming into the states and opened a couple of stores in the area – if you have the option, give it a try – and a less optimal experience at Wal-Mart, which is always pretty awful), then came home, put some laundry in the system, then settled down to crash on the couch with the cat for a couple of movies (Predator and Alien: Covenant). I did go with the family to our dance friends’ pool party in the afternoon, where I did some socializing, but mostly hung out with the dogs (who are my friends now, since I did their family a solid on Friday by checking in on them while they were out of town) and watched everyone else do their thing.

Sunday was a great experience, though. We got up early and headed down to Cary NC to do a bit of pre-DragonCon rehearsal with the Humdingers, then take the band across town to play a couple of short sets at our friend Gray Rinehart’s book launch party (I have talked about this book previously) that afternoon. A great time was had by all, and we played some pretty good music.

I really needed that.

This week, I’ve got a short one – I’m heading down to Atlanta (by way of Humdinger Central in NC) on Thursday for our gigs at DragonCon through Monday. This means I’m putting all kinds of things around the office to bed before disappearing for a week, settling in some end of FY stuff I’ve been bitching about to everyone, and trying to get into the mindset for the con – I know I’ll enjoy the experience, but I just haven’t gotten into the headspace for the experience, which is considerable and needs the adequate outlook.

Maybe heading out to Busch Gardens tonight with the youngest for a few hours (gotta wring the last bit of value out of the fun cards) to ride a couple of roller coasters will help. I hope it does, because that’s what I’m going to be doing. It might be just the release I need after yet another review of a statement work work I have to do this afternoon, and after coming in to find one of the curmudgeons in an adjacent department spent his Saturday throwing a temper tantrum on the work email system.

I don’t get it.